Tadoku - Let's Read! Course Introduction Video (and transcript)

Tadoku (多読), also called Extensive Reading, is the practice of learning a foreign language by reading lots of easy books. It's a really fun way to explore the Japanese language, without feeling pressure to understand every word.

This footage is from the 2019 Tadoku Summer Course at Step Up Japanese in Brighton, UK. In summer 2020, we also held our first Online Tadoku course.

Thanks to Daniel Sheen for making this video!

Watch the video, or scroll down to read a transcript. Click "CC" to turn on the subtitles 👍

What is Tadoku?

David: Tadoku is the practice of reading lots and lots of books, with the focus being on skipping things you don’t understand.

Fran: I think that lack of pressure’s really important, isn’t it? Skipping things, and… it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand everything.

Let’s take a look inside a Tadoku class at Step Up Japanese (filmed in 2019):

Fran: What did you read today? How was it? What was your favourite part? What was your least favourite part?

Snippets from students’ conversations about books:

A: I work in a publishing company – we make books – and this is from my publishing company.

B: Oh really?

A: And that one, yeah.

C: She’s actually a ghost! Oh no! And he’s really scared.

What do you like about Tadoku?

Sara: It’s quite nice just to kind of come back from work and just sit and you’re getting your practice in but it doesn't feel quite so much like practice, because you are focusing on the story, and I quite like the whole rules of the whole thing, which is like, you know, don’t sit there looking words up, just try and work it out from the context of it all, but yeah, I do actually sit and enjoy little stories more, that way.

David: I enjoy Tadoku, as it gives me the opportunity to read Japanese, without the pressure of understanding every single word.

Fran: I really like that experience as well, like you’re reading a book and then like a couple pages on you’re like “Oh, that’s what that word means!” – you didn’t need to look it up.

Sara: It’s like a little gold star for yourself as well, like: “Oh, I did know that!”

Would you recommend Step Up Japanese?

David: I would recommend Step Up Japanese to friends and family, and have. I really enjoy classes, I really enjoy the teacher, I really enjoy all of the students as well, it’s just like a really friendly bunch, and I’d like for more people to be part of the Step Up Japanese family.

Learning Japanese is Easier Than You Think

People LOVE to say that Japanese is difficult. Like all languages it has its challenges - but it also has some key things that make it easy peasy.

1. Pronunciation

The Japanese phonetic system is pretty simple - much simpler than many other languages. Each hiragana character has one - and only one - sound. For example, ら / ラ / ra always sounds the same, no matter what word it’s in:

ラ ム ネ

ra mu ne

ど ら え も ん

do ra e mo n

Compare that to English, where “meat” and “bread” have the same letters “ea” in the middle, but with totally different pronunciation.

And, unlike Mandarin or Cantonese, there are no tones* in Japanese! Hurray!

*Japanese does have pitch accent. Put simply, all syllables in Japanese are either high-pitched or low-pitched. But this is much simpler than tones in Chinese languages. If you’d like to learn more about Japanese pitch accent, I really recommend the Japanese Phonetics by Dogen series on YouTube.

2. Loanwords

Japanese has thousands of words borrowed from other languages - and most of these modern loanwords come from English. How do you say "ice cream” in Japanese? AISU KURIIMU. Tennis? TENISU. Smartphone? SUMAATOFON.

So there’s a whole bank of Japanese words that you already know. Well done you.

↓ Words like "biiru"

3. Straightforward grammar

Japanese word-order has a certain Yoda-like quality at times:

わたしはコーヒーを飲んでいます

watashi wa koohii wo nonde imasu

I, coffee am drinking

BUT making simple questions in Japanese is dead easy. You take your sentence:

日本に行きます

nihon ni ikimasu

I go to Japan

and stick the magical question word “ka” on the end:

日本に行きますか

nihon ni ikimasu ka

Will you go to Japan?

No need to change the word order. Just add か. 

Let’s try that again!

これはたこやきです

kore wa takoyaki desu

This is takoyaki.

これはたこやきですか

kore wa takoyaki desu ka

Is this takoyaki?

Making simple Japanese questions - as easy as adding “ka”.

4. Particles

Particles are short Japanese words that connect parts of a sentence together. They turn a sentence like “I study home evening” into one that sounds like “I study at home in the evening”.

But I’m going to let you in on a secret.

If you don’t know what particle to use, 90 percent of the time you can get away with not using one at all.

People will still know what you mean - and Japanese people drop particles in speech half the time anyway.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t learn how to use particles (it’s good to know the difference between いぬがたべる “the dog eats” and いぬをたべる “I eat my dog”). But remember: you will still be understood without them.

5. No articles…and no plurals!

Japanese doesn’t have equivalents to the English “a” or “the”. There’s no need to say “where is THE book?” in Japanese. You can just say:

ほんはどこ？

hon wa doko?

Where is book?

AND there are no plural forms.

りんごがあります

ringo ga arimasu

I have an apple / some apples

See? The Japanese language. Easier than you thought.

What do you find easy (or difficult) about learning Japanese? Let me know in the comments!

First published November 20, 2015
Updated September 17, 2019