id
was set in the arguments array for the "Primary Sidebar" sidebar. Defaulting to "sidebar-1". Manually set the id
to "sidebar-1" to silence this notice and keep existing sidebar content. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 4.2.0.) in /home/bkerr/apps/extensivereading/wp-includes/functions.php on line 5665id
was set in the arguments array for the "Secondary Sidebar" sidebar. Defaulting to "sidebar-2". Manually set the id
to "sidebar-2" to silence this notice and keep existing sidebar content. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 4.2.0.) in /home/bkerr/apps/extensivereading/wp-includes/functions.php on line 5665id
was set in the arguments array for the "Tertiary Sidebar" sidebar. Defaulting to "sidebar-3". Manually set the id
to "sidebar-3" to silence this notice and keep existing sidebar content. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 4.2.0.) in /home/bkerr/apps/extensivereading/wp-includes/functions.php on line 5665id
was set in the arguments array for the "Content Sidebar" sidebar. Defaulting to "sidebar-4". Manually set the id
to "sidebar-4" to silence this notice and keep existing sidebar content. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 4.2.0.) in /home/bkerr/apps/extensivereading/wp-includes/functions.php on line 5665id
was set in the arguments array for the "Footer Sidebars (5-Column)" sidebar. Defaulting to "sidebar-5". Manually set the id
to "sidebar-5" to silence this notice and keep existing sidebar content. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 4.2.0.) in /home/bkerr/apps/extensivereading/wp-includes/functions.php on line 5665EhonNavi now has over 1,000 [...]]]>
EhonNavi now has over 1,000 Japanese picture books available for free! If you are new to tadoku, whatever your ability level is, it’s probably one of the best ways to start. I find that word count is, with a few exceptions, the best way to judge a book’s difficulty level, and so I’ve been reading through them and sorting them by estimated word count. So if you’re a beginning learner, pick out a book from the list! If it turns out to be too hard, find one with fewer words, and if it’s too easy, find one with more words. If you’re advanced enough not to need this kind of guidance, Ehon Navi split the available books by age and that’s probably the best way to find ones within your level. Either way, don’t forget Sakai-sensei’s tadoku guidelines: don’t look up words while reading, skip parts you don’t understand, and if you’re not enjoying the book, get another one.
To access all these free books, you’ll have to register. For help with this, please see my registration walkthrough. And don’t forget that the site is finicky; they want you to be using Windows and Firefox and it might not work otherwise, you have 15 minutes to load the story, and you can only read a story once. For more information on how to successfully use the page, please refer to the EhonNavi entry in my list of reading material.
]]>As far as the actual contest goes, I came in 14th overall and 8th among Japanese language learners, with 3511.45 pages, 3040 of which were from books and 471.45 of which were from videogames, mostly Mother 3. I finished Mother 3, and I just loved being able to play through it in Japanese, but I felt that I couldn’t help but remember my English experience of the game, which meant I didn’t have to rely on my own skill to understand everything. So I think the next game I play will have to be something I’ve never played before.
I first read about the tadoku contest when I was researching extensive reading, and I thought, meh, not really my thing — but then months later, after I started my blog, I connected with other people who were doing it and because I liked them I decided that I may as well try it as well. I’m really glad I did! I know that not everyone goes by (or knows about?) Sakai-san’s three golden tadoku rules like I do, but still it was exciting to be part of a group of people all focused on my particular obsession at the moment. I was really happy to watch all my friends just read and read and read, and I hope everyone got something out of it and keeps going! It also made me more aware of how much time I waste doing inconsequential things like reading Metafilter out of habit; I’m going to try to use my time a little more consciously in the future and to stop doing things that are amusing, but don’t help me learn or do something interesting or useful. There are two months until the next round, so if I practice picking up a book or watching something in Japanese online every time I want to load up a non-essential English website, I should have broken the habit by then.
What I want to do now:
1) Keep on reading, of course – but probably dip back down into level 2 books for a little while. Nikkei Bunko has a ton of picture books, and I haven’t even started looking at them. Plus, after writing that vocabulary post, I feel like I ought to take my own advice – in my experience, I generally feel like I get more out of level 3 books because they’re more complex and rich in information, but I learn more basic vocabulary from lower-level books because of the pictures and the lower level of words. So I will see how that little experiment goes.
2) Listen to more Japanese in general. To my surprise, I’ve found that my completely neglected listening ability has improved since I’ve been reading: the words that I’ve seen often enough to recognize them without conscious thought also seem to be easier to understand through my ears, and since I know more words now I can hear them. I’m not trying to say “Do tadoku and your listening ability will improve too!” My guess is that it’s reasonable to think that massive visual input could be linked to the ability to recognize spoken words, especially for a visual learner like me, but the fact is, my listening skill has always been absurdly bad, and although I’ve spent so much time reading and writing, I’ve spent so little time trying to improve my speaking and listening skills that it makes sense that any sort of exposure to Japanese is bound to have some effect.
3) Practice writing more. There was a point in my life where I wrote constantly, about my life, my thoughts, my memories… I can’t seem to do that right now, so what I might try to do instead, at least for now, is practice writing structures that give me trouble. I’m always forgetting how to produce the most basic things — how to ask people for things, how to say I have to do something, anything to do with passive or causative construction. Plus, I want to review some intermediate grammar structures that I only have the most tenuous hold on, and I think framing grammar practice as writing practice is the only way I’m going to actually do it these days. We hates the textbook, yes we do, especially when there are so many pretty books stacked up all over the apartment… I’ll be doing this at my Japanese blog, most likely.
I usually write short reviews of the books I read, too, and I completely neglected that this month! So I’ll have to catch up on that too.
]]>