hi there.
I was wondering if any of you can skim through text easily(not sure if skimming is the right word, I mean when you take a quick look at written japanese and you get a gist of the contents). Some friends of mine who have been studying academically japanese for some years told me that it's still pretty difficult. Based on other experiences I feel like it's one of the most difficult thing to learn in a new language. Do you agree? What's your take on japanese?

Thank you
cactus

I would imagine gaining the ability to skim takes quite a bit of time. Usually when you skim you aren't consciously processing what you are reading but instead are letting your brain quickly do the work. Its kind of hard to explain, but there's a marked difference between reading each individual word and simply looking over. To be quite honest though, I think skimming a text in Japanese might be easier than it is in say English, once you reach a certain level. Because most text uses a lot of kanji, the unique ideographic nature of kanji allows you to really just take in the each kanji and use those as anchor points for skimming. Since kanji are usually concrete things (Nouns/Adjectives/Adverbs/etc) and not the grammatical glue, you could probably skim faster in Japanese than in English.

This is all a lot of speculation though . I couldn't skim yet.

I've been studying on my own for years, and reading manga for a couple years. I'm just starting to be able to skim, but I have to have a certain word in mind that I'm skimming for.

As you get better at the language and practice reading it more, it gets easier and easier to skim.

This really just depends on the text I guess. Subjects I am familiar with? Yeah, kinda. Economics? Chemistry? Probably not.

But yeah, kanji help a lot.

Yeah, to quickly summarize stuff I've read (all of the articles posted in my HBPK thread I believe), for both vertical/horizontal writing, kanji-kana processed in a kind of figure-ground sweep (visual-semantic information, cross-script priming, wider parafoveal field of vision than phonetic scripts) makes it well-suited for skimming and from what I read, for a while I thought it was something that required strong Japanese knowledge to develop well, and in a way of course I still believe this, but I also think it's a skill you can develop somewhat separately.

This relates to my usual emphasis on increasing working memory capacity by focusing on mental strategies of chunking/retrieval structures, which was previously applied to listening and avoiding interference whilst subvocalizing and parsing, but I think it's applicable to text as well. Especially with self-study, with what one book called 'integrative' motivation that allows for a more flexible definition of comprehension amidst the multiliteracy process of going from decoding and top-down skimming processes onward to full understanding. Likewise, one of the same major researchers who has done research on fixations, saccades, kanji-skimming, etc., Naoyuki Osaka, mentioned a relationship of working memory and field of vision here: http://ajp.press.illinois.edu/115/4/osaka.html

My opinion most recently changed because whilst collecting and searching files with raw titles, I realized my ability to quickly skim the names of authors I didn't actually know how to read was increasing even as the # of files was increasing. I then dabbled with Japanese シークワーズ/wordsearch and linked to some stuff to make your own Japanese wordsearch. I think this could develop the pattern recognition skill well.

Sorry it's all rambling and condensed above, I'll try to clarify it and add links later.

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...0#pid82520 (Just adding that because it has some references not entirely contained within HBPK thread)

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=2405 - links to japanese word search/crossword puzzles and site to make your own

vix86 Wrote:To be quite honest though, I think skimming a text in Japanese might be easier than it is in say English, once you reach a certain level. Because most text uses a lot of kanji, the unique ideographic nature of kanji allows you to really just take in the each kanji and use those as anchor points for skimming. Since kanji are usually concrete things (Nouns/Adjectives/Adverbs/etc) and not the grammatical glue, you could probably skim faster in Japanese than in English.

Speaking as someone who can skim to a certain degree (at least if it's something in my field), the kanji isn't as much of an extra help as you might think. The supposed "ideographic" nature of the kanji is not reliable enough when you're talking about actual text because the meaning of a word in Japanese is rarely as simple as kanji meaning A + kanji meaning B = AB. I doubt that readers skilled enough in Japanese to read quickly or to skim are still processing kanji sequences in terms of the meanings of the individual kanji anyway.

Reading in chunks happens in any language, and in Japanese I do not believe that the chunks are strictly kanji. The kanji provide a visual point where to start (in most cases), but I imagine that most skilled readers of Japanese will process a kanji sequence plus its auxiliary kana as a chunk (that is, 勉強する rather than just 勉強, or 学生が rather than just 学生). Any sort of skimming ability that did not take into account any of the grammatical particles or whether the verbs were positive or negative, past or present, would not be all that useful anyway.

Format matters a lot to me. If something is spaced decently enough, I'll be able to skim it. But if it's too dense a block of text, I'll just avert my eyes from it.

that's what I need, skimming through blocks. Skimming well formatted texts is easy

cactus

If by 'block'/dense you mean more kanji, less kana, I actually think that'd be more difficult (regardless of formatting) to use fast-reading skills for, because you have less of those complementary figure-ground (kanji as figure, kana as ground) relations to triangulate and parse with, and less likelihood of common collocations/compounds/phonetic relations for semantic priming.

I don't mean more kanji and less kana. I meant like paragraph-wise. Strings of sentences all together.

Smackle Wrote:I don't mean more kanji and less kana. I meant like paragraph-wise. Strings of sentences all together.

I think those are known as paragraphs. Common in texts. ;p

Well, I wonder how skimming in Chinese is, where you have neither kana nor spaces. My Chinese is nowhere near good enough to skim, but I imagine they have some way to do it.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Speaking as someone who can skim to a certain degree (at least if it's something in my field), the kanji isn't as much of an extra help as you might think. The supposed "ideographic" nature of the kanji is not reliable enough when you're talking about actual text because the meaning of a word in Japanese is rarely as simple as kanji meaning A + kanji meaning B = AB. I doubt that readers skilled enough in Japanese to read quickly or to skim are still processing kanji sequences in terms of the meanings of the individual kanji anyway.

