
Learn Japanese with the News: 8 Terrific Tips and 5 Reliable Resources
Japanese news helps you learn important vocabulary and improve your listening and comprehension.
When you learn Japanese with news, you not only gain vocabulary and phrases but an important life skill if you plan to live in Japan.
When I first moved to Japan 10 years ago, I couldn’t make heads or tails of what anybody was saying on the news—yet I stayed the course and I kept studying and practicing conversation whenever possible.
Here are some tips that made it easier for me (and will for you, too).
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8 Tips for Learning Japanese with the News
1. Become a News Junkie
Consume a lot of news on a regular basis. Of course, the more you practice, the better your comprehension will become. But with news, there are certain phrases and words that are used repeatedly, such as:
について — about, concerning
によって — according to, due to
。。。に注意してください (。。。にちゅういしてください) — please beware of…/be careful with…
詐欺に注意してください。(さぎにちゅういしてください。) — Please beware of fraud.
雷雨に注意してください。(らいうにちゅういしてください。) — Please be careful with the thunderstorm.
政府 (せいふ) — government
問題 (もんだい) — problem, issue, question
事件 (じけん) — affair, case
地震 (じしん) — earthquake
You’ll get used to hearing these words and phrases, and this will boost your comprehension.
2. Listen Passively for Immersion
When you first start studying with the news, don’t try to understand everything that’s being said. That will drive you insane. Instead, take in whatever you can pick out and try to get the gist of what they’re saying.
If you find yourself losing the thread of what’s being said, try to start up again with the next story.
3. Take Note of New Words and Phrases
Whenever you hear a new word or phrase, write it down. This will help you remember it the next time you hear it. Before you start your news watching sessions, do a little drilling on your new vocabulary to help it stick so that you’ll be better able to follow your stories.
4. Go Audio
Most of us watch the news on TV, but if you’re studying a language with the news, another option is to listen to the radio or a news podcast.
In an audio format, broadcasters tend to talk more slowly and clearly. With podcasts, you can also save episodes to go back and listen to them again.
5. Use Your Interests
If you’re not particularly interested in the news, choose a specific field of the news that interests you.
If you’re a baseball fan, watch the sports news. If you like cars, find an automotive news podcast. If you’re into music, find some news about the Japanese music scene.
6. Follow a Story
Find a particular story that interests you and follow it. Each day, tune in to news about your story. You’ll remember the vocabulary and have the necessary context to understand the latest broadcast.
I remember doing this with a newspaper story about a high school girl murder case. Pretty morbid subject matter, I know, but it was easier to understand than the political bickering and other news.
7. Keep Up with News in Both English and Japanese
A cool exercise for learning Japanese with news is to find the same story in both English and Japanese. Watch or read the story in Japanese first, then use the English story to see if you understood it.
This is easiest to do with newspaper articles. Often, a news story will originate with a native English news service and be translated into Japanese. It’s relatively easy to find both stories online these days, especially when it’s an international or major news piece.
8. Remember to Supplement Your Japanese News Learning
Keep in mind that when you learn Japanese with news, you’re not learning everyday conversation. I point this out because you don’t want to talk like a news reporter when you hang out with your friends.
I recommend learning with the news as part of an overall study routine that includes colloquial Japanese as well. For example, the FluentU program uses interactive subtitles to teach Japanese as it appears in various media contexts, from news reports to comedy skits.
5 Resources for Learning Japanese with the News
If you’re new to learning with the news, you may not want to start out with actual news. Otherwise you might end up like me in my first months in Japan, sitting in front of the TV and trying my hardest to understand a word or two where I could.
All the resources below are free and most are aimed at language learners so you can improve your Japanese with news and ease your way into real-world news intake.
CosCom
CosCom is a site for learning Japanese and they have a page with easy Japanese news stories. The stories on the website are in kana only, but there are also PDF transcripts you can download that include Roman letters, kana and kanji.
Each story has an audio file where it’s read slowly so you can listen only, or listen with the transcripts. If you scroll down, you can see a breakdown of the key vocabulary and sentences used in the story.
News in Slow Japanese
You can probably tell by the site’s name what it has: news in slow Japanese. What I like in particular about this site is that they pick stories that are interesting or unusual.
You can listen to a news story read slowly and read along with a transcript. If you enable the “pop-up” option, you can hover over a word or phrase in the transcript and it provides a translation.
There are slow and natural-speed options, so after practicing with the slow version, you can speed it up and challenge yourself.
Hiragana Times
Hiragana Times is a monthly magazine and it’s not free. But they do post short news segments that have both the English and Japanese versions on the same page.
This is a great way to practice if you’re not into reading feature-length news stories.
NHK News Web Easy
Like BBC with its resources for English learners, NHK offers short, easy Japanese news stories. The stories are written in kanji but have the kana written above using furigana, so it’s a good way to learn both.
However, I recommend this site for intermediate learners because there’s no English translation provided.
FNN News
FNN isn’t actually for learning Japanese; it’s a real news site. But I included it because it offers transcripts along with its news stories so that you can read along or listen first, then check your understanding.
It’s a good resource for improving both your listening and reading.
FNN also has a YouTube channel with lots of short news clips.
Now you’re ready to learn Japanese with news! Go forth and learn all about the language, culture and a uniquely Japanese perspective.
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)