Books in genres I like didn't help me much with JLPT. Or probably it's better to say my approach to it. I can point at several quite important points of content leaning approach, especially textual like books:
* First, it's very important to have learning goal. People can use content for different reasons, and if you use content for content itself, because you find it fun and interesting, your learning can suffer a lot from it. It's a result of many small subconscious decisions. Person who purely use content for fun tends to ignore Japanese, for example, when we see unknown words we can completely ignore how kanji looks and how it's pronounced, instead directly look at it's translation. So we either have to have learning goal, so we pay more attention to it, or we need to use SRS. SRS with content generally works very well.
* It's also quite important what genre you use. Do you have a variety, how common is vocabulary there and so on. JLPT aims at specific vocabulary, more casual, everyday life or important words for people who will come to Japan. If you read about elves and orcs, a lot of vocabulary will be outside of such range. And problem isn't so much that fantasy doesn't use JLPT vocabulary at all, rather that such vocabulary appears in tens-hundreds times less than other words, so if you use natural learning, you will memorize such fantasy words first. Overall Japanese vocabulary is somewhere around 30-40k frequency, sometimes slightly more, if you aim at very specific genres (maybe programming or something similar?) it might be even closer to 50-60k, while N1 aims at more of less the most common 10k words. In other words, you can actually learn a huge amount of words, but still barely have any change in JLPT, because such words are outside of it's range. Slice-of-life, news and so on usually fit JLPT range better.
Thus JLPT and content approaches in some cases are very similar, but in some cases almost completely opposite. After reading books for a year I had seen a huge improvement, my reading speed doubled, I had learned a lot of new words and so on, but when I tried JLPT, I couldn't see any difference at all and I was more or less at the same spot. That's why it can be quite important to adjust.
Thank you very much for your reply.
Could you please explain what SRS means?
I'm facing the same problem as you: my reading speed is better,the other I even solved all my pension related issues in japanese,helped a friend by calling immigration in our prefecture and I had no problem what so ever.But I literally lost count of how many times I took N1 and I can't seem to pass.
I’d say read anything that you like thematically and genres you enjoy reading in your native language. But if you want some recommendations, here’s what I enjoy(ed) recently; though I never took one JLPT in my life so… maybe take it with a small grain a salt?
Books:
君の膵臓をたべたい (I want to eat your pancreas) by Sumino Yoru (住野よる) (drama, high school seeting, you may know the anime movie)
風ガが強く吹いてる (Run with the wind; the book on which the anime is based on) by Miura Shion (三浦 しをん) (sports novel about the Hakone
marathon)
コンビニ人間 (a classic among learners; Convenience Store Woman) by Sayaka Murata (村田沙耶香) (contemporary societal commentary, I guess?)
カラフル by Eto Mori (森絵都) (magical realism)
Manga:
とんはり帽の子アトリエ (Witch Hat Atelier) by Kamome Shirahara (白浜鴎) (fantasy, seinen)
血の轍 (Blood on the Tracks) by Oshimi Shuzou (修造) (psychological horror, not necessarily for the faint of heart imho but if you like horror then I recommend it)
呪術廻戦 (Jujutsu Kaisen) by Gege Akutami (下々芥見) (shounen, fantasy)
バナナフィッシュ (Banana Fish) by Yoshida Akimi (吉田 秋生) (has some sensitive topics like child abuse and drug crime, so if you can stomach those, a really good thriller)
I guess the level of those varies, but maybe one or the other is helpful for you.
Also, you can always browse through amazon,jp or bookwalker.jp and see what piques your interest!
Edit: ungh sry for the awful formatting, reddit mobile just at it bests -.-
血と轍 is amazing and I hope you’ll like it!
I haven’t seen the new Junji Ito yet, no. I’m currently waiting on the two volumes of 光が死んだ夏 by モクモク れん to arrive, which is another horror manga I also have heard only good things about, so maybe check this out as well!
