The Magic of Tadoku: “Extensive reading” in Japanese

This is the English version of an article I wrote last year which is now published in a Japanese book! 日本語多読 上 ～広がり深化する多読 (Nihongo Tadoku Jou: Hirogari Shinka Suru Tadoku) is an introduction to Japanese extensive reading that incorporates new practices, research, and knowledge.

How I discovered Tadoku
Ever since a short trip to Japan when I was 19, I’ve been obsessed with the Japanese language. After university I moved to Japan, where I worked in Nagoya city for four years. On returning to the UK in 2014, I started teaching Japanese in Brighton at my school, Step Up Japanese.

At Step Up Japanese, I teach group classes from beginner to intermediate level. Sometimes I have Japanese volunteers who come and help me out, but usually I teach all the classes myself.

My students are all adults, who typically come once a week for a 90-minute class. They’re often learning Japanese in order to travel to Japan, or as a hobby. Most students have English as their first language, and for many of them, studying Japanese is the first time they will have encountered a language that uses a different writing system to the Latin alphabet.

Learning to read and write Japanese is not easy. And since my students only have one class a week, some find it difficult to memorise hiragana and katakana (the two basic “alphabets” of the Japanese writing system). At the intermediate stage, too, I knew that my students wanted to read books and manga in Japanese, but I noticed that they often struggled to find level-appropriate reading material.

I could see that students at all levels would benefit from more reading practice, so in 2018 I decided to start a new course devoted to reading.

Up until that point, I’d mostly assigned reading practice as homework – conventional “reading comprehension” tasks. My students would often say that this kind of homework was difficult. I was using materials from the workbooks that accompany the textbooks used in class, but the exercises were often more challenging than the textbook material we’d studied in class. Students could only read these texts if they used a dictionary. And even where they could understand the exercises, they didn’t seem to find them particularly interesting.

In higher level classes, we’d tried other things such as reading yonkoma manga (four-panel comic strips) together, but students usually found this difficult too. Students enjoyed the yonkoma manga class, but I’d end up translating into English so they could understand.

I had started to wonder if there might be another way. There were so many interesting books and manga that my students would enjoy, yet here they were, reading uninspiring comprehension texts. I looked online, and that’s when I discovered the Tadoku study method.

Tadoku, sometimes called extensive reading, is the practice of learning a language by reading lots of books. In Tadoku, you read materials that are slightly below your current study level. You’re encouraged to skip words and phrases you don’t understand, and the focus is on reading for pleasure.

I thought this could be great to try out with my students, so I ordered some graded readers from NPO Tadoku.

I was a bit nervous about starting a Tadoku course. What would I, as the teacher, do while students were reading – just sit there? If students wanted to practise solo reading, they could just do that at home, couldn’t they? Who was going to sign up for a reading course where you read silently on your own...?

Seeking reassurance, I bought NPO Tadoku’s book, Nihongo kyoushi no tame no tadoku jugyou nyuumon (“An Introduction to Tadoku for Teachers of Japanese”), which had lots of useful case studies and practical advice. I was particularly encouraged to read that all you need to start a Tadoku group is a few basic components: level-appropriate books, a place to read, and a teacher (or “supporter”).

The Tadoku books arrived from Japan, and they seemed a good level for my students. But I was still apprehensive – would my adult students really want to read ‘The Three Little Pigs’ in Japanese?

I flipped through the book, and was surprised – it was so fun! The writing flowed beautifully, and the pictures were cute too. Before I knew it, I was reading the book aloud to myself.


2018: Trying out Tadoku

My Tadoku courses are short – six sessions of 55 minutes each. In each session, the first 45 minutes is devoted to solo reading, and the final 10 minutes are for “book talk”, when students chat in small groups about what they’ve read (mostly in English, but sometimes in Japanese).

All I had prepared for that first course was the set of graded readers from NPO Tadoku, and some free Tadoku books I’d printed from online. However, in the very first session I realised I was going to need more books! I actually didn’t think my students could read so fast in Japanese. Pleasantly surprised, I ordered more graded readers from Japan.


A reading revolution...?

I started learning Japanese in 2007, but it was 2012 before I read a whole book in the language.

