Fillanzea Wrote:First, the ability to read kanji is not the same as the ability to read Japanese. I think that one of the best ways to improve general reading ability is to read a lot of stuff quickly, and I've done that with books with furigana and with books without furigana. The only difference is that when I learn words by exposure, if they have furigana I learn the correct pronunciation, and if they don't have furigana I learn the pronunciation as "mumblety-mumble."
The other thing is that by seeing the kanji with furigana a dozen times, then by the time I see it without furigana I already know how to pronounce it -- without studying, without anything but exposure.
When I was in Japanese 3 in college, and we read short stories out loud, I was the person in my class who could read without stopping to think about every word. Up until that point I'd read... mostly, a million shoujo manga with furigana on them. Worked for me.
quark Wrote:I see this idea touted a lot, that learning to read with furigana means that you won't learn kanji. The furigana actually helps me a lot - I've learned new kanji compounds effortlessly this way, or at the very least, they've imprinted in my brain a bit, so that when I do come across them in Anki later, they are much easier to remember.
Also, since I didn't finish RTK, I lack your guys ability to take a stab at kanji compounds. Even with RtK, if you're a beginner reading a book, you may have an idea what the compounds mean, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you know how they're pronounced.
Just like Fillanzea says, when I come across kanji without knowing how to pronounce it, they just come across as noise, or I mentally say 'skip'. With furigana, even if I don't know what the word means, at least it gives me something to sound out. It makes looking things up in the dictionary much easier.
It all boils down to 'To each, their own'. Some people find that furigana doesn't help, or even hinders their progress. But I'm going to come forward as someone that, at this point in my studies, loves furigana, and thinks that they are a huge help in my goal towards fluency.
I’ve been thinking about this lately, and even asked one of my teachers, so I thought I’d share. First, let me present 2 of the infinite number of theoretical paths to reading novels fluently. They are sort of 2 ends of the spectrum, and I doubt if anybody follows them exactly, but here they are.
They both assume RTK1 and the kana are mastered first. Next, they both assume you work your way through a text, gaining some comfort in reading very basic Japanese.
1) Min Furigana. Every day make sure you get at least 10 min of “easy” reading. In the beginning this can be hiragana readers, readers with furigana, manga, excerpts from a text, etc. In addition, do an hour of intensive reading. Use a novel that has only normal amounts of furigana, and try hard to read as much as possible without help. Look up every word you don’t know, and put it in an SRS.
2) Max Furigana. Every day do 1hr 10 min reading with furigana over all kanji. After 6 months, switch to novels that have only normal amounts of furigana. Never look up words.
After 6 months, who do you think will be better at reading novels without furigana? What about after 1 year?
I’m not saying that furigana is bad, I’m just saying there is a time and place for it in each individual’s language plan. And even after saying that, if you want to do things the “easy” way, for whatever reason, even if it’s less efficient, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I want to state my opinion that for the average learner, heavily relying on furigana to learn yomi is a slow way to learn. It will take a hell of a lot of furigana reading to get things to stick, if it ever sticks at all. These “links” between the furigana and the kanji are very weak. Readers are likely to barely glance at the kanji, or not try hard to remember them. It is that extra effort in intensive reading that finally lets me own the word in question. That extra few seconds is crucial.
But that’s just me. That’s the way my memory works. For example, I am probably at least 10 times more likely to remember a word if I put it in a flashcard than if I just rely on context. I know some people never use any kind of isolated word study, and are still able to learn languages. But I think it is a rare few who won’t learn faster with word lists, flashcards, etc. Maybe you are one of those though.
I mentioned talking to my teacher about it. She told me that the students usually start out with kana or furigana over just about everything. The texts are graduated, and start to lose furigana. In addition, they are learning kanji every day, and are required to use the ones they learn in exercises, etc. So they are weaned off furigana. She says this process takes about 1 year for the Korean and Chinese students. The Indian, Philippine and western students usually struggle with kanji even after 2 years. (I would guess an RTK1 finisher would be more like the Koreans and Chinese).
She said furigana is great for just starting out, and gives students the ability to read lots of stuff which would otherwise be unavailable to them. She loves manga, and told me about the different kinds, her favorites, etc. She said in order to read novels without furigana, one needs to wean themselves off of furigana. If one wants to read novels, they should always be decreasing the amount of furigana they are using. I asked her specifically if she thought reading lots of material with full furigana would accomplish the same, and she “no”.
I told her about intensive reading, and she said they do something like that for teaching newspaper reading. She said the approach works well, because even though newspapers are kanji dense, they are very repetitive with straight-forward grammar. She mentioned there are really only a few hundred kanji required to learn newspapers, which doesn’t seem correct; maybe she was talking about a specific exercise. She said that the student will increase his reading everyday, and that he learns to read a newspaper quite quickly. I have 9 days left to study Japanese here. I think I’ll ask her tomorrow if this is enough time to learn to read one, if I read like mad. Sorry for rambling. Anyway, I told her that I thought a novel was a good candidate, because it’s a long story where the author will repeat her favorite vocabulary often. So there’s lots of reinforcement. I told her that I did this with a short story book once (the old Read Real Japanese) but it was quite hard, due to author changes. She was quite interested in the whole conversation. She is a superb teacher, very fluent in English and Spanish. She has even done English and Spanish language exchanges with me after class. Very impressive. Unrelated, but I thought you’d find it interesting.
I’m sure she has nothing against reading text with furigana as an extracurricular activity. But she was absolutely clear that the student needs to be working towards eliminating the need for it. And she is definitely of the opinion that reading a bunch of furigana in and of itself is not going to give one the ability read normal novels.
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