Reading a book in Japanese

Despite my last post about how difficult it is to get to a level where you can read a book in Japanese, I've been going for it lately. I've been reading a book written by a Japanese lady who went to China to teach Japanese for a year. It is an account of her time there. This book is good for me because the subject matter is both familiar and interesting to me: I have travelled abroad to teach, and I'm interested in China and have visited on a few occasions.

I'm finding that I'm able to understand around 90% of the book most of the time. The odd word or two I don't understand, but from context it's often quite easy to imagine what it could be. On occasions there are passages which are more difficult, and my understanding becomes a bit more clouded, but I find it's best just to plough through these sections and wait for the clouds to clear, rather than diving to the dictionary every time, which can be distracting and frustrating.

Anyway, hopefully the more I read, the easier and less cloudy it will become.

Extensive reading in Japanese and Chinese?

Been hearing a lot about extensive reading and comprehensible input lately, and how this is supposed to be the best way to reach fluency in a language.

I think it makes sense that the best way to learn a language is to actually be using it to get your brain processing the meaning of what is being stated whether it be written or verbals communication.

The problem is the two languages I'm trying to learn are both pretty difficult to read. There is an extra mountain to climb with Chinese characters which making reading the language much easier said than done.

I guess the upshot is that if I was studying a language like Spanish, for example, where the characters being used were instantly recognisable, I'd be able to get to the point where extensive reading was a viable option a lot sooner than for a language like Japanese where I still feel after six years of study that reading a short article is a pretty big task.

JLPT N2

I took the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) last weekend. There are five levels and I went for level 2—the second toughest level.

I'm pretty sure that I didn't pass, but my long term goal is to pass in December (the test is held twice a year), so this was really just a practice run.

I didn't cram particularly hard for the test, just kept up with my daily anki flashcards on the iphone, and did a bit of reading practice. About a year ago I bought a level 2 past paper text which helps you to identify which parts of the test you are weakest at, and, according to that book, reading is my weakest area, hence the reading practice.

I'm looking forward to seeing the results in September, which will also help me identify which areas I need to work on for the test in December.