minimalist-language-learning

[minimalist-language-learning]

名探偵コナン vol. 20

Finished! I can't wait to read the following volume - the case with the castle is interesting! I vaguely remember this case from the anime. I don't remember every detail but I liked it back then.

[minimalist-language-learning]

名探偵コナン 11人目のストライカー

Finished! Since I watched the movie version a long time ago, I had only vague memories of the story.

I really enjoyed this book! Especially the second half was exciting and contained some interesting twists and lots of emotions.

Like the other Conan novels, the writing style is relatively easy to understand and contains full furigana.

[minimalist-language-learning]

遊☆戯☆王GX vol. 5

I finished 遊☆戯☆王GX volume 5!

[minimalist-language-learning]

Don’t fear unknown words

(Note: With this post I just want to share thoughts and tips based on my own experiences and observations. If you have a different opinion that's fine. Language learning is an very individual process. Everyone has different goals and preferences. Try different things and do what works best for you.) Reading is an effective way to increase your vocabulary. But the really interesting books are often very difficult for a language learner (especially if you have little to no experience with native level books). Looking at a page full of unknown words can be intimidating. And if it’s a physical book, reading even a few pages takes ages if you need to look up many words. Reading texts above your current level can be slow and difficult.

From time to time I see language learners who tend to avoid books for natives and keep studying from textbooks or apps to “prepare“ themselves until they are “ready“. And I understand their decision. Textbooks and language learning apps provide structure and present the language in manageable chunks. They are an important first step and they can be a great resource for intermediate learners. Please use them to learn the basics and as a reference but keep in mind that they can only get you to a certain level. It’s obvious, but books for native speakers are not written with language test levels in mind (in the case of Japanese the JLPT). A book for natives can contain words of all levels. For example: The language used in books for a young audience is usually easier than for adults, but even books for kids can contain words that are not in your textbook. On the other hand, novels for adults contain not only abstract and specialized words but also many common words you probably already know. To put it simply: There are no strict levels in the "wild". That’s why you need to learn to deal with the language outside of textbooks. These resources help but they just can’t teach you everything. I mean, it would be extremely unrealistic to expect that you just need to study enough textbooks or completing all levels of your language learning app and then you are able to understand any novel for adult natives without look ups. If you want to learn to read at the level of an adult native speaker, you need to face this challenge and start reading these books at some point — and I mean many of them. No matter how much you prepared yourself through textbooks and apps, you will run into a ton of new words and phrases. This is intimidating at first, but there’s no way around it. You learn simply as you go by trying your best to understand and looking up words, phrases and grammar points. If you are only used to textbooks and apps, it’s absolutely normal that you struggle for quite some time. Don't worry! It gets easier the more you expose yourself with content for native speakers.

What is intimidating today will feel normal for you in the future. Keep going, don’t fear challenges, be open minded and take your time — and you will be able to tackle more and more difficult content.

Tips and recommendations

I myself am at a point where I’ve read around 100 books in Japanese. Many of them were manga, the rest were light novels, novels and a few non-fiction books. The level of difficulty of these books varies. I started with easier books and tried to read more and more challenging ones. I also regularly play video games in Japanese. A few examples:

Manga

名探偵コナン (has full furigana, it’s quite challenging but you’ll learn a ton of expressions and words from a wide range of real wold topics, strongly recommend it)

ナルト (typical battle shonen manga, full furigana, much easier than コナン)

Silver Spoon (full furigana, lots of specialized vocab and therefore difficult, but also very fun)

バクマン (one of my favorites, very enjoyable but also difficult)

らんま 1/2 (I love this series, it has full furigana and is one of the easier manga I've read so far; just be prepared that it contains a bunch of "fantasy" words like attack names etc.)

