Graded Readers Japanese

[Ogier Dudley]

Thankfullythis is where graded readers come in! Graded readers are book series that feature a variety of stories sorted into different levels of difficulty, or "grades." For Japanese, this usually is determined by the vocabulary and grammar used, often corresponding to the 5 levels of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), but different publishers and organizations have different levels and definitions. Graded readers offer everyone, even Japanese beginners, fun stories to read. Not only is this an enjoyable, confidence-building activity, but it'll make your Japanese a lot better too!

So, ready to dive in? Great! In this article, I will talk more about what graded readers are and how to get the most out of them. My co-author Emily and I have also taken a look at some of the options available so we can recommend the best graded readers for you, regardless of whether you prefer to use digital books or physical ones, free libraries or paid collections, or even an app.

As mentioned earlier, graded readers are collections of different stories designed for language learners, sorted into categories based on difficulty. Usually, these books start at the beginner level and increase in difficulty. Additionally, just because these books are designed for beginner readers doesn't mean they're books for kids. In fact, since many of the companies that produce graded readers promote extensive reading, they aim to publish a range of different stories that appeal to learners regardless of age and interests. Some graded readers are simplified versions of well-known stories too. Ideally, there's something that piques your interest in every collection.

While graded readers have become more popular for language learners in many languages, they're still relatively new in Japanese, so unfortunately there are fewer options available than you can find in English or Spanish, for example. That said, there are a couple of great options we think will fit the bill for any Japanese student looking to learn to read and improve their overall language ability.

I've mentioned it a few times before, but let's talk a bit more about what extensive reading is, as doing so will give us an idea of how best to use graded readers for studying. Extensive reading is a language-learning strategy where learners practice by reading longer, simpler texts, as smoothly as possible without stopping to look up unfamiliar vocabulary or grammar.

Keeping all this in mind can help you understand what makes a graded reader set good. It should have a wide range of books, across a number of different skill levels, so that you can find something that's not only suitable for your abilities, but pertains to your interests as well. And remember, your aim should not be to translate a book into English as you read, but rather to comprehend the story as it is in Japanese. This might be a little difficult to grasp for absolute beginners, but as you learn more of the language you'll encounter concepts that you can understand or express better in Japanese than in English, and you'll find your thoughts moving straight from the Japanese text to understanding, without having to make a detour into English.

Finally, while I think it can be great to push yourself to complete something you're interested in, and really gratifying once you finish it, if you want to follow these guidelines then reading shouldn't be an extremely taxing activity for you. Instead, it's best to read things that are suited to your level, that allow you to relax and read comfortably without feeling the urge to look up every other word.

In this article, I wanted to focus on books that were meant for language learners rather than native speakers, had a series of different grades or difficulty levels available, and were written entirely in Japanese. That means the list of recommendations won't include materials that offer English translations. While having the English translation can certainly help comprehension, it reinforces translation rather than natural comprehension.

During my hunt for graded readers, I found two great free libraries of graded readers online. In my opinion, these two libraries should really be all you need. The first is a collection of free materials available on the Tadoku Supporters' website.

NPO Tadoku Supporters is a non-profit organization (that's the "NPO" part) that has not only helped establish the use of graded readers and extensive reading in Japanese, but has also become a major player in this space, advising other similar organizations and creating graded readers for a variety of publishers. In fact, many of the most popular graded reader sets, like the ones from Ask Publishing and Taishukan, as well as the White Rabbit Press App, consist of stories from NPO Tadoku Supporters. Of course, they produce books under their own name as well, a large library of which is available for free on their website.

NPO Tadoku Supporters also hosts events, courses, and lessons such as an online reading group, and you can attend some of them for free. NPO Tadoku Supporters has their own criteria for grading books, from Level 0, called "starter," up to Level 5, called "Upper-Intermediate or Above." The levels range from the absolute beginners up to books designed for JLPT N2 and N1 learners. You can see more about their criteria on their website here.

Among the free library on their website, they have books in all 5 levels, though the most for Level 0 and Level 3, and only a single book for Level 5. All the books in their library are graded readers with e-books available, and feature furigana except for the couple of books that are in kana only. Each book is presented with a user rating and icons that let you know what level the book is, whether or not there's an audio reading of the book available, and more.

Each book also has its own page, where you can see a description of the book, what genres it's tagged as, and some short reviews that fellow Japanese learners have left. If you decide to give it a try, you can begin reading right away through their embedded reader. Recorded audio appears in its own player right below the books that have recordings, along with links to download the PDF and MP3 files.

I agree that this online library alone will probably be sufficient for all your (hopefully short-lived) graded-reader needs. The abundance of free beginner-level content here might make it totally unnecessary to look elsewhere, unless you really want to hold a physical graded reader in your hands.

The other big online library I want to recommend is JGRPG (that's the Japanese Graded Reader Project Group) Sakura Tadoku Lab. While they don't have nearly as large a library as Web Tadoku Books, Sakura Tadoku Lab does come with a few key features.

Sakura Tadoku Lab is an online library of graded readers that offers books at eight different levels of difficulty. What this means is that with the added granularity, it's easier to find books suited more precisely to your level.

Furthermore, and perhaps most critically, the website offers a vocabulary test to help assess how many words you know and what level you're at on their scale. In their graded readers, they aim to use vocabulary that people at your level would know about 95% of, just to ensure that it's easy enough for you to read smoothly. This is an interesting and useful approach for all learners of Japanese, regardless of your interest in graded readers specifically. The test gives you a series of words and asks you to pick a synonym for each from a handful of options, all in Japanese.

On the index page, all the books are listed with their title, cover, and level, as well as the number of characters each work has. The lengths of the works range from around 1,700 characters all the way up to just over 40,000 characters, so there are stories available regardless of how much time you want to spend.

Clicking on a book takes you to the book's page. Here, you can see some info about the book like the title, author, and description, as well as a rating for some books. Below are links to download the book as an ePub or Mobi file for your e-book reader, or to view the story as HTML. This loads a webpage which scrolls from right to left as you read. Like the NPO Tadoku Supporters library, you can't toggle furigana on and off here. But since the stories are rendered in your browser, it's easy to increase the size and even to copy and paste if you want to make notes or use a dictionary plug-in like Yomichan. Finally, some books include a questionnaire at the end, where you can test your comprehension and give feedback on the books. This data gets saved to your profile, similar to your vocabulary test results.

The stories are also rather varied. I read a surprisingly complex story about frogs in a pond, and a retelling of Natsume Sōseki's Botchan. I found it a little unusual to scroll left to view the stories, but quickly adjusted to this.

JGRPG-Sakura is another great free option for Japanese learners looking for more reading practice. Despite the smaller library as compared to NPO Tadoku Supporters, the number of different levels available, as well as the vocabulary test and HTML format of the books, make JGRPG-Sakura extremely convenient. I found the books to be captivating, even among the shorter or lower-leveled works, which helped motivate me to read more. All in all, JGRPG-Sakura is a big help to get your Japanese to the next step.

In addition to the two free amazing online libraries we've introduced so far, I'd like to cover a couple of the most popular paid options. And one of them (as you might've guessed from the title) is a mobile app!

The Japanese Graded Readers app is available on both iOS and Android, and published by White Rabbit Press. The stories in the app are also from the NPO Tadoku Supporters collection, however, there are only 9 stories available, and these stories are only in the levels between 0 and 3. The app comes with a short sample, and then each subsequent story can be purchased independently for either $2.99 or $3.99.

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