When I started to study Japanese, I dreamed of one day being able to read Haruki Murakami’s ‘Norwegian Wood’ in the original Japanese. I did try and read manga and novels quite early on, but they were too difficult and I’d soon give up. There were so many words I didn’t know, and I’d look each word up in the dictionary, so the process was slow and a bit painful.

(Now, I love reading Japanese novels. But it frustrates me that it took so long to get to this point, and that it wasn’t always an enjoyable process…)

That summer in 2018, halfway through the Tadoku course, I went to Lisbon on holiday. I drank beer on the beach and read ‘Convenience Store Woman’ in the original Japanese.

This time, I didn’t use a dictionary at all. I just tried to read according to Tadoku principles, skipping over unfamiliar words and phrases – and it was a lot of fun. I finished the book much more quickly than I expected, and because I wasn’t using a dictionary, I was able to truly lose myself in the story.

I’d never experienced this with a Japanese book before. I realised that my concept of what it means to “read Japanese” had changed completely.

So Tadoku has been revolutionary for my students - but it had a huge impact on me too.

If only I’d known about Tadoku in 2007 – I could have read a lot of fun books in those first five years!


2019: Adding manga and picture books to the mix

The feedback from students was great, so in 2019 I held another 6-week summer course, and about half of the students were returnees who had attended the previous year.

As well as the graded readers, I added in some more easy-ish manga as well as some picture books. Children’s picture books with simple Japanese, like Tarō Gomi’s Dareka ga imasu (“Somebody’s There”) and Katsu Kiuchi’s Yasai no onaka (“Inside Vegetables”) were popular with my students, especially the beginners.


2020: Trying online Tadoku

Due to the covid-19 pandemic, in March 2020 I moved all my teaching online, and so the 2020 Tadoku course moved online too. As before, it was six sessions, with a maximum of 12 students, and it sold out quickly.

(Also, because this course was online for the first time and all the materials we used were free online resources, I offered this course at half price.)

At the start of each Zoom session, I’d show students some new books and resources, and then I’d put them each into their own individual breakout rooms for the reading session. I’d visit each student in turn, checking they were okay, talking to them about what they were reading, and making suggestions where appropriate.

As before, the last 10 minutes was devoted to “book talk”, where students talk in pairs or threes. This year, I also suggested that students keep a reading log of what they’d read and what they thought of it.

My impression is that more students listened to the audio files that accompany the graded readers, probably because these materials were easier to access when attending an online course. I also showed them some YouTube videos of kids’ books being read aloud, which proved popular too.

Students’ responses to Tadoku

Tadoku is probably the most popular course I run at Step Up Japanese.

Sara has been a student of mine for several years. I interviewed her about Tadoku in Summer 2019, when she was at Upper Beginner level, and reading Level 0 and 1 Tadoku books. Here’s what she had to say:

“It’s just reading, really, in my case the simplest books there are, but they’re actually really cute little stories. And it’s quite nice to come back from work and just sit there, and you’re getting your practice in but it doesn't feel quite so much like practice, because you’re focusing on the story.”

We asked Sara what she’d read that day, and to tell us what happens in the story:

“The country mouse went to the town mouse’s house, and found out how scary everything was, because there’s people and cats, and all the rest of it. It took me to nearly the end of the book and suddenly I realised I did actually recognise the kanji for ‘town’, and then I figured out what the two words in front of ‘mouse’ were.”

From this comment, we can see that Sara was able to follow the story, a Japanese translation of ‘The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse’, well. She skipped over words and phrases she didn’t understand, and then afterwards, she was able to realise what the word machi ( “town”) meant.

David has attended Tadoku courses at Step Up Japanese three summers in a row, and when I interviewed him in 2019 he was reading at around Level 2:

“I enjoy Tadoku, as it gives me the opportunity to read Japanese, without the pressure of trying to understand every single word.”

Of course, not all the feedback is positive all the time! Some students feel that it’s simply impossible to read without using a dictionary, and some aren’t interested in reading children’s books.

Because we are in the UK, some students don’t come into any contact with any Japanese outside of our lessons. For some of these beginner students, who are still learning hiragana and katakana, even at Level 0 there are some Tadoku books which are too difficult. In the classroom, I’d be able to recommend kids’ picture books to those students, or suggest easier books within the Level 0 framework. Online, I guided them towards YouTube videos of kids’ books being read aloud.