Novels and Light Novels

ハイキュウ 小説版 (this was challenging at first because the author uses a quite rich vocabulary, the stories are not very complex though)

名探偵コナン (I’ve read several novel versions of the Detective Conan movies, the writing style is quite easy to understand, they cover various topics and they have full furigana, I strongly recommend them)

ハリー・ポッター 1 to 4 (the beginning was hard and sometimes I was a bit lost what happens but the overall difficulty is okay; there are also audiobooks on Audible)

変な家 (I really enjoyed this one, the first chapters are quite easy, only the last one was suddenly very difficult)

Games

Animal Crossing (easy and relaxing game, full furigana)

Ace Attorney (one of my favorites, no furigana, challenging at first but now at Ace Attorney 3 I can play it with only occasional look ups)

Even though I’ve read quite a number of books, I’m far from fluent. I'm currently reading several books: 夏へのトンネル、さよならの出口, リング and ソードアート・オンライン 1. Even with all my experience, there are many new words in all of them. Maybe I should be better at this point, but it is what it is.

However, this is no reason to panic. I think that it’s important to not fear unknown words. New words are not a barrier, they help you grow. Instead of worrying about all these unknown words I take my time, look up words and follow the story. I can enjoy these books even though I don’t understand everything and need to look up many words.

To me, it’s about the journey, not the goal.

Some tips and strategies

Pick a book you’ve already liked reading in your native language (or after watching the movie). This way, you can be sure that you will like the story. This makes looking up many words more bearable. Plus, knowing the story makes it easier to understand the novel in your target language.

If possible, choose the ebook version. Reading digitally makes look ups faster and therefore less frustrating. Because it’s almost effortless you can look up many words without burning out. And by looking up more, there are more opportunities to learn new words.

Decide how many words you want to look up per page depending on your needs. Looking up words digitally is fast and almost effortless. This way it’s not hard to look up every word you don’t know. But if this is too much for your taste, just set a limit that makes reading more comfortable for you. You could try to look up only the 3 most important/interesting words per page and see how it goes. Change the number depending on how you feel or how difficult the book is.

It’s okay to not understand 100%. Progress is better than perfection. As long as you read regularly and look up at least some new words, your vocabulary will grow. Don’t worry too much about every single word you don’t know.

Being able to guess words from context is a valuable skill. Try to understand from context first and look up what seems necessary afterwards.

Don’t let yourself get discouraged right away just because you encounter several new words per page. If you start a new book, try to read at least the first chapter. The prologue and the first chapter are usually the hardest, because you need to get used to the authors writing style and the story.

Take as much time as you need. If you lack vocabulary, reading speed is nothing to worry about at this stage. Build up your vocabulary first.

Even if the overall level of difficulty is okay, there can always be paragraphs or chapters where your comprehension suddenly drops. That’s completely normal. Do your best to understand the gist, look up some words and then move on. Focus on the things you can understand.

You don’t need to learn everything the first time you read a book. Don’t worry too much about rare and specialized words, yet. Try to focus on more common words first. Since they come up more often and in different books, they are more useful at this point. Later when you are more advanced, looking up and learning these rather rare words is less overwhelming than in the beginning where everything is new.

A flashcard program like Anki helps to remember words you've encountered during your reading sessions. But instead of adding all new words I recommend to add only words you've seen at least a few times. I put the Japanese word together with an example sentence on the front and reading and meaning on the back. I use it only as a supplement. My daily Anki sessions are between 10 - 15 minutes long. I want to use most of my learning time for reading and listening -- this is where I really learn new words (= by repeatedly seeing them in context). Anki just helps me to build up familiarity with words I already recognize. Anki is not a must, of course. If you really can't stand it, don't use it. Just make sure that you read and listen regulary.

Graded readers can help to get used to reading in your target language. However, the gap between graded readers and easier books for natives can still be quite significant.

[minimalist-language-learning]

ナルト Vol. 2

I just finished volume 2!

Naruto and Co are on their first real mission. It turns out that this mission is much more dangerous than they first thought. I liked this exciting twist.

