NHK News Easy: when did you find it easier?

Japanese Language
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Hi! First post here - I have been very much appreciating the advice in this forum as I’ve started my Japanese journey so thanks for all your collective help already.

A beginner Q on reading: when did you find NHK News Easy start to become manageable?

I’ve seen a few recommendations of it as a good early reading source, and had a quick look but found it mostly a good way beyond me. This isn’t unexpected given how new I am, so would love to hear your experience of when it became more digestible, and what “unlocked” it for you. Everyone’s journey is different! So just looking for some inspiration really.

I’ve also checked out a couple of the free chapters on satori reader which honestly looks excellent - the more specific explanations make unknown words / concepts much easier to grasp than piecing things together using yomitan/jisho for NHK easy.

Thank you!

TF

PS I’m not just using Wanikani to be clear - will avoid this becoming an essay/study log but also using anki for vocab and a couple of grammar resources alongside WK.

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I don’t have a specific answer to the question, but looking at the homepage now, I can see how they’re not all the same level of “easy”. It’s more like, “we took an NHK article and made it easier”, but if it was already a hard topic, like the recent South Korea martial law thing, the easy version will still have many difficult words.

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For me, alongside grammar study, it became possible around level 14-15 to parse it (checking maybe 4 or 5 words in a dictionary for most articles to be able to understand). Then around level 20 after doing it every day it started to feel very manageable and I only looked up around 1 or 2 things per article. Around 25ish it started feeling “easy”, where I could read it relatively without effort, a lot quicker than when I started, and I didn’t usually need to look anything up to understand, and anything I didn’t get I could probably pick up from context. But this was alongside both grammar study and other forms of reading for quite a while, so bear that in mind. The grammar is very consistent, with lots of によると etc, so you get used to it pretty quickly if you look up grammar formations you don’t know to start with. I wouldn’t leave it too long to get started, but yeah maybe level 15ish is when the Kanji isn’t a big handicap - depends on your grammar and external vocab knowledge etc tho.

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I never really understood the obsession with NHK Easy amongst learners. I feel like its pretty shit as a general rec and people just engage with it because thats what other people talk about doing.

Its not actually easy or regulated to some similar level of difficulty, like you mention. And its the damn news. Maybe its just me but does everyone who reads those articles actually find them interesting? Is that why people learn japanese? To read the news?

To OP: just if I might cancel out one of those recommendations I’d like to give my 2 cents. If you don’t actually care about reading the news in japanese, its not a good use of your time. Find something you actually give a shit about to read.

/rant

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About five or six years ago I was a member of a Japanese language and culture Meetup group. Once a month about five or six people would meet at a local chain restaurant for a couple of hours of Japan-related activities. One of those activities was reading through a couple of articles from NHK News Easy.

We would take turns, each reading a sentence and attempting to translate it. The group leader was fairly proficient, and would help the other members when words or sentences were hard to understand.

At the time, I had passed the JLPT N5, and had been studying (or, mostly ‘not studying’) Japanese for a number of years. I found that many or most of the sentences were difficult for me to understand.

Some of the difficulty was due to not knowing many kanji (I had made many attempts to learn kanji, but all of them had been ‘false starts’ - however I could read the furigana, which helped). Other difficulties involved unknown vocabulary (for example, there were lots of references to obscure Japanese government ministries, but there were also plenty of uncommon words including both verbs and nouns). A big difficulty for me was wrapping my brain around convoluted sentence structures and unknown grammar.

Fast forward a few years - I’ve been studying kanji on and off with WK, and at least by this point I’m no longer intimidated by kanji (even though I still have a long way to go as far as completing the WK journey), I’ve learned a lot more vocabulary, but I have not made very much progress in learning grammar.

I still find reading NHK News Easy to be ‘difficult’ - but without a doubt, it’s easier and more approachable than it used to be. I don’t read it every day, rather it’s more like one article a week. If I were to step things up and read it more often, I’m sure that it would help.

I’m reasonably sure that if I were to get my act together, restart WK, get through more of Genki II, and work at improving my reading comprehension by reading more level-appropriate content (such as on Natively), that reading NHK News Easy would become much less of a hurdle, and that it would help me in listening comprehension (when watching online news broadcasts).

FWIW, I do actually find a number of their articles to be at least “modestly interesting” - although many of them are not interesting at all (for example, reporting on economic or political trends or the latest actions by government ministries does not really grab my attention). I also find that many of the articles are unsatisfying both due to their brevity as well as their tendency to be very repetitive.

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I actually really like NHK easy because it gives you a very gentle introduction to vocabulary for stuff like economics, politics and current affairs etc without completely overwhelming you. It’s extremely formulaic and uses really simple and easy sentence structures, and best of all if you already know the news from general existence it’s a lot easier to guess what the unknown terms mean even before looking things up. And you’ll see them a lot if you do an article every day or whatever.

For me I think it took like half a year before I felt like I could tackle basically anything on the page with only having to look up specialised terms. I feel like at that time I got better with stuff like coronavirus terms, Olympics, space etc…

(Don’t bother learning eg the various bureacratic department names or whatever. If it’s important enough to you you’ll learn them over time through sheer repetition)

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This is a very good question… I don’t know, to be honest… :sweat_smile:
I started reading NHK Easy News at around level 20. It was very intimidating at first, because everything is in Japanese. Simplified, sure, but still Japanese. No English letters except for some company names. But then after initial shock I clicked an article and realized I managed to understand most of it.

