Dustin_Calgary Wrote:http://www.livingjapanese.com/p/reading-pack.html

haha wow that's a nice racket that guy's trying to pull off. Charge 8 bucks for an anki deck I would have made anyway? Ballsy

To be clear I'm not having trouble understanding with a dictionary, just without one. I also don't have problems with the vocabulary I have already learned. It's an issue with a lack of vocabulary. Ones that aren't in my deck. I want to get to a native level where I have to rarely ever look up words. People who say that isn't realistic are just being lazy and undershooting real fluency. You guys can have fun with your Benny fluency, but I want actual fluency. I also wonder how many people in this thread that are giving advice are experienced and how many are just hopefully wishing, because I expressed similar sentiments about "reading is king". However after having experienced it first hand, it really only helps solidify existing vocabulary and grammar. It's doesn't seem to work at all for vocabulary acquisition (the point of this thread). Maybe everyone here is okay reading with a dictionary for the next 5 years, but I'm not. I want to lose it as soon as possible.

Sauzer Wrote:

Dustin_Calgary Wrote:http://www.livingjapanese.com/p/reading-pack.html

haha wow that's a nice racket that guy's trying to pull off. Charge 8 bucks for an anki deck I would have made anyway? Ballsy

It does make me wonder how much he's made from these :p

kameden Wrote:To be clear I'm not having trouble understanding with a dictionary, just without one. I also don't have problems with the vocabulary I have already learned. It's an issue with a lack of vocabulary. Ones that aren't in my deck. I want to get to a native level where I have to rarely ever look up words. People who say that isn't realistic are just being lazy and undershooting real fluency. You guys can have fun with your Benny fluency, but I want actual fluency. I also wonder how many people in this thread that are giving advice are experienced and how many are just hopefully wishing, because I expressed similar sentiments about "reading is king". However after having experienced it first hand, it really only helps solidify existing vocabulary and grammar. It's doesn't seem to work at all for vocabulary acquisition (the point of this thread). Maybe everyone here is okay reading with a dictionary for the next 5 years, but I'm not. I want to lose it as soon as possible.

I honestly think you have a very rigid vision of what fluency should be. Having to look something up the dictionary isn't an indicator of fluency or lack thereof, otherwise you could say that most teenagers in the world are not fluent in their native language.

In fact, being literate has very little to do with fluency, but I get what your goals are, so I'm not going to be nitpicky about that.

But I do agree with what many people said on this thread ; fluency comes from a very deep understanding of the language that can only be acquired through direct contact with the language itself. Your ability to understand from context and to circumvent any vocabulary roadblock you might encounter is what you could call fluency. Knowing how to say "hand me the remote control" isn't a proof of fluency. At best, it makes you a great parrot. but knowing how to make yourself understood even when you don't know the exact word (in this case, "remote control") is a much more difficult skill to acquire : "Hand me the ... you know, that plastic device with buttons that you press to change channels ?".

The same principles apply for reading and vocabulary acquisition. Learning from context is the skill you're looking for. The second example sentence above is much harder to understand than the first one for a language learner.

This is not something you can brute force your way into, it has to come from hours upon hours of listening and reading. Vocabulary learning can only take you so far, up to a certain point where you can't simply measure your progresses with the same tools you used when you first started with Anki.

And before you ask, I am talking from experience. I learned english by doing just that ; reading and listening. I never owned a single english textbook or grammar book, nor was I aware of SRSing back when I started.

It's really simple. Read more. Read a lot and then come back and try to state the same complaints. And if you actually read more you won't. Part of fluency like everyone said is you need to develop an intuition for Japanese which you will never develop if you don't read a lot or listen a lot etc. It sounds like you're stresing yourself out too much. Focus on actually enjoy doing what you're doing in Japanese (what do you want out of it??) than worrying about how many words you have to look up. If you keep looking up the words (and you don't necessarily have to add every word to anki), eventually you'll notice that you're not looking up as much or you've developed some japanese intuition so you don't feel need to look up everything etc etc. Plesae just read more or watch whatever it is that you enjoy in Japanese.

