Posts by: Liana
This is an incomplete list of all the Level 1 books available from the Seattle Public Library; it’ll be updated as I keep reading them.
From Extensive Reading in Japanese, the definition of a Level 1 book:
Level 1: Hiragana and katakana only. The text is very short, and has one-word sentences, phrases, and some complete sentences. There are plenty of visual aids to help convey meaning. Japanese native readers would be three to six years old.
I’ve added Amazon.co.jp links for the benefit of having title images and just in case anyone wants to subsidize my reading, but if you’re interested in ordering any of these, I’d also recommend you look them up on Kinokuniya’s website and compare shipping costs, because it’s likely to be less expensive that way. Also, all title translations are my own unless otherwise indicated, names are family name first, then given name, and 作 and 絵 mean “author” and “illustrator,” respectively.
I haven’t actually read any yet, so this is basically a placeholder.
I made another trip to the library recently, and I was faced with a daunting realization: I’m running out of the level 3 and 4 books that I like. At the rate I’m going they’ll start getting harder soon; I can certainly read harder books, but not as quickly or fluidly as I’d like…
When we moved from Michigan to Washington State, we didn’t initially have a very clear picture of where we would settle down. Seattle? Tacoma? Olympia? Bremerton? Bellingham? I admit it: “quality of the library system” was an important criteria for evaluating potential places to live — would you believe I had a dream that we moved somewhere with no interlibrary loan system — and I scoped out several different libraries even before we moved. (Later, when looking for apartments, “proximity to library” was another important qualification.)
Of course, I was most impressed with the Seattle library system’s Japanese language selection. We ended up moving to Tacoma, but it’s been in the back of my mind ever since that a Seattle library card could be mine for around $80. After all, there are more than 600 Japanese children’s books spread out between the various branches — that puts the 125 children’s books held at the Tacoma library main branch (no direct link, but you can search for JAJ) to shame. I just love any excuse to take the train up to Seattle, so getting there every so often wouldn’t be a problem… I was going back to look at exactly how much a prized Seattle library card would set me back ($85 per year, incidentally) and I saw something that hadn’t registered when I looked at that same page back when I lived in Ann Arbor: the Seattle public library has reciprocal arrangements with various other libraries in the area. Tacoma’s not one of them, but Pierce County is, and as it so happens, Tacoma and Pierce County have their own reciprocal system, where someone living in Tacoma can get a Pierce County card and vice versa.
So the question was this: are library cards transitive? I’ve never before in my life felt the need to have three separate library cards, but that was before I started running out of appropriate books. The day I suspected that this might be possible, I went out and got a Pierce County card — just in case. As it turns out, even though I’m from Tacoma, that Pierce County card and a valid picture ID with my current address qualified me for a Seattle library card after all! I called ahead to ask, then took the train up to Seattle the very next day. I returned home with 26 books♪ I had been to the main library before and had been duly impressed by the rows of Japanese children’s books, but I didn’t truly appreciate their value until I started extensive reading and had to start looking not just for any old book, but for books at a certain level.
If you happen to be in Washington State, take a moment to see if you qualify for a Seattle library card. For an extensive reader, it’s worth the trip. If not, are there any major libraries — public or part of a university or college — in your area with some Japanese books that you might be able to get access to? Hopefully, this may be a possible path to gathering more resources for other extensive readers as well.
Incidentally, the Pierce County library system has enough Japanese books to have made it worthwhile for me to pick up a library card in its own right. My parents live in Pierce County, and when we stayed with them for two weeks after moving while figuring out where we wanted to live, I borrowed my dad’s card to check out a couple of books. (He handed it over, and then, with some embarrassment, handed over a $20 to pay his fine. So that’s where I get it from, I thought. It hasn’t escaped my notice that getting books from three different libraries opens me up to three times the potential library fines…) Actually, a shiny new library in University Place, which is part of the Pierce County system and about 20 minutes away from me, opened in February. Had it been open when we moved to Washington, that might have bumped University Place up a few notches in my potential destination calculations!
By the way, the reason I divide my book reviews not just by level, but by library, is that I hope to be extra useful to other readers in the area and perhaps even to put together an extensive reading group at some point. I should have started that already, but to be honest I’m extremely shy. If you’re in the area and interested in something like that, feel free to e-mail me and maybe that will help me become more motivated!
