While graded readers are a great tool for those learning English, I don't think they're that effective when it comes to Japanese. At least in my case, I felt they dumbed the language down way too much. For the most part, the amount of common kanji they replace with kana was irritating.

I recall how annoying it was to learn 達 and a few other useful kanji with RTK, but not find it in beginner material when they used simple words like 友達. It doesn't take a genius to realize this, but guess what? Kana doesn't help you get used to reading kanji!

Instead of trying to read with the very little vocabulary, what gave me a true edge was doing Core 2k after I finished RTK and Genki1-2. That helped me get used to reading words the way they're actually written in N3+ materials. I also read and srs'd sentences from DoBJG and srs'd all the vocabulary I was expected to learn with Tobira in advance (don't get me wrong, there's no need to go this far lol). The biggest thing is that once I started doing Tobira, much of the N4 grammar I learned (e.g. passive voice) was all over the place. Instead of searching for it, understanding all these basic things becomes a requirement - i.e. you'll naturally have to review it until you get it.

What I'm trying to say is that instead of getting stuck and reading a lot of super low level material, I found it more benefitial to get the "basics" out of the way and move forward. Basic graded readers are also a little too short and have very little text, which is a problem that you can't avoid at beginner level. In English, there are some pretty solid graded readers that adapt a full story or several short stories... but these are beyond basic level. Once you get to that level though, you might as well just read NHK easy news (good vocab, but the grammar is very basic) + N3ish stuff online, and perhaps stuff you're interested in but isn't too difficult. Once you start getting past this point, graded readers aren't that important anymore to learn Japanese because you should be able to enjoy some easier authentic material instead. Some people start doing that earlier, so it boils down how comfortable and interested you feel.

(2016-06-21, 11:07 pm)GreenCross Wrote: To Yogurt909 and Stansfield123, you both mention that reading is important and should be done often, but when exactly is it appropriate to start doing so? As in, when is it appropriate to start reading? (For example, Risu above, mentioned that even with a 700 word vocabulary it would be quit difficult to start reading)  Should you be at a point where you have several thousand words in your vocabulary a maybe 1,000 Kanji under your belt?

I think you can start reading immediately.  That is why I've started recommending pre-learning because you can get up and running very quickly instead of waiting months or potentially years until you have enough vocabulary to read without excessive lookups.  

Take something small like a song or a page or two in a book and learn all of the vocabulary(~40-50 unique words) and you will be able to read it within a few days or a week.  True, you will not understand completely but you will get the gist.  Read through a few more times and you will understand better.  Repeat the process with a few more pages at a time and each time you will need to learn fewer and fewer new words while understanding more and more.  

In parallel with this, you might want to read through something like tae kim's guide.  I don't think you need to get into grammar terminology or memorize a bunch of rules.   But recognizing certain patterns when you see them is quite helpful and tae kim is just enough to get you started.

(Yesterday, 12:46 pm)yogert909 Wrote:

(2016-06-21, 11:07 pm)GreenCross Wrote: To Yogurt909 and Stansfield123, you both mention that reading is important and should be done often, but when exactly is it appropriate to start doing so? As in, when is it appropriate to start reading? (For example, Risu above, mentioned that even with a 700 word vocabulary it would be quit difficult to start reading)  Should you be at a point where you have several thousand words in your vocabulary a maybe 1,000 Kanji under your belt?

I think you can start reading immediately.  That is why I've started recommending pre-learning because you can get up and running very quickly instead of waiting months or potentially years until you have enough vocabulary to read without excessive lookups.  

Take something small like a song or a page or two in a book and learn all of the vocabulary(~40-50 unique words) and you will be able to read it within a few days or a week.  True, you will not understand completely but you will get the gist.  Read through a few more times and you will understand better.  Repeat the process with a few more pages at a time and each time you will need to learn fewer and fewer new words while understanding more and more.  

In parallel with this, you might want to read through something like tae kim's guide.  I don't think you need to get into grammar terminology or memorize a bunch of rules.   But recognizing certain patterns when you see them is quite helpful and tae kim is just enough to get you started.

I feel like I now have a much better understanding of how to approach this and why its beneficial. Thanks Yogurt. I going to give Pre-Learning a try once I figure out how to set up Anki. Speaking of which, do you know of any good Anki set-up tutorials?

I feel it may be more benefitial to learn words in context once you start getting into native material, as if you were trying to solve a puzzle. This helps you understand the proper nuance of words and sentences. After you attempt to recall these new words in Anki once or twice (on the same day) and have already seen the sentences, it becomes much easier to read it and process everything without being overwhelmed (if that's what you're going for).

At least, that's what I do with lyrics. If you don't understand a word properly in context, I think you might as well not add it and wait for another opportunity where it makes a little more sense. By adding words in advance, you may be adding words that you won't be able to understand anyway or not know what definition you're supposed to learn.

As I said before though, I did learn almost all vocabulary found in Tobira in advance. The thing is, they have a list of words with the definition you're supposed to learn, not to mention the fact that you have to juggle between the text and a word list all the time if you don't know these words. But that's not exactly true for stuff you can learn with Rikaisama. And when it comes to material you don't have a word list ready with the proper nuance, you'll have to hunt those new words anyway... so you won't be going out of your way more than you already have to if you learn these words along the way instead of hunting them.

