Need book recommendations
-
@klaus said in Need book recommendations:
Sci-Fi might be good. Graphic novels would interest him, but they should contain a non-trivial amount of text - the point is to work on his English skills.
Yeah, I don't mean comic books. Graphic novels can be pretty lengthy. You might want to look into Logicomix? Lots of text, pretty easy reading level, but the subject matter might interest you, too, so it might be something you can do together if he's into that?
Some you might want to look into:
Holes
Lord of the Flies (seriously)
The City of Ember
Alice in Wonderland
The Oz series
The Maze Runner
Explorer Academy
The Firefly Code
The Wild RobotMost of those, I believe, are for kids a little younger than he is, but they're also newer and therefore not old and boring.
The Oz books are (if I remember) easy to read, short, and really engrossing. They're not condescending to kids, either.
wrote on 16 Jun 2021, 19:54 last edited by@aqua-letifer said in Need book recommendations:
Lord of the Flies (seriously)
He has actually just started (somewhat hesitantly, after I recommend it) that book in the German translation.
-
@klaus said in Need book recommendations:
Sci-Fi might be good. Graphic novels would interest him, but they should contain a non-trivial amount of text - the point is to work on his English skills.
Yeah, I don't mean comic books. Graphic novels can be pretty lengthy. You might want to look into Logicomix? Lots of text, pretty easy reading level, but the subject matter might interest you, too, so it might be something you can do together if he's into that?
Some you might want to look into:
Holes
Lord of the Flies (seriously)
The City of Ember
Alice in Wonderland
The Oz series
The Maze Runner
Explorer Academy
The Firefly Code
The Wild RobotMost of those, I believe, are for kids a little younger than he is, but they're also newer and therefore not old and boring.
The Oz books are (if I remember) easy to read, short, and really engrossing. They're not condescending to kids, either.
wrote on 16 Jun 2021, 20:03 last edited by@aqua-letifer said in Need book recommendations:
You might want to look into Logicomix?
You mean the philosophical Russel/Wittgenstein/.... thing? I got a copy in my book shelf. I'm sure he'd appreciate easy words like "epistemology" or "post-structuralism", let alone the subject matters such as logical paradoxes
-
@klaus said in Need book recommendations:
@george-k said in Need book recommendations:
Harry Potter?
Way too complicated and too long.
Not the first book or two in the series. Another series would be the Percy Jackson books. A bit dated, but the Heinlein juvenile books like Have Spacesuit, Will Travel or The Rolling Stones would be good.
Newer stuff would be Al Capone Does My Shirts or maybe A Night Divided. The last one is a Berlin Wall story...
wrote on 16 Jun 2021, 20:11 last edited by@jolly said in Need book recommendations:
Not the first book or two in the series.
I'll check out your suggestions, but I think you are overestimating the English capabilities of average 13yo Germans
They'll maybe know a thousand words. They cannot construct an English sentence with more than five words that does not contain multiple errors. Reading books in a foreign language is really really hard. -
wrote on 16 Jun 2021, 20:21 last edited by
What might work is stories that are super adventurous, so much so that it's worth the effort to conquer the language in order to find out what happens next!
Unfortunately, I can't think of any easy texts right now. There's Captain Blood and Beau Geste, but they are certain to be too advanced.
Rafael Sabatini, who wrote Captain Blood, also wrote some short stories, if you can find them. I don't know if they'd be any easier, but at least they'd be short.
-
wrote on 16 Jun 2021, 20:28 last edited by
The Hobbit?
-
wrote on 16 Jun 2021, 20:51 last edited by
Oo! Oo! I just thought of something! The Hardy Boys!
"The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in several mystery series for children and teens."
-
Oo! Oo! I just thought of something! The Hardy Boys!
"The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in several mystery series for children and teens."
wrote on 16 Jun 2021, 21:02 last edited by@catseye3 said in Need book recommendations:
Oo! Oo! I just thought of something! The Hardy Boys!
"The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in several mystery series for children and teens."
I absolutely hated those books.
(And one of the authors did too, from what I read!) -
wrote on 16 Jun 2021, 21:03 last edited by
Klaus, disregard what Aqua said above. He was drunk.
-
@jolly said in Need book recommendations:
Not the first book or two in the series.
I'll check out your suggestions, but I think you are overestimating the English capabilities of average 13yo Germans
They'll maybe know a thousand words. They cannot construct an English sentence with more than five words that does not contain multiple errors. Reading books in a foreign language is really really hard.wrote on 16 Jun 2021, 21:04 last edited by@klaus said in Need book recommendations:
I'll check out your suggestions, but I think you are overestimating the English capabilities of average 13yo Germans
They'll maybe know a thousand words. They cannot construct an English sentence with more than five words that does not contain multiple errors. Reading books in a foreign language is really really hard.I applaud you and your son for taking this on. This is the first time I see anyone asking for book recommendations specifically to facilitate the learning of a second language.
The unfortunate thing is if I take your "1000 word vocabulary" assessment literally and try to map it to a native anglophone's age or grade level, this site maps it to below age five. I cannot think of any book written for five year olds that would have content that is interesting to a 13 year old. You may have to resort to graphic novels. :man-shrugging:
-
wrote on 16 Jun 2021, 21:04 last edited by Aqua Letifer
@catseye3 said in Need book recommendations:
Klaus, disregard what Aqua said above. He was drunk.