Summary of Extensive Reading and Language Learning: A Diary Study of a Beginning Learner of Japanese, by Ching Yin Leung
Reading in a Foreign Language
Volume 14, No. 1, April, 2002
Summary
This paper is a diary study; the author Ching Yin Leung (referred to in the paper as Wendy), a beginning student of Japanese, analyzes her own journal in which she described her extensive reading experiences and challenges over the course of four months. The author incorporated extensive reading into a self-study program; she spent an hour studying and reading each day, took down notes about the day’s study, then used those notes to write one or two diary entries a week. For the last 11 weeks, she worked with a tutor for half an hour or an hour per week. By the end of the self-study program, she had read 1,260 pages of comics, textbooks and storybooks. Her goal was to answer four research questions:
- Does extensive reading lead to vocabulary acquisition?
- Does extensive reading promote reading comprehension?
- Does extensive reading promote positive attitudes toward reading?
- What challenges does a beginning foreign language learner face in the extensive reading process and how did the learner deal with these challenges?
Vocabulary acquisition
In weeks 16 and 20 Leung took two separate vocabulary tests to measure her improvement over the month, and the results showed that her vocabulary knowledge improved by 23.5%; she was better able to identify and use words correctly on the second test, and there were fewer words that she didn’t know at all. The improvement was attributed to both the large amount of input provided by extensive reading and the improved understanding of the grammar she had acquired by self-study.
The data from her journal entries and tutoring sessions showed that her extensive reading increased her exposure to words she’d already learned and helped her apply her previous knowledge; for example, she found it easier not to confuse 行く (iku, to go) and 来る (kuru, to come) when she saw them in context multiple times. She also learned things that weren’t in her textbooks, came to be able to understand words from context with the help of pictures and discerned alternate meanings for words she already knew, such as きれい (beautiful / clean) and おそい (slow / late). Even with her extensive reading, she forgot the meanings of some words she had already learned, probably because they weren’t reinforced enough. (This backs up Paul Nation’s characterization of vocabulary learned through extensive reading as “fragile”; it seems that extended reading has the most impact if there is enough material to provide repeated exposure over the long term.)
Reading comprehension
Leung’s journal entries show that her reading comprehension increased over the course of her study: at first decoding hiragana frustrated her, but by the end she was understanding simple stories. Her understanding was built on her textbook studies and tutoring sessions, but it was extensive reading that gave her a chance to practice that material.
Attitudes toward reading
She was excited at first, but the difficulty of finding appropriate reading material made her feel confused and disappointed. Because her first language was Chinese, she was initially frustrated that she could use her L1 skills to get a sense of the content of Japanese texts written for adults in a mix of hiragana and kanji, but couldn’t read simple children’s stories written all in hiragana. Once she was able to find plenty of material at her level, she felt more comfortable, and her confidence grew as her reading skill improved; however, trying to read children’s books that she couldn’t understand negatively impacted her attitude, because it was a jarring reminder of how much she had yet to learn. She found that re-reading was valuable to her, and finding books that she wanted to read or understand better was motivating. She also got in the habit of trying to read Japanese that she encountered in the real world.
Identifying and dealing with challenges
It was difficult to find appropriate materials; books that were too hard discouraged her, and she had to look for new material constantly. Finding time for studying, and self-study itself, was challenging; for the second half of her studies she worked with a tutor, which helped to motivate her. Her L1 affected how she learned Japanese: for example, she was frustrated that she couldn’t map meanings onto hiragana as she could with hanzi/kanji, and she thought that the hiragana “ka” looked like “ga” in Chinese, so she tended to mispronounce “ka” as “ga.” However, as she continued her studies her tolerance of the differences between the two languages grew.
Conclusion
According to Leung, reading can play an important role in helping students acquire vocabulary, become more enthusiastic about their language studies and gain confidence, even when those students are true beginners. Although her self-study and tutoring sessions were important, extensive reading reinforced the things she learned and made her feel like she was successfully reading “in the real world.” The key to a successful extensive reading program is access to plenty of materials that are both interesting and at an appropriate level.
Notes:
- Leung studied for an hour a day, but I would have liked to have known how much time she spent reading and how much time she spent formally studying. Also, since I personally keep track of progress by word count, I would be curious as to about how many words she read.
- I find it interesting that she specifically cited re-reading as something that increased her understanding; nothing that I’ve read about extensive reading (so far, or that I remember) recommends or mentions re-reading as a potential tactic, but in my own experience it’s very helpful. After all, the second time around I already know what’s going to happen so I can often understand parts that didn’t make sense before, and I often look up particularly critical words that I couldn’t understand from context after I’ve finished a book, so I can read with the benefit of knowing them (which often clarifies other words that only partially made sense to me before). Still, I don’t usually re-read a book unless I’ve particularly enjoyed it, because I want to move on to the next new thing. Maybe I should get in the habit of re-reading?
