I’ve recently started using Satori Reader to improve my reading comprehension, but I’m afraid I’m not using it effectively. There are a lot of great features—line-by-line reading, in-line definitions and grammar explanations, sentence translations—but it’s so easy activate each of them that I worry I’m using them as a crutch too often and not building up my skills as I should.
Satori Reader users: how do you use each of these features to study effectively?
The way I’ve started trying to use it, though I admit I’m not as strict with myself as I should be, is:
Read an article without looking anything up.
Listen to the line-by-line reading (and repeat), saving any words I don’t know (meaning or reading) to my study list and clicking on any available grammar explanation.
Attempt to translate the sentence into English and click on the sentence translation if necessary to check.
Read the article to myself again.
Study the cards due or added to my Review pile.
Is there anything you’d recommend I add or change to the way I study? Should I complement Satori Reader with some other program or study method to take advantage of the material better? How do you study with Satori Reader? Feel free to share your methods or experience below!
I’d probably do your step 1 then 3 then 2 then 3 again. The repetition of step three would be to see how your understanding of the articles meaning did/didn’t change after you went through the grammar points and words you were fuzzy on.
Step 5 I’d probably skip. Probably better to save words you don’t know on a dedicated srs platform like houhou or something instead of using satori’s built in srs
Satori Reader could be one of my favourite resources right now! I don’t think there’s any single right way to use it, as I think everyone will get the best out of it in different ways - for example, I’m probably concentrating on listening practice more than anything else - but anyhow, my approach is something like:
Try to read one whole article a day (usually in my lunchbreak)
Sync the kanji with WK - I have it set to “Maximum Kanji” mode now, furigana on things I don’t know, but before I reached L60 it was set to “Show only Kanji that I know”
Read the article up to 5 times, until I’m confident with it: #1) Once just straight through, trying not to look up translations, but checking every underlined grammar point in case there’s any interesting points. #2) Read again, but using line by line listening to verify the translations. Check the translations for anything I missed or got wrong. #3) Read again, while listening to the audio all the way through non-stop. #4) Repeat #3 but without reading, only listening #5) Maybe repeat #3 and/or #4 if I had any issues reading or listening previously
I also make it a point to read the comments below each article. The SR staff always answer questions about nuance and how to break down complex sentences, so you can also learn a lot just from there.
Any words/phrases I don’t know, I add to the review SRS thing. But because the SRS thing isn’t very good (I really don’t like how it doesn’t repeat items you get wrong - it should really keep repeating them until you have everything correct at least once!), once a month I usually export the latest additions over to Anki, and try to do those once a day.
Read things at a level where there are just a few things I don’t know per article. I have it set to show all kanji and to show furigana for things I haven’t done on WaniKani.
Read it, checking vocab I’m not confident on; add to study list if it’s something new rather than something I’d just forgotten. Only check sentence translations when I’m still confused after checking vocab.
I’m not consistent about this, but I often reread it while listening to the audio.
I don’t do this because I’m lazy, but I think it would be good to reread it repeatedly until I can read it smoothly and without the desire to check anything.
Export the things to study to anki, study them as sentence recognition, prioritize them after other new anki cards.
I used to spend a bunch of time reading things beyond my level. It was kind of fun, but besides being a source of things to study in anki it didn’t really help me learn anything. I’m currently reading Akiko’s American Foreign Exchange. Sakura and Suzuki’s Long Distance Relationship also looks pretty easy.
I guess I hadn’t considered really actively doing this even though it’s generally what I do! I completely agree it’s a good way to compare my own comprehension vs. my comprehension after a bit of explanation/listening.
I thought about doing this as well, but I’ve only tentatively looked at the export data. I was thinking that since Satori stories provide the context for any vocabulary I learn, it might be a good idea to try out with this sentence study method described on Tofugu a number of months ago.
I had no idea there was a Discussion section! Since it doesn’t pop open automatically (at least on my computer) I didn’t even pay attention to the fact that there was a button there. I just checked under the first article in the series I’m reading now (三途の川) and there was so much good info! Thanks for the recommendation!
I thought about doing this too since I’ve heard a lot of people I respect talk about how shadowing really helped their fluency, but I can’t bring myself to do it with any regularity either. Maybe I’ll give it a try.
I thought about doing this exact same thing (using the method I linked to above), so I’m glad to hear this has been useful for someone else.
Is there a way to use SR effectively without importing unknown vocab/grammar into an SRS? I have just enough time to do a little reading each day. However, I don’t think I could handle another SRS deck since I am already doing WK and Bunpro.
I’m not expecting my reading skills to progress quickly. I just want to start some sort of immersion so that I can apply what I am learning.