So I was wondering…how do all of you guys practice reading? Do you read through stuff and try to just understand as much as you can? Do you go back and make sure that you understood everything after reading? Do you have a dictionary and grammar guide out and make sure that you understand every sentence perfectly before moving on to the next one?
Is there a specific method that helps the most?
When I read, I go through the passage and try to make meaning of the content. Depending on the purpose of the reading material, I may go over the passage again. I always take note of words and passages I don’t understand. I also subvocalize the content I read or if possible, read aloud. When I come across kanji I don’t know how to read, I look those up even though I may know the meaning.
I suggest reading as deeply as gives you the most enjoyment. You’ll probably naturally do quality/intensive reading during interesting parts and quantity/extensive reading during the duller parts.
that’s pretty accurate Kannagi, it seems to be how i read, although i can really only read manga atm, if it is them monologuing i kinda zone out and just read what i can, but when there is action, or something’s happening and i’m not quite sure what it is, i may look up words (but it could be because i didn’t read an integral part earlier 
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Looking back, I feel like I worded this badly. You’ll probably be fine just reading normally though. If you don’t understand something try parsing it, looking up unknown words/grammar, rereading it, etc. I generally wouldn’t worry about perfection or going as far checking a grammar guide most of the time. You won’t get a lot done.
Anyway, for more concrete advice, using a dictionary is pretty much a must. I recommend reading something that you can use the Rikaisama extension with. It makes parsing sentences and looking up unknown words/grammar much easier. The usual recommendation is visual novels, but they’re not for everyone. Otherwise you’re probably reading some form of web content. Web novels might be a decent alternative. For reading visual novels see this link (https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/wiki/vnhooking).*
*I believe Rikaisama is supposed to become unsupported soon, in which case you’ll have to use Rikaichan or something instead. Also this might not work for Steam visual novels. Not sure.
For N5/N4 grammar I went through Genki I and II while reading. Since then I’ve mostly just used Jisho’s definitions for grammar. As long as you’ve got the basics down, I think it’s pretty easy to just throw any grammar you come across in Anki. Reading provides plenty of natural example sentences.
i just checked, rikaisama is no longer supported. rikaichan for firefox and rikaikun for chrome work though.
Yomichan is another one, but i dont know how it compares to the above mentioned ones.
Ah I appreciate the whole mention of the extensive and intensive reading. I had assumed this was a common issue, but I never knew the right words to look up to get any insight. Ill try to use both in my studies as that seems to be the suggested method. Thanks for the replies!
Yomichan (on Chrome at least) is very good. I used to use Rikaikun, but I like Yomichan much better.
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