This volume contains several explanations about the world of this manga (lots of ninja techniques etc.) which was a bit difficult at first.

Also, I really like Naruto as a character. Yes, sometimes he can be annoying, but I admire him for his persistency. I prefer main characters who struggle and work hard until they succeed instead of main characters who are already strong from the beginning. Characters like Naruto give me a motivation boost! ^__^ 9

[minimalist-language-learning]

ナルト vol. 1

Finished! This volume was really fun! I couldn't stop. :D

I watched two or three seasons of Naruto ages ago (in German) so I already knew the main points. I looked up some words but it was much easier and faster to read than Detective Conan, for example (When I read Detective Conan, there is much more text per page and I need to look up words in almost every panel). Plus, like most shonen series Naruto has full furigana.

This series gets more complicated, of course, but at least the first volume has a pleasant level of difficulty for me.

[minimalist-language-learning]

名探偵コナン vol. 35

Finished! I enjoyed this volume. My favorite case is where Mitsuhiko mysteriously disappears and his friends try to find him.

[minimalist-language-learning]

名探偵コナン 業火の向日葵

Finished! This is the novel-version of one of the Detective Conan movies. I already watched the movie. But since this was many years ago, my memories were very vague. For some reason, I only remembered that it wasn't one of my favorites.

Some things were a bit confusing to me but there were also aspects and scenes I liked. The Conan/Kaito Kid combo was cool (as always). Now that I've read the book, I want to watch the movie again to see these scenes.

The writing style of the Conan novels is rather easy to understand. Plus, they have full furigana.

[minimalist-language-learning]

心霊探偵八雲 vol. 1

I finished the first volume of 心霊探偵八雲 !

This novel combines a lot of what I like: mainly mystery and paranormal elements, but also likeable characters, a bit of humor and strong emotions.

It's challenging because of many unknown words but not too hard to read. Lots of expressions are repeated quite often.

[minimalist-language-learning]

小説 名探偵コナン CASE 1

I just finished this novel!

I already read novel adaptations of two Conan movies but this novel re-tells the story from the manga. But it's not an 100% exact copy of the manga. The beginning is similar to the manga/anime but then the following cases from manga volume 1 were skipped. Instead, this novel re-tells two cases from volume 2.

It was interesting to see how the author described the scenes from the anime/manga. The level of difficulty is similar to the other Conan novels. The writing style is not very complicated and easy to follow. This book also has full furigana.

[minimalist-language-learning]

ゆるキャン Season 1

I watched ゆるキャン Season 1!

Super relaxing and wholesome series. Perfect watch before going to bed. ^__^

This anime is full of enthusiasm for camping and good food. I'm not particularly interested in camping but I think the positive mindset of the characters is inspiring. They enjoy everything they do as much as they can. They don't just eat something, they celebrate their meals. They constantly look for ways to make their trips even better. Although I don't plan to start with camping myself, I began to look for ways to adopt their mindset into my daily life.

There is no big story and it's rather slow paced, but each episode is connected to the one before so there is slow but steady progress. I liked how the group of camping enthusiasts grows over time. I also like the development of リン and なでしこ.

This anime is easier than 名探偵コナン (obviously) but I'm still far away from understanding everything. There are roughly 3 topic categories in every episode: every day life, camping and food/cooking.

When they talk about every day life things I usually can understand them. However, when they talk about camping stuff and food/cooking, I understand much less (sometimes nothing). Plus, dialect and other "speaking quirks" are making it even more difficult for me... =__= At least the visuals help to not get completely lost (the visuals are super beautiful btw).

Nevertheless, I liked these little moments where I could learn more about the girls and their backgrounds. It made me happy that I was able to understand these things. Feels special to me. ^__^

[minimalist-language-learning]

名探偵コナン vol. 34

Finished!

[minimalist-language-learning]

謎解きはディナーのあとで vol. 1

Finished!