As an English teacher, I can say this is one of the things most students fail to realize. They ask "what does x word mean?" without any context. That's why sometimes English students say some pretty unusual sentences, like "I ever wake up 7:00" instead of "always" and perhaps even think that questions like "do you ever do x?" mean "do you always...?". The more sentences you see, the easier it becomes to understand a new word because that shows you the real nuance of these words.

Btw, thank you all for your replies. I have been writing down all of your suggestions on a notebook of mine. 

Also, in terms of RTK; how are you going about using RTK? What is the best way to use it? Do I need to actually buy the book? Or do I just work through a deck in Anki? Also, what is valuable from RTK? I hear a lot of conflicting opinions.  

(I would assume there is probably a good thread discussing RTK already.....know of any useful ones?)

(Yesterday, 12:46 pm)yogert909 Wrote: I think you can start reading immediately.  That is why I've started recommending pre-learning because you can get up and running very quickly instead of waiting months or potentially years until you have enough vocabulary to read without excessive lookups.  

Take something small like a song or a page or two in a book and learn all of the vocabulary(~40-50 unique words) and you will be able to read it within a few days or a week.  True, you will not understand completely but you will get the gist.  Read through a few more times and you will understand better.  Repeat the process with a few more pages at a time and each time you will need to learn fewer and fewer new words while understanding more and more.  

This is what I did, and I found it a much more engaging way of approaching language learning. I started with 昔話 on this site (http://hukumusume.com/douwa/), where you can find a lot of stories with accompanying audio. (There are other resources available if fairy tales aren't your thing.) I would study the vocab and grammar until I understood it, then repeatedly read and listen to the story. Over time, I built up a nice audio collection totaling several hours of comprehensive input.

I would also add that this is where working with a teacher on a site like iTalki is very beneficial. You can bring something you are working on to a session with your teacher, and have them help you walk through understanding any parts you may be stuck on.

(Yesterday, 2:45 pm)gaiaslastlaugh Wrote: I would also add that this is where working with a teacher on a site like iTalki is very beneficial. You can bring something you are working on to a session with your teacher, and have them help you walk through understanding any parts you may be stuck on.

Or be like me and shamelessly flood this amazing community with questions whenever you fail to understand something and don't manage to find a google explanation on google.

"find a google explanation on google"... 笑

(Yesterday, 2:40 pm)FlameseeK Wrote: I feel it may be more benefitial to learn words in context once you start getting into native material, as if you were trying to solve a puzzle. This helps you understand the proper nuance of words and sentences. After you attempt to recall these new words in Anki once or twice (on the same day) and have already seen the sentences, it becomes much easier to read it and process everything without being overwhelmed (if that's what you're going for).

At least, that's what I do with lyrics. If you don't understand a word properly in context, I think you might as well not add it and wait for another opportunity where it makes a little more sense. By adding words in advance, you may be adding words that you won't be able to understand anyway or not know what definition you're supposed to learn.

As I said before though, I did learn almost all vocabulary found in Tobira in advance. The thing is, they have a list of words with the definition you're supposed to learn, not to mention the fact that you have to juggle between the text and a word list all the time if you don't know these words. But that's not exactly true for stuff you can learn with Rikaisama. And when it comes to material you don't have a word list ready with the proper nuance, you'll have to hunt those new words anyway... so you won't be going out of your way more than you already have to if you learn these words along the way instead of hunting them.

As an English teacher, I can say this is one of the things most students fail to realize. They ask "what does x word mean?" without any context. That's why sometimes English students say some pretty unusual sentences, like "I ever wake up 7:00" instead of "always" and perhaps even think that questions like "do you ever do x?" mean "do you always...?". The more sentences you see, the easier it becomes to understand a new word because that shows you the real nuance of these words.

I see what you are getting at, albeit it makes things a bit more confusing. 

So, if you were to break down your process of reading say....a block of Japanese text. How would you instruct somebody of my level to go about it, using your methodology. 

Would it be something like: Find text----> put it into jedict or rikaichan ----> Work through it, trying to figure out its context ----> Turn the text vocab into Anki cards -------> Review -------> Read over the material again ------> Repeat.

That's what I would recommend you do if you have the option of using Rikaisama (not chan, because chan doesn't have the 1-click flashcard feature). Of course, it depends on how many learning steps you have for you flashcards though, so you may have more than 2, but I feel 1-2 should be enough just to help you recall words a little more easily. Reading over is optional and I don't always do that.

It does feel like a slog at first, but if you have the opportunity to see an example of that word being used in context, I don't see a reason to skip that part. You'll have to look up the word either way, it's just a matter of taking advantage of the rest of the sentence and context to understand it better. If there are too many new words though and it's too much of a slog, you might want to pick something easier (e.g. NHK easy news) or focus on the first 2k-3k words of Core or a similar deck.

For textbooks with vocabulary lists and definitions, you can learn words in advance more efficiently because they give you something more specific. But on the other hand, it takes quite a while to search for these words in an deck like Core 10k. I know I spent a LOT of time doing that with Tobira, which is unnecessary, but I wanted to get rid of this burden of pre-learning vocabulary every time I finished a unit. I just wanted to move on whenever I felt like it. Anyway, learning vocabulary beforehand is fine in this case imo.