I’ll try to keep the short. I started learning Japanese about 5 months ago and I’m starting to think I should just give up.
What I’ve done so far:
JPFZ Books 1 and 2, Japanese Pod 101 Core 800 Vocabulary Words Wanikani Lvl 6
What I do everyday:
Wanikani Reviews and at least 10 new lessons, JLPT N5 Vocabulary, Listen to Japanese podcasts/ content for at least an hour sometimes 2 or 3.
Basically I’ve feel like I’ve made next to no progress. I started book 3 for JPFZ and George will ask how to say things you should know at that point and I can’t even come up with the vocab let alone the how to properly put the sentence together. Listening is an absolute nightmare, even N5 content. I cannot understand anything and seems like a complete waste of time. I know you have to be able to tolerate ambiguity but understanding nothing and then all of sudden being able to feels impossible.
Wanikani is the only thing that I seem to enjoy and where vocab sticks but the early vocab seems very low frequency. My strongest skill is by far reading(which isn’t good) thanks to Wanikani but my main goal with Japanese is to speak and listen. Anyone have any advice?
If you have trouble with listening – I’d recommend finding resources that you could read and listen at the same time.
The best is
though it’s not free.
Good free alternatives – are YouTube channels like
and
Feeling like you are making no progress at all – is the feeling well-known to all Japanese learners
The key is to just ignore it and keep studying. 5 months are too short a period to see real difference. I think the shortest term – is at least a year…
It’s a very long process. At 5 months you’re very much still a beginner. I’ve been at it for about 3 years now and I still can’t engage with basic Japanese very comfortably. I can do some things, but fluency is still a distant mirage at this point.
If you enjoy Wanikani and kanji learning then go for it even if it’s not your main objective in the long run. If you can read then it means that you’ll be able to read subtitles and use that to then “scaffold” your listening proficiency.
Yep, I’ve seen that happen with someone with my native language.
Her visa didn’t allow full-time employment when she came here, so she read about 20-40 hours a week (a lot easier sans kanji.) She started volunteer work and forced herself to try to only use the language. They stopped using English at home and her husband was a native speaker that ruthlessly corrected every single mistake every single time. She took courses at least twice a week aimed at naturalisation.
Is it possible? Sure. Can everyone have that schedule? No. Do I believe everyone that claims fluency in that time period? Hell no.
If you hold yourself to a standard that is either a lie or a massive outlier, you’ll be too demotivated to accomplish your goals.
And yet this happened for me a few times. It’s like my brain installed an update while I was sleeping. It was bizarre. But only after months and months of slogging away and struggling. It’s rewarding when you reach progress, but it’s a brutal process to get there.
If you hold on until that first feeling of accomplishment, you know it can happen again when you hit another plateau.
That has been my personal experience: plateau, struggle, sudden improvement. Repeat.
I wouldn’t worry about how fast or slow you’re going, it’s not a race and everybody has a different lifestyle and a different amount of time they can allocate to their language study. There are always going to be ups and downs: sometimes it’ll feel hopeless, sometimes you’ll feel like you’re a rockstar. That’s just how language learning works, tune that stuff out and keep grinding.
But if you absolutely must know, I think your pace looks faster than average, although I don’t understand how you’re only level 5 on WaniKani in 5 months if you’re doing 10 lessons/day.
It just contains short “n+1” sentences mostly mined from anime, and slowly introduces more and more vocab and grammar. I think I was doing something like 5 new cards a day, maybe even less, as side-practice at around your level. It feels good to engage with “real” Japanese and not just artificial examples in textbooks, even if it’s in extremely short snippets.
Here to chime in that after 9 years of study I still feel like I’m making zero progress pretty much any time I sit down to go through things. But there’s something to be said for just showing up and doing the work! When I honestly compare my progress to last year, somehow, there’s been major growth. Learning a language really sneaks up on you in a way, if you keep at it! (sometimes I feel like I’m throwing myself at a wall lol)
Also, it took me 8 years to reach level 60 on WK and there’s still a loooooooooooooooooooooooong way ahead of me, so yeah, everyone goes at their own pace and the fact that there might be someone faster – doesn’t mean you are doing anything wrong. It’s a constant compromise between efficiency, available time, required effort, etc.
(this has been my main goal as well—I recommend getting through some beginner material (basic grammar, vocab, kanji) and then jumping into sessions with an online tutor on a platform like Italki. I had gone through Genki 1 and half of Genki 2 when I started conversation lessons)
Are you able to list which vocab are you missing for listening ?
Is your problem not knowing the vocab or not recognizing it during listening practice ?
I like JPDB for a vocab SRS and it has a lot of audio example sentences (not all but most of the high frequency vocab have some) listening to them and shadowing has been tremendously useful to kickstart my speaking and listening.
i can’t be bothered finding the literature (maybe one of our more academic-minded learners like @javerend has a better idea) but i’m pretty sure you consolidate knowledge while your brain is in sleep mode, so an overnight update isn’t the worst metaphor