For me I read around 80 japanese books (novels ) and my reading is not limited to books. I read websites. manga, and subtitles and whatever else I read. I remember in the beginning I had strong motivation so i would literally look up every word in the story that I did not know. Looking back I wouldn't do that unless the book is THAT amazing. So anyways 80 books later I still come across words I don't know and depending on the book sometimes there's nothing to look up or there's plenty to look up. By looking up it could be "Readings" "meanings" "another meaning that I suspect"... (if we go by kanji readings there's NO END to using the dictionary. I'm quite sure ) Of course I look up less now compared to 80 books ago plus a lot of time has passed since then. I'm not really obesssed with reaching a goal where I can read a book and not have to look up anything because I'm not there with english either and that's my native language and I don't feel the need to. I can easily find a book that isn't written for children but is written in such simple language there is nothing to look up but my criteria for reading a book is that it's well-written and interests me and usually those books are the ones with simple/easy to read sentences/vocabulary (I'm particular with writing styles. higashino keigo is considered easy to read but I consider him really boring and hard to read and because his writing is boring and incompatible. it's actually more difficult to read him than an author that uses more diverse/rare/obscure vocabulary and grammar lol... I go after enjoyment and whatever writing styles that i'm compatible with). by the way AJATT said 200 books to fluency lol if you care.

and I have around 10,000 cards too but my vocabulary is much bigger than that since I started my deck over 3 times and I don't have much "common" "daily conversation" japanese in my deck.... i really don't think anki card numbers is that important. I think the amount of time you spend doing stuff in japanese is more important... as well as the quality of your time spending.[/url]

Asking again: What are you reading?

Because I can't believe that there isn't stuff that you can read without lots of dictionary lookups, because my Anki deck has less words than yours and I can find a decent amount of stuff to read and don't touch a dictionary while doing so. Which leads me to suspect that you're reading unreasonably difficult things above your reading level, which would naturally be frustrating and not very useful.

I'm not saying that reading is necessarily the answer to your particular problem - cramming stuff with Anki might be more what you're after. But I think reading does obviously help with vocabulary acquisition and that should be self-evident if you have any memories of yourself reading as a child - at the least all those words you mispronounced because English has a terrible written phonics system you learnt by reading. And not reading by looking up every word in a dictionary but by reading stuff at or slightly above your level.
That reading is very effective for vocabulary acquisition has been demonstrated in studies that I think someone mentioned on the last page. So I think it's demonstrably untrue that reading doesn't work for vocabulary acquisition.

Of course, if you're looking to cram large amounts of vocabulary with shallow understanding, Anki is probably the way to go. And that's fine - cramming large amounts of vocabulary with shallow understanding has plenty of merit. But reading is still a pretty fabulous idea.

Aikynaro Wrote:Asking again: What are you reading?

Almost everything has me using the dictionary. Today I've been reading One Piece, and I probably use the dictionary 10 times per chapter. What are you reading that you never have to use the dictionary?

I think you're just being too negative. I rememebr after i learned all the common, daily conversation japanese the ones that arent stood out to me. it was easy to learn the unknown words wheher it was due to kanji that made up the word or my familiarity with the language and i developed my japanese intuition whichhelped immensely with learning gion ie wasatto gessori zawazawa giza giza. Just keep reading and lookin up words. 10 words per chapter doesn't sound bad to me... But I dont recall how long a chapter it. Just keep at it

Dustin_Calgary Wrote:

learningkanji Wrote:I tried Yotsubato but there's too much colloquial speech there that I don't know so I put that on hold.

Have you tried the yotsubato reading pack? I've heard great things about it, and you can get it free for volume 1, help you ease into some of it.

http://www.livingjapanese.com/p/reading-pack.html

I actually got this a while ago but held off on using it until I read a bit of Yotsubato. I guess I should just finish the whole thing and then Yotsubato will be easier to understand?

