Graded Readers and Parallel Texts "Book Club"

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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And today I finished the last booklet in level 4 of Ask Graded Readers. Unless they have released new ones since I bought them, I have now read all they have released on paper in this series. All 3 volumes for every level (0-4).

It has been a journey.

If I had to pick one favorite story from all, it would be 坊っちゃん (上下, aka two booklets to tell one story), originally written by Soseki, but obviously simplified and shortened to be in volume 3 of level 4. It was also the hardest story of all.

Admittedly though, it has been a long time since I read level 0-2, and I remember the fun police man volumes (Ryou-san I think his name was) pretty well too. And there were some good fairy tales in level 2 and 3 as far as I can recall.

If I was gonna give a recommendation going forward, I would say pick level 0 or level 1 to start reading and skip the other one. Go directly to level 2 after that if you want to continue with graded readers. By the time you hit level 3 and 4, you can definitely struggle through easy native content, so it is entirely possibly to stop after level 2.

However, I have appreciated the +1 level of difficulty with the graded readers. Especially this last/third volume of level 4 helped solidified a lot of grammar points that I sorta knew, and I got to read a longer classical work (there are several classic authors throughout the later levels but only short stories).

I feel like 坊っちゃん is closer to what real native Japanese is like than any other booklet in the later levels. (Although I’m sure it is simplified a lot, having been written over a century ago, and also the original being more than double the length of the story as presented in the Ask.)

The other booklets in volume 3 (of level 4) are easier, one makes you hungry though since it talks about Japanese food. :drooling_face: But should still be good reading practice. Honestly though, easier native content is definitely readable if you can read level 4. (As I said, I think even level 3 might be overkill when it comes to graded readers, but I could certainly argue for it being a good step up in difficulty to help ease the transition to native content. Level 4 is definitely more than is needed, but I’d recommend volume 3 for the excellent content in that one.)

I do have some parallel texts too, but I have no idea when I will tackle those. I don’t see myself getting any other graded readers in the future, nor picking up more parallel texts (unless they happen to be the best way to get a specific story). Instead it is all native content with no extra handholds… except this forum with its book clubs and knowledgeable peoples. :joy:

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Glad to hear you say that, as it totally matches my experience. When I tried to read native material for the first time, it was still too hard for me (I tried and dropped Yotsuba and Kiki then). I picked one volume of a Level 2 graded reader, and that somehow made reading click for me. It kickstarted me enough that I was able to dive into native material again afterwards (and I never looked back).

See you in the bookclubs :hugs:

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:hugs:

I definitely don’t regret getting all graded readers to start. I’m a bit of completionist at times when I forget how often that leads me to grief. :joy: And it was a slog sometimes. But then there were gems like 坊っちゃん and some excellent fairy tales that made the other ones worth it—kinda.

Honestly, 坊っちゃん (and 四十七人の侍, just give me samurai, the more the better :joy:) was so worth it.

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I got all the levels, in more than one set even. But I have yet to read it all (though I try, cause completionist =P )
But I keep getting busy reading native material instead, so yeah, I can see how the last few levels feel close enough to native to not really be needed.
I love the low level ones for being such fun easy reads, making you feel confident in reading.

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Well, especially in the case of Ask Graded Readers that are also fairly expensive. Cost/benefit really weights towards native material once you get to level 3/4, but they’ve done me so much good. Plus there are some good stories there, and fairy tales if read in originals can have pretty obtuse language so could be a while before it was possible to read them in native form.

Agreed. They are so much better than the random sentences or mini-situations in textbooks and the like. And still very readable/understandable unlike native material is (at that level of Japanese).

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I just noticed the fancy new subarea, Bookclubs!! Wow this was a wanted one! :grin:
Went to move this thread, but it had been moved already :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Didn’t scroll too much in this thread, but I have Furigana Japan’s ‘Long-ago Stories of Japan’… it’s a newer edition so the font size and layout are an improvement over their earlier editions.

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Nice…shout out to @MissDagger for her “personal study thread” and pointing me to this particular thread! I’ve just started working through the Ask Tadoku series. I only ordered one volume of the level 0 series, before I quickly saw the better value in the Level 1 series (vertical text, actual kanji, a little more in-depth stories…but the same grammar & vocab base) and fully ordered that set. Felt pretty good about the Level 1 series and read the first volume of Level 1 books. Now reading Ask Tadoku Level 1, volumes 2 & 3. Now that I know about this thread, I may go back and find the few items here or there that I “mostly understood” but want “full clarification” on, via this thread.

I actually just received the entire Ask Tadoku Level 2 (all three volumes) series in the mail yesterday! Excited to dive in…and to reach out to this great group of people, with what I’m sure will be many questions. My goal is to try and start reading as much as I can…and currently the graded readers seem like the only good way for me to do that at the moment.

