Thankfully, this is where graded readers come in! Graded readers are book series that feature a variety of stories sorted into different levels of difficulty, or "grades." For Japanese, this usually is determined by the vocabulary and grammar used, often corresponding to the 5 levels of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), but different publishers and organizations have different levels and definitions. Graded readers offer everyone, even Japanese beginners, fun stories to read. Not only is this an enjoyable, confidence-building activity, but it'll make your Japanese a lot better too!
Japanese Graded Readers Level 0 TOP
So, ready to dive in? Great! In this article, I will talk more about what graded readers are and how to get the most out of them. My co-author Emily and I have also taken a look at some of the options available so we can recommend the best graded readers for you, regardless of whether you prefer to use digital books or physical ones, free libraries or paid collections, or even an app.
As mentioned earlier, graded readers are collections of different stories designed for language learners, sorted into categories based on difficulty. Usually, these books start at the beginner level and increase in difficulty. Additionally, just because these books are designed for beginner readers doesn't mean they're books for kids. In fact, since many of the companies that produce graded readers promote extensive reading, they aim to publish a range of different stories that appeal to learners regardless of age and interests. Some graded readers are simplified versions of well-known stories too. Ideally, there's something that piques your interest in every collection.
While graded readers have become more popular for language learners in many languages, they're still relatively new in Japanese, so unfortunately there are fewer options available than you can find in English or Spanish, for example. That said, there are a couple of great options we think will fit the bill for any Japanese student looking to learn to read and improve their overall language ability.
I've mentioned it a few times before, but let's talk a bit more about what extensive reading is, as doing so will give us an idea of how best to use graded readers for studying. Extensive reading is a language-learning strategy where learners practice by reading longer, simpler texts, as smoothly as possible without stopping to look up unfamiliar vocabulary or grammar.
Keeping all this in mind can help you understand what makes a graded reader set good. It should have a wide range of books, across a number of different skill levels, so that you can find something that's not only suitable for your abilities, but pertains to your interests as well. And remember, your aim should not be to translate a book into English as you read, but rather to comprehend the story as it is in Japanese. This might be a little difficult to grasp for absolute beginners, but as you learn more of the language you'll encounter concepts that you can understand or express better in Japanese than in English, and you'll find your thoughts moving straight from the Japanese text to understanding, without having to make a detour into English.
During my hunt for graded readers, I found two great free libraries of graded readers online. In my opinion, these two libraries should really be all you need. The first is a collection of free materials available on the Tadoku Supporters' website.
NPO Tadoku Supporters is a non-profit organization (that's the "NPO" part) that has not only helped establish the use of graded readers and extensive reading in Japanese, but has also become a major player in this space, advising other similar organizations and creating graded readers for a variety of publishers. In fact, many of the most popular graded reader sets, like the ones from Ask Publishing and Taishukan, as well as the White Rabbit Press App, consist of stories from NPO Tadoku Supporters. Of course, they produce books under their own name as well, a large library of which is available for free on their website.
Among the free library on their website, they have books in all 5 levels, though the most for Level 0 and Level 3, and only a single book for Level 5. All the books in their library are graded readers with e-books available, and feature furigana except for the couple of books that are in kana only. Each book is presented with a user rating and icons that let you know what level the book is, whether or not there's an audio reading of the book available, and more.
I agree that this online library alone will probably be sufficient for all your (hopefully short-lived) graded-reader needs. The abundance of free beginner-level content here might make it totally unnecessary to look elsewhere, unless you really want to hold a physical graded reader in your hands.
Sakura Tadoku Lab is an online library of graded readers that offers books at eight different levels of difficulty. What this means is that with the added granularity, it's easier to find books suited more precisely to your level.
Furthermore, and perhaps most critically, the website offers a vocabulary test to help assess how many words you know and what level you're at on their scale. In their graded readers, they aim to use vocabulary that people at your level would know about 95% of, just to ensure that it's easy enough for you to read smoothly. This is an interesting and useful approach for all learners of Japanese, regardless of your interest in graded readers specifically. The test gives you a series of words and asks you to pick a synonym for each from a handful of options, all in Japanese.
