Not sure if this tool has been posted before, but I tried it the other day and it’s interesting.
Basically, you choose a grade level, read the text, click the button at the end, and then answer some reading comprehension questions to get your reading speed.
(sadly, it doesn’t organize levels in other ways besides grade level, so it does have that issue where even “low level” texts will have words that natives know, but foreigners probably don’t, written in kana only, but eh)
(also, it seems many texts come from Aozora Bunko, probably since they’re free to use, but it means that it’s not unusual to see passages from very old novels, which may be level-appropriate for a middle schooler or something, but use weird, old Japanese)
It’s not perfect, but still kind of fun to try.
Typically, I read while saying the readings aloud, or even if it’s just in my head I still “say” each reading, so I’m usually not aiming for pure speed, and I usually get in the 150-175文字/分 range. If I ignore readings and just skim, I can get to 225-250, but it’s not really how I ever read in real life.
I suppose there’s still room for me to be able to improve my “reading aloud” speed though.
Very nice tool! I tried 2 of the 縦書き and 1 横書き, but mostly just skimmed them. As expected the 縦書き was easier for me and I got 311 and 267. The 横書き was about insects though and I’m really bad at reading a bunch of katakana names so I got 206. I think if it was a test and I really wanted to read carefully I would probably subtract 50-100 from my scores. I’m guessing you’re supposed to be skimming though since it says the average for adults is like 800-1000 which seems very fast.
Haha, yeah, I remember seeing one about leaf types, and then they had lists of trees that fall into each category, and I was like “oh god, I know this is going to be in the questions at the end” and it was. I feel like that’s way easier for natives, who just know tree names off the top of their head, but to me it’s mostly just meaningless katakana blobs.
Yeah, the purpose for natives is clearly to focus on “speed reading” tactics, not just “how quickly do you read comfortably” which is more what I have used it for. I’m sure adults can smash this kind of thing, because my wife can go like twice my top skimming speed even while saying all the words aloud.
The only time I bother learning names of trees or animals etc. is when they have interesting kanji, but that’s useless outside of novels because it’s always expressed in katakana anyways
I did eat at a cafe called 欅 over golden week, but it is a little weird that I can read it, but I couldn’t tell you a single thing about the tree, or identify it in person lol
All I know about that one is that it has leaves with ridges and the kanji is frustratingly close to 襷, which always gets me when doing flashcards. Definitely couldn’t recognize it in real life though haha
This is a very cool resource!! It’s nice to be able to see how far I can understand something completely unrelated to what I have been studying and also the comprehension questions at the end to check myself is especially useful. It’s also nice to practice reading 縦書き but also have the option for 横書き. Thank you so much for sharing it here!
If that’s the speed tester I remember trying before, one unfortunate drawback is that it only has a few texts, so you can’t come back to it later to see how you’ve improved, because it will be using the same text as the first time.
Hmm, I didn’t try too many, but I did try a few levels multiple times and did get different texts. It may just be that I saw 2 of 3 for a particular grade or something though.
I rarely get to read in 縦書き and I took 小学五年生 out of supposed Kanjis knowledge? I might be able to go faster at lower level^^
But yeah, it would take a couple of years to read fast. Read correctly is the first step
For this and many other stuff like fish and things I don’t know in English I would often have an image on the back of my anki card. At that point it’s just “tree that looks like this is called 欅”, fish that looks like this is called ブリ" then I maybe add some info to associate with it in the future naturally. Kinda an inevitability when you learning all this shit for the first time from a novel.
Just saw this, I’ll try it when I get on my computer. Probably depends a lot on the content. I haven’t read much at all the past year and when I do it’s light novels so anything like regular newspaper Japanese is probably going to have me at turtle level lol
EDIT: First attempt. A bit under average it looks like, but I think I could get faster though honestly.