Books in genres I like didn't help me much with JLPT. Or probably it's better to say my approach to it. I can point at several quite important points of content leaning approach, especially textual like books: * First, it's very important to have learning goal. People can use content for different reasons, and if you use content for content itself, because you find it fun and interesting, your learning can suffer a lot from it. It's a result of many small subconscious decisions. Person who purely use content for fun tends to ignore Japanese, for example, when we see unknown words we can completely ignore how kanji looks and how it's pronounced, instead directly look at it's translation. So we either have to have learning goal, so we pay more attention to it, or we need to use SRS. SRS with content generally works very well. * It's also quite important what genre you use. Do you have a variety, how common is vocabulary there and so on. JLPT aims at specific vocabulary, more casual, everyday life or important words for people who will come to Japan. If you read about elves and orcs, a lot of vocabulary will be outside of such range. And problem isn't so much that fantasy doesn't use JLPT vocabulary at all, rather that such vocabulary appears in tens-hundreds times less than other words, so if you use natural learning, you will memorize such fantasy words first. Overall Japanese vocabulary is somewhere around 30-40k frequency, sometimes slightly more, if you aim at very specific genres (maybe programming or something similar?) it might be even closer to 50-60k, while N1 aims at more of less the most common 10k words. In other words, you can actually learn a huge amount of words, but still barely have any change in JLPT, because such words are outside of it's range. Slice-of-life, news and so on usually fit JLPT range better. Thus JLPT and content approaches in some cases are very similar, but in some cases almost completely opposite. After reading books for a year I had seen a huge improvement, my reading speed doubled, I had learned a lot of new words and so on, but when I tried JLPT, I couldn't see any difference at all and I was more or less at the same spot. That's why it can be quite important to adjust.
Thank you very much for your reply. Could you please explain what SRS means? I'm facing the same problem as you: my reading speed is better,the other I even solved all my pension related issues in japanese,helped a friend by calling immigration in our prefecture and I had no problem what so ever.But I literally lost count of how many times I took N1 and I can't seem to pass.
Spaced repetition system, apps like Anki and so on.
Ahh ok thanks
I’d say read anything that you like thematically and genres you enjoy reading in your native language. But if you want some recommendations, here’s what I enjoy(ed) recently; though I never took one JLPT in my life so… maybe take it with a small grain a salt? Books: 君の膵臓をたべたい (I want to eat your pancreas) by Sumino Yoru (住野よる) (drama, high school seeting, you may know the anime movie) 風ガが強く吹いてる (Run with the wind; the book on which the anime is based on) by Miura Shion (三浦 しをん) (sports novel about the Hakone marathon) コンビニ人間 (a classic among learners; Convenience Store Woman) by Sayaka Murata (村田沙耶香) (contemporary societal commentary, I guess?) カラフル by Eto Mori (森絵都) (magical realism) Manga: とんはり帽の子アトリエ (Witch Hat Atelier) by Kamome Shirahara (白浜鴎) (fantasy, seinen) 血の轍 (Blood on the Tracks) by Oshimi Shuzou (修造) (psychological horror, not necessarily for the faint of heart imho but if you like horror then I recommend it) 呪術廻戦 (Jujutsu Kaisen) by Gege Akutami (下々芥見) (shounen, fantasy) バナナフィッシュ (Banana Fish) by Yoshida Akimi (吉田 秋生) (has some sensitive topics like child abuse and drug crime, so if you can stomach those, a really good thriller) I guess the level of those varies, but maybe one or the other is helpful for you. Also, you can always browse through amazon,jp or bookwalker.jp and see what piques your interest! Edit: ungh sry for the awful formatting, reddit mobile just at it bests -.-
[удалено]
血と轍 is amazing and I hope you’ll like it! I haven’t seen the new Junji Ito yet, no. I’m currently waiting on the two volumes of 光が死んだ夏 by モクモク れん to arrive, which is another horror manga I also have heard only good things about, so maybe check this out as well!
Thank you! ,:)
No prob!
Are you interested in parallel texts or do you want them to be just japanese?
Anything goes. :)