How often should I look up a word in immersion? I rarely have done so when I was learning English with immersion, only sometimes, but here I am speaking English. Same for my German, only if I feel like it is needed.
I already have prepared a Japanese to English dictionary with examples. It should be enough for now. I also have prepared a card note type in Anki for my mining.
I personally tend to look up words when I canât guess their meaning from context. I recently passed N4, but before that, I had to do a lot of lookups. These days, since I know around 800 kanji and a fair amount of vocab, I can often guess the meaning of common words just based on context, grammar, or the kanji itself. Sometimes I still look them up anyway just to confirm my guess. And when I notice Iâm looking up the same word repeatedly, I usually make a flashcard out of it.
It seems like OP is still exploring how to approach studying, which is totally normal early on. My suggestion would be to take time to experiment and figure out what kind of method works best for you personally, rather than relying too much on trying to find a âperfect answerâ from others (since what works varies a lot from person to person).
For example, if youâre not sure how often to look up words while immersing, maybe try looking up every unknown word at first and see how that feels. You might find it helpful to understand everything, or you might find it overwhelming or too slow. In that case, you could try reading easier material or only looking up the words that are most important to the story, or the ones youâre genuinely curious about. On the flip side, if you donât look anything up at all, you might realize youâre reading without actually understanding much, which can also slow down your progress.
If youâre not quite at a solid N3 or early N2 level yet, expect to do a lot of lookups in native material, and thatâs okay. Itâs part of the process, and honestly part of the fun too. Wishing you the best with your studies. é ćŒ”ăŁăŠïŒ
When you feel like it 
DO NOT CHECK (Or Rarely)
ALWAYS CHECK
SOMETIMES CHECK
I think most other cases are up for debate / in the âsometimes checkâ category.
Personally Iâm not sure about the following, but Iâve heard several people say to not look things up until you either are completely lost or at least finish a âparagraphâ or âthoughtâ. That way you give yourself time to try to catch the meaning before dissecting every sentence.
For example, if theyâre saying theyâre going to ăăă a ăă and put it in a ăă, but in the next sentence someone mentions è«, theyâre probably going to catch some specific kind of bug and put it in a box, perhaps?
The reason Iâm not sure is that, for reading, I think itâs easy to fall into a trap of understanding a Kanji but not knowing at all how itâs read. Even simple kanji like 怩 sometimes are read with archaic readings like in 怩ć·. And if you follow furigana too closely, like in the Zelda instruction booklet, youâll be reading éæł as ăăžăăŻ. Or maybe æ°·è as ăąă€ăč.
Not strictly wrong, I suppose!
(Edit: just to say the worst Iâve seen this week is æźșă⊠yeah⊠didnât guess that right, haha)
When it seems like that word was really important or has been repeated a few times and you have absolutely no idea whatsoever as to what it could mean.
This is what I am doing at the moment in my German immersion, and it works very good. However, I am unsure if that will work for a language that is less similar to English, such as Japanese.