Reading in chunks happens in any language, and in Japanese I do not believe that the chunks are strictly kanji. The kanji provide a visual point where to start (in most cases), but I imagine that most skilled readers of Japanese will process a kanji sequence plus its auxiliary kana as a chunk (that is, 勉強する rather than just 勉強, or 学生が rather than just 学生). Any sort of skimming ability that did not take into account any of the grammatical particles or whether the verbs were positive or negative, past or present, would not be all that useful anyway.

You have the right of it. I wasn't suggesting that kanji be read singely but as compounds and in the chunking manner you are talking about. Simple particles I think would be fine, but I still think 'wordier' non-kanji stuff would be ignored.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Well, I wonder how skimming in Chinese is, where you have neither kana nor spaces. My Chinese is nowhere near good enough to skim, but I imagine they have some way to do it.

I haven't researched skimming in Chinese, but I imagine that they learn to read and compose sentences without the use of okurigana and suchlike, and thus wouldn't make use of kana so much as they would meaning, context/collocation, and varying levels of subvocalization. Kanji-wise, the same neurological and ocular rules apply, but the reading strategies would differ (and I would think the writing strategies as well). Much of the aforementioned research on dual-route, naming, semantic priming, etc. were based on Chinese in the HBPK thread.

Actually, keep in mind that radical priming also plays a role in Japanese (in addition to cross-script priming), and obviously it would be much stronger and more consistent in Chinese.

Well there is speed reading. I thaught it to myself about 9 months ago( its easy to find information on how to learn it, just search google or YT), it has been very useful. It s more than just skimming, I read in english and my mother-tongue 2-3 times faster, than I did a year ago. It has been very useful.

The thing is, to use speed reading you have to have a good grasp of the language and know the context well. The more you have of those,the more your reading speed increases.

So I would imagine speed reading japanese would be faster than english but first you would have to know it well.

I would imagine that it would work for the words you know though. I would first learn speed reading in english and then would use the method to read japanese.

@jettke - Most of what I've read of speed-reading is pseudoscientific bunk, and the rest just seemed to be 'best practices' of skimming strategies, etc. I've always got my rubbish filter on when I see that phrase, 'speed-reading'. Which do you mean?

Most recently I read Ferriss' stuff on fixations and reducing backlooping and the like, which just seemed to emphasize too much on 'training' stuff that actually has biological limitations (his stuff on eye movements, much of it comes naturally [see above links on Osaka's work with working memory/field of vision], the rest really can't be 'trained' because it's dependent on orthography/design of the eye), so it seems like a mix of pseudoscience and reading suggestions that sacrifice understanding for speed.

I think the 'benefit' most people experience from these is simply a renewed motivation from relying on gimmicks and external authority/validation as well as actual results that stem less from particulars and more from an extra focus on reading.

Anyway, not trying to seem too negative, but I've a bit of yudantaiteki and Ben Bullock in me when it comes to stuff like 'speed-reading', in the sense that old arguments immediately want to be applied to every new mention of them, regardless of what the new mention is actually saying. ;p

To throw something in about subvocalization: While phonological mediation and even activation has been shown in brain scans to not be required (although it's hard to avoid with phonetic scripts) so much as acting in parallel or easily triggered, I really don't think eliminating it is the panacea it's often made out to be, nor do I believe it is easy to 'train' so much as something that is minimized (reducing its occurrence in the phonological loop, its relative self-referentiality and thus also its potential for interference but also articulatory rehearsal) and/or comes naturally once you know the words well.

Hmm, ramblings reaching another saturation point. Back to studying for me.

@ ruiner

Well...for me speed reading is reading at the fastest pace at which i am able to understand the text. From my point of view and experience, there really isnt much about speed-reading besides the easy technique itself, i think kind of everythi.

So I think maybe because eveyone who´s trying to sell you something is adding kind of their own learning strategies, which make the product look full of information, so that the people who bought the learning guide can feel satisfied.

I dont know what the heck they´re talking about sub-vocalization. i´ve noticed that I think in my everyday life subvocalizing most of the time. I notice it especcially well after I´ve smoked weed.
Its quite impossible to eliminate sub-vocalizing imo, so it leaves the buyer with "much stuff to do" I think. In my opinion you should be heading in the direction of trying to understand text faster. Eliminating sub-vocalizing wont make you understand text better, knowing the context more and trying to understand better and faster will.

Overall speed-reading is very easy to learn, but you have to use speed-reading since then to keep it alive. If you are a daily reader I dont think you will have any problems doing that if you try everytime you read. As I said it´s about reading smart...

...at the pace in which you are able to understand.

HOW IT´S USEFUL FOR ME:

It has become very useful to me recently, as I study more kanji and am lazy at school, dealing a lot less with schoolwork.

Most of the time I´m in school I am lazy as I said, and dont pay attention half of the time (sometimes I use my ipod for japanese immersion).

So what I do is I study kanji, skip doing homework and skip studying for certain tests.
Then I go to school the next day, having nearly no knowledge of the test material.
So I open the students book and read it through during the first lessons, and usually I end up scoring 50-70 percent on the test. Today I scored about 70% on biology test, I really knew nearly nothing before coming to school today and could read that much in about 1 hour and (a lil bit more of remembering the parts of the text I could remember worse).

Speed reading works for me for:

Geography
Biology
History and so on. Also for fiction and not technical material.
But I have to say that Todays biology test was easier than other tests, so that maybe why I scored this much for spending so little time.

Goosh, sry for such a long post, I could write for hours on this subject.
If anyone has any questions, then I can anwser

(Btw, heres an okay video to use for learning speed reading)