For those who do intensive reading, how do you do it? Any suggestion is appreciated!

Intensive reading is the only kind I've ever done so ...

- look up every unknown word or grammar point & add to SRS (which for me usually just means unsuspending a card or two in my JMdict deck).

- mull over / reread any tricky parts until understood or you have to give up (which is something I don't do easily ... to a fault).

- ideally, reread the same material at some later juncture to develop a deeper comprehension. This can be surprisingly beneficial though I can rarely be bothered.

Of course the more you do it the easier it becomes until you can read both intensively and extensively at the same time

http://fis.ucalgary.ca/Brian/611/reading...ivereading

I believe this is a very good guide (it also has info to other types of reading strategies e.g. extensive).

Quote:usually very short texts - not more than 500 words in length

I quote that due to the fact that this is one of the major differences from extensive reading where it encourages to read a huge body of text. Mainly because an extensive reading piece will be mostly comprehensible unlike a piece of text you would choose for intensive reading.

Yes, I agree with anotherjohn that you should ideally reread the text but if you really don't feel up for it, just read something of a similar topic. As a personal example, I do intensive reading on cooking recipes. I always keep a copy of what recipes I read via OneNote clipper. Of course the same core vocab repeats, which is what I like, so I can focus on newer terms like the ingredients list and action verbs on how these dishes are made. Eventually I hope that enough of the intensive reading I do with recipes will be more extensive reading where I can just get the gist of the entire piece.

td;lr: I believe that it requires a good amount of intensive reading to reach a comfortable level of extensive reading. This isn't a fact but just something that works for me. I prefer reading short text in English so naturally I would be the same in a foreign language xD I've known others who feel the opposite is more beneficial. So it's all on you

Oh I see, thank you guys!
I've tried both intensive and extensive reading, and the latter didn't work well for me at the moment, maybe because there are still too many unknown words.
Today I went back to the first chapter of zero no tsukaima for which I did intensive reading like one year ago... And it was very easy to read even if I have none of those words in Anki. It was in fact extensive reading.
I've heard Steve Kauffman suggesting to do allways extensive reading to increase the chances of incidental words learning, but it didn't work for me. If I check a word reading/meaning and go on with reading, I immediately forget it, even if the word pops up multiple times. This is expecially true for new kunyomi... they don't stick if I don't take the time to read and re-read the word and sentence, and if I don't deliberately try to memorize it.

RawrPk Wrote:As a personal example, I do intensive reading on cooking recipes. I always keep a copy of what recipes I read via OneNote clipper. Of course the same core vocab repeats, which is what I like, so I can focus on newer terms like the ingredients list and action verbs on how these dishes are made. Eventually I hope that enough of the intensive reading I do with recipes will be more extensive reading where I can just get the gist of the entire piece.

Thanks for the link. This is useful because I'll be hitting reading hard in the new year and it'll be good to have a plan so I can hit the ground running.

Intensive reading defined in language teaching as a:
“grammar-translation approach where the teacher works with the learners, using the first language to explain the meaning of the text, sentence by sentence” (Nation, 2009, p.25);
“close study of short passages, including syntactic, semantic, and lexical analyses and translation into the L1 to study meaning” (Susser and Robb, 1990, p.161);
“a complete, detailed understanding of every grammatical, thematic, and discourse element” (Lyutaya, 2011, p. 26).

Just because I recently did a study that involved intensive and extensive reading...

If anyone's interested, extensive reading, as defined by Hitsosugi and Day (2004), is:
[That 2004 study was done for Japanese learners, so relevant to all here]

1. The reading material is easy. The benefits of ER come from students reading a great deal.
So we have to get our students reading. One way to get them to read a lot is to make sure that they read material that contains vocabulary and grammar well within their linguistic competence. When students find no more than one or two difficult words on a page, then the text is appropriately easy; it is well within their reading comfort zone. In addition, reading easy material helps the affective dimension of learning to read. Students discover that they can read FL material, and as they read more and more books, they see themselves as readers in the target language.

2. There must be a wide variety of reading material on a large range of topics. Having variety allows students to find material they want to read, regardless of their interests. Different kinds of reading material also encourages a flexible approach to reading. Students learn to read in different ways (e.g., skimming, scanning, more careful reading) and for different reasons (e.g., entertainment, information, passing the time).

3. Students choose what they want to read. Self-selection of reading material is the key to ER.
Students are free to stop reading material that is boring, too easy, or too difficult.