- I found that this quotation from The language learning benefits of extensive reading by Paul Nation really resonated with me: “Vocabulary learning from extensive reading is very fragile. If the small amount of learning of a word is not soon reinforced by another meeting, then that learning will be lost.” I wonder what the best way to facilitate that meeting is: graded readers with deliberately repeated word usage? Looking up unknown key words later? Or simply more and more reading?
- Leung’s experiences really mirror the complaints I’ve heard from others who have tried to use extensive reading as part of their Japanese studies: without a healthy supply of appropriate materials, the idea just falls apart. Finding that supply is probably not easy for any true beginner, and probably about impossible for one who doesn’t have library materials, Japanese friends or a Japanese teacher who is conducting an extended reading program.
- It is easy to see how extensive reading would benefit an intermediate or advanced student of Japanese who already has a reasonably large vocabulary to draw on, but when I started reading this paper, I doubted whether it would be useful for a true beginner (who had, I thought, quite enough to be worrying about without adding authentic books to the mix). I’m pleased to know that it’s much more promising than I expected!
- I wonder how Leung’s previous experience with learning English affected her experience with learning a third language, and if a beginning language learner without that experience would be able to get the same benefits from extensive reading. For example, did it help her be open to the possibility that one word could mean different things, or that words she thought she knew could be split into two parts (such as when she realized that “kodori” didn’t mean “bird,” but “little bird”)?
- It seemed from her descriptions of the storybooks she preferred that she was mostly reading level 2 books, even though she was more or less a true beginner at the beginning of her studies, and so I wonder how fluently she was able to read. We know the number of pages and books she had read by the end, but I would be curious as to the average number of unknown words per page she encountered over the course of her studies. In terms of learning a language more efficiently, would it be better for an adult learner with little or no prior experience with the language to exclusively read the more understandable level 1 books or to try to read the more interesting and rich level 2 books, assuming she or he had equal access to a large number of both?
かいけつゾロリ やせるぜ！ダイエット大さくせん
Incredible Zorori: I’m Going To Slim Down! The Great Diet Strategy
作／絵：原 ゆたか（はら ゆたか, Hara Yutaka）
Level 3 本, 103 pages, 3,000 words (rough estimate; see difficulty section) ★★★★★
Hardcover
When I got this book out from the library it was low on my priority list, because I thought it was some preachy book designed to explain calories and nutrition to kids with the help of cute cartoon animals. After all, there was the title, and the back cover also had a chart showing a list of foods, their calories and how long you’d have to do various exercises to burn them off. Bored now, I thought as I evaluated the cover, but two seconds of flipping through it revealed that it was one of my prized level 2.5 books. I’ve officially classified it as a level 3 book just due to its length and relative complexity, but it has a lot in common with level 2 books: tons of illustrations, big, spaced text written mostly in hiragana, with barely any kanji and furigana even for katakana words. I can finish a book like that in an evening and if I was Queen of the World I’d have a new one every night, so even though it looked lackluster it went right into my bag. If I had taken two minutes and not two seconds, I would have seen that I had judged it quite wrongly: it’s not a nutrition textbook, it’s an adventure story! It turned out to easily be my favorite of the level 2.5 and 3 books I’ve read so far.
I didn’t know it at the time, but there’s a whole series of books about Zorori, an anti-hero trickster fox, and his two followers, the boars Ishishi and Noshishi. (The word for boar in Japanese, it should be noted, is inoshishi.) At the moment there’s a great Wikipedia page about Zorori that I do hope won’t be bothered by Wikipedia guardians anytime soon. In this book, the trio realize that they’ve gained an awful lot of weight lately and resolve to diet, but first they misinterpret a dozen different diet books, then spend all their money on scams; desperate for cash and diet tips, they take on the job of delivering three weight-loss gadgets to a “Madame Diet” for her daughter’s birthday party. When they run into a giant catfish along the way, those gadgets get put to some decidedly non-traditional uses…
Difficulty
I found it hard to classify this book as either level 2 or 3; I think of it as level 2.5 but I thought that as long as I’m going with this classification system it should be one or the other. It shares in common with other advanced level 2 books large, spaced text, lots of illustrations and almost no kanji, but I think the length and complexity of vocabulary makes it more of a level 3 book in the end. You’ll note that the estimated word count is two or three times higher than those of other advanced level 2 books I’ve read. (Because there are four text sizes, some pages have considerably more text than others; my estimate is that there are about 30 words per page on average, but it’s probably a fairly low guess.) Even though the only kanji used are ones taught in first grade, there were a good number of words that I didn’t know, and at least one pun that I could almost see sailing right over my head. For an extensive reader at an intermediate level or for one who can cope with a whole lot of unknown words this series should offer a lot of value, but don’t be tricked into thinking these books are easy just because they look like they should be.
