Vempel Wrote:I could figure out what the sentence meant, but there were too many pieces for me to figure out why it meant what it meant).

I don't think that the why is terribly important at that stage. Especially if you could figure out the meaning anyway. Repeated exposure will bring a decent level of understanding.. even if you never learn how to explain the why.
I am awkwardly proud of my inability to explain many things about Japanese. :|

ryuudou Wrote:

undead_saif Wrote:The problem with Core6k or word lists is that you don't really "learn" words by memorizing them, since they are most likely taken out of context, even with an example sentence, and you won't feel that you know the word unless you see it in a context or "setting" very similar to how you memorized it.

This is why I'm sort of against vocab centric decks.

This is why I'm sort of against premade decks (of any kind). ヽ(´ー｀)ノ
My vocab-centric decks have worked wonders! I can read almost anything thrown at me (aside from highly specialized texts.. but that goes for English as well.)

I also only have 12000 words in Anki total. I do, however, like puzzles..? (Patterrrnnns) I'm also sure that there are several thousand more words just floating around in my brain because, after a while, the learning new words thing starts to take care of itself. Guessing the meaning of new words from context and "spelling" also gets easier and easier.

[RawToast]

With regards to vocabulary building:

There's a talk/interview on Youtube between Stephen Krashen and Steve Kaufmann. In this video Kaufmann mentions that for some people they simply find it difficult to read when the unknown content is too high. For someone who is like this, getting a sensible amount of vocabulary from any source (decks, textbooks, etc) is needed in order to read enjoyable content.

This is why I would recommend getting a few thousand words of vocabulary before pushing into native media -- unless you enjoy the content in graded readers or are not discouraged by continual lookups. If you can jump into reading straight away, then by all means do so.

If you wanted to read a certain series, say Harry Potter, but cannot stand looking up every other word then creating your own deck for the top 1000 most common vocabulary for that series would be a good start.

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On a different note, my 10 minute readers have arrived from Japan (only ordered them on Friday!) I've had a quick flick through them and they are very impressive for only 700/800Y. At the same time I picked up Kino no Tabi 1. From a quick glance of the LN I'd say you would want to be very comfortable with the grade 6 reader before tackling it.

My plan is to reach my next vocab threshold and then go through the graded readers from 3 to 6 and then try Kino no Tabi. Why the threshold? Once I reach it I will be lowering my new card count, so that should free up some spare time for reading

RawToast Wrote:With regards to vocabulary building:

There's a talk/interview on Youtube between Stephen Krashen and Steve Kaufmann. In this video Kaufmann mentions that for some people they simply find it difficult to read when the unknown content is too high. For someone who is like this, getting a sensible amount of vocabulary from any source (decks, textbooks, etc) is needed in order to read enjoyable content.

This is why I would recommend getting a few thousand words of vocabulary before pushing into native media -- unless you enjoy the content in graded readers or are not discouraged by continual lookups. If you can jump into reading straight away, then by all means do so.

If you wanted to read a certain series, say Harry Potter, but cannot stand looking up every other word then creating your own deck for the top 1000 most common vocabulary for that series would be a good start.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a different note, my 10 minute readers have arrived from Japan (only ordered them on Friday!) I've had a quick flick through them and they are very impressive for only 700/800Y. At the same time I picked up Kino no Tabi 1. From a quick glance of the LN I'd say you would want to be very comfortable with the grade 6 reader before tackling it.

My plan is to reach my next vocab threshold and then go through the graded readers from 3 to 6 and then try Kino no Tabi. Why the threshold? Once I reach it I will be lowering my new card count, so that should free up some spare time for reading

It's interesting that I had no major trouble reading without thorough comprehension when I was studying English and/or French but with Japanese it does bother me some, I don't know how to pinpoint exactly what is it that irks me, maybe it's about not being able to "hear" the words in my head even though I don't understand the meaning, or it could be that dictionary look-ups outside of the computer are somewhat inconvenient, but at my current level I just can't read Japanese for long without getting bored. Back to core6k with me... Yotsuba from time to time is fun, though.

I might be interested in those readers you're talking about, care to share a link or something? And please do come back with your opinion on them after you give them a good reading.