Also for those who are reading a lot of books, where are you browsing to see if there's something interesting for you to read? I really wanna read a relatively short simple novel from start to finish but I don't know where to find one, if I'd even be interested in it, etc.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:I think you're just being too negative.

I don't think I'm being negative. It's not like I can't or don't read, I just feel like I'm making almost no progress at all with new vocabulary. I'm wondering if, for learning vocabulary, something like Anki might not be more efficient. I understand that you can eventually learn through reading, but I'm talking about efficiency here. I seemingly wasted 6 months on reading (and like I said before, I did get stuff out of that like reinforcement of prior knowledge, just no actual progression) when I could have learned another 10k (shallow) meanings that could be reinforced with reading a little bit.

However it seems like everyone here is telling me I'm wrong, and it's working of them, so I don't really know what I'm doing wrong. Like I said, I don't want to read with a dictionary for the rest of my life (at least not more than a native would), so just reinforcing the same base that I have won't really achieve that. I understand "enjoy the journey", etc., and I am, but ultimately I do have a goal in mind of becoming fluent. Native level fluency that is, not some watered down definition by people who want to make themselves feel better about their accomplishments / give themselves a reason to stop making progress because they are lazy. People say things like "as long as you get the gist" and "don't look up words, guessing is fluency" which to me just sounds like laziness and a sense of early accomplishment that stops you from progressing.

I'll ask one last time, is reading just a fun way to learn, or is it the most efficient way to learn? If it's the latter, than does anyone know what I could be doing wrong? I look up new words as I come across them, read the meaning to the point where I understand the sentence, then move on.

kameden Wrote:

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:I think you're just being too negative.

I don't think I'm being negative. It's not like I can't or don't read, I just feel like I'm making almost no progress at all with new vocabulary. I'm wondering if, for learning vocabulary, something like Anki might not be more efficient. I understand that you can eventually learn through reading, but I'm talking about efficiency here. I seemingly wasted 6 months on reading (and like I said before, I did get stuff out of that like reinforcement of prior knowledge, just no actual progression) when I could have learned another 10k (shallow) meanings that could be reinforced with reading a little bit.

However it seems like everyone here is telling me I'm wrong, and it's working of them, so I don't really know what I'm doing wrong. Like I said, I don't want to read with a dictionary for the rest of my life (at least not more than a native would), so just reinforcing the same base that I have won't really achieve that. I understand "enjoy the journey", etc., and I am, but ultimately I do have a goal in mind of becoming fluent. Native level fluency that is, not some watered down definition by people who want to make themselves feel better about their accomplishments / give themselves a reason to stop making progress because they are lazy. People say things like "as long as you get the gist" and "don't look up words, guessing is fluency" which to me just sounds like laziness and a sense of early accomplishment that stops you from progressing.

I'll ask one last time, is reading just a fun way to learn, or is it the most efficient way to learn? If it's the latter, than does anyone know what I could be doing wrong? I look up new words as I come across them, read the meaning to the point where I understand the sentence, then move on.

You are not necessarily being negative, but you do have some pretty unrealistic expectations. Once you reach a certain level of proficiency in a language, progress becomes less and less visible. This is perfectly normal, and it's actually a good sign, it means that every new thing you learn seems minuscule compared to what you already know. It robs you of a certain feeling of progression, that's the downside, but let me assure you that your 6 months of reading did not go to waste. You are progressing, it's just that you don't realize it. And yes, this is the longest phase of the learning process.

Secondly, you seem to believe that fun =/= efficient. I don't agree with that. While it is true that language learning entails phases when you just have to suck it up and go through stuff you might prefer not doing, once you get to the point where you can read native material (whether with or without dictionary), then what better way is there to progress ? Aren't you learning to read japanese to... you know, read japanese ? If so, then I don't see why enjoying what you read would be "inefficient".