The format is nice for an extensive reader, too: I’m not really into manga as reading practice material because I’m not really into manga they’re centered on images and dialogue and I like to have all the surrounding words and descriptions a book provides, but this one reads something like a manga-book hybrid. The majority of the book is in prose with illustrations, but some illustrations have a comic-style arrangement, and while part of the dialogue is mixed into the prose lots of it is given in speech bubbles. The result still feels more like a book than a comic to me, but it’s dynamic, playful and easy to follow.
Running the sample text through Reading Tutor, its vocabulary level is rated “normal” and of the five kanji, two are old-JLPT level 3 and three are old-JLPT level 4.
Sample text
Note: All kanji and katakana have furigana in the original.
「ああ、この 町 すべての たくはいびんやさんに ことわられてしまった この しごと、 あなたたちに つとまりますかねえ。」
「しつれいな！ この かたを どなたと こころえるだか？ けわしい 火山から きょうだいな 「きょうりゅうの たまご」を はこびだした ことの ある ゾロリせんせとは、 この かたで あるだ！」
＃くわしいことは「かいけつゾロリまもるぜ！きょうりゅうのたまご」をよんでみてね。
「それは しつれいいたしました。 じつは はこんでいただきたい ものは、マダム・ダイエットの ひとりむすめ、 スリムおじょうさまの たんじょうびプレゼントなのです。 ただし、こんや 八じまでに、むこうぎしの おやしきの うら口へ、この ボートで こっそりと というのが、じょうけんです。」
How to get it
On Amazon.co.jp, this book (as well as the other Zorori books) is ￥945, or $11.41 at the time of this writing. (That’s before the handling fee of ￥300 – raising the price to $15.03 – and shipping.) Kinokuniya has it for $15.75. Even better, they have a lot of the Zorori books in stock at around the same price; just search for かいけつゾロリ for the full selection.
There’s only one Japanese graded reader out there that I’ve found so far, so I really like the idea of finding a series you like at a level you can read and sticking with it – which is a big part of why this book gets its own review and other books I’ve liked just as much just get a mini-review. I find myself eyeing a link on Kinokuniya’s page where a set of 44 Zorori books can be had for a mere ￥39,600. At the time I write this, that’s $477.93, which is about $277.93 more than I ought to be spending on books all this year. Still, I can’t help but do the math and wonder if $10.86 per book might not be a real bargain… It won’t actually happen, but it’s a pleasing daydream. Even more pleasing is the daydream where I pick up a bunch of used Zorori books cheaply — the low prices for second-hand books on Amazon.co.jp have not escaped my notice — but I don’t think I could swing that without navigating some sort of proxy service or burdening one of my friends… Well, it’s not like I’ve run out of library books yet!
I started trying out extensive reading over a year ago, but a dread of unknown words and a language learning sensibility shaped by training in intensive reading meant that I wasn’t really able to give up the dictionary until… well… Even though I’ve gone so far as to create a blog about my extensive reading efforts, I still have great difficulty with not breaking the first of the three principles. I’ve considered the idea of starting a blog like this for several months, but how could I talk about how great an idea extensive reading was when I was still making up vocabulary lists for most every book I read? The previous, unpublished post I wrote on the subject was titled “Dictionary Usage in Extensive Reading: Do As I Say, Not As I Do.”
In theory, it’s a sound idea. Time spent focusing on single words is time you can’t use for reading lots of words, understanding words through context and reading them repeatedly helps you remember them better, and if you’re resorting to the dictionary all the time it’s a sign the book isn’t at your fluent reading level anyways. Like the idea of extensive reading in general, it makes good intuitive sense.
