When to stop using dictionaries?

9 comments

1. why would you ever stop using dictionaries? if you never need a dictionary it means you are not challenging yourself

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   so to answer your question: stop using dictionaries when you want to start stagnating

2. I mostly stopped using a dictionary as I was studying for n2. I began reading easier things that didn’t need it, although 174 words in 55 pages of manga might have a way to go still until that’s doable.

   Give easier manga and graded readers a try. It’s very helpful.

   Also, read through something extensively, making guesses about unknown words, go back through and look them up, and reread it again until you get it. This kind of practice is great because it almost doesn’t even matter that the text is too hard, as you’ll get it through repetition.

3. Never

   I still look up words in my native English on occasion

   That being said, attempting to get into using a J2J dictionary is an important step to work into your studies

   And practicing reading without stop and starting to look up words is important as well. By all means circle stuff and go back and look them up tho

4. Are you referring to JAP-EN bilingual dictionaries? If that is the case, I would strongly suggest you migrate to JAP monolingual dictionaries first.

   Reading definitions in full Japanese, where you most likely will have to look up several more words in order to understand the definition is a hassle at first, but you get a better undestanding and more nuance than with bilingual dictionaries.

   As for the question, I’d say you can stop using dictionaries when you encounter new words whose meaning and reading you can mostly guess by looking at the different kanji that form said word.

5. I’m a little confused, it doesn’t sound like they want you to stop using dictionaries, it sounds like they want you to stop *relying* on English to Japanese dictionaries at face value because you’re misusing words or using weird word pairs when you’re speaking or writing.

   If you need clarification on what a word means, you obviously need to look it up in a dictionary. If you’re capable of it, now might be a good time to transition to a proper J-J dictionary or find a better J-E/E-J dictionary. A step up beyond JMDict/Jisho would be one that has a tons of curated example sentences to help you get a good understanding of proper collocations (natural word pairs) and the overall context you would use that word in. I recommend Kenkyuusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary (研究社　新和英大辞典　第５版; also dubbed The Green Goddess), it goes way more in-depth than something like JMDict and I think is sort of the bridge between using J-E and J-J dictionaries.

6. >One of the main pieces of feedback I received was that I should stop using dictionaries to learn words (presumably this means that my test answers used words incorrectly or unnaturally)

   There may be other reasons which you are not presuming, so it would be nice to get to the root of the comments. Can you ask the institution?

   Is this feedback related to your writing, your speaking, or both?

   Whilst your writing and/or speaking might have areas for improvement, maybe the “feedback” was generic and not well thought out.

   So rather than chasing some intangible feedback, maybe consider a Japanese language tutor to evaluate your speaking and writing and suggesting areas for improvement.

7. > (presumably this means that my test answers used words incorrectly or unnaturally)

   Maybe their advice was too literal but I don’t think anyone would recommend you seriously stop using a dictionary. Rather, they want you to be immersing with more material so you learn natural usage of the language rather than learning from a dictionary/anki/memorization systems.

   I believe their intuition is right, as you yourself gain an intuition of how to use dictionary information after you read things in context and figure out what meaning to apply to it. It has better retention and leads to more natural language output in the long run.

   J2J dictionaries should come first with example sentences, E2J as a fall back. I use both at the same time, and if I want to get a full understanding of a word I will start with J2J -> example sentences -> E2J to double check and then google some potential blogs people may have written and see how people end up using it.

8. Never, you’ll never stop using dictionaries. That’s extremely quixotic to think you’ll never look up words even in your native language. Bet you had to look up what quixotic meant 💀💀

9. By the sounds of it, what you need is not to stop using dictionaries, but to use the right kinds of dictionary. Get a monolingual Japanese dictionary, as they will be able to explain the nuances of the words you’re looking at.