studying for reading comprehension

[cef]

Hi there

I have just done some practice tests and realised that the reading comprehension is my weakest area. Does anyone have any good study tips for reading comprehension?

I have a book of about 40 reading comprehension articles and questions and one of the UNICOM text books related to reading comprehension.

Is it best to just read, read ,read ,read and read more?

Thanks,

Tim.

[JanneM]

Reading sounds like a good plan

Seriously, I don't know any other way to do it. I have alternated studying textbooks with free reading with assistance from my teacher. So far mostly short stories - a guy by the name of Lafcardio Hearn (who later took the name Koizumi Yakumo) published a couple of volumes of traditional Japanese ghost stories that turn out to be at about the right level. As he wasn't a native Japanese speaker I think he tended to stay with the more straightforward expressions and grammar.

[Applecart]

I think that with the reading section it is very important to identify what information is essential and what you can gloss over. I recently did a practice test and made the mistake of obsessing over some point that I could not make out. It wasted a lot of time and in the end was not important.

So I would suggest that rather than just practicing reading, it would be useful to practice extracting the specific information needed to answer the questions. It means learning to scan most of the material to identify key words / phrases and then focusing on those. The book you have from Unicom is OK for practice, but to me it seems easier than questions on past tests.

[Keith]

[Keith]

I read the 10 warming up articles and the first article of the main section. I read each one 3 times. The first time, I read the article without furigana to see how much I can understand and to get a feel for how much of the article contains words which I can't read. Then I read the article with furigana and look at the furigana for every word. It's a good chance to double-check my reading for words that I'm pretty sure of already. Plus, I try to put the other ones into memory.

I also look up words in the online dictionary. I prefer to know what a word means rather than have a vague idea. For example, the book has an explanation for the Japanese word for duck. It tells you it is a kind of bird. That would not be enough for me. It gives the same explanation for goose. I already knew the word for duck but not goose.

Then I go back and read the article without furigana again to see if I can get through it while remembering all the readings. After that, I read the notes and then questions. I read all the answers to the questions. Next comes the 読解のポイント and then the 問題を解くため解説.

I feel like I'm really picking up the new vocabulary and pronunciations through all that reading. Plus the book explains some grammar that it wants to emphasize.

FYI, the books articles are real articles gathered from newspapers, books, and magazines. Real content is called 生教材（なま　きょう　ざい）. I learned that term from this book too.

[synewave]

That book Applecart and Keith have been talking about is great. I got it at the weekend and am already beginning to wonder what I have been finding so difficult about reading and grammar. I had the UNICOM 文法編 book before but using in together with the 読解 book is really helping.

There is one difficulty I am having with the reading book though. I'm finding it really hard not to notice the answers at the bottom of the question pages. I don't really understand what they are there for, as on the following page it gives you the answer and explanation.

But overall these books rock.

I'm using them slightly different from Keith. I go through the questions as quickly as I can first time. Basically trying to find the relevant info as fast as possible. Then go back through the whole passage picking out grammar points and kanji readings that I want to work on.

[Keith]

[Applecart]

I started out using it pretty much as Keith has described, but after about 5 articles I shifted more to synewave's way of going about it.

One of the legs of my daily commute it almost exactly 15 minutes so I decided to try and get through an article each morning and have the questions answered within that trip. Before I got to the end of the book I got most well within the time. I did hit a few tough questions though. In particular, a couple of the questions that involve describing the overall theme, or what the author most wants to say, were quite hard.

In fact there is one sentence that I still don't really get. I'd put it here but I don't want to spoil it for you guys. But I'll be interested to see if you both have the same problem. Here's hoping you don't- then you can explain it to me.

[synewave]

I'm finding the 読解編 book to be a revelation. One thing that I notice from the questions is that often the answer is literally staring you in the face. If a big chunk of text from the passage is repeated in one of the answers, that more often than not is the answer.

I must admit though that it's not like I understand every word. But going with my intuition seems to be working pretty well.

[ayame]

Hi everyone, I've been lurking off and on for a while but just finally joined the forum.

I've been using the same Unicom reading comprehension book that everyone has been writing about. I thought I'd post a few spots that confused me and see if anyone can help.

This is from p. 110, 3rd paragraph.
いわねばならぬことだけを、
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I just don't get it...

Here's another - p. 130. There's a sentence that ends with であろう - it looks like a volitional form of である - is that possible?

Thanks in advance!

[Tim]

[ayame]

Thanks - that helps!