謎解きはディナーのあとで is a comedy mystery novel series, which sounded interesting so I gave the first volume a try.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. The cases were interesting and there were many surprises. The characters were peculiar (I wasn't able to build a strong connection to them though) and I liked the unusual concept.

There were some scenes that made me laugh but not as often as I expected. I think the reason is that reading the book was a bit difficult for me and therefore I wasn't able to fully imagine the scenes in my head. If I was reading this as a manga or watching an anime version it would be much more funny because of the clear facial expressions and gestures.

This book was a bit of a challenge for me. The writing itself was not very difficult but I needed to look up many words. But I also recognized many words from 名探偵コナン for example. The good thing is that many of these words come up very often throughout the book.

There are other books I want to read next so I think I won't read the next volume soon.

[minimalist-language-learning]

My advice on Remembering the Kanji (RTK)

Before I share my learning routine and advice for RTK I would like to write about my personal experience first:

When I started to learn Japanese, kanji seemed incredibly difficult. They were just a complicated combination of strokes to me. Then I came across the book Remembering the Kanji (RTK) by James W. Heisig. Volume 1 presents a total of 2.200 kanji (including most of the Jōyō kanji).

I used the german version of Remembering the Kanji

The beginning was promising. I easily learned the first few hundred kanji. This experience was amazing. I never thought that this could be possible. But then I made the mistake of proceeding too fast. I saw forum posts of other RTK users who claimed that they “finished“ RTK in 3 months or even less. This motivated me and I tried to learn 25 kanji a day. Even though it was difficult to create memorable stories for this amount of kanji every day I moved on. After my first try to learn kanji with RTK, I forgot a great part of it after I “finished” the book.

I was not satisfied but I decided to move on and tried to read as much as possible instead. My idea was that I would make faster progress if I don’t learn kanji consciously. It’s not impossible to learn some kanji by seeing them repeatedly in context but it didn’t worked as well as I expected. 

Kanji seemed not as complicated like before but because of the great number of kanji and a lot of similar looking kanji they were still a great obstacle for me. Then I noticed that I still remembered the meaning of a number of kanji I learned with RTK. When I came across these kanji in context, I was able to understand new words without looking them up. Knowing their (rough) meaning really made a big difference. This made me think.

Around this time, I gave RTK a second chance and learned from my mistakes. I realized that if I really wanted to benefit from RTK I need to think long-term. It’s not that you do RTK for only 3 months and you are done. What I needed were sustainable strategies. 

I finished all 2.200 kanji (RTK volume 1) a while ago and I know most of them well now. By reviewing my RTK deck my recognition rate will further improve over time. My RTK knowledge helps me enormously with reading japanese books. I’m really happy that I gave it a second chance. That’s why I want to share my experiences and tips in this blog post. I hope that this post can be helpful for Japanese learners who struggled with RTK.

My learning routine

My usual learning routine looked like this (more detailed tips below):

1. Review

Every day, I used Anki to review my own RTK deck. 

Read the keyword and (if in doubt) the hint

Try to remember the elements of the kanji and their positions and write the kanji in the air

Turn the card and check the kanji

If it was wrong, change the hint and/or improve the story

2. Adding new kanji

After reviewing I usually added around 10 to 15 new kanji a day. My cards contain not only keyword and kanji but also fields for hints, elements of the kanji and the story. Here’s an example (my original cards are in German so this is just a rough translation):

Hints: If the keyword was very similar to another kanji I added a hint to reduce the risk of mixing them up.

Elements: I also added the elements of the kanji. This is useful for two reasons: By writing them out I become more aware of the elements which helps to remember new or complex elements correctly. Plus, by putting them on the back side of the card I can refresh my memory during reviews without using the book.

Story: Instead of creating a story only in my head I added the story to my cards. The reasons are the same like for the elements (see above).

…

After adding 5 new kanji I made a small break, came back and reviewed the new kanji. Then I repeated this process for another 5 kanji.