Learning vocabulary blindly is inefficient. It's not useless, but it's not efficient either. If you want to be fully literate in a language, then read. It's as simple as that. You're not doing anything wrong, and you'll get there, you just have pretty unrealistic expectations in terms of how long it's gonna take you to get there. In whatever your primary language is, I'm pretty sure you felt lost when you opened a "literature" book for the first time when you grew up, and I'm also sure that you didn't go learn a vocabulary list before going back to reading. You probably just carried on, frustrating as it was, and pulled through eventually. My advice would be to stop going neurotic (no offense meant) about using a dictionary, and just carry on with what you're doing. Textbook, grammar and vocabulary lists can only take you so far.

And again, I am talking from personal experience with learning both english and japanese (not a native speaker in either).

edit : typo

If you can't stand reading and not knowing the meaning of every single word you come across, be prepared to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours drilling vocab, via Anki or otherwise. Basically, your only options are:
1) Do the aforementioned, spending several months (possibly 1yr+) of doing nothing but vocabulary. It took me around 350 hours for Core 10k...assuming a native level vocab is 40-50k, expect to spend about 1000-1500 hours of your time on this. I don't even know where you'd be able to get a frequency deck for that. If you want to be really sure, you could do the JDICT which has like 110,000 words. So that's like 3,500 hours for security's sake.
2) Actually do "fun things", accepting that using a dictionary and taking longer to comprehend material is your "punishment" for not spending 3500+ hours up front.
2a) If you really enjoy drilling vocab for months at a time with no other source of reading, then this point is invalidated.
3) Combine points one and two somehow. As soon as my reviews go down, here's what I plan to do. I already have huge lists of words from looking stuff up, right? So, I add them to Anki, under a separate deck. At the same time, I'll probably start the Core 10k supplement (IIRC, it's 15k words), doing 10-20 words per day. And this is in addition to reading or whatever, and it combines the best of both words.

Like you, I'm also a little skeptical about "just picking up stuff from reading", especially with the sheer amount of words involved. But, honestly, I haven't done as much reading as the people here have claimed to have done, so I can't really argue from my position of inexperience. All I know is, the methods I have seem to be working, so I might as well continue to use them.
Also, you kind of remind me of people who want to lose a large amount of weight in a short amount of time...it's just not possible. You just can't cram a decade or two of experience into a year or so.

Kuzunoha13 Wrote:3) Combine points one and two somehow. As soon as my reviews go down, here's what I plan to do. I already have huge lists of words from looking stuff up, right? So, I add them to Anki, under a separate deck. At the same time, I'll probably start the Core 10k supplement (IIRC, it's 15k words), doing 10-20 words per day. And this is in addition to reading or whatever, and it combines the best of both words.

This is what I'm doing right now though. I imported that 15k supplement to my deck and suspended everything. I read and add a days worth of words, and then unsuspend some words from the deck so that I reach a certain minimum per day (right now it's about 120 cards per day).

Kuzunoha13 Wrote:Also, you kind of remind me of people who want to lose a large amount of weight in a short amount of time...it's just not possible. You just can't cram a decade or two of experience into a year or so.

In my mind you guys are suggesting to eat healthy, while I'm saying doing some exercise on the side would help speed things up. It's not a perfect analogy though.

Linval Wrote:Secondly, you seem to believe that fun =/= efficient.

I think you misunderstand me then. I'm not saying that at all. Those are basically the two motivations that guide people when choosing an activity to do. Either it's fun, or it's efficient for learning. If it was neither, no one would ever do it. To use the food analogy again, people generally eat for two reasons, because it tastes good or because it's healthy. If I asked you to list some foods that were healthy, you might list some foods I didn't think tasted good. The two things aren't really connected, they are separate. I was trying to ask what is efficient, ignoring the fun part. Pretend that doesn't exist, because that's not what I'm asking.

