Hi everyone,
I need some advice on how you use literature (manga, light novels, books etc) to learn Japanese.
Would you be so kind as to answer my poll and give some tips on using books as part of your study journey?
0 voters
I voted add each new word to SRS, because thatās what I do, but I would only recommend that if you already have a fairly large vocabulary. Otherwise youāll quickly become overwhelmed with words.
Note that just because a word is ārareā enough that an SRS might be needed to help it stick, doesnāt mean the word is obscure / challenging IRL. It just means itās not a word used very often in the types of books I read. For example, there are some basic animals that would be considered ārareā that I still want to know how to say.
Thank you, I started adding every word I didnāt know to my dictionary Flashcards app but it became overwhelming, 300 cards from 30 pages but thatās because the word are all pregnancy related and I havenāt studied anything like this in my learning (Iām reading å¤ćŖēµµ in case anyone is curious).
I think Iāll add the repeating words that I would use in daily life but I donāt think Iāll need to say āććŖćć®čµ¤ć”ćććÆéåć§ćā on the regular haha at least I hope not!!
For me that definitely sounds like too much to keep up with on SRS! I think your strategy of adding those words that seem particularly useful would be a good strat for now!
I really DONāT recommend adding every new word you come across. Not only is that going to slow you down majorly, youāre also going to be making an endless amount of new cards per reading session. You can make it a rule to only add words you see multiple times, or words under a certain frequency (5k/10k), or just limit how many new cards you make per day.
Anki is really useful for remembering less common words or words that you struggle with, but itās not the only way to learn. As long as you read a lot and keep looking up the stuff you donāt know, youāll improve your vocabulary.
See whatever sticks; because thatās how I learnt English as a kid. Itās how I am intuitively learn right now. If it sticks itās important. Sure, I might have to read and hear it 30 times but if I hear it that many times in context it must mean itās important and it gets stuck in my long term memory.
This is how I learn Japanese without it becoming tiresome. A longterm strategy that isnāt bound to large āgoalsā or tests.
I dislike minning. I prefer using high quality premade cards [like Bunpro, I use Jaup]. If you are doing N4 or N5- just stick to premade order.
Once youāre N3 have 1 book that you look up every word and add to a deck.
Also a manga that you arenāt allowed to look ANY words up. You just have to look at the pictures and guess.
Then you do which ever one you feel like.
haha, you sound like a tadoku reader 
I never obeyed that rule, but I always try to get the meaning with context first, guess and afterwards look-up to see if my guess was correct.
Depending on which level of japanese one is at, it does or doesnāt make sense to add everything you read to your reviews. But I think if you are still within your first 4000 words or something itās more worthwhile to use premade decks with common words.
But occasionally making a deck with themed vocabs (like a pregnancy related deck) to better be able to follow a themed book can be a fun and useful change of things. In such a case I would skim the book first to gather useful vocab (thereās probably a tool for that), then make the deck (not many vocab, but useful ones, 100 max), then learn the deck for a week or two and then read the book again.
I wish there was an in-between option for this poll.
Iām a big fan of āadd new words to a deckā if and only if you see it often and canāt seem to remember the reading/meaning. Typically you want to read things at or slightly above your level so you hopefully donāt get too many new words, but instead get a refresher of what you should already know, as well as some additional content on top.
Certainly somewhere inbetween for me as well ā if I understand the whole page save for one-two words, it makes sense to add that to a deck personally, feels easy filling a gap like that. If a sentence/sequence makes me feel lost, I just try to get the gist of it and move on.
This works out to 20-30 words mined / session (1-1,5 hours), which is perfect personally for growing my mining deck.
Whatever floats your boat, really, but itās important to keep it fun for yourself. Itās always fine to switch media too, if itās too easy, too hard or just straight up boring, and maybe come back to it later. A half-read book still made you learn a lot, no reason to finish it if you donāt want to.
Depends on how many words and more importantly kanji you already recognize in the book in question. And on whether itās a well-written book.
Iāve made some headway into one book that I consider to be well-written. I donāt mind re-reading the same pages several times. But because Iām adding 99% of the words to SRS, it takes forever and overloads review queue. No idea when I can finally find the time and energy to finish it.
On the other hand, Iām reading some books that I consider guilty pleasure tier. For those Iām just looking up unknown words and only add a few interesting words to SRS. This goes much faster and allows to actually finish books.
I would only add so may new words a day and once you reach that just read. Otherwise you quickly reach too many reviews.
No recommendations, but the way I do it is I just mine almost everything so I can tell if Iāve come across the word before or not and If Iām looking up a word that Iāve mined before it must mean itās a word Iām struggling to remember. If itās something I feel like Iāve seen many many several times and still donāt remember the meaning or reading of Iāll specifically pick that word out and set it due today (to a limit of course, donāt want too many reviews). Clearly it must be important to me.
By the time a word is in my Anki queue Iām probably going to suspend almost half of them (I have over 10k unlearned mined words) because Iāve learned quite a lot of them just by consistent lookups while reading long novels or watching long shows. An addional benefit here is itās a lot easier to keep track of a rough estimation of words Iāve come across and I get to feel some sort of progress.
Itās so quick I donāt really care, I honestly feel like just the act of mining helps me remember. Iād probably be a lot lazier otherwise, for example itās easy for me to skip words I donāt know and canāt guess when Iām reading a paper manga with high comprehension, just wanna keep going and itās not like 1 word here and there will ruin the manga. At least when itās digital I feel compelled to mine it which becomes a lookup.
Something to keep in mind is: authorās voice . ie each author normally has words / vocab / sentences that they basically repeat a lot .
Normally I try to stick to a series for a while (eg 2 or 3 or so volumes). If there is a repeating unknown word, I would look it up. If it does not stick and I keep looking it up in dictionary, I would then add it to SRS.
But there are times before starting Volume 1 of a series. I would try to read the first few pages, then look up and add for SRS all unknown words / kanji.
Bookwalker, Booklive, Amazon (also I think) have free samples of most manga / light novels / books. I would normally see if I can read the samples before deciding to purchase. Like there are series that I really like but I can see I am not there yet hehe
Somewhat related, I canāt recommend Satori Reader highly enough.
Iāve made a lot of progress ever since Iāve started using it. Itās incredibly helpful to see grammar and vocab in a larger context than individual sentences. Voice acting is top notch, you can click each word and everything builds up on top of itself, so itās kind of an SRS.
The grammar explanations are great too, and you can export your study list to Anki or in my case Bunpro so as to benefit from all the written sentences.
Edit for devs (@veritas_nz), in Satori you can create a study list with words, but also add several context sentences from what you read in the app. It would be awesome to be able to import custom sentences in Bunpro directly from the exported CSV.
I know, itās probably a niche request, but heyā¦
Thank you so much to everyone for doing the poll and commenting, there are too many people for me to tag so I hope you still see this.
I am going to only add words that are common and that I would use in daily life. Im still working my way through the vocab decks here so once I have gone through them I might look at mining but I dont want to over complicate things for myself.
Really appreciate the feedback and insight!!