What does or did everyone else do to make grammar stick? I am still on N5 grammar and it is hard to go into stuff like nhk easy because my grammar knowledge is so weak. What level of grammar knowledge did you have before you started immersing in actual native content?
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I read through level N5-N4 grammar and learned the most used 2000 words and got into reading really early. In the beginning it’s more of a recognition game, to see how much I can understand, one word here, two word here, oh wow a phrase here. Check up on words as I go along from time to time. Can be simple texts, example sentences for grammar points (<— good one). Or simply subtitles in japanese for some show.
You should immerse pretty much from day one.
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I couldn’t get grammar to stick until I started immersing. Grammar gradually started making sense as I slowly, slowly attempted to translate よつばと volume 1 in my study log (while recieving valuable feedback and encouragement from the WK community). I hadn’t mastered N5 at the time but I had been trying to wrap my head around it for a little while (a few months) without feeling like I was making much progress. At the start I was just reading/translating a couple manga pages per day, spending up to 2-3 hours looking stuff up and reading about various grammar points as they came up, but in return grammar went from these vague, abstract rules to familar patterns with concrete meanings, and reading about grammar also became easier the more experience I gained with grammar in the wild.
So as long as you can stomach it I’ll second @x90PT ‘s recommendation of reading/immersing from day one. I also recommend having a look at past Beginners’ and Absolute Beginners’ Book Club threads here to see if you can find any manga that seem interesting to you since the Book Clubs often (always?) make pretty comprehensive vocabulary lists organized by chapter and page number for each volume they read, which is a great help when you’re just starting out. It basically means you can focus on just deciphering the grammar while leaning on the vocab cheat sheet for the meaning of words:)
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