Paralell short stories.

[Hedonologist]

Does anyone have experience with using parallel short stories?

I found an old copy that I bought many years ago and I'm reading through it now. Basically reading what I can, picking out the unrecognizable words and learning them by rote, then re-reading the text until I can read the paragraph without dictionary. So far it seems to be going very well, as vocabulary is expanding rapidly.

[Dora M]

I find the parallel system often amusing. Because there are certain phrases that only exist in one language, and when translated their meaning might be correct, but the story somehow loses essence and becomes something else. It's the same with movies. I can't believe how bad and misleading the subtitles are. Many jokes and punts simply get lost in the translation.

[tckc]

In my college Spanish classes, we often used parallel stories. I thought they were helpful, but I imagine that is only because we were already at a certain level of Spanish understanding. We used them more to learn about the various meanings a particular Spanish word can have. By having an English translation right there for comparison, we could see the many different translations/connotations of each word.

But I also think that probably anything that gets you to learn a word and associate its definition is helpful. Looking at vocabulary lists is pretty boring, so I'm sure switching it up and reading a story is useful for learning.