I Learned a Language by Reading Game of Thrones
By: Frank Andrade
Tags: Language, Psychology, Productivity, Self, Creativity

Four years ago, after finishing the Portuguese course in Duolingo, I tried to find a way to practice all the grammar rules and vocabulary I learned.

In the beginning, I didn’t have success in finding a language partner to practice the language and my free time didn’t allow me to watch movies or TV shows in Portuguese, so I decided to read a book to practice the language on the go.

That’s when I chose the Game of Thrones books since I thought I could easily understand the books because I watched the TV show. Besides, I wanted to find out more about my favorite characters, so it was a win-win!

In this article, I’ll show you what I did to learn a language by reading Game of Thrones and how that helped me improve my language skills.

How Did I Learn a Language by Reading Game of Thrones?

To learn a language by reading books like Game of Thrones, I used flashcards. Keep in mind that I read e-books, which were essential for the method I used to learn a language; however, you can come up with a way to adapt this method to printed books.

These are the steps I followed to learning a language with books on an iPhone/iPad:

Step 1: Highlight the text with different colors

It’s different to read for pleasure than to read for learning a foreign language. In the latter, you should be aware of the use of the language in the narrative and use different colors to highlight words or phrases according to your language goals.

For example, my priorities when reading Game of Thrones were to increase my vocabulary, learn how to use conjunctions and common expressions. Then I highlighted with the green, pink and blue colors to distinguish them. You can still use the classical yellow highlight for the typical remarkable phrases you wish to remember.

A Guerra dos Tronos — As Crônicas de Gelo e Fogo

We’re going to create flashcards with those highlighted words and phrases, but first, we need to filter out irrelevant stuff with the next step.

Step 2: Translate or look up the definition of unknown words

Before we create our flashcards, we need to know which words are worth learning. To do so, you can easily find the definition or find the translation by tapping twice on the word. In this case, I pre-installed the Portuguese dictionary and translator on iBooks.

iBooks dictionary

Once you know the meaning of the word, you have to choose whether that word is relevant or not. Ask yourself,

Am I going to use this word in real-life conversations?

This is an important question, especially when it comes to reading fiction books since some of the vocabulary is rarely used in everyday conversations. If you consider the word relevant, you can keep the word highlighted; if not, just remove the highlight.

Step 3: Create your flashcards

Most flashcard apps work with a learning technique known as spaced repetition. This technique helps us study a new word just before we’re about to forget it, so we’ll effectively learn new words and phrases.

There are a lot of flashcards apps available. I used Quizlet since it’s free and straightforward. Once you download any flashcard app, you’ll get instructions on how to create flashcards, so you can include the words previously highlighted. That’s it! Now you can learn a language by reading books!

Quizlet flashcards- Image by author

How Reading Game of Thrones Helped Me Learned a Language

There are some reasons why books like Game of Thrones are more beneficial to learning languages.

Book series are more helpful than individual books

I didn’t pick up the Game of Thrones books only because I liked the show, but also because it’s a series of 5 books. Some of the benefits of reading book series are the high number of repetitions in vocabulary, continuity in the plot, and familiarity with the author's writing style. The last two are essential to increase your text comprehension, while the first makes you increase your vocabulary since it surpasses the number of words learned by reading random books.

The narrative helps you easily understand grammar rules

Just like the original book, the translated version contains formal vocabulary. This might make the vocabulary difficult to understand; however, it also helps us figure out how grammar rules work in the target language.

Unlike TV shows, books are full of sentences that respect the grammar rules of the language you’re learning. Although breaking some grammar rules represent a real use of the language, when one just started learning a foreign language is better to learn it the right way and just later learn informal speech.

It helps you learn at your pace

This isn’t just related to one particular book, but all in general. To me, the best thing about books is that you can read and learn at the speed you want.

Usually, some TV shows are hard to understand because characters speak too fast, whisper and have a difficult accent. Of course, you can always rewind and watch the scene again, but doing that many times isn’t fun.

When reading a book, there’s no rush, so you can decide the speech pace of dialogues and even come up with a pleasant accent every time a character speaks.

Final Thoughts

Game of Thrones — A Guerra dos Tronos in Portuguese — helped me learned a language in a fun and effective way. However, it doesn’t mean you have to read that book to learn a language. I didn’t have so many problems reading it since I also speak Spanish, which is similar to Portuguese. However, I know some people who struggle to read it even in their native language.

As a rule of thumb, you can choose any book as long as it’s a book series that you’re familiarized with, like Harry Potter. Also, analyze whether the book can help you grasp concepts in the language, such as grammar or vocabulary.