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Vempele wrote:
I could figure out what the sentence meant, but there were too many pieces for me to figure out why it meant what it meant).
I don't think that the why is terribly important at that stage. Especially if you could figure out the meaning anyway. Repeated exposure will bring a decent level of understanding.. even if you never learn how to explain the why.
I am awkwardly proud of my inability to explain many things about Japanese. 
ryuudou wrote:
undead_saif wrote:
The problem with Core6k or word lists is that you don't really "learn" words by memorizing them, since they are most likely taken out of context, even with an example sentence, and you won't feel that you know the word unless you see it in a context or "setting" very similar to how you memorized it.
This is why I'm sort of against vocab centric decks.
This is why I'm sort of against premade decks (of any kind). ヽ(´ー｀)ノ
My vocab-centric decks have worked wonders! I can read almost anything thrown at me (aside from highly specialized texts.. but that goes for English as well.)
I also only have 12000 words in Anki total. I do, however, like puzzles..? (Patterrrnnns) I'm also sure that there are several thousand more words just floating around in my brain because, after a while, the learning new words thing starts to take care of itself. Guessing the meaning of new words from context and "spelling" also gets easier and easier.
With regards to vocabulary building:
There's a talk/interview on Youtube between Stephen Krashen and Steve Kaufmann. In this video Kaufmann mentions that for some people they simply find it difficult to read when the unknown content is too high. For someone who is like this, getting a sensible amount of vocabulary from any source (decks, textbooks, etc) is needed in order to read enjoyable content.
This is why I would recommend getting a few thousand words of vocabulary before pushing into native media -- unless you enjoy the content in graded readers or are not discouraged by continual lookups. If you can jump into reading straight away, then by all means do so.
If you wanted to read a certain series, say Harry Potter, but cannot stand looking up every other word then creating your own deck for the top 1000 most common vocabulary for that series would be a good start.
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On a different note, my 10 minute readers have arrived from Japan (only ordered them on Friday!) I've had a quick flick through them and they are very impressive for only 700/800Y. At the same time I picked up Kino no Tabi 1. From a quick glance of the LN I'd say you would want to be very comfortable with the grade 6 reader before tackling it.
My plan is to reach my next vocab threshold and then go through the graded readers from 3 to 6 and then try Kino no Tabi. Why the threshold? Once I reach it I will be lowering my new card count, so that should free up some spare time for reading 
RawToast wrote:
With regards to vocabulary building:
There's a talk/interview on Youtube between Stephen Krashen and Steve Kaufmann. In this video Kaufmann mentions that for some people they simply find it difficult to read when the unknown content is too high. For someone who is like this, getting a sensible amount of vocabulary from any source (decks, textbooks, etc) is needed in order to read enjoyable content.
This is why I would recommend getting a few thousand words of vocabulary before pushing into native media -- unless you enjoy the content in graded readers or are not discouraged by continual lookups. If you can jump into reading straight away, then by all means do so.
If you wanted to read a certain series, say Harry Potter, but cannot stand looking up every other word then creating your own deck for the top 1000 most common vocabulary for that series would be a good start.
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On a different note, my 10 minute readers have arrived from Japan (only ordered them on Friday!) I've had a quick flick through them and they are very impressive for only 700/800Y. At the same time I picked up Kino no Tabi 1. From a quick glance of the LN I'd say you would want to be very comfortable with the grade 6 reader before tackling it.
My plan is to reach my next vocab threshold and then go through the graded readers from 3 to 6 and then try Kino no Tabi. Why the threshold? Once I reach it I will be lowering my new card count, so that should free up some spare time for reading
It's interesting that I had no major trouble reading without thorough comprehension when I was studying English and/or French but with Japanese it does bother me some, I don't know how to pinpoint exactly what is it that irks me, maybe it's about not being able to "hear" the words in my head even though I don't understand the meaning, or it could be that dictionary look-ups outside of the computer are somewhat inconvenient, but at my current level I just can't read Japanese for long without getting bored. Back to core6k with me... Yotsuba from time to time is fun, though.
I might be interested in those readers you're talking about, care to share a link or something? And please do come back with your opinion on them after you give them a good reading.
Each book has a number of stories 
For example, the 6th grade reader contains 12 stories, some are as short as 4 pages and others up to 20 pages.
You'll have to rotate this image, but this is a single page from the 6th grade reader. A couple of the stories use a slightly smaller font size than this:
http://406notacceptable.com/wp-content/ … C_0014.jpg
The book is around penguin classics size, just in case you want to zoom out the image for font comparison.
Am I right in thinking that these book's are a collection of good stories that happen to be easy enough? (As opposed to being written to be easy.) Because if so that sounds awesome.
Edit: Having read the image rawtoast posted and the 一年 amazon sample it's obvious that this is at least partly simplified learner material, but I guess if I'd thought about it I would have realised that's inevitable. As a collections of the best material written at their respective levels these readers still may be a cut above the standard graded readers. (I certainly enjoyed both samples I read)
Last edited by Splatted (2013 October 29, 4:56 pm)
kanttuvei wrote:
Grade 1 has basically only very easy kanji (like 先生、分,etc), the font is large and the rest is in hiragana. When you go up in grades from 1 to 4, the font gets gradually smaller so more and more text per page, and more and more kanji on a page. Can't say anything yet about the grammar level used.
A quick look on grade 4 book and at the moment it seems too difficult, so it will have to wait. I will start from the grade 1.
It should be per grade year at Japanese schools, so I imagine they'll only be ~100 unique Kanji in grade 1. I picked up the 'Animals Stories' book as well and that had no grade level, from a quick look at the book it seems easier than my grade 3 book. They are two other books like this one 'Scary Stories' and something else 
I guess they are all the same level.
I picked up a copy of Kaiketsu Zorori 1 instead of a lower level reader. Like the grade 1 books Zorori has very, very few kanji. The first book is the same as the first episode of the anime, so you can quickly read it and then try and watch the anime w/o subs.
