Jtnix learning log

Japanese
61

Vaguely.
I think there’s a minimum speed at which I feel like I’m reading versus feeling like I’m looking at symbols on a page. Early on you don’t really have a choice, but at my level there’s plenty for me to read at a reasonable speed. Since I wouldn’t pick anything to read that was that hard for me to get through, it’s not really a problem for me.

More than reading speed I actually am concerned with reading stamina. Like a lot of other people mentioned, I think reading speed kinda takes care of itself the more you do it. But in order to read enough for that to happen you have to read a lot. And to read a lot you need to be able to read for at least half an hour or so at a time. I try to notice if there’s a particular type of reading that feels hard for me to read for a considerable amount of time and (if I care about reading that type of thing) work on it to get better at reading it.

Also, I’ve recently found that I prefer reading physical books over digital (as long as my number of lookups is low), and I’m almost always too lazy to time a reading session. :joy:

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I want to be able to read quicker but still understand what I’m reading same as in English so my speed is possibly lower than most. So although I do try to track reading speed based on each book and pages per hour or per 30 minutes, if reading at work, I tend not to put too much focus on it. My speed does increase as I read the same style of books but changes each time I change authors or book difficulty.

I do re-read books I’ve read in Japanese but only after at least a few months. Some of the books I’ve re-read several times across the last few years, picking up more words and picking up meaning easier each time so I no longer have to translate unless it’s a word or phrase I don’t know.

Near the beginning of my Japanese Journey, I was following Olly Richards on YouTube and started his reading technique using his books. You read a chapter all the way through without checking anything. Second read through note down and try to guess the words you don’t know. Then third read through you look up every word you don’t know and try to work out sentence meanings as you read back through then move onto the next chapter even if you don’t fully understand everything. He also suggests listening to the audiobook as well.

His approach didn’t work for me, I found my approach worked better for me (not saying it’s efficient but it stopped me burning out with Japanese especially when I was burning out from every day stuff already).

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Stamina seems really important too. Similar to speed, I have had thoughts recently about whether or not it can be trained over time. I wonder if it’s an attention span thing…

As for reading a lot and building stamina, I have had some 2 hour sessions lately and sometimes I get distracted or think I should be doing something else. But when I think about it, other people are watching tv or scrolling social media for that amount of time, so why would it be different for reading.

I notice this too. I usually think of it as same-genre boost or same-author boost, like it’s a video game power up or something.

I have yet to re-read an entire book or volume of anything, I don’t know if I have the patience yet. I think that method would be good for vocab.

What I like about the Repeated Reading drills I am doing is that it I only re-reading short passages, like an individual page or scene and the method of reading is very different due to the timer.

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64

I don’t think about reading speed at all (at least not when reading), I go by feel mostly, how interesting the passage use, how tired I feel that day…

Today I found that counted in pages my speed for novels is 10x slower than manga :face_with_spiral_eyes: which is natural I guess since well the amount of text differs.

I’m not really planning to reread anything for learning purposes but I did reread a few doujinshis because I liked them (and they’re short) and feel like after the third reread or so I understand everything perfectly :grin:

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New update.

I read a lot last week. Finished また、同じ夢を見ていた and almost done with くまクマ熊ベアー 3. I think I am getting to a point with my reading where it is becoming a lot more automatic and I want to keep that momentum going this month. However, the gap between my reading and listening has gotten really wide and I feel the need to start fixing it.

I want to try setting some tangible goals this month to look back on.

September goals:
Reading: 400,000 chars (about 3-5 light novels)
Listening: 23 hours (about 60 eps of anime)
Clubs: Participate in Yuri book club and Clamp book club

Listening:
I am intimidated by listening. I have gotten myself out of the rut of being a beginner reader, but doing listening practice is like having to start all over again from square one. When I listen without subs, it feels like going back to the dark days of struggling to read よつばと.

I am conflicted on whether I should be using subs. When I use subs, I feel like I get 80-90% comprehension, but when I turn them off I’m probably below 50%. I worry that I am relying too much on reading ability and kanji knowledge and that I can’t actually parse the sounds.

