The Role Of Reading In Expanding Vocabulary In Japanese

If you want to improve your Japanese, you need to increase your vocabulary …it really is that simple and one of the best ways to make this happen is through reading.

The more you read, the more you will expand your vocabulary and I will go through how exactly this happens.

Reading Will Introduce You To New Vocabulary

Reading is going to be the best way to find new vocabulary. You will not need to read much to find new words, especially as a beginner.

When you are starting out you can feel kind of lost, you have no idea where to begin. Languages are huge and you will feel overwhelmed, which is kind of silly as really you can start anywhere, any word you look at is a chance to learn something new.

However, reading can be a good place to start. Find anything to read and you will start to see new words. You are going to have to learn “everything” so, it doesn’t matter where you start, just finds something to read and start learning. 

It Is Easier To Look Up New Words That You Comes Across

It is also going to be a lot easier to look up words you don’t know when you are reading. If you are listening, the words can fly past you and might miss what was said. If you are listening to a recording you can of course wind this back, but if you are out in the real world then this isn’t an option.

With reading, the word is right there, written on the page and it doesn’t move. There is no rush or panic to grasp the word you don’t know, you can just stop reading and look up the word and then carry on reading.

This can be a little annoying if you are reading a book, but it is still easy to look things up. However, if you are reading online, you can look the word up so easily. You can either copy and paste it into a dictionary, or you can use something like Yomichan to just hover over the word and it will tell you the definition.

In a matter of seconds you can come across a new word, look up its meaning and move on.

You Can Add These New Words To Anki

You can also add these new words to your Anki so that you can study them later and be able to remember them.

This is again pretty easy if you are reading a book, but it is even simpler if you are reading on a computer. A few clicks of your mouse and the word will be added to Anki and you will be adding it to your own vocabulary in no time.

(You can read more about – How To Download Anki and Set It Up For Japanese Language Learning)

The Words Are Also In Context

Some of you are probably thinking that surely it is easier to just get a list of words and learn these, and while that may be true …you miss out on context.

Everything you read is going to be in some sort of context, so when you come across a new word it is going to be surrounded by other ones that you do hopefully know, and this dynamic is very powerful.

You will get to see how words interact with each other and how they can be used in certain instances and really this is all just called “context” and it does make the difference as it adds that extra layer of understanding that we actually need to use the language properly.

Written Vocabulary Is Much Richer

You might also be thinking that you can find plenty of new words through listening. This is true, especially in the beginning, but you will find the written language is much richer.

If you think of a movie, you can have two people on screen and they can be talking. The dialogue is of course going to help you learn the language, but that is all you get.

If you where to read about the same scene you will also get the dialogue …but there is going to be so much more language used to describe what is going on.

The movie can visually show you the location, the people, their actions and really so many other things,  whereas this all has to be described when written and this will require a lot more language, so you will find the breadth of vocabulary is much wider and richer in the written form. 

You Will Get Repeat Exposure From Reading

A large part of learning vocabulary involves having to see the same words over and over again so that they finally stick in your brain and reading allows for this to happen.

If you read a lot, you are going to see the most common words over and over again and you will very quickly get a lot of repeat exposure. This is of course great for learning new words, but it is also massively important for strengthen what you already know.

Every line you read will be helping your memory in some way, even if you have already seen these words hundreds of times, it all helps.   

It’s Also Easy To Re-read Things

You also need to realise that there is nothing stopping you from re-reading something.

You can literally finish reading something and then go back to the start and do it all over again, which is just going to guarantee you are getting repeated exposure to the same words. 

You don’t even need to do this right away, you can read something today and then come back to it in a few days, weeks or even months. You might feel like you can’t really remember the content and that is fine, your brain is still benefiting from seeing the same words again, it all adds up and helps you progress.

You Will See The Same Kanji In Different Contexts

Reading is also going to really help you with your kanji knowledge. Everything I have discussed so far can be applied to kanji but you will find that kanji is quite unique by the fact that they can have a number of different pronunciations or meaning, depending on the usage.

By reading a lot you are going to naturally see the kanji being used in these different contexts and you are going to get a much better knowledge of how they actually work.

Simple things like the fact that kanji can be combined to make a new word can really throw people off. The more you see this type of thing happening, the more you will just get comfortable with it and the better you ability to use Japanese will become.

(You can read more about – How Do You Actually Read Japanese Kanji?)

There Is No Rush When You Are Reading

Probably one of the most important aspects of reading is the fact that you can go at your own pace and this is fabulous for helping your vocabulary grow.

You can just take your time and look at every word properly and if something looks new, or you are unsure about it you can take as long as you want to study it. 

You can stop and think about the word, or you can go and look it up, you can go back to the start and re-read something or you can even just ignore that you don’t really understand it and move on. There are no rules and you are free to do as you please.

You set the pace and this does make a huge difference. If you compare this to listening, it is the speaker who sets the pace and you must work at their speed and this is much harder.

Reading allows you to take a more relaxed and comfortable approach, which allows you to actually focus at a level where you can make progress properly, rather than being stressed out and being pushed to your cognitive limit.

Conclusion

Hopefully now you can see that reading is very important when it comes to expanding your vocabulary, in fact it is probably the number one way to do this.

You can try other methods, but I am fairly confident you will find the biggest growth of your vocabulary will come from reading, it really is worth your time, so don’t avoid it.

(You can read more about – The Importance Of Reading In Japanese Language Learning)