WaniKani users at higher levels -- have you acheived reading fluency?

WaniKani
21

Lol no. But I can grab something and understand enough of it to follow through. Depends on the work/writing how much effort and time it takes to get through a certain piece of text.

Maybe to add a bit of a perspective I have read manga for over a year now and I’m slowly getting into reading books. Most I have read of the latter are children books. It takes around a week to finish a volume of manga for me and a book I make room for two weeks. I have rejoined wanikani about 3 years ago.

It does depend on how much you overall study in Japanese, but I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say it might take 2-3 years to feel comfortable starting to read native material and many don’t even get to that stage.

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22

I can now read the average manga or play a video game of average difficulty without much trouble I usually have only to look up some words. Other media like books, visual novels, magazines, newspaper etc. are still hard but I can understand it if I put some effort into it. But my reading speed is still pretty low.

Since a year ago I have been reading in japanese every day this is what actually improved my understanding of written japanese.

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23

Only level 34 but I can tell you that even if I was level 60, I wouldn’t be fluently reading.

Vocab and grammar are the big setbacks right now, obviously still regularly encounter unknown kanji, but there’s also just a lot of words I don’t know, and the lack of context makes it even harder

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24

When I got to level 60 (last year, I’ve since reset for extra practice) my reading comprehension was better than before, but not as good as it should’ve been. I kind of used WaniKani as an excuse to not progress in my actual language studies, since it could feel like I was still progressing without having to buy textbooks or study grammar. It’s not that my kanji studies didn’t help, but when you can read all the kanji a 10th grader can but only have a kindergartener’s understanding of the actual language, you can still only read at like a first grade level. And then, of course, when you don’t practice, you forget what you’ve already learned.

That said, kanji helps tremendously with reading, and still it’s much much easier for me to understand more complicated readings that use a lot of kanji than it is simpler ones that have none (i.e. a light novel that’s a bit above my reading level vs. a Pokemon game, where all writing is in kana). You’ve said that you’ve done a fair bit of grammar study, so I’d recommend joining a few book clubs on WK Community!

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25

I think you’re selling yourself short, my friend. :wink: In all the book forums I’ve been on over the last couple decades that’s about average pace. According to my kindle, at my regular speed, it’s like 4-6 hours for me.

But I grew up before the internet and reading was my thing, and it was hard to find books where I lived. So I’ve got novels that I’ve read dozens of times.

For me it’s at least double that depending on the book.

My main issue these days is finding time to read in either language.

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26

When you finish WK, you’ll know 6000~ words. People that have grown their vocabulary to double that still need semi-frequent lookups when reading novels. You would need to double that number again (20-24k) to infrequently encounter words you don’t know. A 12K vocabulary is probably sufficiently fluent for spoken Japanese, but a vocabulary in the 20k’s is needed for reading fluency, and that’s on top of rarer forms of grammar you mostly only encounter while reading. N3 grammar will carry you a long way in spoken Japanese, but is nowhere near sufficient for reading novels.

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27

In terms of comprehension, I can pick out and read any manga I want although I’m going to end up looking up a lot of words since my vocab is one of my weaker areas.

But in terms of fluency, if there’s no grammar or words I don’t know in what I’m reading, then I can read close to the speed I read in English. I’ve been reading Japanese for close to 7 years and I live in Japan so it’s a subconscious effort.

However, take out the kanji (or give me the same Japanese read out) and my comprehension more than halfs.

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28

Kanji recognition will be high, as the frequency trackers will show. But that doesn’t translate to reading fluency, which also depends on vocab and grammar acquisition, as well as extensive reading experience.

Your best strategy is to diligently proceed through WK, find small ways to integrate Japanese into your life, begin learning grammar (Genki + Bunpro.jp is a solid strategy), and once you reach a suitable level (20-25 maybe?) begin simple reading. Manabi Reader and it’s companion Manabi app is excellent for this. Satori Reader is far too advanced as a first reading app.

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29

I think OP already has some understanding of grammar and about 600 kanji memorized, which I think is about 15 levels worth. I think starting reading as soon as possible is probably best, not just for OP but for pretty much anyone. There’s plenty of manga that uses very little kanji, like Yotsubato, or manga that uses a fair bit of kanji (with furigana) with relatively simple grammar, like Naruto. I really regret not starting reading sooner honestly

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30

I agree with the emerging consensus points above.

An important thing to keep in mind is what it takes for you personally to enjoy the experience. Unless you’re using your reading in a professional context, it’s ok to have to look up every other word and take 4X longer than your native language, as long as you are getting something out of it.

I found reading manga to be satisfying starting around level 25, even though I wasn’t anywhere close to “fluent”. Now I’m still looking up a fair amount of vocab (and inferring a lot of grammar or slang from context) but the experience is definitely a lot more rewarding than reading in translation.

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31

WK will help you recognize words more quickly but it won’t help you with reading fluency. Only spending time reading and seeing words/kanji used in context with help with reading fluency. Someone mentioned being able to deal with ambiguity in understanding, and I agree that this is hugely important.

Was there a point, perhaps a level here that you passed, where you realized you could basically survive in Japan with little or no help (again, for the sake of argument, I’m thinking only in terms of reading comprehension)?

At level 30 (and with some regular reading practice), I’m finding that I can function surprisingly well independently when I visit Japan. For example, I was at a local gym recently and was able to understand most of the signs around me explaining the various rules. “Survival”, however, might be different from reading fluency.

