#graded reader

Short stories are very popular with language learners – and rightly so. Being able to finish even a short tale aimed at native speakers will feel like a great accomplishment.

I had a look at three approaches for intermediate and advanced learners to enjoy Japanese short stories. For each I can also recommend a few matching short story collections:

Short Stories in Easy Japanese

Japanese Short Stories with English Annotations

Parallel Readers

I give my more detailed thoughts on all these short story collections for learning Japanese in my blog post. You can find it here:

A big positive is they made it for total beginners, including an introduction to chinese with some basic grammar and hanzi. This might be a good ‘early’ comprehensible input graded reader for new learners, before they move on to Mandarin Companion 120-300 hanzi level graded readers. 

Here is a free Sherlock Holmes - The Speckled Band by Arthur Conan Doyle (Пестрая Лента - Артур конан Дойль), Russian graded reading book aimed at elementary level. You can find the PDF [here]. It’s pretty short but it comes with vocabulary lists, and questions on the text to assess your comprehension. 

Esse post é para aqueles que querem aprender inglês, mas não fazem ideia de por onde começar. Listei abaixo uma seleção de livros do nível mais iniciante com links para download.

Livros Didáticos

Estes são os livros que irão te guiar os seus estudos, pois facilitam a organização. Por eles você vai aprender gramática, escrita, falar e ouvir. 

English File Beginner 3rd Ed. Student's Book (PDF)

English File Beginner 3rd Ed. Work Book (PDF)

English File Beginner 3rd Ed. Teacher's Book (PDF)

O áudio dos arquivos estão nos seguintes links:

English_File_Beginner_3e_Class_Audio (MP3)

English_File_Beginner_3e_WB_Audio (MP3)

Graded Readers (Leituras Graduadas)

São estórias curtas escritas de forma simplificada cuja dificuldade aumenta de acordo com os níveis do CEFR, quase sempre acompanhadas de arquivos em áudio para treinar a compreensão auditiva durante a leitura e ao final tem testes para avaliar a sua compreensão.

Todos os livros abaixo são classificados como nível A0.

April in Moscow (PDF)

The last photo (PDF)

Sara Says No! - Norman Whitney (PDF + MP3)

Thanks for the ask! My favourite short story collection in simple Japanese is definitely the series どんどん読める！日本語ショートストリーズ by the publisher アルク.

There are three books in this series and it's the only Japanese short stories collection for learners of which I liked both the stories and the overall structure of the book. As you can see in the sample below, every kanji is accompanied by furigana, making it easier to read, and there are annotations for vocabulary above N3 and idioms.

If you are at the beginner stage of learning Japanese and interested in reading full manga one day, have a look at this short free manga in simple Japanese:

Textbook grammar with some colloquial expressions inbetween

100% furigana on all kanji

Beautiful drawings that support reading comprehension

The library at my alma mater recently added the new Genki Tadoku graded readers for the fall semester. So, of course I had to go check them out when I was back in town last month!

This is my book review for a book on yōkai, which can be read right after finishing lesson 19 of the 2nd Genki textbook.

Are you ready to discover the fascinating world of Japanese short stories? Reading in a foreign language is one of the most effective ways to improve but doing it for an extended period can also be exhausting, especially when you need to grasp new grammar and vocabulary at the same time. Short stories offer a perfect compromise. With their selfcontained plots and concise length they will sharpen…