At Level 0, much of the content is simply vocabulary, like a picture book for kids, but the difficulty ramps up later on. In fact, when you hit Level 3 or so, you may be able to move on from graded readers entirely. But in any case, if you prefer physical books to e-books and don't mind paying for graded readers, you might find these up your alley.
The graded reader sets I introduced in this article are pretty vast collections, but of course, at some point you'll "grade out." But don't be sad, it just means you're improving and ready for the next challenge! Before you grade out, it's probably a good idea to set a goal in terms of the kind of material you want to work toward being able to read next. This could be a manga like Yotsuba&!, a book like Kiki's Delivery Service, a website like NHK Easy News, or even a game like Pokémon. Setting goals is just a great study practice in general, but it works especially well in this case: gradually increasing your reading abilities, learning the skills needed to reach that goal. LearnNatively is a great site for this, allowing you to browse different books by skill level and to make lists of the ones you plan to read or are currently reading, including some popular graded reader options.
Fala alex beleza?Te achei aki justamente por conhecer esse método dos graded readers.Eu terminei de ler os primeiros 50.Vc acha q depois q terminar os 300 eu estarei apto a ler livros normais em inglês?
Graded readers are shorter books written intended for those who are still studying the language. Vocabulary, grammar and length are therefore specifically chosen for the respective reading level. If you have already learned a second language in school, you will certainly remember reading them in class.
This was the first ever graded reader series for Japanese, published in 2006. As it was put together by the NPO Tagengo Tadoku, it follows their guidelines for reading levels with level 0 for absolute beginners up to level 4 for upper intermediate.
It follows the same reading level pattern as the series from 2006, but adds a level 5 with two stories intended for intermediate-to-advanced readers. While in the first series, there were equally as many books for every reading level, this series provides more reading material for beginners (level 0-1) in their later volumes.
The challenge to the teacher and librarian is to help the readers find enough books at the right level so that there is plenty of fuel to feed the fire of reading. If you want to read more in Japanese, please please don't hesitate to ask for reading lists.
White Rabbit Press App191162516 77.7 KB31490850 114 KBGraded readers app for ios and Android. Currently 9 stories available, level 0-3. More have been promised to be on the way.You can decide to hide furigana, and show them when you touch the screen, has audio without the hassle of a CD room or hassle of download.Audio Files
I wanted to ask about how you usually study with graded readers. Read the story along with the audio? Listen to the audio first? Read the story first without audio? etc. What has been the most effective way for you all to study with graded readers?
As several other questions already mentioned, graded readers are a good resources for extensive reading, at least for people who are not yet sufficiently proficient to read texts written for native speakers of the target language.
For languages that don't use an alphabet, and especially in language where the writing system does not suggest a specific pronunciation, e.g. Japanese kanji, graded readers may even be more useful as a bridge than for alphabetic languages. So are there any graded readers for Japanese?
If you like reading but want something more meaty than Watanoc, there are 36 free graded reader lessons available on Wasabi. Each one is an original Japanese story that was rewritten for an N4 level. Each lesson comes with an English translation, audio and some brief grammar notes.
In this study, 35 subjects in three experimental groups read and listened once to three stories in graded-reader form, each of which was approximately 5,500 words long. The reading and listening treatments took place during three regular 90-minute classes at intervals of 2 weeks. The subjects were then assessed on their recognition and recall of the target vocabulary items with varying frequency of recurrence rates that they had met in each story. Similar to the Waring and Takaki (2003) study, it was decided that the vocabulary acquisition would be assessed at two levels and over three test periods. Eighty-four target words (3 sets of 28) were selected from three 400-headword-level graded readers. These words, which represented already known common concepts to the subjects (e.g., letter, restaurant, family), were then changed into substitute words. See Table 1 for an overview of the study. 2ff7e9595c
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