Some brainstorm ideas I might test out this month:

  • watch two shows (one with sub, one without subs) to practice both ways
  • toggle subtitles off during slice of life moments and back on during the lore dumps/crazy voice acting
  • watch scenes multiple times (boring but might work)
  • read the subtitle file ahead of time (time consuming but might work)
hidden section for the people who like data analysis

I have been playing around with subtitles files to get a feel for how much language content is in an episode or season of the shows I am watching and how that compares to reading.

For example, I am watching season 2 of ゆるゆり which apparently has ~55,000 characters in the transcript. That’s about half of a novel worth of written language per 1 season. Divide that by 12 episodes and 23 mins, you get 200 chars/min. I have been trying to increase reading speed and I am just scratching the surface of 150 char/min on basic light novels.

I was kind of shocked by this because I was always under the impression that reading is the faster medium.

To be fair, google says native readers can read like 400-600 chars per min (which if you assume maps to ~2 chars/word, you get 200-300 wpm which is comparable to English). So reading would be faster if you’re not a language learner.

Based on this, I would be getting more language exposure per minute by listening than reading. The problem is I can’t comprehend it because it is so fast. Either way I need to train my ears.

At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter, you can listen to books at a fixed pace and you can read tv show scripts at a variable pace if you really wanted to.

If anyone has any tips for how to get good at listening when you are already decent at reading, let me know!

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Sorry, no tips from me. I started listening before I was any good in reading, so subs never were an option.

Btw: there are players that can reduce the speed, but you will probably have to have the episodes as files for that, or use YouTube to watch other things than anime. There are some channels with “Easy Japanese“. That may be a good way to get one’s foot in the door.

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I find it so fascinating that so many people started with listening instead of reading. Like how do you parse where one word stops and another one starts if you can’t see it written?

Thanks for the suggestions. I don’t want to reduce speed because that might feel unnatural and become a crutch. I should consider YouTube content. I think I have avoided it so far because the generic comprehensible input videos seem boring compared to anime.

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I have a Chrome extension called Video Speed Controller that lets me control the speed on any page with streaming video. I can’t live without it (mostly for English because I watch anything that’s not entertainment on at least 1.5x).

When I’m reading along to difficult (for me) audiobooks I bump the speed from 100% to 95%. I can’t hear the difference quality-wise, but it lets my brain take just that tiny bit longer to sort out the meanings than happens at full speed.
I think for something at a level where you’d be able to read the written text but are struggling to match sounds to symbols, putting the speed down as low as to 85% could help a lot.

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Hmm… Maybe I should try an audiobook this month. It’s tough because I’d totally rather read a book than listen (even in English), so an audiobook feels like more work. But it sounds like doing an audiobook at like 80-95% speed might be a great idea for getting my listening speed up.

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70

My recommendation would be to ignore your reading ability and watch a ton of easier material without subtitles. Focus on things that you should be able to understand (As in, the grammar/vocab is within your knowledge, you just struggle to parse out the actual sounds of the language.)
Try to use subtitles as little as is reasonable in order to force your ear to improve.

When I first started to watch Japanese shows I was completely lost at even super simple shows that should have been far below my comprehension level.
It takes time for your ear to develop. After maybe 50 episodes I started being able to actually understand simpler shows. After 400-600 episodes my listening ability was finally catching up to my comprehension level.

Watching with subtitles will make it easier to understand in the short-term, but if you use it as a crutch then it will harm your long term development. It’s probably better to use subtitles only after you get lost in order to figure out what you missed. Then turn them off again.
My use of subtitles tends to be: Can’t understand something → Rewind and listen again to see if I can catch was was said → Rewind and listen with subtitles to understand if I’m still lost → Rewind and listen again without subtitles to reinforce the sounds with the meaning.
I do this with English subtitles, but you can do it with Japanese subtitles too.