I usually added around 10 to 15 kanji a day. This was my sweet spot. Since I work full time and because my main focus was on reading japanese books I hadn’t a lot of time for RTK. By not adding more kanji that I can handle I made sure that I remember them well. 

Then I continued reading a book in Japanese and/or listened to something in Japanese. RTK was just a small part of my learning routine. My goal was not to finish it as fast as possible but to make sure that I remember these kanji as well as possible. Slowly but steady I learned more and more kanji. This gave me a noticeable advantage while reading.

RTK is not a race

As I wrote above, I made several mistakes myself but instead of blaming RTK I realized that I need to take the explanations in the book more seriously. It’s really important to make sure that the stories are memorable and that you pay attention to the details. 

The most important lesson I learned was that RTK is not a race. During my second attempt, it was not my goal to “finish” RTK as fast as possible but to remember these kanji LONG-TERM because this makes reading and learning new words much easier.

By proceeding too fast, the risk of forgetting a lot of kanji is very high. When it comes to RTK, a high recognition rate is more important than speed, in my opinion. That’s why I created sustainable strategies that helped me to remember most of the 2.200 kanji long-term.

5 Tips on Remembering the Kanji

Tip #1: Don’t underestimate the power of writing

In the beginning, I used to write every kanji on paper. Now, I only write them with my finger (either in the air or on the table). This is much faster and easier.

Why writing them at all? Some people say, being able to recognize them is enough. Personally, I remember them much better through writing (even if I just write them in the air; the movement of the hand makes a great difference for me). In my experience, writing works much better than just looking at a kanji because through writing I become aware of every detail. Many kanji look pretty similar. Sometimes only one little detail is different. The risk of mixing them up is much higher. 

I tried the “recognition-only approach” in the past and it didn’t work well for me. The ability to recognize and distinguish kanji just by looking at them has its limits. It’s not very accurate, that’s why I still mixed up similar kanji. 宇 and 字 or 烏 and 鳥 for example look very similar at the first glance. The original RTK method on the other hand helps to avoid that because you pay much more attention to the details.

Plus, writing in Japanese by hand is important to me. I love writing and kanji are very beautiful! That’s the reason why I want to be able to write in Japanese. But even if you don’t want to be able to write kanji, I recommend to write them in the air during reviews to reduce the risk of mixing them up. It may not seem like this could make a big difference but in my experience it’s really helpful. The power of writing should not be underestimated.

Tip #2: Add hints

When I repeatedly mix up kanji or when I can’t remember how to write them correctly, it’s a sign that the story is weak. I pay attention to the story and try to make it more memorable. Plus, when I confuse a kanji with another I add a hint to the card like “Don’t confuse with [similar keyword]”.

It’s also helpful to copy the definition of the keyword from a dictionary and/or a japanese word written in hiragana that contains this kanji and add it to the card. This way I have more context and this prevents me from confusing a keyword with a similar one (because the definitions are different). 

Using little hints is a great way to make the learning process less frustrating. Over time, I need these hints less and less. Eventually, I remember difficult kanji correctly. 

Tip #3: Take the time you need

It’s also very important not to rush. I barely added more than 15 new kanji a day. Most of the time, I only added about 5 or 10 a day. Since I work full time and because my main focus was on reading japanese books I hadn’t a lot of time for RTK.

During reviews I pay attention to the things I described above. Do I mix them up? Can I remember them correctly? Whenever I have trouble to remember certain kanji, I improve the story and/or add some hints. Some kanji may be more difficult than others, but over time you can learn every kanji by paying more attention to them. Paying attention to why you didn’t remember some kanji correctly and eliminating sources of error is really important. If a story doesn’t work don’t hesitate to improve it.

However, there’s no need to be too strict. You don’t need to nail them down to 100% before you move on. But I think it’s a good idea to give new kanji time to sink in a bit before continuing. That’s why I recommend to slow down the pace instead of rushing through the book.

