Japanese study tips 中級から上級
After studying a lot of grammar and vocabulary in my first and second years, I realised that our classes were lacking in reading and comprehension. When I went on my year abroad I realised how bad my reading was and it was the time where I put all my effort into improving it and I am so glad I did.
The first hurdle is always the hardest so once you get over that it becomes easier. I have some tips on reading if anyone out there is just as bad as I am and also don’t particularly like reading.
1. Take it slow and don’t rush it. We were taught to skim the text but I don’t find that to be an effective way to learn before grasping comprehension to a higher level.
2. Read small short articles outside of your studies. You can do it on the train if you have nothing to do.
3. It doesn’t matter if you have to look up words, it’s ok because it helps you understand the text better than just skimming it and guessing the meaning.
4. If you find quite a lot of words you don’t understand, try to understand the context in which it is used and how to use them.
5. Find something interesting that you would want to read. For me it was my favourite figure skater’s biography.
6. Try to summarise and explain difficult sentences in simple Japanese.
Another thing I found very helpful to my studies was that on my year abroad, they picked some vocabulary that they thought would be useful and used in everyday life and made us write our own sentences in order to understand the sentences better. In class we would all write down our sentences to see how many of us have grasped the meaning. All in all it was a great exercise in helping us understanding the meaning of vocabulary and expressions and how to use them.