In practice, I struggle with not using the dictionary. I like to know precisely what I’m reading, and I get uncomfortable if I know I’m not understanding something. (The jargon for this sort of mindset is low ambiguity tolerance. Painfully low, in my case. Possibly non-existent.) I almost always have my laptop at hand, and since I use a dictionary program and not a paper dictionary it doesn’t take much time to look up a word, making me think “Well, just one won’t take long” — and then before I know it I’ve looked up five words and gotten distracted by an e-mail besides. I also rationalize it by thinking that I remember words better if I know the kanji for them as well so it’s better for me to look them up, or by thinking that I only have so many books I can read before I have to start spending money, so I’d better squeeze all the utility out of them that I can. Those things aren’t not true, but the fact is that I have more fun reading, I read more smoothly and I get more out of the experience when I’m not looking up words every two minutes.
If you, like me, are trying to disentangle yourself from the dictionary, here are the ways I’ve found to get out of the habit of looking up everything:
- Take the book to a cafe, park or library. Bonus: learning material in more than one area improves retention.
- Draw a nice hot bath; read until the water gets cold. The smell of peppermint is supposed to enhance memory, so you could pick up some peppermint bath salts or something like that. (It’s always jasmine oil for me, memory benefits be hanged.)
- Make a habit of reading in bed – with the dictionary or computer safely in the other room. When I was a little kid, I used to love to read in bed before I went to sleep, but when I got older I stopped. Recently, we added some more lights to our bedroom, and now I like reading in bed again. As if it wasn’t enough to be reading picture books again, extensive reading has once more put me in touch with my inner child.
- Take a cross-country plane trip. I don’t think I’d have ever finished ジローのあくしゅ — which was really just a touch above my fluent reading rate — without reaching for the dictionary otherwise…
- Promise yourself that if there were any words that just really drove you batty, you can look them up after you finish the book. This is a compromise I made with myself, and I find that there aren’t too many I have a burning need to define: when I really get into a book, the strength of all the other words carries me right over the unknown ones, and I come to understand them or don’t really need to understand them to still enjoy myself.
Tagged with: dictionary usage in extensive reading
こどもマナーとけいご絵じてん
Children’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Manners and Keigo (Polite Language)
監修 (Editors): 坂東 眞理子（ばんどう まりこ, Bandō Mariko）、蒲谷 宏（かばや ひろし, Kabaya Hiroshi）
Level 3 絵辞典, 173 pages, 7,000 words (est.) ★★★★★
Paperback
This book provides very detailed, yet simply written instructions to kids on subjects such as table manners, proper behavior at the doctor’s, how to talk politely to teachers, how to get along with other people and so on. As you may have guessed from my previous review, I like to get simpler books from the library, but actually spend my money on books that stand up to rereading and provide a lot of reinforcement of new vocabulary within themselves. With this book, if you have ever had a problem with the 〜したりする pattern you will perfectly understand its use within ten pages, because instructions like “don’t make a lot of noise or run around in the library” are usually given in that form. Furthermore, the word きちんと — properly — will be burnt into your brain. Because of the extensive illustrations and the short, simple texts, even words you don’t know at all are pretty easy to guess from context, and because of the amount of repetitive text, those words often show up again and become easier to remember each time.
On another level, I find the process by which children learn polite behavior in any culture fascinating. I grew up watching how my mom and dad behaved in public and my own behavior was corrected by teachers, my family and so on, so of course I’m comfortable with my manners as an adult American. Still, I always felt not quite right while I was studying in Japan, and since I only stayed for a semester, that was hardly long enough to lose that feeling. Much of the content in this book is universal: don’t throw trash on the street, don’t run around during funerals, say “thank you” and be careful with other people’s possessions. Still, there are a lot of bits of etiquette unique to Japan: when and how deeply to bow, chopstick manners that go beyond those staples Japanese homestay students learn, “don’t stick your chopsticks straight into the rice” and “don’t pass food from your chopsticks to someone else’s” and even what to do with your hands if you’re sitting in seiza. (Girls are supposed to keep their hands in their laps, flat and arranged in a 八 shape, and their knees together; boys have their knees spread apart a little, with their hands in a loose fist on each knee.) If you had grown up Japanese, your mother would have pushed your little head down into a correct bow; short of being reborn or finding a friend who’s comfortable with criticizing an adult as if they were a child, a straightforward text is your best bet to understand the forms. Even if you aren’t planning on having to get along in Japanese society any time soon, it’s greatly amusing to see the “don’ts” of polite society laid out so bluntly. I do love the section on cleaning up one’s language — for example, don’t say うん to your teacher, say はい, and drop でかい for 大きい. The process of how non-native speakers learn polite language is completely different from the experience a Japanese kid is going to have, and it’s fascinating to see it from the other side. (I, too, have heard the tales of non-Japanese job seekers getting jobs because their keigo was better than that of the native Japanese graduates; I don’t know if that’s a real thing, or if it is the kind of story we language learners tell each other to lift our collective spirits.)
