【No. 2】Reading Process
From reading on paperback to reviewing words
Date: 2023-12-03 (Sun)
Background
Since I am mostly focused on ‘Reading,’ a lot of the things I’m testing out tries to answer this question: how might I be able to read Japanese materials effortlessly? A large constraint for now is that I don’t know the Kanji that I come across. At any rate, I set out to just extract as many vocab as I can.
Methodology
I am currently using a 3-part process which involves 1) choosing what to read, 2) looking up words in the dictionary and 3) reviewing those words.
1) Choosing what to read
At the moment, I am reading a novel called 『推し、燃ゆ』. Usually, I don’t read novels. For this book, I was trying to force myself to become more confident with communicating. In a recent trip to Japan, I went to a bookstore, browsed around, selected a random book. I went up to the cashier and tried to communicate with the person there. It wasn’t difficult Japanese, but I have huge confidence issues which would render myself silent sometimes. It was one of those moments to force myself to break out of it. I was just lucky that the book is really fun to read.
I prefer paperbacks, especially the bunkobon, since it’s easier to carry around and the paper feels nice. It’s slightly inconvenient to look up the words compared to digital formats, so I guess that’s the trade-off.
2) Looking up words
I use an app called ‘Shirabe Jisho’ for my digital dictionary. Whenever I come across a Kanji I cannot read, I would draw it out on the app’s writing pad. Even with my coarse handwriting, the app is really good at detecting what I wanted to look up.
It keeps a history of all the words I searched up, so I use this function to export it as a csv so that I can review it in flashcard form.
3) Reviewing
I don’t have a good memory and the most effective way for me to learn is to just review words in a SRS every day. For this, I use Anki. With the CSV from Shirabe Jisho and some customization in Anki, I could import those words directly into Anki and have them ready to be reviewed.
The reviewing takes around 30-40 minutes each day. It became a habit at this point–almost like brushing my teeth–so I don’t mind it that much.
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