Hi everyone!
A few weeks ago I asked for recommendations for Japanese texts I could read in order to improve my reading speed. At that time I had just taken a past JLPT2 exam (2008) and failed it with 48%, mainly because I couldn't make it through the reading comprehension in time. The past few weeks I have been reading these books a little, but I'm not a person who can read for a long time without drifting off. So I decided to play Dragon Quest IX for Nintendo DS instead. The rule for playing: ALWAYS talk to ALL people in EVERY town, and read EVERYTHING they say (in other words, don't just press the A button until the text box disappears). Other than that, I didn't keep on learning Japanese except for repeating my flashcards. I spent a total of 50 hours playing the game, and yesterday I took another JLPT2 (from 2006). This time I managed to finish the grammar, read all the texts through, and have about 8 of 70 minutes left. Total score: 78%.
What I'm trying to say is:
1. Learning the vocabulary is one thing, but if you need to think 5 seconds for every compound, you'll run out of time halfway through.
2. The more you practice reading, the more you can skim over all the kana parts and only see the Kanji. Let's take 「働かせなければなりません」 as an example. Without much practive, you'll read the whole thing, which is tedious. With practice, you'll get to the point where: 1. you see the kanji, you think "work", 2. you see かせ, you think "make someone", 3. you kind of see なければなりません as a whole structure and think "have to".
3. When you play Japanese RPGs, don't try to understand everything. There will be a lot of words you don't exactly know, because everything is in a fantasy context. If you don't know a word, just try to guess from the context and move on. For example, I didn't know what 遺跡 was, and I couldn't really guess it from the two kanji. I just guessed from the context that it had to be some kind of place with monsters in it, maybe a dungeon or a cave. I then went to the place to solve the quest and noticed "Oh, it is a ruin". It would have been redundant to look up the word. What I did look up was words like 器用さ, 素早さ, 魔法 and so on. They appear in every RPG, so it's worth it.
4. You get a feeling for nuances like ~ませぬ instead of ~ません, じゃね~ instead of じゃない, who uses them and what they communicate.
That's it
I hope this information is useful to some of you. Those above my level will know it anyway I guess, but I was so surprised of my 30% improvement that I thought I had to post it.
A few weeks ago I asked for recommendations for Japanese texts I could read in order to improve my reading speed. At that time I had just taken a past JLPT2 exam (2008) and failed it with 48%, mainly because I couldn't make it through the reading comprehension in time. The past few weeks I have been reading these books a little, but I'm not a person who can read for a long time without drifting off. So I decided to play Dragon Quest IX for Nintendo DS instead. The rule for playing: ALWAYS talk to ALL people in EVERY town, and read EVERYTHING they say (in other words, don't just press the A button until the text box disappears). Other than that, I didn't keep on learning Japanese except for repeating my flashcards. I spent a total of 50 hours playing the game, and yesterday I took another JLPT2 (from 2006). This time I managed to finish the grammar, read all the texts through, and have about 8 of 70 minutes left. Total score: 78%.
What I'm trying to say is:
1. Learning the vocabulary is one thing, but if you need to think 5 seconds for every compound, you'll run out of time halfway through.
2. The more you practice reading, the more you can skim over all the kana parts and only see the Kanji. Let's take 「働かせなければなりません」 as an example. Without much practive, you'll read the whole thing, which is tedious. With practice, you'll get to the point where: 1. you see the kanji, you think "work", 2. you see かせ, you think "make someone", 3. you kind of see なければなりません as a whole structure and think "have to".
3. When you play Japanese RPGs, don't try to understand everything. There will be a lot of words you don't exactly know, because everything is in a fantasy context. If you don't know a word, just try to guess from the context and move on. For example, I didn't know what 遺跡 was, and I couldn't really guess it from the two kanji. I just guessed from the context that it had to be some kind of place with monsters in it, maybe a dungeon or a cave. I then went to the place to solve the quest and noticed "Oh, it is a ruin". It would have been redundant to look up the word. What I did look up was words like 器用さ, 素早さ, 魔法 and so on. They appear in every RPG, so it's worth it.
4. You get a feeling for nuances like ~ませぬ instead of ~ません, じゃね~ instead of じゃない, who uses them and what they communicate.
That's it
I hope this information is useful to some of you. Those above my level will know it anyway I guess, but I was so surprised of my 30% improvement that I thought I had to post it.