Tip #4: Be creative

The meaning of some primitives chosen by Heisig are not optimal for everyone. It works much better if you choose something that has a strong meaning to you (like, characters from your favorite series). Just make sure that your personal meaning doesn’t conflict with later keywords or elements. Ideally, it’s as close to Heisig’s word as possible or it’s so unique that it’s impossible to mix it up with other words.

If a kanji is used as part of another kanji (like 青 in 請 for example) you don’t necessarily need to use it in it’s combined form if it’s difficult to create a good story. You can split or combine the elements of a kanji the way you like if it helps you to remember the kanji.

Tip #5: Combine RTK with reading

Some people recommend beginners to do RTK at the very beginning of their Japanese learning journey. The idea is, to complete RTK as fast as possible so that you can focus 100% on the language itself afterwards. However, I think depending on the person this can be counterproductive. RTK is probably more difficult for people who just started with Japanese because they can’t see the benefits of RTK yet. When you have no use for what you are learning it’s hard to stay motivated over an extended period of time. I think this is one reason, why people who tried RTK gave up.

When I started RTK I wasn’t a complete beginner of Japanese. I did RTK in addition to my other Japanese activities like reading books. This way, I often came across kanji I just learned. I saw them in context and they helped me to understand new words without looking them up. Experiences like these were a strong proof for me that RTK really pays off and this gave me a motivation boost.

So instead of doing RTK at the beginning and doing nothing else, I recommend to wait until you can read at least graded readers or easier novels, for example. Otherwise it’s probably too hard to stay motivated for so long. 

…

I hope these tips can be helpful for someone. It’s sad when I read that some people gave up because they constantly mix up or forget a lot of kanji. There are also people who rush through RTK without creating memorable stories for each kanji and stop doing their reviews after “finishing” RTK. And then they claim that RTK is a waste of time and doesn’t work because they can’t remember most of the kanji — which is no surprise in this case. 

While I absolutely understand that RTK may not work for everyone it’s not fair that people who didn’t take the explanations in the book seriously claim that it doesn’t work in general. 

Learning kanji takes time. This is absolutely normal. It’s not a shame if you need more than 3 months or a year to complete RTK. In my opinion, if the goal is to remember these kanji long-term 3 months are very unrealistic for most people. Seeing people who “finished” RTK in a short amount of time creates false expectations. RTK is not about breaking records. To me, it’s much more important to make sure that you remember these kanji long-term. Every learned kanji is already a little advantage, that’s why speed is not so important anyway.

Without RTK learning kanji would have been much more time consuming and frustrating for me and the risk of forgetting and mixing them up would be much much higher. To me, there’s no real alternative to RTK and now that I finished it I’m very happy that I put in the work and time.

Maybe I will also learn the additional 800 kanji from volume 3 in the future. But for now I’ll focus on consolidating the 2.200 kanji from volume 1 and on other learning activities.

[minimalist-language-learning]

ハイキュー!! ショーセツバン!! vol. 9

I finished volume 9 of "ハイキュー!! ショーセツバン" !

I enjoyed the first half of the book the most. The chapter with Hinata, Kageyama and Tsukishima was hilarious! XD

Unfortunately, the later chapters were not very eventful. Basically, the boys from other teams were just fooling around. I think these dialogue-focused chapters would work better for me if I had more visuals (like in a manga or anime).

[minimalist-language-learning]

遊☆戯☆王GX volume 4

I just finished volume 4 of 遊☆戯☆王GX !

This volume was cool. I liked the spectacular duel and the backstory.

[minimalist-language-learning]

名探偵コナン volume 33

I finished 名探偵コナン volume 33 and enjoyed every chapter. <3

I like rather text-heavy manga like this series or 銀の匙 (Silver Spoon) because I can learn so much from it. Manga like 遊☆戯☆王GX are great for entertainment which is totally fine but I learn much less new words. I think it's good to mix both types.