After our first session of the 2020 Online Tadoku course, I got this email from another student. He’d read the book Tamago (“Eggs”) once in the Tadoku session, and then read it again after the session because he enjoyed it so much:

Translation:

“Tamago  (‘Eggs’)
I first read Tamago in Tadoku class. Today I read it again. I like books about food, so Tamago was fun. I learned some new words.”

This student usually emails me in English, and this is the first reasonably long email he’s sent me in Japanese.

There are some grammar mistakes in his Japanese message, but it’s clear exactly what he wants to say. But why, after the first Tadoku session, did he think to email me in Japanese?

He read a fun book, enjoyed it, and felt confident to write an email in Japanese. That’s amazing, isn’t it? And some of this confidence must have come from Tadoku.


What’s next?

Building on the 2020 Online Tadoku course, I’d love to run Tadoku courses not only as summer courses, but also as short courses at other times of the year too.

I’ve run a “Learn Japanese with Netflix” course before, where students watched Japanese drama and reality TV shows together, but we haven’t tried “solo watching” yet. I’d really like to try out a Ta-kan (“watch-a-lot”) course with my students too! Maybe next year...


- Fran Wrigley, Step Up Japanese, Brighton, UK

- More about Step Up Japanese: www.stepupjapanese.com

- Watch a video report (in English/Japanese with subtitles) about Tadoku at Step Up Japanese:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abn6vzQNmT0

- Follow Fran on:
Twitter twitter.com/stepupjapanese
Instagram instagram.com/stepupjapanese
Facebook facebook.com/stepupjapanese

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.

日本語教室で多読のコースを開いてみたイギリス人日本語教師の感想

（英語版はこちら Click here to read in English）

私はどっちかといえばもの静かなほうだと思いますが、日本語を教える時はうるさい時もあります。授業では歌を歌ったり、盆踊りを踊ったり、にぎやかなゲームをしたりしています。隣の部屋で会議を行おうとしていた人たちに「少し静かにしてくれませんか」と注意されたこともあります。 

でも、２０１８年に私はとても静かな日本語の授業を開きました。この授業では、生徒は主に一人で黙って勉強していました。 

私はその授業の「先生」だったけれど、私も一人で手作りの絵本を読んでいて、時々生徒が大丈夫かを確かめるために目を上げただけ。

これは「多読」です。普通の日本語の授業と全然違う読解の学習法です。

多読とは、文字通りたくさん読むことです。簡単な本をたくさん読んで、外国語を身につける方法です。多読では、今の勉強のレベルより少し簡単なレベルの本を読みながら、新しい言葉や表現や文法を自然に習うことができます。 

私は、多読の「授業」を開くのにかなり緊張していました。生徒が読んでいる間、私は先生としてどうすればいいかな？そこに座るだけ？生徒は一人で読むなら家ですればいいんじゃない？いったい誰が「静かに一人で読む」クラスに参加したいのだろう？

ネットでいろいろ調べて、東京にある多読を支援する団体である「NPO多言語多読」から多読の本を取り寄せました。

事例紹介や実際的なアドバイスがたくさん入っている「 日本語教師のための多読授業入門」＊という本も買って読み始めました。

NPO多言語多読のメンバーからもメールで応援メッセージをもらって、自信が少しつきました。

その後私の新しい多読のコースはブライトンの新聞にも掲載されたんです！ それを見て、かなり緊張し始めました。

多読の本が日本から届いて、私の生徒には良さそうなレベルだと思いました。でも正直、少しつまらないんじゃないかと心配しました。大人の生徒は本当に「3匹の子ぶた」が読みたいのだろうか？でも、自分で読み始めて、驚きました。すごく楽しかったのです。

絵本だからわからないときは、絵を見て推測してみることもできます。絵を見てもわからないときは、コンテクストから推測するのもいいです。それでもわからなければ、続けて読むだけでいいです。

ただ、辞書を使うことだけは許されていません。（私はこのルールに加えて、知らない単語の意味を先生に聞くのもダメだ、ともうちょっと厳しくしてみました。）

辞書を引いたり言葉の意味を聞いたりするのは、読むことを遮って進むペースが遅くなるんです。そして読むのが楽しくなくなって、生徒はやる気がなくなってしまいます。そこで、多読では知らない単語や表現に出会う時は、飛ばし読みが勧められています。

