I finally find a way to read without really reading. Let me explain. I am at the level of lower intermediate in Spanish, which is a very awkward stage. Often people consider this a plateau,
The freshness of the language is lost by now; the boredom sets in; the lack of progress is too glaring to be ignored despite some serious efforts. One wants to get out of it, but one just can’t; one tries more advanced material, pretending one has made progress, only to meet confusion and incomprehension so much so that one has to give up and go back to more basic stuff.
I was told that reading was important. So I tried to read here and there, but the reading speed is so low that it takes all the fun out of it. At such a speed, reading feels like a torture. If one unknown word appears, the whole sentence has to be put on hold until that one word is looked up. If a weird “le” shows up, which is not so infrequent, one has to google it to see what other people online have to say about the extra “le” and similar whimsical pronouns in similar situations.
After being in this plateau for months or even a year, I finally found a way to read without reading. I found some K Drama (or fake K Drama) which have Spanish subtitles. They are not dubbed in Spanish. So I just turn off the soundtrack and read the subtitles. I prefer really bad fake K Drama with beautiful scenes and dramatic fights. They usually have repetitive and infantile dialog, which is wonderful for language learning purposes. Half an hour or even one hour was easily passed as I read the subtitles and mocked the ridiculous plot. So I was able to read for a period of time without feeling I was reading. And it is almost like reading a video book–the subtitles are the texts, accompanied by moving images. Reading it is certainly bearable and it can even be fun from time to time.
Actually my writing is a little stagnated too. Progress is hard and cliches are all what I’ve got. I wish I can find a way to get out of this plateau too.
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Image by congerdesign from Pixabay
Haoyan Do 
Very clever way to use modern subtitles to your advantage.
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I’ll admit Reading is hard for me. But it’s better than the alternatives 🤣😎🙃
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I’ve done that with Finnish – except that the audio was English with Finnish subtitles. Even so, I found myself reading the subtitles. Sometimes they even helped to clarify words that were unclear in the English!
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What an interesting way to approach reading!
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