Tadoku six years on

Six years ago I adopted a reading method called tadoku (多読) and wrote about my initial experience in Japan Harvest.¹ Since then, I’ve continued to use it and have found it extremely effective.

As its name implies, tadoku is a strategy that emphasizes reading a lot of material. It has three basic tenets:

1. Choose books you find easy to read.
2. Don’t look up words in a dictionary; rather, skip over words and phrases you don’t understand.
3. If you don’t find a book interesting, start reading another one.

Why it works

Before I started using tadoku, I would spend a lot of time looking up words in a dictionary (roughly 1,000 words per book on average), and this slowed me down considerably. But now I’m generally able to read a novel in about a month. I think one of the biggest advantages of tadoku is that it maximises the time you spend reading.

Another advantage is that you spend your whole time in Japanese—there’s no switching between languages. When you use a foreign-language dictionary, you’re connecting Japanese words to English meanings (or another language). But with tadoku, you surmise meaning from the context, and so you’re learning Japanese in Japanese. This mimics the way that children learn language.

Also, by reading interesting books that are not overly demanding, tadoku strikes the right balance between effort and reward. If a book is too hard, the brain quickly tires, whereas if a book is not engaging enough, you lose interest and tune out. With tadoku, reading becomes a more enjoyable, immersive experience. I think this principle extends to all educational experiences: you want to challenge yourself just enough, and you need some kind of intellectual stimulation as you learn.

Other benefits of tadoku include strengthening reading skills such as surmising meaning from context and evaluating which words and passages are critical for grasping the book’s narrative and which ones you can safely skim over.

Some tips

As I’ve written previously, start reading manga as they are an excellent gateway to reading Japanese books.² The pictures aid comprehension, and text is brief and sometimes comes with furigana (kana that indicates pronunciation). When you’re ready to graduate to books, I advise starting with short stories or articles by easy-to-read authors. I’ve found Seo Maiko, Murata Sayaka, Shōji Yukiya, Kondō Fumie, Higashino Keigo, and Murakami Haruki good in this respect.

One of the hardest things about tadoku is finding interesting books that are right for your level. The most interesting books always seem to be those that are hardest to read. But if you find an interesting book that’s currently too hard for you to read, you can make a note and come back to it when your reading ability has improved. I find the website Bookmeter.com useful for recording Japanese books I want to read, am reading, or have read (it’s similar to the English-language website Goodreads.com).

Another thing I struggle with is that I find it difficult to stop reading a book once I’ve started it. If it’s not that interesting, I often keep reading in the hope that the ending will redeem the book. And if it’s hard going and I’m already well into a book, I will plough through since I’ve already invested a lot of time on it. One solution to this problem is to use free ebook samples. They provide the first 5–10% of the book, so when you reach the end of a sample, you can evaluate whether you want to keep going or not. Alternatively, going to a bookshop or library, and engaging in tachiyomi (to read a book in a store without buying it) is a more traditional way to assess books before committing to them.

If you’ve never given tadoku a try, I would strongly recommend giving it a shot. It’s the most effective reading strategy for foreign languages that I’ve come across.

1. Simon Pleasants, “Experimenting with Tadoku,” Japan Harvest, https://japanharvest.org/experimenting-with-tadoku (Summer 2016).
2. Simon Pleasants, “Get into Manga!” Japan Harvest, https://japanharvest.org/get-into-manga/ (Autumn 2018).