Hi everyone! I just wanted to hear some people's thoughts on this, since I've been going back and forth about it. I really appreciate any advice/ideas.

I've heard some people discuss this, and it seems like a lot of people think you should start watching movies and shows (without subtitles), reading native material, etc. pretty early, even as a beginner.

I get the idea of this, and it seems positive to be exposed to natural (and potentially interesting) material like this. But I don't totally get it. I've tried reading some native (but not particularly intimidating) books, and while it's at least initially exciting to be reading something real, it's so incredibly slow that I can't imagine it's a very good use of my study time.

I'm at an intermediate level, finished RtK1, and rarely have much trouble with the grammar I come across, but the vocabulary is what does it. I can understand the stuff I've tried with a dictionary, but I'm constantly looking up words. To the point where it hardly feels like reading. It just seems like such a slow way to study. It seems like it would be much more efficient to study a lot more concentrated vocabulary before trying to read/listen/watch native material (assuming that doesn't drive you crazy, and you have no problem studying vocab).

The thing I really don't get is why people seem to think even beginners should jump right into native material (not that everyone thinks this, but I've heard it mentioned here and there). My grammar is decent, kanji aren't a problem on their own, I have a few thousand words under my belt, and it's still unbearably slow. I imagine some people will say it should be like this at first, and this is the way to build up vocabulary, but it still doesn't seem like a very efficient/organized way to build it, since anything you're reading will tend to have a fairly random selection of words (although I guess that depends what kind of material you're talking about).

Thanks again for any opinions on this!

I'm not done with RtK yet but most users here will probably tell you to download Anki and get started with the Core2k/6k deck. It will increase your vocab.

Also, I usually put on some kind of media in Japanese in the background for immersion while I review.

A lot of people have varied opinion on this. I think native media is great right from the get-go - I studied Japanese that way (it paid off in a big way) and I'm studying Korean the same way and it's working like a charm. The idea is it's engaging and fun whilst providing you with passive opportunities to learn. For me it makes me feel like I'm working toward the end result of being able to enjoy the language the way the natives do; I find book study demotivating. In addition to focused study it provides a great balance of work and play. In contrast to reading, if you don't understand stuff in media (which at first most of the time you wont) you don't need to stop and look it up, just keep on going and try to catch what you do know. The best thing about this is the more your vocab increases you start to notice that you understand more. Awesome measure of progress.

Reading is a bit of a different story. You have to bear in mind that it is one of the LAST skills you pick up in your native language. So when you learned to read for the very first time you actually already knew most of the basic vocabulary and used that as a base to work from. It's just not going to work to dive straight into reading in a foreign language if it's anything too big.

You have to take a different approach for a second language because you're in a completely different situation. This is understandable. For me, what really worked was reading short articles to begin with. When I first started reading short articles (news) there would be 20 - 30 words I didn't know for EVERY article, which meant I could get through about one a day. The key element is being able to read it from start to finish. I can't stress how important this is in the beginning. Using stuff that is possible to read from start to finish helps with comprehension (did you get the message it was trying to convey?), as well as vocab building, and also a sense of achievement. I found it very motivating when my vocabulary had grown to the point where naturally I could read two articles a day. Then three, and so on. The positive reinforcement was great.

In terms of things like novels, it takes a massive amount of vocab before you're even ready to tackle a beast like that. Books are hard. And I mean hard. Personally I think Japanese is the easiest language to STUDY but the hardest to MASTER. Purely because vocab will always trip you up if you take on big books. For a Japanese person, again, they already the vocab for their ENTIRE language in their head to help them guess the correct reading of a new/obscure word that they might find, whereas from our standpoint we have nothing to go on. So, if you want to learn to read like a pro then you have to be prepared to just keep on pushing through until you reach the end. The more books you do that with, the easier they become. It's hard work but Japanese is a stunning language (as we all know) and written Japanese is one of my favourite things in the world. So it's well worth the effort... even if it does drive you mental on a regular basis.

Yes, it's incredibly slow at first, but if you're understanding it, you'll get faster and better.

In fact, if you don't practice, you'll never get faster at it.

When I read my first manga, it took me like 30 minutes per page. By the end of my third one (they were really easy) I was reading a page in less than a minute.

