Reading might be ruining your Japanese

You're not going to read your way to fluency

Hey KoreKara Squad, 

I hope you guys enjoyed the first KoreKara Newsletter and maybe even learned something new. There is always more to talk about when it comes to immersion learning and I’m hoping to continually deliver some tips and tricks that got me to where I am today.

💡 Tip of the week

Lots of immersion methods place a heavy focus on reading. Many people will say literacy is the adult language learners’ superpower, but I disagree. I think while learning how to read may feel like you’re on the fast track to fluency, your other language skills will suffer.

“But if I can read can’t I just let speaking catch up later?”

Maybe.. but pretty unlikely from what I’ve seen. Spoken language has existed long before its written counterpart and because of that, they are inherently different. Written text will always flow differently than spoken words. Let's say you do happen to excel at reading early on, it’s only going to make the content you listen to that much more difficult to sit through when the only way you can understand it is to read the subtitles. The only way to get good at listening is to listen. The only way to get good at writing is writing. And the only way to get good at speaking is to speak. The more skewed your time is with reading and not speaking, the more unbalanced your Japanese will become.

I’ve met so many hardcore immersion learners that just shoot themselves in the foot when even after 3-4 years, they can’t have a simple conversation or self-introduction in Japanese. It’s paradoxical that they speak at a 4-year-old level yet they read complex novels or the newspaper like an adult. This isn’t really a good trend to be following.

Unless your goal with Japanese is just to read novels and you don’t care about having conversations, you definitely want to make sure you’re splitting your time reading, listening, and speaking reasonably. It can be disheartening to dump so much time and effort into something like reading and still be unable to watch your favorite shows or have a simple conversation. You can’t really call yourself fluent without being able to hold a basic conversation, right?

“Okay, well what’s the best way to practice reading and listening?”

Do both, at the same time, in context, but focus on listening first. You can try either

  1. Listening to a novel with an audiobook at the same time (like a visual novel) or

  2. Watch content with Japanese subtitles.

If you miss something you’re particularly interested in, go back and read it. Enjoying content in this way will develop your listening skills first and foremost, which is the most important skill to nail down early on. Your reading will catch up as you double back to pick up the pieces you’ve missed.

And if you’re doing your daily Anki reps, that’s 30 minutes (at least) a day of designated reading practice.

Focus on listening. The rest will follow.

📺 Immersion of the week 

Old Japanese TV used to be wild. Did you know both Shark Tank and Iron Chef originated as Japanese reality TV shows? In this show below they trapped a guy in an apartment and tried to see if he could survive purely from sweepstakes. Check it out!

✍️ Kanji of the week

I figured I’d make this word a bit more difficult than last week's. This word is comprised of the kanji 読み (to read) and 応える meaning to affect or to strike home with. Together they describe something that is worth reading, like maybe this newsletter ;)

🗣️ Q&A 

Do you have any favorite reading-related tools you can't live without? Maybe some tools that make reading as frictionless as possible?

Let me know so I can try them out and share them with everyone!

Alright don’t forget to immerse, またね!

Eric