Editor's Pick
NPO Tadoku Supporters -Tadoku in Japanese - Free Books for On-site Reading
Tadoku is a fun way of learning Japanese through reading a lot of easy books with pictures. Many instances of success are reported by those learners who now enjoy regular books, who have acquired quite a number of kanji, and who now fluent in Japanese conversation. One of them says "It was very difficult for me to memorize kanji through drills and I almost gave up when I started tadoku and it opened a whole new world and I have confidence in myself. I'm so happy."
There are four rules for tadoku reading.
- Choose easy books first.
- Read without a dictionary.
- Skip over words, phrases, and passages you don't understand.
- If you get stuck, read another book.
On the Tadoku Supporters' website, there is a page called "Free Books" where you can read books for free. These online books are divided into six levels, from 0 to 5. Level 0 contains 37 books; Level 1, 10 books; Level 2, 10books; Level 3, 12 books; Level 4, 4 books; and Level 5, 1 book. The PDF files can be downloaded or printed out to make a book. If you are okay with listening to Japanese, but not so good at reading it, Tadoku Supporters recommends Kikiyomi; reading while listening to audio. There are also 26 books with audio, in level 0. If you are an intermediate or advanced Japanese speaker, but have never read a Japanese book before, try experiencing tadoku reading from an easy level.
The books listed on this site are books about travel or food, as well as books of variety of genres. Some of them are serialized and some are written by international learners of Japanese. There are books that feature and explain specific interesting words too. If you read a book but don't get anywhere with it, you can switch books. You don't have to understand everything. The tadoku rules will vastly expand your enjoyment of reading. Look at the pictures and photos in the book and savor their world.... The shortcut to learning any language is through the target language in its original form and context, along with the scenes that are depicted in pictures. If you are a tutor or teacher of the Japanese language, please recommend tadoku to your students.