How long to spend trying to understand a sentence within an article?

randyrandy Member

From: World Registered: 2010-07-15 Posts: 10

Currently I am reading NHK News Easy and NHK News Web. I generally find a few sentences or parts of a sentence in an article (in NHK News Web) where I don't quite understand the meaning. I will then try to find a an English version of the article to see what the sentence means. I sometimes spend 5-10 minutes trying to find the specific line in an English version.

My question is, is it worth it to spend that time trying to find the exact meaning of the sentence, or should I just skip it and keep reading the next article in Japanese?

I still understand most of the article, but I prefer to understand 100% of it.

Thanks!

Hashiriya Member

From: Georgia Registered: 2008-04-14 Posts: 1072

Go here: http://gloss.dliflc.edu/Default.aspx click on Japanese-> click on a article-> click source-> click view translation.

Maybe after going through some of those you will get a better idea of reading Japanese News articles.

SomeCallMeChris Member

From: Massachusetts USA Registered: 2011-08-01 Posts: 787

Ummm.... 'sometimes'.

I think it's best to do both in-depth reading where you look up every word, check translations, identify new grammar constructs and totally understand every nuance.

It's also important to do broad reading where you don't look anything up unless absolutely necessary.

I generally try to separate the two completely and decide which I'm doing before I start reading a given work.

If you want NHK to be your in-depth reading then that's fine, but have something else (or several things) that you go through faster for your in-breadth reading.

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