Bilingual paragraph-by-paragraph translationsSo you can learn or practice a language while reading the books you already want to read anyway.► Classical novel

Professor Aronnax, his faithful servant, Conseil, and the Canadian harpooner, Ned Land, begin an extremely hazardous voyage to rid the seas of a little-known and terrifying sea monster. However, the "monster" turns out to be a giant submarine, commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo, by whom they are soon held captive. So begins not only one of the great adventure classics by Jules Verne, the 'Father of Science Fiction', but also a truly fantastic voyage from the lost city of Atlantis to the South Pole.

The original French version (1869) is aligned with the official English translation, by Lewis Page Mercier (1872). The most common way to use these texts is to only use your native language when it's absolutely necessary for understanding what's going on in the text. This keeps you from just leaning on a language you already know. By only consulting the "teaching language" when absolutely necessary, you get the experience of extensive reading without the pain of having to do it in the normal way. This also means that all the input you're getting is comprehensible, which helps grow your vocabulary, grammar and other subtle aspects of the language.In the end, the goal of the parallel text books is to help you understand and learn at the same time by helping you when you need it and not helping you when you don't need it.If you can learn to use parallel text books correctly, they're incredibly powerful tools that can teach you a very nuanced version of the language you're trying to learn.

To make the most of using parallel text books, follow these steps.

1. Don't read both languages all the time.

This is the most important step on this list. Don't read both languages every time you read-your native language is just an aid for understanding the target language and should be treated as such.If you start reading both languages all the time, you're basically giving your brain the green light to always translate in your head. This is very important not to do because translating in your head is tiresome and only slows you down and keeps you from sounding natural when you speak.

2. Read often.

Reading in a new language is just like learning to read again. You need to be reading as much as possible so you can grow as much as possible. Take in as many different types of books as you can and read them until you can digest and retain the information in them.Not only is reading often important to get used to the method of reading parallel texts, but it also just gets you comfortable around your new language and helps you begin to think in that language when you're using it.Essentially, the more you read, the better you'll speak, read and write in the language that you're studying.

3. Read out loud whenever possible.

This will probably make you uncomfortable at first, because most of us don't regularly read out loud.However, it's very important to read books out loud when you're reading in a foreign language because it helps you with things like pronunciation, rhythm, etc.