Looking forward to posting in here. Thanks Everyone :slight_smile:

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You are most welcome! :+1: I’m glad someone beside me is getting something out of my study log. :joy:

I promise I/we will do our best to answer your questions. :smiley:

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I started to listen to/read the Ask Tadoku Level 3 stories. I saw that my last posts on this thread were almost 3 years ago, time flies!! (I was listening to/reading the Level 2 stories at that time)
I recently got motivated by the fact I will take the JLPT N3 on December, so I need to improve my listening/reading skills.

I will maybe post some updates on this thread, and if I manage to finish all Level 3 stories, maybe I will treat myself after the JLPT by buying all Level 4 volumes :slight_smile:

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I’ve spent years on these myself! I have periods where I actively read them, then forget about them =P
Just started lvl 3 myself, after finally finishing all lvl 0-2 sets I have.

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Having a blast with these readers so far. So far, I really liked the ハチコ story (although really depressing!), the story of ojiisan & obaasan trying to sell hats on NYE, and just yesterday read the spooky cab story with the yellow-clothed girl.

In each story, I found one or two slight questions related to grammar / word-usage. I need to go back, find those and post a few of those questions! I’m actually kind of impressed by the quality of a few of these stories…I thought I would just be reading the typical “John/Maria go to the store” type of stories…but these have been quite neat!

I’m hoping the jump to LVL 2 isn’t that large…

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It isn’t as far as I can remember. Each bump up is very nice. My sense is that each volume of a level gets a tiny bit harder, but honestly that could be just me making things up. But it meant that reading all volumes of each level definitely made me feel ready for the next one.

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Yeah, I did notice (at least to me) that Level 1–Volume 2 was slightly more complex than Level 1–Volume 1…so thinking there’s something to that. That’s great news about the jump, that it all seemed very gradual for you, and no sudden “spike”. Hoping I can keep my current study plan in place by making my way through WK & Bunpro, and in doing so I’m naturally ready to jump up in the Graded Readers as they present themselves.

@MissDagger , if you don’t mind me asking–I’ve seen a lot of your other posts (and seen you at other places like Bunpro (if I’m not mistaken)), and your reading level seems pretty strong right now. My ultimate goal for Japanese language learning is to be able to read/consume interesting content (Manga, TV shows, fiction, short stories, etc.). I don’t want to spend time unproductively (which sums up the past 3 years! :laughing:), but finding readable content for me has been the most enlightening discovery thus far.

If I maintain WaniKani progress at a steady rate, keep chipping away at Bunpro (done with N5 in a week or two, then on to N4 content), and periodically add miscellaneous/interesting words to personal SRS decks as I stumble across them…do you think this is a solid path towards this goal? I’m wondering if there’s something I’m missing that you found insightful. I just discovered Satori Reader earlier this week, and signed up…but remains to be seen if I will “actively” use this as part of my daily/weekly study routines. I don’t want to overload myself too badly with SRS scattered all over the internet. Currently balancing WaniKani, KaniWani, Bunpro & Kitsun for SRS…and that alone is a lot. Was there anything in particular that helped serve as a catalyst for you to advance your reading level?

Cheers! :smiley:

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There might be a spike if you fall behind on the grammar it uses, but as long as you keep learning more grammar I think you’ll be fine.

MissDagger at Bunpro is indeed me. :blush:

Well, lets see here. This will obviously be my opinion and I’m no sage, I just thought I’d put that upfront. :slight_smile: Another thing to know is that I went to Japanese language school in Japan for a year. There I got more solid on grammar (I tried to also add it on Bunpro when it came up in my RL lessons), but the biggest thing it taught me was a fairly broad every day vocabulary. That vocabulary made reading slice of life type manga set in school environments and other everyday locales fairly easy to tackle. Doesn’t mean I don’t look up a lot, because I do.

I think you have a pretty solid path, I have a couple of suggestions, and some general advice.

KaniWani (if you doing reverse English to Japanese) works mostly well for the first 10-15 levels, then more and more synonyms starts showing up and it becomes near impossible to guess which one you’re supposed to answer with.

Bunpro is really good for N5 and N4, by N3 I started having trouble guessing which grammar point I was supposed to use because there were so many similar ones, or near similar. This is one reason I haven’t gone back to BP since I started a break in 2020. I might go back and solidify N3 through it, but I’m not entirely sure. I feel like I’ve mostly found the grammar that is mind bending and really needs extra help, the higher it goes, the more grammar is just a more polite version of X, or more like a common way to phrase things rather than pure grammar.

But I definitely highly recommend BP for N5 and N4.

I really found the graded readers helpful, and then honestly WK book clubs have done so much for me. I got most of my education on native level casual language there (dropping です and ます is barely the beginning). Because that is gonna be the biggest hinder once you hit native content. Casual language, slurring words (すげぇ is すごい for example) and dialect can really trip you up. But joining the ABBC and BBC will help. Especially ABBC that tends to have more grammar discussion. Don’t be afraid to read the previous picks and ask questions, a lot of people still watch the threads so they’ll see your post.