Yatagarasu, It's great that you can self-assess the productiveness of your reading ventures. What is your first language? It is true that reading Japanese is indeed different because of kanji/-yomi and that's what RTK is all about. It'd be wise to get a hold of those readers (or any readers, Janet Ashby is good) or any readers so you're not just doing Core. Subs2SRS is also a great option at this stage, but then you're still in Anki world, the Harry Potter audiobooks might also work if you can stand to read that stuff and you know it in some other language alredy.
Check out this blog post: http://www.cooori.com/weblog/2013/05/30/nara/
It's just one post like that, and I'm hoping to find other, maybe that's what Lingq.com is about, or NHK News Easy, but I don't think Lingq is ideal for Japanese, and NHK easy doesn't thrill me.
You might also want to check out short stories by Akutagawa Ryunosuke. The stories are great and very easy to visualize: http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/Audiobook..._Akutagawa
When you decide to grow your hair long, there's always that awkward couple days when it's not really long and not really short, that couple days is a bit longer in learning Japanese, but you just gotta keep on doing a little bit each day.

Edit: I am a few hundred new cards away from finishing the 'new card' part of Core 6K, and I would say that one useful feature of the deck is that there is a separate note for
ねむい、眠る、眠り、etc. This way you become familiar with the word 'families'.
also: "studies have shown that a word
(lexical item) must be encountered or used about seven times before it is
acquired" reference: http://kenlackman.com/files/LexicalActiv...ook102.pdf page 9
note: If I were to go back and do it again, I think I'd just make my own deck. I was too lazy to figure out how to make ideal cards like DrDunlap did, so I was happy to sign up for Core, and the audio samples don't hurt (not one bit they don't!)

I started reading around the 2k point (didn't do Core though, just self-adding) and while it was difficult in the beginning, it did both help me develop my reading flow as well as boosting my Anki recall rate.

If you find books a bit too difficult, find some Manga or some video game with lots of text dialogue; in those, you would get lots of exposure to the language while not being faced with a discouraging wall of text. Also, a lot of manga contains hurigana...

Avoid children's literature, because although the language is easy, the stories will be mind-numbingly shallow and boring.

[RawToast]

Yatagarasu Wrote:I might be interested in those readers you're talking about, care to share a link or something? And please do come back with your opinion on them after you give them a good reading.

They're called 10分で読める, and can be found here:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/s/ref=nb_sb_noss...vascript=1

I don't think any of them have a 'look inside' on Amazon, but I could take a picture of a single page from the ones I have.

RawToast Wrote:They're called 10分で読める, and can be found here:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/s/ref=nb_sb_noss...vascript=1

I don't think any of them have a 'look inside' on Amazon, but I could take a picture of a single page from the ones I have.

It says "147ページ" on one of the results. How are they supposed to be finished in 10 minutes?

undead_saif Wrote:

RawToast Wrote:They're called 10分で読める, and can be found here:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/s/ref=nb_sb_noss...vascript=1

I don't think any of them have a 'look inside' on Amazon, but I could take a picture of a single page from the ones I have.

It says "147ページ" on one of the results. How are they supposed to be finished in 10 minutes?

It's a collection of short stories in the same book

[RawToast]

Each book has a number of stories For example, the 6th grade reader contains 12 stories, some are as short as 4 pages and others up to 20 pages.

You'll have to rotate this image, but this is a single page from the 6th grade reader. A couple of the stories use a slightly smaller font size than this:

http://406notacceptable.com/wp-content/u...C_0014.jpg

The book is around penguin classics size, just in case you want to zoom out the image for font comparison.

Am I right in thinking that these book's are a collection of good stories that happen to be easy enough? (As opposed to being written to be easy.) Because if so that sounds awesome.

Edit: Having read the image rawtoast posted and the 一年 amazon sample it's obvious that this is at least partly simplified learner material, but I guess if I'd thought about it I would have realised that's inevitable. As a collections of the best material written at their respective levels these readers still may be a cut above the standard graded readers. (I certainly enjoyed both samples I read)

tashippy Wrote:Yatagarasu, It's great that you can self-assess the productiveness of your reading ventures. What is your first language? It is true that reading Japanese is indeed different because of kanji/-yomi and that's what RTK is all about. It'd be wise to get a hold of those readers (or any readers, Janet Ashby is good) or any readers so you're not just doing Core. Subs2SRS is also a great option at this stage, but then you're still in Anki world, the Harry Potter audiobooks might also work if you can stand to read that stuff and you know it in some other language alredy.
Check out this blog post: http://www.cooori.com/weblog/2013/05/30/nara/
It's just one post like that, and I'm hoping to find other, maybe that's what Lingq.com is about, or NHK News Easy, but I don't think Lingq is ideal for Japanese, and NHK easy doesn't thrill me.
You might also want to check out short stories by Akutagawa Ryunosuke. The stories are great and very easy to visualize: http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/Audiobook..._Akutagawa
When you decide to grow your hair long, there's always that awkward couple days when it's not really long and not really short, that couple days is a bit longer in learning Japanese, but you just gotta keep on doing a little bit each day.