I also wonder to what degree the book is idealized; how much of it is what parents really want from their kids, and how much of it is how the authors think kids should behave? One section says「おやすみなさい」と言ってねる (Say “goodnight,” and go to sleep) which is reasonable, but shows an illustration of a child bowing as she says goodnight to her dad. Is it common for kids to bow as they say goodnight? Is it a hyper-correct reflection of (perhaps perceived) upper-class behavior, or general idealized behavior? Is it a personal dream of the author’s or illustrator’s, as yet unrealized by any kid anywhere? There is a very interesting lang-8 diary — or series of lang-8 diaries, perhaps — to be made out of my questions about the book; I haven’t been writing much for the past couple of months, but I am bound to go on a Japanese writing kick at some point, and when I do I will report back.
Apparently one of the writers, Mariko Bandō, is the president of Showa Women’s University and a prolific writer; I found this New York Times article about a book of advice for modern Japanese women and this article about her background and philosophy helped to put this book in context somewhat.
Difficulty
The estimated count of 7,000 words is a definite lowball – each set of two pages has a short section directed towards the parents, and I didn’t count those. (I estimate the おうちのかたへ sections would add another 9,000 words all together, bringing the estimated total closer to 16,000. They are not horribly hard (although with no furigana they’re officially off the extended reading classification chart) so consider the book doubly useful for an extensive reader: it has something to go back to later when your skill has improved. There are so many pictures that even if you didn’t know Japanese, you could generally tell what’s being explained. By Hitosugi and Day’s classification system, I think it’s about a 3, but it has a rather healthy amount of kanji (I imagine so that it’s accessible to young kids, but still useful to older ones).
Running a random page through Reading Tutor, the vocabulary level was rated “easy” and there were 18 different kanji used; going by the old JLPT difficulty levels, 22% were level 2, 44% were level 3 and 33% were level 4.
Sample text
Note: All kanji have furigana in the original text.
友だちとうまくいかないときは
きのう、すずきくんとけんかをした。今、どんな気持ちでいるかな。きょう、「ごめんなさい」と言ってみよう。
相手の気持ちを考える
「なんでおこっているんだろう」「どうしてこまっているんだろう」と友だちの気持ちを想像してみよう。うまくいかなくなったときのことを思い出して、相手の立場だったらどう思うか、自分がしたことや気持ちがどうだったか考えてみようね。
相手に聞いてみる
友だちがどんなふうに考えているのか、すなおに聞いてみよう。そして、自分の気持ちも伝えよう。もしかしたら、おたがいにかんちがいをしていることがあるかもしれないよ。どうしてうまくいかなくなったのか、いっしょに考えてみよう。
Where to find it
I picked this one up at Kinokuniya as well, and you can order it online from them for $42 plus shipping. You can get it through Amazon.co.jp as well, where it is ￥2,520 new ($30.41 at the time of writing).
I haven’t looked very much into websites for children about manners, but you could try こどもEマナー教室 (Children’s Classroom for Good Manners). Or, post a comment if you run across any other useful ones!
Tagged with: bando mariko • children's illustrated encyclopedia of manners and keigo • kabaya hiroshi • keigo • manners • polite language • politeness • こどもマナーとけいご絵じてん
This is an incomplete list of all the Level 6 books available from the Tacoma Public Library; it’ll be updated as I keep reading them.
From Extensive Reading in Japanese, the definition of a Level 6 book:
Level 6: Easy unabridged books for adolescent native readers from twelve to fifteen years old. These books still include furigana; and there are few pictures. The content is more complex. Some specialized vocabulary items appear.
I’ve added Amazon links for the benefit of having title images and just in case anyone wants to subsidize my reading, but if you’re interested in ordering any of these, I’d also recommend you look them up on Kinokuniya’s website and compare shipping costs. Also, all title translations are my own unless otherwise indicated, names are family name first, then given name, and 作 and 絵 mean “author” and “illustrator,” respectively.
Placeholder post.
This is an incomplete list of all the Level 5 books available from the Tacoma Public Library; it’ll be updated as I keep reading them.
From Extensive Reading in Japanese, the definition of a Level 5 book:
Level 5: Beginning at this level, material is quantitatively and qualitatively different from the lower levels. Level 5 books usually have more than 100 pages and fewer illustrations. Some kanji have furigana, but not all of them. Stories are fully developed and more detailed. Japanese native readers would be ten to thirteen years old.
