Perhaps you have already had the experience of being frustrated by not being able to understand the language you are studying. You do what your workbook or your teacher asks, but you just can't understand what you want. You've already memorized a lot of vocabulary and you even think you have a good foundation of grammar and then you think the problem is in you.
In this article we will try to show you what could be causing you not to understand what you read in the language you study. But before we try to give you the clues, let's first separate two concepts.
Table of Content
Listening Comprehension vs Text Comprehension
First you must know which one you are having difficulty with then know where to put your energy. As the name itself says “auditory”, is that you understand through sounds and “textual”, through texts. In most cases there is a great difficulty in listening comprehension, since to understand what is being said, you possibly saw it before the written form, even if it was in your study material, this of course if it is not your native language.
Based on this, to be able to read, it is assumed:
- Vocabulary;
- notion of several structures;
- Grounded knowledge of at least the main grammars;
- And practice!
And with practice, I'm not saying to just sit and do exercises, but rather to read materials really created by natives such as books, e-books, news sites, and other formats of content that can train your reading ability. Of course, at first, you'll have to start reading books or materials from the course you're taking or from the book you're studying to build your foundation.
Foundation is a very important factor, it’s the foundation that will allow you to migrate to more complex materials created by natives. The problem is the paradox of forever building a "foundation" and never facing "practice," which is precisely reading content created by natives. So, having a foundation, you need to know how to choose something that you like and is at least 40% comprehensible.
If it's something almost not comprehensible at all, you will hardly be able to concentrate on what is written. Possibly, at the beginning, most things geared towards reading will be quite difficult to understand, but this difficulty will be overcome through the practice of reading and your study of structures, sentences, grammar, and vocabulary. There are also other activities to improve your reading that we will discuss below.
As a note, we are not saying to become an ultra specialist in grammar, just use it to learn something you don't understand; you don't need to know all concepts to be able to understand what is said in the languages. As you get used to the language, automatically, you will start to understand more and more.
Structures of a Language
Structures are truly of utmost importance for you to understand the language; they are what make up a sentence. In other words, the more familiar you are, the easier it is for you to infer the idea or meaning of what is being said, even without having studied it grammatically in depth.
If you don't understand what structures are, I'll give an example in English:
- I go to corner.
- I go to the bakery.
- I go to door.
What do these sentences have in common? "I will go to ..." Right?! These are structures, they are elements within a sentence that follow patterns and can connect to other words or sentences. The trick to developing your speech in the language is to memorize these patterns, because once you know them, when you speak, you just need to change a small element or two. Just like in the example of [vou até], all you need to do is add a word that represents a place and sounds good with [o, a]. Let's see examples in English and 日本語 to note that this is inevitable in any language.
I'll go to a hotel.
I'll go to the hotel.
I'll go to the store
I'll go to the store.
I'll go there now.I go there now.
Note the pattern, "I'll go" repeating itself, and just adding a piece of information that makes sense by linking to it.
In japanese:
大学に行く
Daigaku ni iku
go to college
学校に行く
Gakkou ni iku
Go to school.
図書館に行く
Toshokan ni iku
Go to the library.
Note the pattern "に行く / Ni iku" repeating, and simply adding information that makes sense connected to it. With the consumption and exposure to various patterns of the language structures, you become capable of inferring the meaning of sentences by knowing several structures. That’s why it isn’t possible to study only isolated words.
In other words, you will overcome your reading difficulties, knowing the meaning of different structures and vocabularies. Vocabulary and grammar you will acquire through study, that is, by taking notes, typing, saving for review, but reading should never be left out, even with low comprehension.
Reading
Reading has no escape, you will really need to read something, even if it's little, daily. If you study japonês, you can start with mangás that usually have a simple language, or even watch something LEGENDADO EM JAPONÊS, meaning, almost everything appears in kanji (ideograms), and keep watching while reading what's written.
This activity is very powerful, as it improves your interpretation of texts as you have the clear context of what is being said and the sound that comes in the background. Even this activity will require a certain sense of reading, as the scenes and subtitles go by very quickly.
Another thing to help train reading is to take articles from the site. "NHK easy news" what are easy-to-understand news articles. You can use these articles to practice your reading, or perhaps use one Light novel that will really require a high level of reading, both in kanji recognition and text interpretation skills, meaning that by then you should develop your reading with what you are capable of.
In short, that's it, Study and Practice, both incessantly, there is no magic solution, the theoretical knowledge aligned with constant practice is what will truly ensure results for you.
Check out our website and repertoire of Japanese language content. japoneclub.comthere you will find a lot of content and various types of classes that will really develop your foundation to start making great strides in the Japanese language.
I hope you enjoyed this article, if you liked it share and leave your opinion in the comments. Good studies!