（日本語はこちらです）
When I was a student, I studied Japanese in a variety of ways. For as long as I have studied Japanese, however, I have consistently done what we call Extensive Reading (多読). Therefore, in this blog post I want to offer some thoughts about choosing books for reading in a second language, based on both my personal perspective and some research in the field of language pedagogy.
The most important thing is finding books that you will continue reading.
Research on Extensive Reading consistently emphasizes both the role of enjoyment in reading and ease of comprehension. When teachers recommend books for extensive reading, however, we often point to “Graded Readers” and over-emphasize difficulty and ease of reading. Graded Readers are the books in the English Lounge and library with numbers on the cover telling you how challenging they are (in length, vocabulary, sentence complexity, etc.). The general rule is that you should be able to read Extensive Reading quickly and easily, understanding about 80-90% without a dictionary. Graded Readers make finding books like that comparatively simple.
That said, Graded Readers are not “authentic texts”; they are not written for native speakers. In fact, many are famous stories and classic literature that have been rewritten in a much simpler way.
How do you feel about that? While I never had Graded Readers when studying Japanese, I do recall two instances of using simplified texts in my classroom (Soseki’s Botchan and Ogai’s “Takasebune”). To be honest, when I later learned that these were simplified versions of the stories, I felt betrayed, like I had been lied to. I wanted to read the “real thing.” So, my personal feelings are that Graded Readers would not work for me. Instead, I used to read a lot on the internet using Aozora Bunko. The advantage of reading online was that I could copy and paste kanji into an online dictionary quickly and easily.
Many of my classmates used manga to practice reading Japanese, and many international students do the same today. In my case, when I first came to Japan, I knew that I would mostly be drawn to manga with very difficult language—for example, Romance of the Three Kingdoms—and so I did not choose to read any. The first manga that I read at length was Mushishi, which also had very difficult language. However, I read it because I had watched the anime and was already familiar with most of the episodes’ contents. This meant I was “learning what I already know.” I often recommend choosing something to read that is more challenging if you already know about it—something you have read in Japanese, seen the movie, a subject you studied in school, etc.
The last point I want to bring up is how to bridge between Graded Readers and novels. If you want to try reading authentic texts but cannot find a book you “already know,” I suggest looking at “children’s literature.” A number of books in the English Lounge library are “children’s literature,” although I actively avoid using that term on this blog. The reason for this is that I wouldn’t want to read a book if you told me it was for children, and I doubt you would either. Yet, think about the complexity of the language that you, as a native Japanese speaker, were reading in middle and even elementary school. You would be surprised at how difficult some of the language in English “children’s literature” can be.
You can also expect these books to be worthwhile: the English Lounge keeps books that give you the opportunity to think about interesting themes, meet interesting characters, read interesting plots, or at least enjoy some humor or action. Put another way, while many people would say that Miyazawa Kenji wrote “children’s literature,” many would also agree that his works are just as interesting for adults to read. So, in a word, do not be scared off if you think a book is intended for children. I make a point of reading as much of the English Lounge library as I can, and I have yet to find a book that I thought had no value for you as a college student (and if I did, I would get rid of it!)
To repeat the main point: Extensive Reading only works if you read a lot, and that means you have to feel like reading more and more. In this blog post, I wrote about Graded Readers, learning what you already know, and children’s literature as authentic texts. Know yourself and how you feel—maybe a newspaper or a science textbook will work better for you. These are just some thoughts to help you start thinking about your learning process.