I’ve added Amazon links for the benefit of having title images and just in case anyone wants to subsidize my reading, but if you’re interested in ordering any of these, I’d also recommend you look them up on Kinokuniya’s website and compare shipping costs. Also, all title translations are my own unless otherwise indicated, names are family name first, then given name, and 作 and 絵 mean “author” and “illustrator,” respectively.
ジローのあくしゅ
A Handshake from Jirō
作：岸川 悦子（きしかわ えつこ, Kishikawa Etsuko）
絵：土田 義晴（つちだ よしはる, Tsuchida Yoshiharu）
Level 5 本, 125 pages, 5,700 words (est.)
My first level 5 book since I started this project, it wasn’t precisely hard, just long and with a higher proportion of unknown words than I tend to like. I understood the content and most of the details but missed just enough to annoy me, so apparently a book this level is currently about my limit, and I will try to stick to books that are a little easier for a while. I wonder if most level 5 books are about on this level, or if it’s a bit on the easy side since the narrator is a dog?
I’m actually feeling a bit of relief about reading these higher-level books because I missed having kanji around. For a Japanese language learner, used to thinking about kanji mastery as a benchmark, books in all hiragana are lonely; besides, kanji are fun, remove ambiguity and make reading quicker. It is kind of a joke among people who do translation for rom hacking; a hacker with little experience with Japanese will think saying “Translating this game should be easy! There’s no kanji!” is actually a selling point to prospective translators. To better ones than me, perhaps.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about the classification system used in “Extensive Reading in Japanese” – it’s not that there’s anything wrong with it, it’s more that I’m never satisfied. The two major criteria are kanji and furigana use and pictures; that leaves a lot of room for variation within the levels. Picture books are usually level 2 — unless they’re like 鉄のキリンの海わたり, with over 1,000 words and some fairly advanced kanji and vocabulary. And what of books like くんくまくんとおやすみなさい that are technically level 2, with no kanji and pictures on every page, but are at least four times longer than most picture books? How about my manga history book about the Meiji period? There’s lots of pictures on every page, meaning that it couldn’t be scored higher than level 4, but its vocabulary level is certainly much higher than that of メル友からのメッセージ, which is also level 4. There is no real value in changing the system, since it’s nice to be able to look at a page from a book and be able to slot it into more or less its appropriate level immediately. I’m merely curious as to what a more complex classification system would look like.
When I’m thinking about a book’s complexity, these are the kinds of things I keep in mind:
- How is katakana handled?
- What kinds of pictures are there?
- What kanji, if any, are used?
- How much furigana is used?
- How advanced is the vocabulary?
- Are there chapters?
- Are there spaces between words?
- What is the font size?
- How many pages does it have?
- How many words does it have?
Assign a scale to each variable and add numbers, and theoretically, you could come up with a tidy little scoring system. Possible example:
Katakana Use
- No words in katakana (1)
- Words in katakana have furigana (2)
- Words in katakana stand alone (3)
Properly calibrated, this would allow readers to determine a book’s relative complexity just from a review. (Improperly calibrated… well, my first stab at such a system gave こまじょちゃんとあなぼっこ and 鉄のキリンの海わたり the same score.) In a perfect world, then, you could perhaps go online and search for every fictional book that falls between 20 and 25 points, and wind up with all sorts of great books exactly at your reading level.
At this point I am talking to myself more than anything. The six-level classification system has made it a lot easier for me to pick out the right books, and there’s really no need to change it at this point. Instead of coming up with complex rating systems, I really should just be reading more! Still, it’s on my mind…
Tagged with: classification system
１分で読める江戸の笑い話（落語を生んだ江戸の笑い話・こわい話１）
Funny Stories from Edo You Can Read In One Minute (Edo’s Funny and Scary Stories That Produced Rakugo, #1)
作 (Writer)：加納 一郎（かのう いちろう, Kanō Ichirō）
絵 (Illustrator)：中沢 正人（なかざわ まさと, Nakazawa Masato）
Level 4 本, 88 pages, 4,500 words (est.) ★★★★★
Hardcover
Forgive me if this is all familiar to you, but Edo (江戸) is Tokyo’s former name. It also lends its name to the Edo Period (江戸時代, 1603 ~ 1868), when political power was moved from Kyoto to Edo, turning an insignificant village with a castle in it into Japan’s major financial and cultural center. So even if all you know of rakugo (落語, traditional comic stories) is that one chapter in “Dave Barry Does Japan,” the 江戸 in the title is a clue that these stories are going to involve a lot of samurai, stingy rich guys, wise-cracking commoners and other staples of period drama.
