Do you truly understand 日本語?

Know the kanji but not the sentence?

I built Readimi after failing the JLPT N2. I had near-perfect scores on vocabulary and kanji, close to 2,000 kanji by then, and still failed the reading and listening sections. I knew every word in the passage and could not tell you what the passage said.

That gap is what Japanese reading practice has to close, and most tools don’t touch it. Flashcards test words on their own. Graded readers run out, and they are not what you actually want to read. The real test is a sentence you didn’t choose, on a page a Japanese person wrote for other Japanese people, and whether you understood it or only recognized it.

Readimi turns that page into the practice. It’s a browser extension: open any Japanese article, blog or news site, hold a key, and pick a sentence or a few. Then it asks. In translation mode you write what the sentence means and it grades you. In comprehension mode it asks a question about the passage, free text or multiple choice, and explains the answer. In listening mode you hear the sentence before you see it. Every check is against the real sentence in front of you, not one a textbook decided you were ready for.

Try it on the Japanese passage above. That is the extension, running on this page.

Angel, who built Readimi

Questions about reading Japanese with Readimi

What level do I need?

Enough to read with a dictionary. If you can pick your way through NHK Easy or a blog post, you can practice on it. The demo passages come in two levels, and on a real site you choose how much to take on at once.

Does it help with kanji?

Not directly. It assumes you will look up what you don’t know. What it tests is the step after kanji: whether a sentence of words you recognize adds up to a meaning you actually got.

Is this JLPT preparation?

It’s practice for the part of the JLPT that most study plans leave out: reading and listening to natural text, then answering for it. The N2 and N1 reading sections are passages you have not seen, with questions about what they mean. That is the exercise.

How is it different from a reading app?

Reading apps give you their library and a dictionary, and the reading stays passive. Readimi works on the web you already read and makes you answer for it. Use both: read with whatever you like, and check yourself with Readimi.

Which browsers?

Chrome, in free beta. Join the list below and an invite arrives by email. Firefox later.