My final, but maybe most important, advice is to be okay with ambiguity and to not try to translate everything into natural English/your native language. I don’t know if you have experience with learning another language, but the sooner you let go of your native language as a crutch for understanding the better. It will be necessary to start, and become less and less necessary. When you start to understand the component parts of a sentence, then try to just hold those in your head and see if you understand how they fit together/the meaning of them.

I’m not sure I’m explaining this well, and I’m not sure people can do it exactly like I do. So example time.

Example with simple sentence

これはペンです。Let’s use this meme Japanese learner’s sentence.

So early on, most people will translate this: This is a pen.
The words have been rearranged to fit English word order. Is have been added, because です doesn’t technically mean is, but that is something that will maybe become clear well… a long time from now. I barely understand the grammatical stuff that makes です technically not “is”. >_>

Maybe the learner will then move on to: As for this, (it) is a pen. ( Xは is often translated as “as for X”)
Now the learner is trying to more closely match the Japanese grammar and what different particles will do.

What I suggested above, is to move on to this when possible:
これ (this) は (as for/topic particle) ペン (pen) です (is/exists)
And holding these elements in my head in this exact order, or when the sentences are complex I might reshuffle a little to be able to do it, I ask myself if I understand what the sentence means. And my brain is like: “there is pen”. :heavy_check_mark: And I move on.

Notice the meaning isn’t as exact as a true translation would be. I’m not trying to translate well, I’m just trying to understand, and to do it with as little English as possible. Preferably, I don’t even figure out a sentence, I just kinda see the meaning in my head if that makes sense.

Also know that depending on how complex/difficulty a sentence is, you might go from just reading a sentence with no problem to carefully diagraming out a sentence that made absolutely no sense. This is a sliding scale. After all native content freely goes from the simplest sentences to super complex ones as it sees fit. And from one sentence to the next, the complexity might radically change, and therefore your ability to understand it.

So biggest catalyst is probably the casual language I learned through reading a casual language heavy manga with a WK book club. Honestly, once you get more comfortable with casual language so you can look up those parts (because you can guess what is missing or have been slurred), native content just becomes so much more accessible because dictionaries are our friends.

I hope my ramblings are useful. xD

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Very useful, thanks!!!

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Thank you so much for this, and for taking the time for me for a thoughtful and formative response. I truly appreciate it. I totally get what you mean by not trying to do 1:1 translations. I think I’ve gotten my head around this pretty well so far…as Tae Kim helped form my brain early on with this. A lot of his “translations” he wouldn’t honor with purely English variants, he would translate as as you did with your pen example.

I definitely agree that simple sentences I read…and I’m like “Heck yeah, I read that whole thing…without pausing, and understood everything, in real time!”. And other times, I have to break down a sentence into clauses & components, and re-jumble it all together again into a sentence meaning that makes sense to me. And this whole process is not fluid or organic in my head…though it is getting somewhat more natural for me. I will say, the complex clause structures of sentences can definitely trip me up…but I’m sure that gets better with practice. I need to find a solid way for my brain to 100% think in Subject-Object-Verb order…vs. English order. I’m trying, but it’s difficult to trick my brain into this thought pattern in a naturally occurring way.

Also, I think you helped set me straight on KaniWani. THANK YOU. Unfortunately, I’m on a third reset of WK (…thanks Life!)…and busted out the KaniWani this go around to practice additional writing with Apple Pencil scribble support. I’m a huge fan of writing, and write out all of my lessons for WaniKani & Bunpro. I love writing Kanji & Kana…but KaniWani is starting to be more of a pain than it’s worth with all of the synonyms…and it’s slowing me down. I think you helped me realize that this may be “wasted time”, and to put this aside, and make room for other things. Recall is great, but without KaniWani…I’m worried all I’m doing is consuming, and not “generating”. Maybe that’s fine for now. I guess I’ll see if I’m struggling with recall later on. The best I do without it, is generate fake sentences/dialogue scenarios with myself in the shower (AKA talking to myself like a crazy person :laughing: )

I want to get a hold of a Japanese tutor one of these days…but IDK why I haven’t yet. Fear, I guess? The thought that “I’m not ready?”. I’ve found a few local folks on the Wyzant app (tutoring app)…maybe I need to bite the bullet and reach out for help. I have found that one of the most difficult aspects to Japanese language study is knowing what to study and when, and this is sometimes difficult when you are only in your own bubble, or varying bubbles of the internet. I think a tutor could straighten that out quickly.