もう少し先を読めば自然にわかるようになりますから。そして、（これが面白いよ！）時々わからなくて大丈夫です。読めば読むほど、外国語を理解するのが易しくなるんですよ！

私は２００７年に日本語を勉強し始めましたが、初めて日本語の本を丸々一冊読み終えたのは２０１２年でした。あの５年間に多読のことを知っていたらどんなにたくさんの易しい日本語の本が読めていただろう、と今思います。 

私の多読のグループに参加した生徒の中には、１年間しか日本語を勉強したことがない人もいましたが、２、３回目のクラスまでに（つまり、２〜３時間の間に）様々な日本語の本も読めたのは、大変な業績だと思います。

レベル別に分かれていて、簡単で、短い本だからこそ、Step Up Japaneseの生徒は早く楽しく読めました。

多読の読み方のルール
（NPO多読のウェブサイトから引用）

１．やさしいレベルから読む

絵がついていて、母語に訳さなくても読めるやさしいものから読みましょう。絵をじっくり見て本の世界に入ることが大切です。

２．辞書を引かないで読む

わからない言葉を辞書で調べていると、速く読めません。ゆっくり読むと、つまらなくなってしまいます。わからない言葉が出てきても、辞書を引かないで、絵を見たり、その後の文を読んでみましょう。

３．わからないところは飛ばして読む

絵を見たり、ちょっと考えてもわからない部分は、飛ばしてしまいましょう。楽しく読めていれば、全部わからなくていいのです。

４．進まなくなったら、他の本を読む

進まないのは、読んでいる本が難しいか、興味がないからです。その時は止めて他の本に替えましょう。

生徒がルールを守れるかどうかという心配もありました。辞書を開きたくなったり、興味がないのに無理やり本を読み続けたりすることも絶対あると思いました。みんなにとって和やかな雰囲気が作りたかったけれど、リラックスしすぎた感じだったら、生徒が本を読まずにおしゃべりしてしまう可能性もあるんじゃないか、という不安もありました。 

でも、心配することはありませんでした。みんなしっかりルールに従って勉強できました！だって、本をたくさん読むために多読のコースに参加したんですから。

「辞書なし」というのは一番大変だったらしいです。授業の終わりに「ルールに従って多読できた？」と聞いたら、ある生徒は今まで見たこともない漢字一つをこっそり辞書で調べたことを告白しました。その漢字は「臼」でした。 

「続けて読んでみたらコンテクストからわかったかもね」と私は言いました。（あと、「臼」はほとんど見かけない漢字なので、調べないで本を読み続けたほうが効率のいい学習法でしょう？とも思いました。）とは言っても、基本的に生徒は辞書を使わずに楽しく読めました。 

一回目の授業が終わったら、買った本の数は少なかったと気づきました。生徒がこんなに早く読めると思いませんでした。ネットで多読の本をもっと注文しました。

６週間多読をして、生徒にはいろいろなメリットがあったと私は思います。そして、私も先生としていろいろ学ぶことができました。

これまで授業のために読み物を選ぶとき、私はできるだけ面白そうなものを選ぼうとしてきました。時間があるときは自分で短いストーリーを書いたりもします。でも、多読で読んだ本と比べたら、どれも面白くないなと気づきました。

それはなぜかというと、基本的に教科書に載っている読み物はつまらないからなんです。

簡単な読み物でも面白いものがたくさんあるというのは、多読が私に教えてくれたことなんです。

「ラーメン麺太の冒険」（右）は人気の作品一つでした。

始める前に、生徒はどの本を読めばいいか、自分にとってどのレベルがいいかわからないこともあるんじゃないかと思ったけれど、そういうことは全くありませんでした。生徒は自分が興味のあるトピックで、自分のレベルに合わせた本を選ぶことで、自分の日本語のレベルにも自信がつきました。

授業中、私も簡単な楽しい本を読んで、質問されたときはこんな風にかわしました：

Bさん：　先生、これはどういう意味ですか。

自分：　Bさんはどう思いますか。

Bさん：　あ、そっか。ルール２ですね。

６週間のコースの真ん中で、私は夏休みの旅行でポルトガルに行ってきました。ビーチでビールを飲みながら「コンビニ人間」という日本語の本を読みました。辞書を開かずに、知らない単語を深く考えずに、早く楽しく読めました。 