It's smugglers, okay? Smugglers.
It was always smugglers.
-
@klaus said in Need book recommendations:
I'll check out your suggestions, but I think you are overestimating the English capabilities of average 13yo Germans
They'll maybe know a thousand words. They cannot construct an English sentence with more than five words that does not contain multiple errors. Reading books in a foreign language is really really hard.I applaud you and your son for taking this on. This is the first time I see anyone asking for book recommendations specifically to facilitate the learning of a second language.
The unfortunate thing is if I take your "1000 word vocabulary" assessment literally and try to map it to a native anglophone's age or grade level, this site maps it to below age five. I cannot think of any book written for five year olds that would have content that is interesting to a 13 year old. You may have to resort to graphic novels. :man-shrugging:
wrote on 16 Jun 2021, 21:15 last edited by@axtremus said in Need book recommendations:
The unfortunate thing is if I take your "1000 word vocabulary" assessment literally and try to map it to a native anglophone's age or grade level, this site maps it to below age five.
I found this mapping from grades to CEFR language levels:
5th grade: A1
6th grade: A1+
7th grade: A2
8th grade: A2+
9th grade: B1
10th grade: B1+
12th grade: B2+My son is 7th grade, so level A2. According to this website A2 vocabulary is around 1500 words.
I think it is in general a lot of work to speak a foreign language as good as a 5 year old native speaker.
-
@axtremus said in Need book recommendations:
The unfortunate thing is if I take your "1000 word vocabulary" assessment literally and try to map it to a native anglophone's age or grade level, this site maps it to below age five.
I found this mapping from grades to CEFR language levels:
5th grade: A1
6th grade: A1+
7th grade: A2
8th grade: A2+
9th grade: B1
10th grade: B1+
12th grade: B2+My son is 7th grade, so level A2. According to this website A2 vocabulary is around 1500 words.
I think it is in general a lot of work to speak a foreign language as good as a 5 year old native speaker.
wrote on 16 Jun 2021, 21:24 last edited by@klaus said in Need book recommendations:
@axtremus said in Need book recommendations:
The unfortunate thing is if I take your "1000 word vocabulary" assessment literally and try to map it to a native anglophone's age or grade level, this site maps it to below age five.
I found this mapping from grades to CEFR language levels:
5th grade: A1
6th grade: A1+
7th grade: A2
8th grade: A2+
9th grade: B1
10th grade: B1+
12th grade: B2+My son is 7th grade, so level A2. According to this website A2 vocabulary is around 1500 words.
I think it is in general a lot of work to speak a foreign language as good as a 5 year old native speaker.
I think all the stuff I gave you was American 6th grade level, if that can work...
-
wrote on 17 Jun 2021, 00:22 last edited by
Percy Jackson is a good recommendation but could be beyond his English level. I can post a sample page or two.
-
wrote on 17 Jun 2021, 00:23 last edited by
I could just send my boy over there for the summer.
-
wrote on 17 Jun 2021, 00:25 last edited by
@jon-nyc said in Need book recommendations:
I could just send my boy over there for the summer.
Partay at @jon-nyc 's house!
-
wrote on 17 Jun 2021, 01:44 last edited by Copper
@george-k said in Need book recommendations:
Actually, what about some of the Tom Swift books?
Yes, obviously, no question
This is number one on the list
Maybe the Hardy Boys after this
And Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer
Edit
And now I just noticed that there is a long line of new Tom Swift books written in the 80s, 90s and beyond. I am not familiar with these. The books from the 1950s are terrific.
-
Oo! Oo! I just thought of something! The Hardy Boys!
"The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in several mystery series for children and teens."
wrote on 17 Jun 2021, 01:55 last edited by@catseye3 said in Need book recommendations:
Oo! Oo! I just thought of something! The Hardy Boys!
"The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in several mystery series for children and teens."
Darn! Cats beat me to this. Good job, Cats.
Yes, this series could be fun for your kiddo.
-
wrote on 17 Jun 2021, 03:11 last edited by
Here's a sample of Percy Jackson writing:
If you think that's too advanced, I have other suggestions of adventure stories but one problem you could find is that the books written at a reading level he'd be good with won't interest him because they're aimed at younger kids.
-
wrote on 17 Jun 2021, 05:47 last edited by
@jon-nyc said in Need book recommendations:
I could just send my boy over there for the summer.
Well, send him over, he'd be very welcome. But I'm afraid he'd learn more German than my boys would learn English
-
Here's a sample of Percy Jackson writing:
If you think that's too advanced, I have other suggestions of adventure stories but one problem you could find is that the books written at a reading level he'd be good with won't interest him because they're aimed at younger kids.
wrote on 17 Jun 2021, 05:52 last edited by@jon-nyc said in Need book recommendations:
If you think that's too advanced, I have other suggestions of adventure stories but one problem you could find is that the books written at a reading level he'd be good with won't interest him because they're aimed at younger kids.
That's a good suggestion. If it's a very well-known book or story, then there's a non-zero probability that I'll find specially prepared versions of the book that would contain footnotes and vocabulary lists for more advanced words.