You hit the nail on the head with the ABBC and BBC clubs on WaniKani!! That’s where I think I’m headed next after the Graded Readers. Unfortunately, last year (last time I was “in the thick” of studying) I signed up for Yotsuba to! and the level of casual use was too difficult for me. I think I had gotten a little ahead of myself then, having not known about the graded readers. So I feel better now knowing that I can use the graded readers, and now Bunpro has a lot more to offer in the form of reading exercises these days that I can build myself up to participate in the book clubs here eventually.

You are very kind to help me with suggestions @MissDagger – I greatly appreciate it!! :smiley: :smiley:

Edit (added): I think I will drop KaniWani & continue the rest of my study routine. Accelerate my Bunpro a bit and (slightly) slow down my WaniKani to equalize things a bit. Hoping to finish Bunpro N4 maybe around WaniKani Level ~20-25?. Keep picking away at the graded readers, and hopefully move up to Graded Reader LVL 2 here very shortly, and maybe LVL 3 as well if not too challenging not long after.

One more question for you!! :wink: If you completed Bunpro N4 (or close to completing), and maybe WaniKani level ~25-ish…do you think that’s an appropriate time to pick up some of the ABBC / BBC book clubs? I no longer want to pick up things and have them way beyond my learning level…as I’ve learned that wasn’t getting me anywhere. Neither do I want to solely read/learn stuff I already know. There’s a sweet spot for “jumping up in difficulty”…wondering if you think this is about that appropriate time for that. Thanks!!

Also, good luck getting to level 60 by year end…you got this!! :muscle:

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That’s an amazing feeling, isn’t it? :star_struck:

Absolutely! It may take a while but you will notice that you can parse more and more complicated sentences without doing reorders in your head.

The thing is, the more you consume, the more you will extend your vocabulary, and be able to also apply it. And the other important factor is that it’s not necessary to be able to output as much as you can consume. If you asked me, in conversations I can probably use less than 10% of my passive knowledge, but it’s enough to make myself understood and to have hour-long conversations, so I’m totally fine with that. More practice will broaden my abilities in that regard as well. So just start, and it will sort itself out automatically. (But do start! :grin:)

Especially the first chapter of Yotsuba is a beast when it comes to casual language. I have no idea why people recommend it as a beginner’s manga. I would rather recommend to start reading Kiki (which is a book, and it will be quite harder than your graded readers, but it contains standard Japanese (well, outside conversations ofc, but these are not as casual iirc) and is not too hard to read, plus we had two bookclubs so there is lots of help). Or if you like to read a manga, I’d recommend Flying Witch which is written in pretty straightforward language iirc (well, except for the part when one or two persons use the local dialect, but MC does not understand them either so there is always somebody who helps them along).

I’m not MissDagger, but while I’m at it :wink:
That would be a perfect starting place, I think. Don’t worry as much about your WK level as most beginner-friendly books and manga have full furigana so you can technically read them without any kanji knowledge. But the more grammar the better. With N4 grammar you have a solid basis. Of course you will encounter lots of other grammar but you can look it up on Bunpro or elsewhere and learn them bit by bit through exposure.

That’s somewhat unavoidable, unfortunately, as native material does not follow JLPT levels or other beginner learning paths. But if you persevere a little bit, you will make rapid progress. And honestly I don’t think there is anything that can prepare you 100% for native material - sentences will be longer and more complex, that alone was the biggest mind-blow for me when I started to read real stuff. But you’ll quickly get used to it, I am pretty convinced! :muscle:

Happy reading!

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Man I love this community and everyone in it. Really no other place on the internet like it. You all are so helpful— thank you Nicole! Good advice on putting higher priority on grammar and maybe slowing Vocab down (since I can look words up).

I’m a question hog today…. :laughing: :sweat_smile:@NicoleIsEnough , have you read Shirokuma Cafe yet? As for books I own, I have Yotsuba vol 1, as well as the entire Shirokuma series. I will certainly check out Kiki and Flying Witch and see what they’re all about. So thanks for the rec! Curious your thoughts on Shirokuma, and maybe how or where that ranks against other “beginner recommendations” as I do currently own that series. But I’m totally fine with keeping them in the shelf if there are better suggestions to start with first.

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No worries :blush: Fire away!

I started to read Shirokuma Cafe vol. 1 back then with the book club, but I dropped it halfway. The main reasons for me were that the story was a bit silly and “empty” (but I totally see that many people like it, so don’t let that demotivate you) and the other thing was that it’s full of silly and complicated language puns which I found super hard to understand, and without understanding them everything was even more “empty” :rofl:
Maybe if I read it again it would be the same as with Yotsuba, which I picked up again by chance after I had gotten a more solid grasp on casual language, and wow it’s such a cute story :grin:
So bottom line, I think books make the better beginner material, but of course ymmv.

Also, don’t be afraid to try out things and drop them if you find them too hard. I do that all the time! And at some point I will pick them up again and reread or finish them I promise :sweat_smile:

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