4. Learners read as much as possible. As noted in Principle 1, the more our students read, the greater the benefits.

5. The purpose of reading is usually related to pleasure, information, and general understanding. Students are encouraged to read for a variety of real-world reading purposes, from entertainment to finding specific information. Also in common with real-world reading, 100% comprehension is not usually the goal. Only sufficient understanding to achieve one's purpose is required.

6. Reading is its own reward. Because the goal is for students to experience reading, they are not required to demonstrate their understanding by answering comprehension questions. However, teachers may need to ask students to engage in follow-up activities after reading for a number of reasons: 1) to discover what the student understood and experienced from reading; 2) to keep track of what students read; 3) to monitor the student's attitude toward reading; and 4) to link reading with other aspects of the curriculum.

7. Reading speed is usually faster rather than slower. Because students read material that they can easily understand, they begin to read faster. Over time, they move from word-by-word decoding to fluent reading. Students are advised against using dictionaries as it interrupts the reading process, making fluent reading impossible. When encountering unknown vocabulary items, students are advised to either ignore the word or guess the meaning.

8. Reading is individual and silent. Students read at their own pace. Most ER is done outside class, as homework, on the students' own time, when and where the students choose. This encourages and allows students to read silently.

9. Teachers orient and guide their students. Students may not be accustomed to the freedom of making choices in school, so they need to be introduced to the practice of ER. The teacher could begin by explaining the benefits of ER -- that it leads to gains in vocabulary knowledge as well as reading, writing, and oral fluency. The choice of easy materials, self-selection and reading for overall understanding could be discussed. Teachers may also wish to point out that there are no tests or comprehension questions.

In order to guide them during the course to ensure they get the most out of an ER experience, teachers need to keep track of what and how much their students read, and the students' reactions to what was read. Teachers also need to encourage students to expand their reading comfort zones; as they read, they can begin to read books that were previously too difficult for them.

10. The teacher is a role model of a reader. Example is the most powerful instructor. If the teacher reads the same material that the students read, and talks to them about it, this gives the students a model of what it is to be a reader and also makes it possible for the teacher to recommend reading material to individual students. In this way, the teacher and students form an informal reading community, experiencing together the value and pleasure that may be derived from the written word.

Hope people find that useful

I've taken the first 127* words of "kino no tabi", without counting the grammar and grammar-like words (pronouns, conjunctions, particles, suru, proper names, onomatopeia etc..) and of those 127 words, only 9 are above the 8k frequency mark (always according to Rikaisama).

(*93 unique words)

This means that if I know the first 8k word, I will know 92-93% of words on this little extract.
Obviously the greater the text-sample, the greater the number of words needed to reach this same percentage of coverage. If we take the 5k innocent novels analysis, to reach the same % of coverage we need 11-13k words, while the 8k words mark will give us a coverage of 90%.

I know those are only numbers, and they vary depending on what we want to read, on the fields we want to focus and so on.

But this is still a good reference, so let's take it to pick a random number of, let's say 8000 words, and let's suppose this number represents a good foundation.

My question, addressed to those who gained reading fluency mainly by means of reading itself (with or without the help of tools like Anki to review words so learned) is:

If we consider intensive reading as our main words acquisition method, after how many books we will be able to obtain such a (randomly set by me) passive vocabulary?

Research into reading is pretty clear that you *cannot* gain reading fluency through intensive reading. Fluency, the ability to read texts at a reasonable speed (i.e. similar to the speed you would read in your native language), and understanding everything, is pretty different to what goes on in intensive reading. Intensive reading is better for focussing on different things, i.e. accuracy, but it's not what will help you develop reading fluency.

Studies into reading in Japanese suggest that at least 96% of words should be known in order to comprehend a text satisfactorily, so I think that your 90-93% knowledge is too low, and you should move down a level perhaps.

ktcgx Wrote:Studies into reading in Japanese suggest that at least 96% of words should be known in order to comprehend a text satisfactorily

Source?

Komori, K., Mikuni, J., & Kondoh, A. (2004). What percentage of known words in a text facilitates reading comprehension? A case study for exploration of the threshold of known words coverage. Journal of Japanese Language Teaching, 120, 83-91. is one of the studies.

Yes but, in order to gain that level of comprehension, don't you need to learn words? And how do you acquire them?

I was not saying that I do only intensive reading. I do extensive reading too, and it works wonder to solidify words I already know, and to gain reading speed (as you said).