My advice to anyone pursuing reading fluency would be to use WK and do independent reading at the same time. These two practices will reinforce each other. If you aren’t yet able to read native material productively, start by studying simple sentences. I used sites like bunpro.jp for this and it helped kickstart my reading quite effectively. I’ve since moved on to Satori Reader and am now able to read the stories on the “harder” levels in many cases without needing to look up words (though it requires me to be okay with some ambiguity at times).

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32

WaniKani is just one of many things you should be doing. A level 60 user with no dedicated grammar and vocabulary study (plus, of course, actual reading to put it in practice) will not be able to comprehend much even if they are capable of recognizing kanji.

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33

at my current level, i can read some manga relatively easily, with few to no lookups, as long as i can tolerate a bit of ambiguity (i.e. there are words i don’t know, but i can make a decent guess at what they mean from context, and i’m okay with not understanding some of what’s going on. i can read a (relatively easy) LN with lots of vocab look-ups. i am obviously far from fluent, but i can read, sometimes fairly comfortably.

however, already now kanji knowledge isn’t my limiting factor. grammar, vocab, set phrases (expressions where even if you know all the words you can’t know the meaning), slang, idiosyncracies of speech, those are all obstacles to reading comprehension. on the other hand looking up kanji and vocab is easy.

so i recommend just starting to read. perhaps use something like natively to select books according to difficulty level. but i’d recommend reading stuff which you actually want to read. reading fluency will come from reading.

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34

Eh, I can read manga, visual novels, and play most video games in japanese now. I can read through news articles and such too with some discomfort wheni get a 6 kanji compund word, but all in all, pretty good.

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35

Thanks for the responses everyone. Very informative. A little depressing, but very informative.

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36

That’s a great idea. I plan on doing that.

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37

Yeah, you get used to it. When I started this I was told within a year you could “read Japanese” and that was fantastic news to make me want to do it! That was totally true and I did do just that, but I wasn’t yet fully clear on how slow and tool-assisted that reading would have to be. As I got deeper I learned more and more how true “fluency” (at a sufficiently high goal) would take several years and that was a bit discouraging. Now, about a year and 3 months in, I’m mostly just pleased to know that however many years it’ll take, it’ll actually get easy one day, haha.

I think the crucial thing most people would agree with me on is that even if whatever fluency is is far away, they usually find a way to have fun with what they can do much earlier. I’ve never managed to truly be a “the learning journey is the real fun :rainbow:” sort of person, still outcome-focused and my fun scales with how well I understand – but there’s plenty I can work through and I mostly have a good time doing it. Couldn’t tell you where fluency is though, not even close to seeing it.

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38

What I would recommend is – read what you like and read lots, but also be mindful to how you learn. In the end, amount matters too. Vocab is a relatively easy aspect, but there are more to learnt than that. (Probably the most obvious one of such is Kanji.)

Speaking from my experience, as I was studying or not, I read sporadically; yet when I resumed studying, I learnt more from about half a year than many years.

And yeah, I believe that trying reading without Furigana (or with, doesn’t matter early on) can already start at around level 20 or so, but reading lots, it simply depends on personal comfort after some time.

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39

I’m seconding what others have said about “fluency” being something that is hard to pin down. You’ll find yourself more or less “fluent” depending on the genre you’re reading, and how much prior experience you have with it.

Like, just to give an example, I’m still an upper beginner in terms of overall Japanese level, but the vast majority of my immersion has been Japanese pro wrestling, so I can open a book about Japanese wrestling and actually understand a fair amount of it just due to the fact that I’ve specifically studied the vocab (I have 840 pro wrestling words in Anki), and I know many names of wrestlers and many details about matches and stories from a variety of different companies, which helps provide a lot of context when reading about it.

I have books that are, well, not about wrestling, and the difference in fluency I experience is truly incredible. When I open one of those, I have absolutely no hope without a dictionary. Skimming gets me maybe 20% of what’s going on, whereas with some wrestling stuff I can skim and understand easily 70-80% without needing to look up any vocab or kanji.

If I keep working at this for another year or two, my fluency with wrestling stuff will just keep climbing higher and higher. And if I approach another genre with the same dedication that I’m applying to wrestling now, I’ll improve my fluency in that area as well.

Of course, none of these things exist in a vacuum, so you’ll get benefits in other areas from focusing just on one genre. Pro wrestling has, believe it or not, given me vocabulary that has helped me understand senryu poems.

As far as how this dovetails with progress through WK, I think that’s hard to say. Most of my gains in reading fluency have come from applying my WK knowledge outside of WK. I do use my WK level to sort of gate the vocab I add to Anki, though. I only add words if I already know the kanji (or if the kanji isn’t in WK, I learn the kanji on my own and then add the words to my vocab deck).

I didn’t start actively mining words from native media until I started translating wrestling promos and recaps at the very end of last year. At the time, I was between N5 and N4 in grammar level and almost halfway through WK, so the vast majority of kanji I encountered, I recognized. There were no shortage of new words for me to learn.

Now, with wrestling, I add new words at a much, much slower rate, because I’ve learned quite a bit of common vocabulary already. When that rate slows to a point where I’m learning only one or two new words each wrestling translation I do, I’ll probably start branching out and SRS-ing words from other genres.

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40

In terms of purely being able to read kanji characters without having to look them up, even at my current level, it’s usually not an issue for me anymore. It’s a massive amount of kanji you learn even two-thirds of the way through the application. That being said, regarding vocabulary and grammar comprehension, etc, that’s an entirely different story and you’ll need to utilize other resources to work on those. This app will only teach you to read kanji characters, but it does an extraordinarily good job at that.

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