Learning new vocabulary is not complicated, but hard work.Īs you progress to an advanced level, the good news is that your Swedish is getting better. During the day, revise your new words, once in a while, on the bus, whilst waiting for someone, before sleeping. Have a daily limit say, a maximum of ten new words per day. Write down every word you look up in the dictionary. Luckily, your brain is designed for remembering things. You cannot do it later you need to do it now. Learning a new language, ultimately, is about remembering. Wrap this around half of your dictionary (the part translating from your language into Swedish), so that you need to think twice before using it.Īny word you look up in the dictionary should be remembered. If it still tempting to you, please invest in an elastic band, or some masking tape. Instead of the correct word, you might need to explain what you mean, or use an approximate word instead. You have to accept that for a really long time, you cannot say such intelligent things as you can say in your own language. I have seen conversations when a student picks up the dictionary two or three times per sentence, in order to find the exact word for what they want to say. Sometimes I confiscate my students’ dictionaries. If you have little time and consider this solution, remember: you will not learn any Swedish (that is the point of studying a language, right?), your teacher will discover it right away (I promise), I have had students who sometimes attempt to write their essays using Google Translate. Never use it to translate something in your own language into a language you do not know very well. You will see plenty of mistakes and weird things, but you will probably understand. Always use Google translate to translate a foreign language into your own. It can be very useful if you want to understand the general meaning of a text. Google Translate should be used with caution. I have, however, in my own amateurish empirical studies, noticed that paper dictionaries are better than digital ones. Digital dictionaries can be very useful, especially on the go, and I personally like, but I believe this is mostly because of habit. There are some digital dictionaries online, and some good and not so good apps. Therefore, if your English skills are good enough, it might be a reasonable solution to buy a Swedish-English dictionary instead of one that translates into your own language. This is very regrettable, and I am somewhat embarrassed about this bias, but it is important to point out. Sadly, I have also discovered that English, German, Spanish and French dictionaries are often of much better quality than less “popular” languages (from a Swedish point of view). At the same time, as Swedish is a relatively small language there is probably not much money to make for a publisher in your country to publish a comprehensive, up-to-date Swedish dictionary. That is, they are made for Swedish speakers – studying your language. ![]() This is not because they are bad, they are just not designed for learning the language thoroughly.Īs you will discover, there is a problem with buying a bilingual dictionary from a Swedish publisher. I strongly advise my students not buy a traveller’s dictionary, such as the ones from Berlitz. ![]() As you progress, you might want to invest in the larger version, to keep at home, but it is not necessary. Norstedts make quite good bilingual languages, translating from Swedish to a handful of European languages, and Russian. It takes a few seconds, and after hearing the universal ahhh, we can continue.įor beginner’s level, you do not need more than a small bilingual pocket dictionary. In such cases, I really appreciate if my students have brought dictionaries, to look it up. Or it would take ten minutes of important classroom time to explain just one word, ten minutes that could be used in a much more productive manner. And then, where would you draw the line for what should be said in Swedish, and what should be explained in another language? I must say, with a bit of practice, I have become quite good at explaining new vocabulary, even at beginner’s level. But from experience, I know that, if I say one word in English, once, it will not be only once. I teach exclusively in Swedish, and I might appear just a little bit too stubborn about this. I start off by blaming my students for not bringing a dictionary to the course, and when they finally show up with one, I tell them off for using it too much. I am fully aware that as a teacher, I often contradict myself. I am grateful my students are so patient with me.
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