How to learn technical terms in science?

14 comments

1. How did you learn those terms in your native language?

2. I guess use Japanese textbooks will be best, although I’m not sure about the availability. I’m considering this for career as well but don’t really know where to go 😅

3. First get a good base in the language.

   Next, start reading anything you can get your hands on. Start with children’s books, and gradually move up – you can start with things related to marine biology for kids

   Gradually start reading more adult-orientated materials, and materials specific to science and your field.

4. Go to japanese wiki pages for biology related subjects you’re interested in.

5. Oh, that’s simple. If you want to be versed in scientific language, read scientific books. Before, start with shorter (news-)articles out of the specific field. There is almost infinite stuff out there, so there should be no material shortage.

   This might seem really hard at first, but ultimately, is absolutely achievable. In its own way it might even be simple. The way scientific articles are written, the general language as well as the terms used are rather logical and easy to understand.

   In some way, if you are good with your Japanese studies and those did focus on classroom and textbook studies, you might even have an easier time with newspaper and science articles then you would with reading manga (say one that contains a lot of colloquial speech, shortening and regional dialects). And I am actually 100% serious here.

   The real issue I’d see is that you would want at the very, very least, a ultra confident N2 level to start university. The topics you study about, the topics yourself will want to talk / converse about and maybe even write about will require deep knowledge.

   This will be a large strain in regards to time consumed to achieve this level. I don’t want to say don’t go for it. But it is not as easy as spending some days, weeks or months with the language. This kind of fluency takes time. So if you want to go for it, see if you enjoy doing so. If you do, put in some effort.

   If this works out for you, you might be one of those that manage to “live their dreams”. If you got some aspirations, even if they might seem far away, still go for it, even it it might seem difficult. I mean you are in middle school now. There is still time until you will have to go to University. More then enough actually. Just don’t underestimate Japanese. You won’t make it when you just occasionally spend time on learning.

   As very rough roadmap for how to achieve your goal:

   Start with textbooks. With ~N3 level (or at least have finished like Genki 2 or equivalent), try to get your hands on native children learning books for your specific field and integrate those in your studies. Read news articles, try to move into JLPT N2 learning and exam preparation materials.

   With N2 passed, move into your specialization, you likely won’t need to pass N1 for your University of choice (well, if they would require you to do so – you would need to focus on N1 of course), so better build up what you need and at some point achieve N1 level naturally instead of focusing on it.

   Furthermore, Japan is leading world leading in some research areas as well. Especially when it comes to oceans, pollution, climate change and effects on like coral reefs or overall ecology surrounding those areas you – there is a plethora of material that might be of interest to you and possibly not even available (yet) in English.

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   Dang, that was one wall of text. Well, I hope you enjoy your enjoy! Good luck 🙂

6. NHK has several programs for teaching children science (and various other subjects): [https://www.nhk.or.jp/school/program/#rikaList](https://www.nhk.or.jp/school/program/#rikaList)

   Pick something that looks interesting, turn on the subtitles and use a pop-up dictionary like Yomichan to look up words easily.

7. Technical terms are easier to learn than everyday vocabulary, so don’t worry that there are a lot of them.

   Once you understand the terms and concepts in your native language, it’s as simple as:

   – read articles or textbooks in Japanese

   – make flashcards to practice translating the words from Japanese, and review them with Anki or similar

   Literal translation sometimes falls apart. That happens when the words refer to different concepts, or when different languages divide a top into concepts differently.

   (For example, Japanese doesn’t usually distinguish “leg” from “foot” while English doesn’t usually distinguish あげる from くれる。)

   Make sure you learn how to read Japanese, and make sure you understand the concepts in school as well as you can. Then putting the pieces back together in Japanese will be easy.

8. Wikipedia is brilliant for this especially.

   Use the PC version; and toggle back and forth to Japanese and your native language.

9. Look for material in your target language. Be it videos, articles, textbooks, etc. and pick off all the relevant terms. As a bonus, you’ll be able to focus solely on the language without having to worry about not understanding the content itself. And it also doubles as a great way to dive into academic texts.

10. I’m reading “cells at work” which is pretty useful for anatomy and different diseases and stuff

11. I hope you’ve thought this through. Your Japanese would have to be native level or damn close to it if you want to keep up with the coursework at a Japanese university. Not just in terms of reading and listening, but handwriting and speaking as well. Very, very few learners ever get to that point, and you should probably make sure you’re reasonably close to it before worrying about stuff like this.

12. kids.gakken.co.jp has online resources for young Japanese kids learning about science (among other things). I’m sure you’ll manage to pick up a few useful terms just by clicking around 🙂

13. You learn those words like how you learn literally any other word

14. I I bought a book aimed at high schoolers for science, the kind of class book you would have in your native language. And then I read the lessons.