You say memorizing word lists isn't efficient, why not? In 2 hours of Anki per day I can get a base meaning for 100+ words into my long term memory. I feel that with 2 hours of reading I would only get a small fraction of that progress. I have said before that I think Anki has a higher diminishing return than reading. For example 10 hours of Anki is a little unrealistic. However 10 hours of reading, while still having a diminishing return, is less drastic. So I do think that after a certain amount of time per day, reading might become a better option.

And again please try and ignore motivation and fun because that's not what I'm talking about. I know it's unrealistic, I don't care. Why is reading efficient for making progress (not just solidifying old knowledge) over say, Anki?

kameden Wrote:You say memorizing word lists isn't efficient, why not? In 2 hours of Anki per day I can get a base meaning for 100+ words into my long term memory. I feel that with 2 hours of reading I would only get a small fraction of that progress. I have said before that I think Anki has a higher diminishing return than reading. For example 10 hours of Anki is a little unrealistic. However 10 hours of reading, while still having a diminishing return, is less drastic. So I do think that after a certain amount of time per day, reading might become a better option.

And again please try and ignore motivation and fun because that's not what I'm talking about. I know it's unrealistic, I don't care. Why is reading efficient for making progress (not just solidifying old knowledge) over say, Anki?

It depends on the goal. Vocabulary lists are efficient if you want to pass a vocabulary test. However reading is a much more organic skill to acquire, and words may have a very different meaning in a sentence than in a vocabulary list. Vocabulary lists don't teach you slang, idiomatic expressions or colloquial uses of words. Vocabulary lists don't teach you sarcasm (granted, pretty much the only way to be sarcastic in Japanese is to be overly polite, but still), humor, puns and the like.

Vocabulary lists are very matter-of-fact, but language isn't. Reading is a more well-rounded exercise. It allows you to train your brain's pattern matching abilities, which is a very important skill, that allows you to read faster and faster.

Fluency is not about efficiency. Native speakers speak in the most inefficient way, adding junk words that serve no grammatical nor lexical purposes. Same is true for literature (popular and classic both), which is written in a fundamentally very inefficient way. You might know all the vocabulary in a language, and still not be able to make sense of a sentence because you can't understand the nuances of the words and how they inflect the overall meaning of the sentence. Reading helps you with these issues.

The thing is, those skills are next to impossible to quantify. But that doesn't mean they are not important.

I'm not saying you are doing something wrong, what I'm saying is that you might have underestimated the time it takes to get to full fluent literacy. And once you'll be there, you won't even notice. There won't be a bell ringing in your brain to congratulate you for reaching fluency.

If you can stomach a massive vocabulary marathon, then all the power to you. It's not gonna be time wasted. But don't get an ulcer trying to find the most efficient way to learn a language, and don't forget that there is much more to literacy than a declarative knowledge of vocabulary.

I feel that Anki helps in getting the bases, while reading gives you the nuances...so you kind of need both to work off each other. Other than that, it's just a matter of time.

kameden Wrote:

Aikynaro Wrote:Asking again: What are you reading?

Almost everything has me using the dictionary. Today I've been reading One Piece, and I probably use the dictionary 10 times per chapter. What are you reading that you never have to use the dictionary?

I've never read One Piece in Japanese so I can't speak with certainty, but maybe it's more of an issue of reading stuff with a lot of vague, oddly-used, or "technical" words. As an example, I've played through the latest Pokemon series game in Japanese. Because of all attacks, items, place names, pokemon names, and all sorts of other weird things you find in a fantasy world like pokemon, I had to constantly look stuff up because it was completely unfamiliar vocabulary ( かえんほうしゃ apparently this is the popular flamethrower attack, with the more literal translation of flame emission). After looking things up the definition might have made sense to me, but while playing I had no idea what was being said. I'd imagine One Piece to potentially have similar issues, where you would have to potentially know vocabulary information about: pirates, ships, a variety of different elements (think like the Devil Fruits), pirate weapons, all of the different attacks/techniques, food, the ocean, military ranks, and etc. I can see that leading to a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary.