What I'm asking is basically how many books I need to read in order to acquire a good number of words, which I set to 8k just to give a number. I'm aware this is not enough to gain that percentage of knowledge that you quoted from that research.

I set a number just to have a point of reference. So I'll rephrase:

how many books do you need to read in order to gain a foundation of 8k words? Share your experience :p

In other words I know you need to gain at last 96% of words coverage, but tou reach it gradually. In order to gain 96% goal, you must first gain 50%, then 51% ... 90% and so on... and I feel 90% is a good mid-term goal to set. And I wonder after how much reading you reach this goal. And obviously to reach it, extensive reading is not enough. You must learn new words to increase that percentage, and I think intensive reading is a way to achieve this. Am I wrong?

I don't think I've really ever done "extensive" reading. That doesn't mean that I don't read things that are easy for me, but if a word comes up I don't know I will look it up. I see very little reason to ever do "extensive" reading. Keep doing intensive reading, looking things up etc., and eventually things will become easier, but there is little reason to ever stop and just sort of skim over / guess unknown parts unless you're feeling particularly lazy.

EDIT: That being said I do a sort of "extensive reading" thing when it comes to listening just because of the difficulty of doing it intensively.

cophnia61 Wrote:Yes but, in order to gain that level of comprehension, don't you need to learn words? And how do you acquire them?

There's research for English that suggests that beyond the most common 2000 words, words are best learnt by encountering them through reading. If you know 98% of running words, most of the time you will be able to understand the word you don't know through context. That's how most native speakers of any language which uses writing go about learning the majority of their vocabulary.

Intense reading does have a place in language learning, but I think that far, far too much emphasis has been placed on it. One recent study looking at Japanese learners found that learners are too ready to accept the mantra 'no pain, no gain', and I agree with the author that it's basically a ridiculous way to approach reading. Of course learning a language requires effort, but when there are far easier and more rewarding ways to go about getting to the same point, why do we insist on making students tackle texts which are way above their comprehension level?

Ktcgx, thank you for your answer! So you basically suggest to always read at comprehensive level. In other words, to always choose something slightly above your level? Do you suggest to use anki too?

ktcgx Wrote:That's how most native speakers of any language which uses writing go about learning the majority of their vocabulary.

Natives take an extremely long time to acquire vocabulary though. Think about the vocabulary base of a 15 year old, and then realize that it took that person 15 years to get there. With intensive reading you can build a similar base in only a few years.

ktcgx Wrote:Komori, K., Mikuni, J., & Kondoh, A. (2004). What percentage of known words in a text facilitates reading comprehension? A case study for exploration of the threshold of known words coverage. Journal of Japanese Language Teaching, 120, 83-91. is one of the studies.

It's pretty awesome that such a paper exists, let alone that you have read it and were able to quote it!

Also I've crossed above a post where you say you did core10k, and this is sort like an equivalent to intensive reading...
just I'm not doing core 10k so I must study new words as I encounter them and I put them into Anki... So I could say "how many books I need to read to build my own core10k?"

cophnia61 Wrote:So I could say "how many books I need to read to build my own core10k?"

There are tools on this forum that can tell you that. Just keep shoving books into cb's word frequency app until you hit 10,000 words. Obviously you are going to get lots of different answers depending on what you throw at it, especially as you pass the 6,000 mark. The more varied and longer the books you select the fewer it should take to hit 10k.

Do you have morphman installed? (It's an easy way to get an estimate of your mature vocabulary from your Anki deck.)

tokyostyle Wrote:

cophnia61 Wrote:So I could say "how many books I need to read to build my own core10k?"

There are tools on this forum that can tell you that. Just keep shoving books into cb's word frequency app until you hit 10,000 words. Obviously you are going to get lots of different answers depending on what you throw at it, especially as you pass the 6,000 mark. The more varied and longer the books you select the fewer it should take to hit 10k.

Do you have morphman installed? (It's an easy way to get an estimate of your mature vocabulary from your Anki deck.)

I don't have morphman installed, I tried it once but I didn't understand how it works xD

But I've started recently to build a vocabulary deck, so the words in it don't represent my actual knowledge ._. Also I don't put into it words that I already know well so actually I don't have an easy way to determine how many words I know ._.

If you know less than 4,000 words just pound vocabulary through sentences or whatever method you find effective. It doesn't matter where the words or sentences come from. Pre-made decks are nice because they are low effort so you can spend more of your time actually studying but you might need to mix in some customized content to keep your motivation up.

