Short Stories in Icelandic for Beginners

by Olly Richards

An unmissable collection of eight unconventional and captivating short stories for young and adult learners.

"I love Olly's work - and you will too!" - Barbara Oakley, PhD, Author of New York Times bestseller A Mind for Numbers

Short Stories in Icelandic for Beginners has been written especially for students from beginner to intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, and most importantly - enjoyment! Mapped to A2-B1 on the Common European Framework of Reference, these eight captivating stories will both entertain you, and give you a feeling of progress when reading.

What does this book give you?
· Eight stories in a variety of exciting genres, from science fiction and crime to history and thriller - making reading fun, while you learn a wide range of new vocabulary
· Controlled language at your level, including the 1000 most frequent words, to help you progress confidently
· Authentic spoken dialogues, to help you learn conversational expressions and improve your speaking ability
· Pleasure! It's much easier to learn a new language when you're having fun, and research shows that if you're enjoying reading in a foreign language, you won't experience the usual feelings of frustration - 'It's too hard!' 'I don't understand!'
· Accessible grammar so you learn new structures naturally, in a stress-free way

Carefully curated to make learning a new language easy, these stories include key features that will support and consolidate your progress, including

· A glossary for bolded words in each text
· A bilingual word list
· Full plot summary
· Comprehension questions after each chapter.

As a result, you will be able to focus on enjoying reading, delighting in your improved range of vocabulary and grasp of the language, without ever feeling overwhelmed or frustrated. From science fiction to fantasy, to crime and thrillers, Short Stories in Icelandic for Beginners will make learning Icelandic easy and enjoyable.

Genres: Language

224 pages, Paperback

Published June 2, 2020

Reviews

[Berengaria · Rating 2 out of 5]

For didactic quality: 4 stars
For story quality: 1.5 stars

average: 2.5 stars

It's too bad that Olly Richards is a much better theorist than he is a storyteller.

I could list several major problems with the content of the stories in this collection - ranging from out-dated gender stereotyping, to ham-fisted repetition, to the addition of "weird" sci-fi-ish elements that serve no other purpose than to attempt to liven up flat, basic plot lines.

For the most part, I felt treated like a child being told simple, positive Sunday School stories, not an adult wanting to improve a language.

For people new or inexperienced with language learning who lack confidence in their ability to tackle a foreign language, Olly's method is pretty good. However, it's not meant for the already multi-lingual or polyglot crowd who will already have developed their own strategies for tackling texts.

Regarding the Icelandic version specifically, I had some questions regarding word choice. On several occasions, I looked up unknown words or phrases only to see them listed as "very rare" in dictionaries. Why did the translator choose a very rare word/phrase when there are far more common versions available? (A case of AI translation?)

I also had my qualms with a number of the bolded words. Some I thought a reader at that level would already know, but others one probably wouldn't were not bolded. This, I'd guess, is because The bolded words were pre-selected in the English edition with no regard to which words are known/unknown in Icelandic at which stage.

Certainly, Olly Richards put a lot of time, thought and effort into this product (line) and it shows.

Perhaps, though, he should have hired a ghost writer to do the stories and then adapted them to the appropriate stage levels himself, because these stories are awful .

Can you improve your Icelandic with this book? Certainly. This isn't a bad product, but it could be miles better. Too bad it's one of the very few books for Icelandic currently on the market.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short story collection is a great way to improve your Icelandic through extensive reading. The stories are well written and mostly quite entertaining.

[Elisabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the value of content of the stories, this book is really not good. Absolutely absurd stories. Read for pleasure? Sure....
For the Icelandic value, a bit better. As other reviews indicated, the language is not very common at times, so bizarre choices by the translator, but also the highlighting of what terms are noteworthy and not already known are very far from what is commonly taught at A1-2 levels, and quite a few words which I've never seen before are not given translations for.
Whilst the convenience of some translations and summaries at the end of segments are useful and convenient, I've definitely enjoyed árstíðir and dagatal a lot more for the language learning value.

[Luke O'Brien · Rating 2 out of 5]

Simple, easy-to-read for beginners but the plots make very little sense. Also, the stories don't have anything particularly relevant to Iceland, so you don't learn any more icelandic culture than you would by just reading any translated children's book. It would be a 1 star, if I was rating the stories.
That said, I really liked that they wrote it in simple language, that both audio and text were available, and that they had some comprehension questions at the end of each chapter.

[James Tomasino · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are fantastic and pushing the limits of my language skills perfectly. There's some opinionated instructions in the beginning that I've been trying to take to heart. If you're learning Icelandic this is a good buy.

[Nicki Markus · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am marking this book as finished, although technically I will still be working through it for a few more months, one story chapter per week.
With so few Icelandic learning resources out there, I was keen to get a copy of this book, and it has many good features. Its chapters are short, with vocabulary notes at the end, and a synopsis (still in Icelandic) of what took place in the text.
It says it's for beginners, but I would say high-beginner/low intermediate, as I am finding it a tad hard, mostly due to lack of vocab knowledge rather than grammar comprehension, as only a few words are highlighted and in the vocabulary lists, but there are more I do not know than that.
My biggest gripe with this series (I have the Korean one too) is the fact audio is not included. All other similar book series I've bought/seen - graded and/or bilingual readers - that offer audio provide either a CD with the book or a link for free download (or both). However, with this series, you buy the book, but if you want the audio of someone reading the stories, you have to pay out more money to buy it separately, and this feels like a real rip-off to me. The book itself was close to AUD30 for me, and at current exchange rates the audio would cost me something in the AUD15-20 range. It's too expensive, so I won't be getting it, even though it would be useful for my studies. I just don't have that much money to throw around.
As such, I am giving this book three stars. It has some useful content, but it feels more advanced than advertised, and the audio is a real sticking point for me.
Others have noted too, and I've observed myself, that certain stories also get repeated in different books within this series. That's no issue if you only study one language, but if, like me and others, you buy books in this series for several different languages, it's not much fun to read the same stories multiple times. It would be good to see 100% different stories for each language in future editions.

[Kristoffer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good selection with a gradually increasing difficulty. With a solid understanding of Norwegian Nynorsk, you can probably start reading this book without much trouble. It is well-designed and thought through in regards to grammatical variation. My biggest problem is that these books are almost the same in all languages, so I picked Icelandic since it was the language I wanted to practice the most in this way. But I will probably choose a different book when I want to practice a different language. Alternatively, I can pick the intermediate or more advanced level books for new languages, as those stories will be different from these.

[Jakub · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first ever book in Icelandic and I can't recommend it enough. Finishing it felt really rewarding. I remember that I really struggled with the first few chapters, but the more I read the easier it got. I feel that my language skills skyrocketed over the course of this book.

Be sure to read the stories in order, they've been put together in a very clever way and even though every story has nothing to do with the previous one in terms of plot, they do build upon each other when it comes to words and grammar.