There are 2 ways I could see to alleviate this. 1) Read stuff in areas where you have a stronger vocabulary (school life type things could be an example, it was just the first thing that popped into my head). Practice with books where you have good vocabulary and once you get better at reading venture into deeper waters
2) Skim through your media and write down all the words that look unfamiliar (or run the text through some sort of word frequency analyzer maybe). This way you can focus on filling in the gaps in your vocabulary for that SPECIFIC area, so future chapters in that series might go by easier because chances are if it's important the word will pop up again. (For example, devil fruits are a big thing in one piece, memorizing the phrase 悪魔の実-Akuma no Mi, will now make you familiar with a phrase that will often pop up.) And it even allows you to use SRS like you wanted. This way instead of saying "I want 20k words" you can say "I want 2k words that I know are useful because they show up all the time in what I'm reading"



As far as reading vs. Anki::
I don't think people are bashing using Anki so much as pushing you to read more. As you said, Anki is great for giving you a base for the word, but that's all it gives you (and maybe an example sentence). As others have said, it doesnt really get you as familiar with: both how the words connect and interrelate to each other, which I feel like is more of a nuance thing than 1 clear Anki definition that you can post in the brain.
However, more importantly, reading more gives you a stronger ability to INFER FROM THE CONTEXT. This, to me, is one of the MOST important things I've gained from reading (apart from enjoyment of the adventures of course). I've had a decent vocabulary/understanding of vocabulary in my native language since I was relatively young, and a major part of that was because I would devour books (I suppose it helped that TV wasn't allowed in the house then). I would often come across unfamiliar words. However, instead of following the advice of my teachers to stop and look up words I don't know, I would always keep on reading. I could usually guess what the word meant from the context. Even now, while I can't necessarily recite a dictionary (or Anki) definition for all the English I know, I can infer it from context or give an idea of the word because I learned that "word-idea" from reading it, a lot. Usually the ONLY time I would look up words I didn't know is if knowledge of the word was key to understanding the word/phrase/paragraph. Otherwise I would skip it. I've had some slips where I was learning the wrong definition of the word, but the last time I consciously recognized this was in a Shakespeare book (which I don't mind, because there is some weird English there).
--
In terms of your pace with cards, while everyone is different, unless you have a very good memory I feel like 100+ cards is a bit much to cram in there and really UNDERSTAND the word (not to mention having to keep up with the reviews). But everyone works differently so I'll leave it to your judgment


So in the end, while I don't think you should just drop Anki/SRS/looking up words all the time altogether, I do believe that you should up the reading amount and lower the SRS amount. SRS might put a basic identifying tag on words, but reading a lot will let you really UNDERSTAND the words, and the language. (And maybe some grammar review as well if you need that)

learningkanji Wrote:I actually got this a while ago but held off on using it until I read a bit of Yotsubato. I guess I should just finish the whole thing and then Yotsubato will be easier to understand?

Since it has the running vocab list for each page with the kanji, readings and translation, it is a lot easier to even just read through it without having to refer to a dictionary, instead already having the translations on hand.

The anki deck beforehand I am sure would also help since you're reviewing the words before you read it.

I haven't read through yotsubato yet, but it was highly recommended by a few friends who have used it and it really helped ease them into reading it.

What if you start off with a digital version of what you want to read, run it through Japanese Text Analysis, subtract the words you know, and learn the remaining ones in Anki? Then, once you're done with that, you should have something with (theoretically) 0 unknown words that you can read.

Then, if you keep reading similar things, you should have to learn fewer and fewer new words.

idk, this is all theoretical, as I'm still in a post-Core10k / learning KO vocab phase, myself. I think it's doable though, with Japanese Text Analysis + Excel + Epwing2Anki.

Just suck it up and read a few thousand pages. The problem is gonna disappear if you do that.

I guess you might simply read and load what you don't know into Anki? You might want to check a vocabulary book out (take it out from the library) and see what is it that you don't know, or maybe one of those Kodansha books on some specific subject, such as the one on onomatopoeias.