I’ve read that way for about a month, then, due to various reasons, I ended up taking a break for a year form any Japanese studies. When I resumed, it took me a while to start reading again, but I managed it… And then, as I keep reading them, I realized that I can understand more and more without looking at the dictionary, then, months later, I reached the point when I understand pretty much 100%…

Then there was a long period when NHK News already started feeling too easy, but everything else was still too hard… I’d say I’m only leaving that period about now…

Overall, it depends on the person. As long as you keep reading, you’d be able to understand more and more and it would be easier and easier! Best of luck with your studies! wricat

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I know I have already talked about it several times on Wk but, the extension rikaikun could really help you with these articles. It’s an amazing tool :rocket:

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Thanks all, really helpful variety of perspectives. The point about variability of articles makes sense. I probably need a little more patience as I build vocab, and in the meantime I’ll stick to things that are less “newsy” / political.

Hopefully in a year or so I will come back to this and it will all feel quite different!

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I must say though that if you want something that is “newsy” / political – then NHK Easy News is the best place. They managed to talk about even the most sensitive of topics in a neutral and clam way, which is exactly how I think such topics need to be discussed love2

I am a very sensitive purrson and there are not many news sites I can go to without a panic / anxiety attack; NHK Easy News is one of the few sites that are safe for me trunky_rolling

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I absolutely love the NHK News Web Easy. I find it both informative and helpful in my Japanese practice. There are unfamiliar words here and there, but they are easy to look up and the sentences are pretty comprehensible. I have only just taken my JLPT N4 and the language they are using in NHK News Web Easy is adequate to this level IMHO. I’ve made it my routine now to include it in my studying the language. Try to read at least one article, that appeals to me the most, on a daily basis. I started to feel pretty confident with this source half way into my N4 course.

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I find it quite interesting since I don’t watch any news, so it is a way for me to get some headline news while reading it in Japanese. I think NHK News Easy is a good source as an extra thing to add to your studies.

Why do you think it’s “shit” though @Vanilla? Some people do like reading the news, and I have no doubt some people’s top goal was to just read the news but everybody’s goal in Japanese is different.

I find it is also a good way to get some Japanese in while at work since I can just bring it up on the PC and it looks like I’m doing work. It’s free as well so that’s always a good thing as well. @Vanilla If you have any other recs I would be interested since I’m aware you are in the top 99.9999999% of Japanese learners.

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To be clear, my exact statement was

For some reason NHK News Easy has become some sort of “gateway” reading material for general literacy. I think the only people that should consider using it are people whos goal is to read the actual news and keep up with current events in Japanese.

This means that if your goal is to get better at reading signs, Manga, books, games, Twitter, the jlpt reading section, or anything else then I wouldn’t even bother with it unless you genuinely find it to be the most engaging content to you out there. Since in my experience that tends to be a vast majority of learners out there, I think general recommendations for NHK easy as a beginner reading material are pretty bad.

My recommendation would change depending on where you’re specifically at in your studies and what it is you want to get better at. But for a general recommendation Id say check out satori reader. It seems to get a lot of attention nowadays. I personally didn’t use it but I’ve checked it out and it seems like a much more solid general rec for getting into reading.

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Well, it is one of the easier resources, so I wouldn’t say it’s a bad recommendation for beginners. It is not the only gateway reading material, but it is one of such materials. So, I would always keep recommending it among other beginner resources; as to whether to use it or not – this is something everyone should decide for themselves :slightly_smiling_face:

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I think it’s good as a gateway rec because there’s a constant stream of content, news stories are very short and relatively easy, and it’s relevant to the world. You can get a lot of confidence daily just doing 5min reads. Now as to the actual words, maybe that depends on the subject matter you’re going for, but generally I find that words you see often are words you see often wherever you find them

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I never understood the obsession with it either… I find it okay to read it now but not groundbreaking in any way. I think it’s just a sense of pride to be reading from a “proper” source maybe. Don’t worry too much about it.

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I did try Satori Reader a year or so ago, and I didn’t love it but maybe that was because it was quite challenging for me. I dunno, the stories didn’t interest me either.

I think I like NHK news easy because it is just that: easy. I’ve heard people say it is N3ish but I don’t know about that. I only just passed N4 and the articles are quite easy. I have found it challenging to fit actual Japanese reading into my schedule so I think it’s a good fit for me at least.

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Well, I consider being able to finally read some all-Japanese resource – to be quite groundbreaking. Like, you move from “here’s lots of English text and then a tiny bit of Japanese” to “no English here at all, except for company names in romaji” :sweat_smile:

Again, those who don’t want to use it – don’t have to, but there’s no need to diminish others’ achievements…

I actually found Satori Reader easier, because of the abundance of English – in translation, in notes… :sweat_smile:

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If you enjoy it, I’m all for you sticking with it. I feel like theres a lot of people out there who use it who probably shouldn’t, but it sounds like you’re probably not one of them.

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I’m not diminishing anyone in any way. I just think a lot of people point to it as the “starting point” and I think it can be quite hard for a total beginner. So yes it is nice to read through it with all the kanji. Maybe the whole issue is the is that it’s called NHK “easy” which can be a bit misleading.

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