つまり、「多読」という勉強法は生徒だけではなく、私にも革命的でした。

２００７年に知っていたらよかったな、と今思います。あの初めの５年間でどんなにたくさんの易しい日本語の本が読めていただろう！ 

来年の多読コースについて考えてみたら：

• 読んだ本について生徒に短い感想を書かせる？：

写真：国際交流基金

• 音楽を聴きながら読むのはどうかな？

• 一年で６週間以上した方がいいんじゃない…？

リンク：

• NPO多言語多読→ https://tadoku.org/

• 日本語多読たどくブックス注文申し込み（NPO多言語多読版）→ https://tadoku.org/japanese/to-order

• KCよむよむ（無料で多読ブックスをダウンロードできます！）→　https://jfkc.jp/clip/yomyom/

• ブライトンの新聞（The Argus）に掲載されたStep Up Japaneseについての記事（英語）！ Japanese Language School is Running a New Course in Brighton
  → https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/16361201.japanese-language-school-is-running-a-new-course-in-brighton

• 「日本語教師のための多読授業入門」→ https://amzn.to/2T5AAkY ＊

• 「コンビニ人間　→ https://amzn.to/2CFJjDA ＊

＊が付いているリンクはアフィリエイトリンクです。そこをクリックして本をご購入いただいた場合は、私はアマゾンからわずかな手数料を受け取ることができます。お客様には普通の価格でご購入いただき、手数料はかかりません。いつも応援してくださってありがとうございます！m(_ _)m

（英語版はこちら Click here to read in English）

'Tadoku': Here's What I Learned From Running a Japanese Silent Reading Course

（Click here to read this article in Japanese 日本語版はこちら）

I’m not a particularly loud person, but some parts of my Japanese classes are quite loud. We sing and dance, talk and play games. We’ve even been asked to keep the noise down before by a group in the next room who were having a meeting (sorry about that!)

But in summer 2018, I ran a very quiet course. Students worked alone, in a comfortable silence.

And I was the teacher, but I mostly sat reading a hand-stapled book, looking up only to check that students were happily entertaining themselves.

This was Tadoku - a reading class with a difference.

Tadoku (多読) is a Japanese method of learning foreign languages by reading easy books. Ta (多) means “a lot” and doku (読) is “reading”, so Tadoku literally means “read-a-lot”. It’s sometimes called “extensive reading”. 

In Tadoku you read easy material, slightly below your current study level, and in doing so you learn new words, phrases and structures.

I was quite nervous about starting a Tadoku “class”. What would I do in class while students are reading? Just sit there? My students could just read at home, couldn't they? Who’s going to enrol in a silent reading class?

I did some research, and ordered a set of Tadoku graded readers from NPO Tadoku Supporters, a Tokyo-based organisation that promotes the practice of Tadoku around the world.

I also got this book: 日本語教師のための多読授業入門 nihongo kyoushi no tame no tadoku jugyou nyuumon (“An Introduction to Tadoku Instruction for Teachers of Japanese”)*, which had useful case studies and practical advice.

Several members of NPO Tadoku Supporters got in touch from Japan to wish us luck and to offer their support. That was hugely encouraging.

We were in The Argus too (Brighton and Hove’s newspaper)! Now I was starting to get really nervous…

When the Tadoku graded readers arrived, they seemed a good level. But to be honest, I was still a bit concerned that they might be boring. Would my adult students really want to read The Three Little Pigs in Japanese? So I started reading them myself. And to my surprise, it was a lot of fun.

Tadoku readers have pictures, so if you don't understand something you can look at the picture and guess. If you still don’t understand, you can try to guess by context. Or you can just keep reading.

One thing you are not allowed to do in Tadoku is to use your dictionary. I pushed this rule a bit further in our class, to include: you cannot ask your teacher what a word means either!

Using a dictionary (or asking your teacher) slows you down and interrupts your flow. This makes the reading experience less fun, which discourages you. Instead of using the dictionary, in Tadoku you are encouraged to skip over words and phrases you don't know.