There’s 41 stories, each two pages long and illustrated by a small picture, and each story is essentially a long joke. This is a great format for a book used in extensive reading, because if you’ve understood the story you’ll get the joke, if you don’t get the joke the essential clues are somewhere in those two pages, and if you still don’t understand, just go on to the next story! The only story I knew before reading the book was まんじゅうこわい (A Fear of Manjū), so they were all fresh to me and getting the joke always seemed like an accomplishment. Many of the jokes rely on understated, dry humor (which is like catnip to me) and they don’t generally need any outside knowledge to understand; the occasional references to other stories or concepts are usually explained in a footnote.
With so many books out there I covet I hesitate to actually buy an easy book, because once I’ve read it once or twice I get bored with it and don’t feel like there’s much value in reading it again, but this one combines the benefits of being at a low enough level that I actually can read the stories in one minute with having quite a lot of content to enjoy and reread. My hope is to collect the whole series, on the assumption that they’re all about the same level and draw from a common pool of vocabulary, but even just this one would be a fantastic addition to an extensive reading collection.
Difficulty
According to Hitosugi and Day’s classification system, I’d give it a 4. (I wouldn’t call the pictures “ample” exactly, but for some of the stories that baffled me at first they were a great help.) Kanji that are taught in first and second grade do not have furigana, but all other kanji do, so it is probably targeted to about that reading level.
Running a representative story through Reading Tutor, there were 39 different kanji used; 2 of them (5.1%) were JLPT level 1, 16 (41%) were JLPT level 2, 11 (28%) were JLPT level 3 and 10 (25.6%) were JLPT level 4. Based on the vocabulary, Reading Tutor rated it as “easy.”
There is some mild dialect going on in the dialogue; if you can handle the odd ない to ねえ shift, you’ll be OK. Also, there’s some Edo-period vocabulary defined at the bottom of each page it appears on.
Sample text
身投げ
昔、江戸の大きな橋には、番人がいて通行料を取る所がありました。
「近ごろ、この橋から身を投げる者が毎晩いるということだ。よく、見張っていろ。」
＃身を投げる 水の中などに飛びこんで、自殺すること。
と、役人に言われて、橋番のおじいさん、夜もねないで見張っています。
すると、一人の若いむすめがやって来て、橋の真ん中に立ち止まり、じっと暗い川の流れを見つめています。
「あのむすめ、きっと川へ飛びこむつもりにちがいねえ。」
おじいさん、あわてて走り寄り、むすめをつかめました。
「これ、ここから毎晩身を投げるのはおまえだろう。」
How to get it
I bought mine at the Seattle Kinokuniya; you can order it online from them for $29.60 plus shipping if they still have it in stock.
It’s also available from Amazon; at the moment it’s ￥1,680 ($20.74 as of today) plus shipping. If you’re outside Japan, Amazon.co.jp’s shipping costs are most likely a rather weightier matter than Kinokuniya’s shipping costs, so keep that in mind.
I have a weakness for physical books, but if you’d like to try some Edo-period stories yourself without going to the trouble of finding this collection, you can read plenty at 福娘童話集 きょうの江戸小話 (Hukumusume’s Fairy Tale Collection: Today’s Story from Edo).
Tagged with: １分で読める江戸の笑い話 • edo • edo period • edo stories • funny stories • Kanō Ichirō • level 4 • Nakazawa Masato • rakugo • short stories • stories from edo • 中沢 正人 • 加納 一郎
- Extensive reading is known as 多読, or tadoku in Japanese. To try it, start with very easy books (ones with no more than two or three unknown words per page), and follow these principles:
1. Don’t look up words in the dictionary while reading.
2. Skip over parts you don’t understand.
3. If you aren’t enjoying one book, toss it aside and get another.
Find something to read!
Hundreds of free books and stories online
Local bookstores and libraries
Buying new and used books online
For more information, read "What Is Extensive Reading?" and "Classification System."
To learn more about Kunihide Sakai, who developed the three principles of tadoku and has worked to popularize it in Japan for years, read this interview with him.
Finally, for more than you ever wanted to know about why I believe extensive reading is worth your time, read my tadoku manifesto. Currently reading:
Superfluous Stats
Books read: 303
Word count (since starting the blog): 380,500Categories
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Extensive Reading
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