When I read my first book, a page would take me an hour. It was extremely painful, considering that I read English pages extremely fast. By the end of that first book, I was down to a few minutes per page. This is still much slower than English, but a much more acceptable rate.

During those times, I didn't learn much new vocab. I didn't do any other practicing. I just read.

So if your vocab is good enough that you can read without looking up more than a few words per page, it is absolutely time to start reading.

BTW, despite my success there, I haven't been practicing listening/watching TV. Guess what I'm still horribly bad at? Yup, Listening/watching TV.

My use of native media can be divided into two stages, before and JLPT N2.

Before N2:
Listened to music, watched drama/films with English subtitles. I tried reading books alongside the English translation but I got bored because I was more interested in the story than practising reading Japanese.

After N2:
Listen to music, listen to podcasts in the background whilst I'm working, watch drama/films with Japanese subtitles, play games in Japanese. I only just started seriously trying to read books a couple of months ago. I used to try it on and off but I couldn't really be bothered to read until I knew enough vocab to get through a few pages and feel like I had a proper grasp of what was happening.

So my use of native media went along with how much I knew at the time. For me watching stuff without subtitles was boring. If there's a plot I'd prefer to know what it is, otherwise I lose interest and it's more of a chore to watch/read.

Thanks for the thoughts everyone, all very helpful and interesting. Really appreciate it.

So a couple of you (crawford, mezbup) seemed to do the kind of slow reading I tried and found it helpful.

Did you save vocabulary as you went? Or just looked up unknown words and moved on in the article/book?

I guess the process of practicing reading would make it faster over time, but I really feel like just not knowing words is what's making it slow. The sentence structures aren't hard for me to grasp most of the time, I'm just looking up so much (way more than a few words a page, pretty constant looking up).

It's just a little hard to imagine getting faster without specifically memorizing some significant chunks of vocab.

Sorry if this sounds whiny. Just trying to figure out what my priorities should be now, and how to be efficient.

wccrawford Wrote:Yes, it's incredibly slow at first, but if you're understanding it, you'll get faster and better.
In fact, if you don't practice, you'll never get faster at it.

I can confirm this. I started reading more and more Japanese recently, since the amount of vocabulary "allows" me to understand most of it and I need a good balance.
I can also confirm and advice leaving out words and contructions you do not know (f.e. sometimes long subordinate clauses that could screw you up); otherwise you will not understand anything of the sentence and just get hanged up in a way, which is depressing to happen every sentence you may encounter. I can also recommend reading slow and aloud (!) and listening to one's pronounciation carefully. First, this will probably give you more of a feeling of how the languages sounds when being produced by your own voice and on top of that it feels like a different type of word-by-word plus grammar processing in my brain if I hear myself reading it aloud. My reading-aloud turned into mumbling now already..

Quote:Did you save vocabulary as you went? Or just looked up unknown words and moved on in the article/book?

My handheld electronic dictionary has a button that adds the word you're looking up to a vocabulary list that I can review later and decide if I want to add into Anki. I don't know how common a feature that is in such devices, but check for it in yours.

I'd say right from the beggining, at least with drama, podcasts, radio, just so that you get used to japanese. After you get to N3 level you should start reading newspapers, books, random articles.

thenewpollution Wrote:It's just a little hard to imagine getting faster without specifically memorizing some significant chunks of vocab.

That's basically it.

mezbup Wrote:

thenewpollution Wrote:It's just a little hard to imagine getting faster without specifically memorizing some significant chunks of vocab.

That's basically it.

Which is why I'm thinking of trying to finally do Core 6000 and then doing more reading after that.

Yeah, my dictionary does have a way to add words and do SRS with them, so I might make a vocab list for any new book I'm reading, and then just add them as I come across them. It's still a slow way to read, but maybe I can keep moving, knowing I can go back and review the words later.

Thanks for the ideas everyone!

You pretty much have to get used to immersing,listening and using the srs daily. I dived into native-material from day one as I didn't like the textbook style learning I did in the past. Textbooks are a valuable resource but in order to reach native-level, there is only way: get used to native-material that natives themselves use,read,write,speak,listen and live with.