If you just keep reading, you may eventually work out what the word means. But – and this is the interesting bit – if you never work it out, that’s fine too. Just keep going, and reading Japanese will get easier.

I started learning Japanese in 2007, but it was 2012 before I read a whole book in Japanese. Imagine how many easy books I could have read in those five years, if only I’d known they existed!

Some of my Tadoku students had only been learning Japanese for a year, and within a few weeks on the course they’d already read several books. I think that’s an amazing achievement.

Of course, these are easy books, level-appropriate and short. That’s why they were able to read them quickly and easily.

The four golden rules of Tadoku (from NPO Tadoku Supporters) are:

Four Golden Rules

1. Start from scratch.
Read easy books you can enjoy without translating. That way, you will understand better and so you will read more.

2. Don’t use your dictionary
Don’t use your dictionary when you come across words you don’t know. Guess the meaning from the pictures and/or the story.

3. Skip over difficult words, phrases and passages.
If guessing doesn’t work, skip over that word, phrase or passage and go on reading. You can often enjoy the book without understanding every small detail.

4. When the going gets tough, quit the book and pick up another.
The going gets tough when the book is not suitable for your level or your interest. Simply throw the book away and start reading something else.  

I was a bit nervous that my students wouldn't follow the rules. I thought they would want to use their dictionaries, or would feel compelled to finish books they weren’t interested in. I wanted to create a comfortable, relaxed environment, but I worried that if it was too relaxed, students might sit and chat, rather than read the books.

But of course they followed the rules! They’d signed up for this, after all.

‘No dictionaries’ was probably the hardest part. One student confessed to “cheating “ by looking up an unfamiliar kanji she was encountering for the first time. “If you’d kept going, you might have guessed it from context,” I argued. (Also, 臼 [mortar!] isn’t a particularly common kanji, so arguably looking it up isn’t a great use of time when you could be reading the rest of the book instead).

My students read so fast, after the first session I realise I needed to order more books.

I think my students gained a lot from practicing Tadoku for six weeks. And as their teacher, I learned a lot too. 

I realised that a lot of the time, the materials I ask my students to read are not very interesting. I try to pick out the most interesting stories from Japanese textbooks, and when I have time, I sometimes write little stories, to make content relevant or funny (or preferably both!)

But generally speaking, textbook reading exercises are quite boring. Doing Tadoku showed me that easy reading materials can be funny and interesting too.

This story about the prince of ramen (right) was a popular book

I also saw, in a new light, the extent to which my adult students are really good self-guided learners. I thought I might have to help them choose which books to read, or guide them as to which level to pick. No one needed my help with this. 

Actually, I just had fun reading easy books and deflecting occasional questions:

Student: “What does this word mean?”
Me: “Hmm…what do you think?”
Student: “Oh yeah…rule 2, sorry” 

In the middle of the course, we had a week off and I went to Portugal. I lay on the beach and read a Japanese book (コンビニ人間 kombini ningen, Convenience Store Woman) without using my dictionary. I raced through it, enjoying the book for what it is.

So Tadoku was pretty revolutionary for me, too, as well as my students.

I wish I’d known about Tadoku in 2007…I could have read some fun books in those first five years!

Thoughts for next year:

• Students could write short book reviews in the back of each book? Like this:

Photo: Japan Foundation

• Could we listen to music while reading?

• Maybe we should do Tadoku for more than six weeks of the year…?
  

Links:
Links with an asterisk* are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you, when you click through and buy the book. Thanks for your support!

NPO Tadoku Supporters (English page) → https://tadoku.org/en/vision
Buy Tadoku Books online (English/Japanese page) → https://tadoku.org/japanese/to-order
KC Clip - download free Tadoku books (Japanese page) → http://jfkc.jp/clip/yomyom/index.html
Step Up Japanese in The Argus! Japanese Language School is Running a New Course in Brighton (English)→ https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/16361201.japanese-language-school-is-running-a-new-course-in-brighton
日本語教師のための多読授業入門 An Introduction to Tadoku Instruction for Teachers of Japanese (Japanese book) → https://amzn.to/2T5AAkY*
コンビニ人間 Convenience Store Woman (Japanese book)→ https://amzn.to/2CFJjDA*

（Click here to read this article in Japanese 日本語版はこちら）

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