When you read something what is your usual behavior....When you do not know the reading but know the meaning by the kanji? Do you pass the word and continuing reading the rest pronouncing the rest in mind, and skipping the word knowing what it is. Or you stop and search it in dictionary to ensure the reading so you read the hole sentence in your mind

I usually just skip the reading unless it's really bothering me (for instance when I didn't know the reading of 全て). For now, I try to ensure all of my resources have ふりがな.

I know that I will need to know the reading at some point in time, but it helps at the moment to have the reading above. That way, the more you read, the more the pronunciations get burned into your brain (Note: I don't use RTK2. At least not yet).

If I don't know the reading, I fail the card.
If I don't know the meaning, I fail the card.

I look up the reading every time.

afterglowefx Wrote:If I don't know the reading, I fail the card.
If I don't know the meaning, I fail the card.

I don't think he was talking about Anki.

egoplant Wrote:I look up the reading every time.

afterglowefx Wrote:If I don't know the reading, I fail the card.
If I don't know the meaning, I fail the card.

I don't think he was talking about Anki.

I should save forum posting until after coffee.

I also look up the reading (or ask about it if there's a speaker handy) every time. Yesterday it was 梅林. I do the opposite too--I find now after 6000 or so words I can read a lot but don't know the meaning. Saw 散策路 signs in the plum orchard (plums are in full bloom in Japan now), and asked the girlfriend. She looked at me and said if you can read it, you can understand it. 散歩の散, 策, and 道路の路 ... yeah maybe she's right, haha.

It depends on how quickly I can look it up and whether I feel like it or not. Recently, I've been reading things with furigana or on the computer, so it's easier to look up unknowns and I do so for every word.

If I think I know the meaning from the kanji, but I'm not positive, I'll look it up; you never know when it might mean something completely different.

If there isn't furigana, but the text is easy enough to understand, I only look up words that inhibit my understanding of the text.

Also, the dictionary app I use on my phone allows me to tag entries, so I do if I can find the word in that dictionary (it's not a very good one); I haven't bothered exporting the list yet, but it's good for letting you know if you've looked that word up before. I've heard some say that they do something similar with paper dictionaries, marking the entry in some way so that they know if it's something they've already looked up in the past.

I always keep reading. When I'm reading I'm not studying. Knowing the meaning is more than enough, and unless it's a word that pops up all the time it's not like looking it up then and there in the dictionary means that I'm going to remember it (happens with names all the time - they give the furigana the first time they write it and never again - from then on unless it's an easy enough name they turn into <thatcharacter> in my mind).

I remember doing this in English, too. Rather than sounding out long and complex looking words I'd just skim over them and understand them. At some point the right pronunciation would get filled in by another source. No big deal. Of course with Japanese it's a bigger problem, but it's nothing unfamiliar.

If I'm reading an electronic text I always check the pronunciation. If I'm reading a paper text, it depends...

Am I reading for purely for the content of the article, ie. pure pleasure reading or purely trying to inform myself of the content of an article? -> Check the pronunciation if the word bothers me for some reason, or maybe if I just haven't looked up a word lately. I often think of kanji compounds as 'some kun-reading word + some kun-reading word' while knowing that the actual word is an on-reading compound that I can't recall or don't know. 帰国 might be かえる　くに to me if I couldn't remember きこく, for example. If I can't remember -any- pronunciation of the kanji in a word it's more likely I look it up because then I'm more bothered by it.

Am I deliberately reading for speed and breadth? -> I only look up words that are absolutely stopping me from understanding the meaning of a passage, never for pronunciation only.

Am I deliberately reading for depth and vocab aquisition? -> I look up almost every word if I either don't know the meaning or don't know the pronunciation, and I add it to a vocab list. If I can't recall the pronunciation of a word but am quite sure I know the meaning and have it in said vocab list then I won't look it up (which happens quite often since authors tend to use the same words over a lot, so even uncommon words might appear frequently in the same text).

I try to think to myself what kind of reading I'm doing before I start reading. If I don't take the time to think about why I'm reading, it probably falls in the 'pure pleasure reading' category. (The better I get at reading, the more reading falls in this category... which is nice )

I use a strip of blank paper as a bookmark and write down the words whose reading I don't know. When I've accumulated a lot, I look up their readings in bulk and enter them into Anki.

Oh, I like that, I'm adopting it. Thanks!

How often does this really happen? I usually know the reading, but not the meaning.