Also, it’s okay if you miss a few words here and there. As your ear improves you will be able to pick up more. Worry about understanding the larger picture first. After your listening ability improves then it makes more sense to worry about the single words that are being missed. Until then, it’s a quantity game.

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71

Thanks for the feedback.

I guess this does pose the question of “am I watching shows too hard for me?”, which is kind of the point of this website in the first place. So far I have been watching low level 20’s shows like: のんのんびより, けいおん!, カノン, ゆるゆり, ふたりはプリキュア, etc. I can understand them well with JP subs, but get lost easy without.

My September listening challenge goal is starting to not feel very ambitious lol. I was trying to be balanced but it seems like quantity over quality is better. Maybe I’ll increase it.

I’ll give this a try. I’m starting to feel motivated to try no subs as default setting. That will at least give me the chance to improve with no subs. Then I can fall back on subs after.

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I’m nowhere near that stage where I would say that my listening is great, but I do split up my shows by shows that I watch with subs and those without. Usually by interest, because I’m too lazy to look things up or switch subs on and off, so no sub shows are usually either easy, rewatch, or ones that I have only mild interest and fine with not getting everything.

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Mid-month learning update:

September Goals:
Reading - 259,500/400,000 chars (64.88%)
Listening - 27/30 hours (90%)

I upped the listening goal to 30 hours (no subs allowed) after the comments on my last post, but now it is still too low.

Reading:
I have been reading 泣きたい私は猫をかぶる, くまクマ熊ベアー 4, and 嘘が見える僕は、素直な君に恋をした. My reading abilities have felt very stable. Once I get used to a novel at this level I have no trouble reading in the 125 chars/min range.

What has been working really well for me is reading two light novels concurrently, one long series and one rotating single volume book. I think the long series is helping get repetition while the individual books give exposure to new vocab.

I am tempted to read something too hard for me so that I can start to demystify the orange and green difficulty books.

Listening:
I have finally got into a routine of listening almost every day. I’m still at a point where sometimes I understand everything and other times I understand nothing. I am hopeful that I can get out of the beginner ear-training phase.

I watched ちょびっツ S1 which was a confidence boost for me because I could understand so much. I’m starting to feel like Natively levels for anime aren’t super useful to me and I should watch things based on plot.

I also listened to the また、同じ夢を見ていた audiobook which was good. I was able to understand it well at full speed, but that’s probably because I already read the book.

Oh yeah I also completely gave up on Bunpro/Anki to fit in all this listening time. So I’m fully on the comprehensible input train now. No regrets so far.

Additional Thoughts:
I still want to increase my reading speed at least to the point where reading speed is equal to listening speed. My recent speed increases have come from repeated reading drills and sometimes delaying lookups to the end of a page.

I am curious if I can replicate my repeated reading drills with audiobooks. Maybe listening to the same passage at 0.8x speed, then 1.0x speed, then 1.2x speed?

Listening to audiobooks has opened my eyes to the importance of rhythm. A lot of my subvocalized reading is at a flat pace because I am parsing words on the fly, but the audiobook narrator is taking pauses in between lines and certain phrases while still going way faster than me.

Maybe I should try shadowing audiobooks? I don’t have any interest in speaking but if it helps me read at a more fluid rhythm then it might be worth a shot.

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I can only speak for myself but I have noticed increases in my reading speed just from listening over time since internalizing the rhythm of language really helps! I have only l begun shadowing very recently, but I have already also noticed small benefits with regard to speed as well. So, I think it’s worth a shot for sure!

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I have seen your posts about it in the listening thread and that made me want to look into it further! Although the way it’s discussed in that thread feels so complex that I usually feel like I have nothing to add to the conversation. Plus I want to use it for reading improvement which feels off-topic in that thread lol.

I don’t know anything about pitch accent or mouth positions so I would probably just be doing it based on feel.

Do you do the repetition based shadowing or the follow along as it goes by shadowing? How long of a passage do you aim for?

I feel like it might be really helpful for me to practice rhythm and prosody(is that the right word?), but similar to my other reading drills I need to balance time spent with actually reading. So I can probably only do short sessions.

