Oftentimes when reading, I can infer a word’s meaning from context clues…should I confirm my guess with a bilingual dictionary (which might strengthen my reliance on English, but would clear up any confusion), or should I keep reading (which would keep me thinking in Japanese and wouldn’t interrupt a potential flow state, but might result in misinterpretations or future misunderstandings)?
I know the goal is to eventually switch to monolingual dictionaries, but I’m not at that point yet.
4 comments
I think looking up to confirm is a good idea, but you could write it down to look up later if you don’t want to interrupt your flow.
i dont look something up if i get the idea from context
What I do is have the monolingual dictionaries on the top of Yomichan’s list and if I still don’t get it I read lower where the bilingual definitions are. I never keep reading if I don’t completely understand a sentence first.
If you don’t want to look something up in a bilingual dictionary because you don’t want to expose yourself to English in the moment you can always write it down and look it up later.