Anyway, if it's happening to you, I would suggest paying special attention to those words (by looking up and trying to remember the word), because they are a rare opportunity to learn several things at once, by remembering only one word. You get to learn:
1. the word
2. the readings of the individual Kanji (and with it the reading of any other word written with those Kanji)

The reason why this doesn't happen to me much is probably because I've been following this plan. (I haven't studied the readings of individual Kanji, so that's the only other explanation)

It still happens a lot to me, but I'm at the point where I just skip it -- I should look it up because then it's embarrassing if I have to read something out loud, but fortunately that doesn't happen very often.

Stansfield123 Wrote:How often does this really happen? I usually know the reading, but not the meaning.

Happens plenty often to me. Even if you know the most common readings for all of the kanji you see, you can't be sure about the reading of a compound until you've learned it.

JimmySeal Wrote:

Stansfield123 Wrote:How often does this really happen? I usually know the reading, but not the meaning.

Happens plenty often to me. Even if you know the most common readings for all of the kanji you see, you can't be sure about the reading of a compound until you've learned it.

Yeah, that seems plausible. But then you also can't be sure of its meaning, except from context.

Once you know the meaning, I feel like you really should also know the reading. If you don't, that's because when you previously encountered that word, you haven't focused on learning the reading. So the problem just perpetuates itself.

I think that's a less than optimal approach. The reading is the most important aspect of a word, not the translation.

Stansfield123 Wrote:But then you also can't be sure of its meaning, except from context.

That's how people naturally learn in their first language, and likely a good way to learn in a second language. (Plus Japanese specifically gives extra hints by kanji; you can't be -sure- of either meaning or reading from kanji alone, but they help a lot with meaning and some with reading.)

While I agree that the -translation- of a word is not very important, the -meaning- is far more important than the -reading-. (Compare in English to 'meaning' vs. 'pronunciation' ... which is more important when you're reading? And despite our incredibly irregular pronunciation system I rarely looked up words for pronunciation alone as a grew up, only for meanings that weren't clear in context. As an adult of a certain age and developing a pedantic nature, I look up words in my own English for pronunciation more often now... but that's far beyond anything remotely required.)

Now, personally, I have a hangup about reading and being able to pronounce words in my head as I do so, so I really feel a need to look up pronunciations a lot in Japanese (although while learning my native English I happily mentally mispronounced words believing all the while that English spelling was 'phonetic' ... heh.) ... but not everybody has that hangup. If you can attach a meaning to the kanji without knowing their pronunciation, then more power to you.

More importantly and to the point of quoting the post - learning a words meaning from context is, in my opinion, the only -real- way of learning the meaning of a word. A dictionary entry is a guidepost, but how a word is used in context is the actual road. I never feel I -know- a word until I've encountered it repeatedly in context.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Yeah, that seems plausible. But then you also can't be sure of its meaning, except from context.

Once you know the meaning, I feel like you really should also know the reading. If you don't, that's because when you previously encountered that word, you haven't focused on learning the reading. So the problem just perpetuates itself.

I don't learn words' meanings by looking them up. I learn them from context, and often the meaning is quite obvious when kanji are involved. So usually when I'm looking up a word's reading, it's because I've encountered that word for the first time.

It seems to me that people who are really good/polyglots/linguists keep saying that whatever you do, it's most important that you keep reading. If looking up the word helps your enjoyment of the text and/or comprehension, then look it up. If you're looking up so many words per page that you are tiring of the material, then it's time to start skipping the lookup (if you can guess the meaning) or just find easier material.
simple repeated contextual exposure to lots of words seems to be the defining factor in language acquisition. 100% understanding isn't necessary...
There was a study done recently about how pre-k kids in low-income houses in america hear less than half the number and variety of words that middle-income children hear... Now of course those children don't understand everything they are hearing, but later that experience can be statistically tied to test performances in elementary & middle school.
hence the new push for pre-k all over america. they're calling it word poverty.

don't be word poor.

dtcamero Wrote:There was a study done recently about how pre-k kids in low-income houses in america hear less than half the number and variety of words that middle-income children hear... Now of course those children don't understand everything they are hearing, but later that experience can be statistically tied to test performances in elementary & middle school.
hence the new push for pre-k all over america. they're calling it word poverty.

don't be word poor.

That's pretty interesting. When I was that age, my grandmother (my parents both worked full time, so I was at her house a lot) would often read to us grandkids, but also got us involved in it, so we were both listening and reading. We'd also all tell stories together, passing it from one person to the next.
My cousins and I all did really well with vocabulary and grammar in class.

I agree that reading more is better and if looking things up a lot makes you read less, then don't.