掲示板 Forums - Getting faster at reading texts

Is it possible to achieve the level of understanding japanese where you can look at the text and understand the symbols instantly without the need to slowly read the whole thing first, like if you read in your mother language? For me it works with most european and slavic languages, I can recognize the symbols instantly, but japanese has completely different writing system and is harder for brain to process, so I wonder how long it will take to adapt. I'm not trying to rush, just asking

The question of whether it’s possible for adult learners (in this context, anyone older than about ten) to obtain the level of literacy enjoyed by those who learned to read as children is not an obvious one. I believe the answer is yes, but it seems to be quite rare.

Recognizing character and words is a different ability from the ability to read a sentence.
It's like focusing on one detail vs watching without a focus.
And ironically, you don't "read" a sentence, you're kinda predicting the words in a sentence.
One of the way to understand that in english is to read those kind of annoying sentences that most people will understand:

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in
waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht
the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl
mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the
huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a
wlohe."

And even after that, there is another level which is the sentence structure, meaning after a certain word, like a subject, you know that there will be another type of word. Or that after "read", there will be probably "book" or "sentences". And even after that, there is also the level of group of words. Your brain will try to do all of that work even if you don't try. It makes a lot of different types of shortcuts, some are generic for a lot of people (or languages) and some other are specific to what you like and see/hear often.

So how to read faster? Just read, read and read again and again. In you mother tongue and european languages, you have a whole different level of experience with that and those shortcuts are already well-made. And you can also probably use some of them in similar languages. But for japanese, it's a whole different system of writing like you said. So, it will take more time time to create a lot of different kind of shortcut. And btw, I don't know if you watch japanese video but even japanese sometime struggle with reading sentences (it's one of the weakness of the language like french, my mother tongue, which has too much exceptions in grammar and makes all people and natives alike crying every time :v)

In renshuu, you should try to include more sentences in your schedules if you want to work more on that. And also deactivate the furigana for known words in sentences (there is an option for that I didn't know of and I should have deactivate it a long time ago x) ). And think of that as a different exercise from the words schedule. Don't spend too much time on each words or even groups of words since it's not the same ability.

Anyway, all is left to say, is 頑張って! è_é

Edit: fix a mistake

To add onto this, lots of action-oriented manga use odd sounds to emphasize actions and moods, which can be super confusing. The same goes for animes where the characters use a lot of everyday slang that you don't learn in the JLPT.