I wasn’t sure what flair to use, if I used the wrong one I will change it happily
I had seen somewhere that as soon as you can read hiragana and katakana to start trying to read manga, I have started attempting to (specifically Yotsuba&) but I am not getting anything, I can translate the sentence after I read it, but I still feel like i am not gaining anything from it at all. I am not really learning any words or grammar this way, as I don’t know how the sentence is translated piece by piece. I do gain a little from kanji, as I will look them up in a kanji dictionary when I come across one.
Do I need a greater understanding of grammar? I started genki recently, and am currently in lesson 1 (I am picking up the grammar really easily but having a much harder time remembering all the vocab for each chapter). I also am doing wanikani for vocab, but just recently started that too (level 2).
Tldr; What am I missing when it comes to learning from reading
5 comments
I think you’re doing okay. The issue is you’re expecting yourself to understand more of the content than you should be. You’ll definitely have to learn a bit more grammar if you want to learn efficiently but it’s also not efficient to do nothing but grammar. Hop back and forward.
Also this is just my opinion but I would avoid pure reading at the start. the issue is you don’t have enough hours of listening to understand what the intonation of a sentence would sound like on a subconscious level. I think this makes parsing its meaning harder. Good luck!
That sounds about right. It’s like if you were told to read some English books as soon as you know the alphabet. Like, you can, but until you have more vocab and a better understanding of how sentences are structured, it’s gonna be a chore.
I personally wouldn’t try reading anything that early but everyone learns at a different pace. Eventually you’ll start to pick up patterns and recognize characters faster because you keep seeing them in use, so you look up less and reading gets faster.
> Do I need a greater understanding of grammar? I started genki recently, and am currently in lesson 1
Uh I think it will not be good to read it at Chapter 1 of Genki. Try it at about Chapter 17 (more or less) which is in Genki 2 or even after Genki 2 entirely.
Where did you see that? I’ve never seen someone recommend that. The sites I know recommend you start after you learn all the basic grammar and 2000 words.
you’re doing fine but immediately expecting to pick up manga without having even cracked open genki1 or knowing how basic grammar works is a bit of a high bar to set for yourself. if you memorized cyrillic, would you expect to pick up a native russian novel (or even comic) and just be able to understand it?
you need to work through grammar and vocab and kanji at an even pace all at once. if you read too far above your level you’ll get really frustrated. this is a marathon, not a sprint.