I have a 8k word vocabulary builder and honestly I think if I knew this stuff I could pretty much say anything I wanted to - it even has fairly specialsed vocabulary such as the names of traditional tools, the names of social classes, religious terminology (to become a priest, to attain satori... lol), the names of artistic movements... I plan on studying it when I'm done with the jouyou kanji in a couple of years.

But yeah, I'm far from knowing 10000 words so I'm not sure what I'm suggesting would be a good idea.

Danchan Wrote:We have to worry not only about meaning, but usage. Seeing a word in the context of a story is of course more enjoyable for us, but also it helps give us a better feeling for usage, for patterns, for the general feeling of how things are expressed. Through reading a lot we don't just increase the raw number of words we know therefore, but also learn a lot of related things about how those words a put together. If you don't go through that process, reading will never really feel very comfortable. In other words, the fun/efficiency thing is intertwined. It is efficient because it is fun. Only on paper might it look like you can brute-force it, unless you have other extremely powerful motivating factors.

Even though I'm at a much, much lower number of words in my vocab, I can wholeheartedly underline this. "Having fun" with the material (bet they words, grammar or Kanji) "in the wild" (so to speak) is such an important (not to mention much more painless way) to master something, compared to just banging your head against lists of words or unillustrated grammatical rules, for example. At least in my opinion.

I find the effect of rereading stuff I've studied in Anki is almost magical.

Rereading the sentences in their original context having studied them in isolation seems to take overall comprehension to a new level.

Not sure that's relevant to this thread but ... whoops, too late, posted it

kameden Wrote:

Aikynaro Wrote:Asking again: What are you reading?

Almost everything has me using the dictionary. Today I've been reading One Piece, and I probably use the dictionary 10 times per chapter. What are you reading that you never have to use the dictionary?

Are you sure you're not just relying on the dictionary too much? It's not like I couldn't find a use for a dictionary if I had one handy, but I deliberately don't because I don't want to be slowed down by looking stuff up and most of the time (assuming the context is comprehensible) I can understand the words that I would look up anyway.

Very occasionally I'll use a dictionary - I had no way of working out what colour '瑠璃色' was in the current book I'm reading so I looked it up afterwards. But that was only after I already knew the word ('the colour of the stones that the palace is made out of') but not the exact meaning.
Here's all the novels I've read (manga not included).

Anyway, looking up most things you come across in a dictionary is a waste of time, which I think you've discovered. Even if you look up every word, they don't stick, so you might as well just keep reading. Words will stick if they're important or interesting or just the author's favourite word or just because - and the more you read (and less time spent in a dictionary) the more of those words you'll hit upon.

learningkanji Wrote:Also for those who are reading a lot of books, where are you browsing to see if there's something interesting for you to read? I really wanna read a relatively short simple novel from start to finish but I don't know where to find one, if I'd even be interested in it, etc.

Browsing Amazon, other people's 読書メーターs, and actual bookshops.

Aikynaro Wrote:Anyway, looking up most things you come across in a dictionary is a waste of time, which I think you've discovered. Even if you look up every word, they don't stick, so you might as well just keep reading. Words will stick if they're important or interesting or just the author's favourite word or just because - and the more you read (and less time spent in a dictionary) the more of those words you'll hit upon.

What about the idea of just adding the words you look up to an Anki deck so you do remember them. Then you just invest an hour or two a day and not have to keep relearning the word over and over again. Wouldn't this be more efficient in the long run?

What I do is take pictures when I read so I don't have to stop and look up while I read (in this day and age i do not understand the people who make notebooks and write out the words and sentencess) . Then when I look it up I decide if it's worth adding to my deck or not (If it's relaly obscure and useless and i'm better off adding another word then I don't add it). Usually I add it because I have 3 different deck formats and one of them definitely works... It's effective for me because it's a sentence taken from a book I enjoyed reading and I remember the scene or the general plot etc so there's significance to the sentence.