Edit: I am a few hundred new cards away from finishing the 'new card' part of Core 6K, and I would say that one useful feature of the deck is that there is a separate note for
ねむい、眠る、眠り、etc. This way you become familiar with the word 'families'.
also: "studies have shown that a word
(lexical item) must be encountered or used about seven times before it is
acquired" reference: http://kenlackman.com/files/LexicalActiv...ook102.pdf page 9
note: If I were to go back and do it again, I think I'd just make my own deck. I was too lazy to figure out how to make ideal cards like DrDunlap did, so I was happy to sign up for Core, and the audio samples don't hurt (not one bit they don't!)

Hey, thanks for that post. My native language is Spanish, I took English lessons when I was a kid but the pace was really slow and I was always ahead of the class so I pretty much learned English just by extensive reading, be it books, internet forums, videogames or whatever had me interested at the time and I'd like to do the same with Japanese but like you said it's a bit more difficult to get started. I was actually thinking of ordering Read Real Japanese just a few days ago haha. About Harry Potter, I kind of read 2 or 3 books when I was like 12? and then lost interest so yeah...
Akutagawa Ryunosuke looks pretty good but the audio goes a bit fast for my kanji reading speed, maybe I should download it and slow it down a tad.

I'm actually rather enjoying core at the moment, I'm doing about 50 words a day and been thinking of upping that number since I have more free time than I thought but you got me interested now, do you think the extra time spent making my own cards is worth it even at a basic level? I'm not against the idea but I'm quite lazy as well!

RawToast Wrote:They're called 10分で読める, and can be found here:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/s/ref=nb_sb_noss...vascript=1

I don't think any of them have a 'look inside' on Amazon, but I could take a picture of a single page from the ones I have.

These look really good (and yes you can 'look inside' some of them)! There's even a kindle version available for the newest ones. Level 1 seems a bit too easy and ehm... kanjiless? So I guess I'll start with level 2. Thank you.

Yatagarasu Wrote:I was actually thinking of ordering Read Real Japanese just a few days ago haha.

I'd recommend going ahead and ordering it. It's like reading literature with training wheels, there's a lot of useful guidance and notes that help understand the sentences. Also gives you exposure to several authors and listening practice with the CD.

I don't know if it should be before or after a graded reader... it's a different kind of 'easier', having notes rather than particularly easy stories.

Janet Ashby has done two Read Real Japanese. She selects really interesting stuff, like non-fiction essays by authors who usually write fiction. It feels like she's not trying to patronize the reader or force them to wait until they are fluent to read something actually interesting.

I would say if you're already adding 50 cards a day with core, you may as well plow through it. The audio samples really do make that deck enticing. I took my time with it because I was trying not to focus on cards, but now I'm so close to done because I stepped up my new cards/day on account of the Intermediate Vocab thread a month back. When I finish Core, though, I want to take the time to learn about making Anki cards in various ways and not just relying on Epwing2Anki (or figuring out how to optimize that to my liking). That way I can let Anki cards improve my reading/language ability and help shape it around my own language journey.

tashippy Wrote:Janet Ashby has done two Read Real Japanese.

AFAIK, Janet Ashby did only "Read Real Japanese - Essays". "Read Real Japanese - Fiction" is by Michael Emmerich. Both are excellent in introducing you to real Japanese prose. Essays seemed to have richer/more detailed explanations. Fiction is probably what is more appealing to most people but with steeper learning curve.

After reading this thread I went to the local Maruzen and got one book each of grades 1,2,3 and 4. It seems they are very cheap, 700 / 800 円 each. I don't have time to start on them until I get back home, but quickly skimming through the "look" of the books:

Grade 1 has basically only very easy kanji (like 先生、分,etc), the font is large and the rest is in hiragana. When you go up in grades from 1 to 4, the font gets gradually smaller so more and more text per page, and more and more kanji on a page. Can't say anything yet about the grammar level used.

A quick look on grade 4 book and at the moment it seems too difficult, so it will have to wait. I will start from the grade 1.

I can post more information once I actually try to read any of the books. (RTK I have finished, Core6k ongoing ~ 700 words, and about 40 hours of 1v1 lessons going through the Genki series, mostly speaking and conversations through the exercises)

Inny Jan Wrote:

tashippy Wrote:Janet Ashby has done two Read Real Japanese.

AFAIK, Janet Ashby did only "Read Real Japanese - Essays". "Read Real Japanese - Fiction" is by Michael Emmerich. Both are excellent in introducing you to real Japanese prose. Essays seemed to have richer/more detailed explanations. Fiction is probably what is more appealing to most people but with steeper learning curve.