(Note: That number basically puts you slightly beyond the N3 JLPT vocabulary level which is a good place to begin dabbling in reading.)

There is a series of booklets and stories and audio CD's, specifically designed to encourage extensive reading at different levels of reading proficiency. I have purchased quite a few of the lower level volumes and find them quite enjoyable and helpful in my Japanese studies. Here is the link: http://www.ask-books.com/tadoku/index.html . The レベル別日本語多読ライブラリー　(Graded　Levels Japanese Language Extensive Reading Library) series is published by NPO法人日本語多読研究会 (NPO Corporation Japanese Language Extensive Reading Research Society). The books are entertaining and have excellent artwork and illustrations that help the reader understand without the need of a dictionary. With the help of the pictures, audio and a basic knowledge of kana, kanji and very simple Japanese grammar, I am able to enjoy some extensive reading as ktcgx describes above. I also use the material in more intensive study with my tutor and I enjoy writing out the texts by hand in my notebook for handwriting practice. Many participants in the forum may be beyond the easy levels of this series but I can highly recommend the books and cd's for beginners and lower intermediate learners.

ktcgx Wrote:Studies into reading in Japanese suggest that at least 96% of words should be known in order to comprehend a text satisfactorily, so I think that your 90-93% knowledge is too low, and you should move down a level perhaps.

What sort of vocab count are you looking at for 96% Surely it is more than 2000

ktcgx Wrote:There's research for English that suggests that beyond the most common 2000 words, words are best learnt by encountering them through reading. If you know 98% of running words, most of the time you will be able to understand the word you don't know through context. That's how most native speakers of any language which uses writing go about learning the majority of their vocabulary.

For that matter, at what level do you reach 98%

Also how can you do this with Kanji

With English if you see for example... The Gnomes are guarding the gold from the knights and the Gnolls. [I know, knights typically would be helping the Gnomes in this situation]
If you don't know the English very well, even if you are unsure what a Gnome, knight or Gnoll is you can at least read it phonetically and move on. Granted your pronunciation will be way off base most likely but for reading purposes it would be close enough.
Take the same sentence, change Gnome and Gnoll to some Japanese cultural version with Kanji. How would you pronounce it. If you can guess the meaning, you would be stuck using English or using some related Japanese word which would result in confusing 2 different words with the same pronunciation.

cophnia61 Wrote:Ktcgx, thank you for your answer! So you basically suggest to always read at comprehensive level. In other words, to always choose something slightly above your level? Do you suggest to use anki too?

Learners should generally start at the i-1 level until their reading skills improve, then they can move to slightly above their level. There are a number of ways to go about intensively studying vocabulary, such as anki, which I do use on and off, but this year's been really busy for me, and my Japanese studies have taken a bit of a back seat.

cophnia61 Wrote:Also I've crossed above a post where you say you did core10k, and this is sort like an equivalent to intensive reading...
just I'm not doing core 10k so I must study new words as I encounter them and I put them into Anki... So I could say "how many books I need to read to build my own core10k?"

I don't know about for Japanese, but research came out last year that for English, in order to come across the 9000 most common vocab, you needed to have read 3 million tokens (words), but don't panic, because this is approximately only 25 novels, which would take most native speakers well less than a year to read.

Dudeist Wrote:What sort of vocab count are you looking at for 96% Surely it is more than 2000

96% coverage of a particular text can happen at any level. It depends on the difficulty level of the text. Same for 98% and kanji.

Dudeist Wrote:For that matter, at what level do you reach 98%

Also how can you do this with Kanji

With English if you see for example... The Gnomes are guarding the gold from the knights and the Gnolls. [I know, knights typically would be helping the Gnomes in this situation]
If you don't know the English very well, even if you are unsure what a Gnome, knight or Gnoll is you can at least read it phonetically and move on. Granted your pronunciation will be way off base most likely but for reading purposes it would be close enough.
Take the same sentence, change Gnome and Gnoll to some Japanese cultural version with Kanji. How would you pronounce it. If you can guess the meaning, you would be stuck using English or using some related Japanese word which would result in confusing 2 different words with the same pronunciation.

If you do Heisig, you will learn the meanings of the characters and their pronunciations much more quickly than you think. I would estimate about a year of study for a couple of hours a day, maybe. But at the same time you could be reading grade readers or other books with furigana to learn grammar and help your reading comprehension.