Are you like me like if you miss a word you also miss the whole thing?. I find it incredible how there's people that won't mind and just continue reading/listening, etc.

You may be surprised by the amount of information which is filtered by the brain; words ignored and others parsed purely by the aid of context, in your native language without you being conscious of it at the time.

It is a rather credible and mundane feat, really.

You're definitely not the only one. Some people's brains are probably better at effective filtering at a beginner/intermediate level than others. I suck at it, but my experience with English is that it slowly starts catching up as you get better at the language, and it skyrockets when you enter the 'advanced' zone. So I'm hoping it'll work out for Japanese too, eventually.

You probably learned a LOT of words in your first language by seeing them in contexts while reading. That is how kids start building a vocabulary and creatively forming unique sentences with words they've never heard before. Do you remember being a kid and trying a word you only had seen in books and maybe you pronounced it wrong? Second language learning is different because you are conscious of what you're doing, and your relationship to learning through reading relates to what is called your 'ambiguity tolerance'.
Ideally, there would be a book written just for you in a style and subject you love that is a little above your level (i+1), but since that's not the case, you have to trudge along and hope for the best. If you like the way you've been reading (slowly and carefully) you might want to read up on a very old method called Grammar Translation Method. It might not be so bad to pore over and analyze the text if you aren't actually in Japan atm.
I think this whole reading a for. lang. thing is similar to learning music software like ProTools. As a beginner you wonder why it's so damn complicated to do anything, but it's because the people who have a native level understanding of the software (language) need it to be capable of handling any creative task (expression) they throw at it.
Perhaps you could try the Harry Potter audiobooks, that way you have no choice but to continue (there is no pause button!). The voice actor/reader is pretty good, too.

I want to make an apology to the whole forum because I know my posts are so long and wordy. I guess I like writing and I like being here.

＠tashippy Tell me more!

Thank you all.

youasuki Wrote:Are you like me like if you miss a word you also miss the whole thing?. I find it incredible how there's people that won't mind and just continue reading/listening, etc.

Depends on the word. I find that usually I understand anywhere between 20% to 90% of what was said and from that I make my best guess at the complete meaning.

Of course, there's a good chance that one of the words I missed completely changed the sentence and my reply is therefore off, but that's the life of a second language learner.

youasuki Wrote:＠tashippy Tell me more!

Thank you all.

If Harry Potter interests you, aYa/bounaparte has uploaded/has links to parallel texts with audio, broken into mp3 and playlists so you can pause anytime you may want to. It has been put together in a bloody well done PDF with Japanese in one column, the corresponding English in another column, and simple hyperlinks for the related mp3 for each section.

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=6840

I can't find the PDF's, めんどくせぇなー

youasuki Wrote:I can't find the PDF's, めんどくせぇなー

http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_m...aarrrrii1/

You have to download all three parts. Thinking more about it they may not been word documents- which are simple enough to export into PDF format.

By the way, it's kind of rude to respond with 「めんどくせぇなー」in this context. It is a rather blunt, casual form of 面倒臭い.

uisukii Wrote:By the way, it's kind of rude to respond with 「めんどくせぇなー」in this context. It is a rather blunt, casual form of 面倒臭い.

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EDIT: Thanks for the links!