There are two, but she features many of the same authors in both.
http://tinyurl.com/m4jlqbt
http://tinyurl.com/kun3gfp

[RawToast]

kanttuvei Wrote:Grade 1 has basically only very easy kanji (like 先生、分,etc), the font is large and the rest is in hiragana. When you go up in grades from 1 to 4, the font gets gradually smaller so more and more text per page, and more and more kanji on a page. Can't say anything yet about the grammar level used.

A quick look on grade 4 book and at the moment it seems too difficult, so it will have to wait. I will start from the grade 1.

It should be per grade year at Japanese schools, so I imagine they'll only be ~100 unique Kanji in grade 1. I picked up the 'Animals Stories' book as well and that had no grade level, from a quick look at the book it seems easier than my grade 3 book. They are two other books like this one 'Scary Stories' and something else I guess they are all the same level.

I picked up a copy of Kaiketsu Zorori 1 instead of a lower level reader. Like the grade 1 books Zorori has very, very few kanji. The first book is the same as the first episode of the anime, so you can quickly read it and then try and watch the anime w/o subs.

I'm planning on purchasing these graded readers, perhaps all from grade 1 to the max. I'd like to purchase these from amazon. If I make a japanese amazon account, would they allow me to ship to my residence in the states? I've heard about these things of connecting accounts, it's rather confusing.

Xanpakuto Wrote:I'm planning on purchasing these graded readers, perhaps all from grade 1 to the max. I'd like to purchase these from amazon. If I make a japanese amazon account, would they allow me to ship to my residence in the states? I've heard about these things of connecting accounts, it's rather confusing.

I've shipped a few volumes directly to US from amazon.jp. It's possible, but the shipping cost were a little big higher then the cost of new books.

Another solution would be to order a scan of books. It costs like 100-300 yen per book a whole book scanned from amazon.jp. Personally I ordered 31 volumes of manga and I have paid 100 yen for a digital scan of each one of them. I used http://www.s-s-sendai.info/ web. Scanning a regular book costs 150 yen.

Xanpakuto Wrote:I'm planning on purchasing these graded readers, perhaps all from grade 1 to the max. I'd like to purchase these from amazon. If I make a japanese amazon account, would they allow me to ship to my residence in the states? I've heard about these things of connecting accounts, it's rather confusing.

WhiteRabbitJapan seems to have the 10 minute readers.
http://shop.whiterabbitjapan.com/japanes...s.html?p=5
The only downside is it's a little bit more expensive.

I'm unsure about shipping costs. I think it'll depend on which warehouse it's coming from.

Quote:White Rabbit Press has shipped to over 80 countries, and so we probably ship to your country too. We ship from either our warehouse in New York or Tokyo depending on the product and destination.

erm, does anyone know a not weird site where I can find recommendations for raw manga scans?

This site has a lot of good manga recommendations:

http://www.iibq.com/class/51/

As I update the second post of the thread I realize there are already more than enough resources and it can be overwhelming/paradox of choice. For someone who made a whole thread about resources for reading, I'm slow to get around to actually using them myself. And sometimes the things that will make my life convenient can seem like a hassle.

If anyone would like to share their experience in terms of using said resources and which ones were user-friendly, which one's were helpful enough that they've never stopped using them or if they made a big difference over a month or 3 of use, or just what's your 'setup' that's be useful and thanks.

I get distracted when I use the computer and can't always find the text files of books, so I haven't delved into LTR or Yomichan much.
tbh, I usually read paperback books. I want to start dong more monolingual dictionary lookups as I'm trying to think more in the language and learn words through the company they keep.

I started using the OCR manga reader. It's a great reader, but it doesn't always recognize the word correctly and it's kinda hard to draw the box around the text with my fat finger. I think once I bring in the floating dictionary I'll have all the bases covered but then I've got to incorporate that monolingual point somehow.

I have Mazec for looking up words with JED but I might switch to Swype so I don't have to keep changing the input method. Still hoping to route my phone to see if that makes exporting tags from JED to Drive or Anki actually work. Lots to do, but for now I have schoolwork.

tashippy Wrote:I get distracted when I use the computer and can't always find the text files of books, so I haven't delved into LTR or Yomichan much.

have you looked at that torrent on rutracker that has 5000+ books in japanese (in .txt format)? about 80% are by japanese authors.

personally, i only use yomichan. by far the most useful thing in my japanese study.

Thanks ume, I lost those 5000 but if it's a torrent I'll find it