So the main advise I’ve seen when it comes to learning Japanese vocab is “do anki”. But I just couldn’t stick to anki for whatever reason and fell off learning Japanese for a while because of it. The past month, instead using flashcards or other memory aids, I just tried reading short stories online with the help of yomi-chan. I thought I’d talk about the pros and cons here to see if it helps anyone and to maybe get some insights about whether this method is as good as flashcards.
Note: I’m intermediate (about N3). I can see this method being quite painful if you don’t already have a good grasp of Japanese grammar and common words (unless you find very easy text).
So basically, I find a short story that intrigues me and read it while using yomi-chan for words I don’t know and occasionally google translate when the entire sentence is confusing me. I do try to remember new words in the moment and I might re-read a sentence, but otherwise I mostly just move on and keep reading. Then, a day or two later I re-read the story or section of the story I read. And that’s about it.
For one I read recently, I tallied 189 words I didn’t know in the entire text (read it in 3 sections, one section a day). I had re-read the first 2 sections before this tbf (one the day after reading and the other the same day), but after re-reading the entire story today, I only recorded 26 words I didn’t recall. So going off that, that 163 new words I recognized just by re-reading a story 2-3 times.
Here’s my pros and cons of this method for learning vocab:
Pros
\- I enjoy the story so I’m very motivated to read it
\- Quite a few words will get repeated so you’re more likely to remember them
\- Seeing words in the context of a larger story is helpful
\- Sooooo much exposure to various grammatical expressions and long sentence structures
\- Much less stress about remembering every new word you come across. I’m of the attitude that I’ll remember what I remember and that’s that, no need to force it. If what I forgot was important, I’ll come across it again and be more likely to remember it from having seen it before anyway
\- Pretty much no matter what you read, you’ll learn common or useful words
\- It’s good to see uncommon words or kanji because the we can assume the author assumes any native Japanese speaking person would be able to understand it, therefore it’s likely something you’d need to learn to reach N1/fluency
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Cons:
\- Can be time consuming, even for shorter stories
\- You won’t necessarily learn words in order of how important or common they are outside of the story. I’m currently reading fanfics so I’m learning a lot of words about ‘anatomy’… Not sure how important 尿道 is for everyday life but I sure do remember it well now lmaooo.
\- You might read one story that focuses around one theme or location. Then you might read other ones that are very different and that don’t use any of the major or new words in that first story. So it’s difficult to track and reinforce the words you’ve come across in the past unless you re-read the story or get lucky.
\- Some onomatopoeia can’t be translated in dictionaries and occasionally there are confusing parts/words where using a dictionary doesn’t help, which makes you wonder if you’re missing something or if it’s a mistake by the author. I mostly just cut my losses with those bits because you can infer what they mean anyway.
\- I’m much more likely to remember the meaning of the kanji than the reading. Not sure why that is (maybe because the reading is ‘arbitrary’ to my mind compared to the meaning which makes sense in context?) but it means this method might not translate well into speaking and listening. I do try to remember the reading and quite a few do stick though
\- It’s hard to tell if I’ve actually fully learnt every word because sometimes it feels more like I’ve remembered the sentence/context rather than the individual word. The real test would be seeing that word again unexpectedly in a different context, and for some words that may take a while
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So that’s been my experience with only using reading to practice Japanese for the past month. I intend to keep doing it because it’s fun and I’m certainly learning something, but I’ll definitely need to do some output and listening to fill those gaps. But anki? I mean… I could try to smash every new word into my head by re-reading them over and over on the same card over a long period, or I could just read what I want, come across new and old words on the fly and see what my brain picks up organically (with a little nudge of course). There are obviously cons though so I’d love to hear people’s opinion’s on this though 🙂