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Oh no, you should definitely join in anyways! It’s interesting reading everyone’s updates and you would certainly add to the conversation with whatever unique thing you end up doing or noticing while shadowing! I don’t think reading improvement is off-topic at all since that’s I think everyone does want to improve reading speed and all the little extra bonuses that come from doing listening are good to know and talk about since they’re helpful info.

This is basically what I do :joy: I just know the basic pitch patterns (there are only a few + small rules of what happens to a particular after, like if it stays high or goes low) and try to listen for those. For the mouth positions I just google them here or there when I think my position sounds wrong. This youtube channel has a playlist that explains all of the Japanese ones in Japanese which is also useful to refer to!

I am really lazy so I don’t do the repetition based one as that would require me to find some sound files and figure out how to edit them so they loop forever…if it is something I can’t easily do with my phone, I don’t it won’t be sustainable for me. :joy: So, I just follow along to whatever I’d normal listen to and try to repeat after the speaker a split second after. It’s pretty challenging because you need to listen for what comes next while repeating, so it’s a super good work out for your Japanese brain muscles!

I don’t pick a passage length since, well, my listening is already kind of advanced so my endurance is higher. :sweat_smile: I did shadowing for a while in Korean, which I am lower level in, and I would shadow things that were just a few paragraphs and would repeat the same thing over and over because there were lots of new vocab words and it helped me internalize them. I honestly think you can just shadow whatever feels doable and sustainable for you and there is no right or wrong way though!!

I am looking forward to your updates~! :saluting_face:

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Thanks for the resource. I’ll refer back to it once I start noticing which sounds need the special attention. Which will probably be related to the ラ行 based on my experiences so far.

I can’t relate lol, I use my computer for almost everything language related! I could probably tolerate hitting the go back 10 secs button over and over again if I were to choose that method.

The method you described with Korean is what I will likely try to do. I probably don’t have the listening skills to do simultaneous shadowing at full speed just yet.

I can try to repeat after random lines while I watch anime too. That might be a more passive way to get started.

Speaking while listening for the next line sounds hard! I could probably only do that if it was a repeat listen or if I had the transcript in front of me. Now that I think of it, I might try it with a transcript since my goal is to improve my reading vocalizations.

I’ll come up with some experiments to test out and talk about it in a future update.

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I have found just listening to an audiobook along with the book helps my reading speed too, so you could try that if you don’t want to actually shadow and see what results you get too!

Looking forward to it!

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Learning update.

I lost a lot of momentum in the second half of September due to some unexpected real-life stress. I was able to meet my listening goal for the month but unfortunately failed the reading goal.

September Goal
Reading - 337,484/400,000 chars (84%) (~1050 LN pages)
Listening - 38.5/30 hours (128%)

This was my first time trying to set goals like this and I probably set myself up for failure by increasing both my reading and listening. That being said, I am still happy with my language progress.

Thoughts on meeting future goals
I need to stop being stubborn and start dropping books that are boring. I took a random chance on 嘘が見える僕は、素直な君に恋をした and it was not worth my time, but I stuck it out to see if it would get better.

Also, leaning into easier content would have helped the number go up faster.

Listening Challenge
I did a lot of no-subs listening for the September listening challenge. Big takeaway was that my listening brain and reading brain are like two completely separate machines that don’t share vocab between each other as much as I would like.

In general, I found no-subs listening great for sharpening what I already know, but bad for my vocab acquisition. I think reading subtitles and visually finding unknown words is valuable. So I plan to do a mix of the two methods going forward.

Random shadowing stuff
I mentioned wanting to try shadowing last time but I think that will be an endeavor for future me. I tried doing some casual shadowing and it was difficult. I tried shadowing in English as well to see if I could develop the focus and then transfer it over, but I was running out of breath trying to keep up.

Anyways, I’m in a big slump right now and I don’t know when I’ll get out. No goals for October, other than keeping up with book clubs.

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