Frustrating Vocabulary Roadblock: Any Advice?

Japanese Language Listening
1

Since the start of the new school year, I’ve made an effort to dive back into my Japanese studies. WaniKani has been my primary study tool for most of the time I have been studying, and for learning kanji, it’s been excellent. Reading and pronouncing the characters I encounter in any given reading material is a breeze.

But as kanji gradually ceases to become an obstacle between myself and Japanese fluency, a new limiting factor appears.

Vocabulary.

When I study a vocabulary word on WaniKani, the process works like this:

— I am shown the kanji and asked to recall the meaning of the word

— I am separately shown the kanji and asked to recall the sound of the word (kana).

I find this system to be far less effective at teaching vocabulary than kanji, because that is not how I realize a vocabulary word.

For me, “realizing” a vocabulary word means creating an instant mental connection between the sound of the word and the meaning of the word. My mental pipeline for reading is Separate words and create sounds from kanji and kana —> extract meaning from sound. For listening, it’s Hear sound from speaker —> separate words and extract meaning from sound (no kanji involved). The way WaniKani teaches vocabulary is not compatible with this process because the meaning and sound are connected only through the intermediary of the kanji.

If it’s unclear what I’m saying: I know the meanings of 最高、暑い、行く、etc. because I also understand さいこう、あつい、いく。But with less familiar words, let’s say some 3X level ones like 密か、皇太子、雨天、despite knowing the sound and meaning independently of each other (enough to satisfy WK), I have no idea what the meaning of ひそか、こうたいし、うてん are without thinking about the kanji.

This makes listening in particular very problematic because when I listen to a sentence containing a word that I have not yet “realized,” even if I can identify it in WK, it throws everything off. I do not have time to hear a word, assign kanji to it, and derive meaning from the kanji. I need an immediate association of meaning to the sound I am hearing.

How do I make this happen? Should I create flash cards with kana on one side and meanings on the other? Maybe I should listen to the same sentence over and over until every word bounces around in my skull?

Any advice you have on this topic is welcome. Thank you for taking the time to read this and assist me.

2

This is a common “issue” in general and not a specific quirk of WK. Many people figure out pretty early that recall and recognition are two different skills, with WK training the former. But this distinction also applies to visual recall vs auditory recall.

On WK we get a visual cue (written form) and for listening we get an auditory cue (reading+pitch+context usually) and need to associate them with the underlying “word” in our internal dictionaries. Sometimes succeeding with the former with make the latter possible, but not always. Especially with jukugo words its very common for this to not take place.

I personally started listening practice after building up a very large vocabulary base for a JSL. Maybe about 20,000 words or so, and a ton of exposure to them over maybe 100 or so books worth of content. I STILL had trouble listening to and comprehending very simple jukugo words that I could recognize in written form that I had learned years ago.

I outlined what I did in my second video, but the long story short is you just need to listen a bunch. Specifically, you need to listen, fail to pick something up, either repeat it and think about the kanji until you figure it out or check it yourself via lookup, and repeat until you’ve got it down. The good news is often times just hearing a word you know well once or twice, checking, and being like “ah its THIS” is enough to cement auditory recognition enough to where you can get it in the future with a little thinking. After that is just repetition until it becomes fast enough to where it doesnt inhibit your ability to understand native speech. Its very simple, but the process itself takes a lot of time and effort. Its very frustrating having to “relearn” simple words you “should” know, but its part of the process if you’re going to go more into recognition practice at the start.

3

I agree, it’s about building up more ways for the language to get into your head. I imagine people learning English have a certain amount of the same problem—I know for me (more so as a child, but to a certain extent still) there are some words that I learned first by reading them and so I sometimes mispronounce them or it takes me longer to recognize them when they’re spoken.

If I can make a suggestion: don’t go as narrow as a flashcard or a single sentence. If you can already word but struggle to pick it up in (spoken) context, practice trying to pick up words in context.

4

I can confirm when I learned English my listening skills took a lot longer than my reading, having used subtitles for English for the better half of my life. I forgot when I turned them off, but I think that was 5 years ago. The most painful part about it was that things sometimes are written different than how they are pronounced. My Japanese is not close to this level yet but I suspect this will follow a similar trend due to learning Kanji and reading first.

I also agree with the others that more exposure is the way to go. Things will go faster the more you do something. :slightly_smiling_face: Be sure to turn off subtitles when you are focusing on listening skills.

5

Yes! It’s almost always jukugo where this happens. Particulary jukugo where there is a non-jukugo substitute with the same meaning.

6

And that is not to mention all the regional accents.

7

How do you like to go about this? I have been using YouTube because there are videos on a broad range of topics, automated subtitles that are sometimes helpful, and the ability to slow the video down.

However, it feels at times inefficient (probably because it is not intended for language learning), and there is no clear indicator that I am making any progress at all. I’m pretty sure I am, but YT doesn’t have levels or a log of words I’ve learned.

Do you have a better way of doing this in mind? I saw an advertisement on this forum for a site called “kikikata” that is supposed to train listening in a WK-like system, but it’s not clear to me if it is relevant to what I am trying to achieve, and the registration fee is quite pricey.

8

I think this is normal when learning, especially with immersion. I also feel this for a lot of things, not just studying/learning. I look at it like this; daily progress is so small you don’t see it, weekly minimal and barely visible, monthly something changed but difficult to pinpoint and a year ago it is a lot! Just think about where you were a year ago in your study.

It was a small remark in my previous post, but really turn off subtitles if you want to improve your listening skills. Subtitles assist, especially if you are also learning readings, but after that it’s best to turn them off. That’s the moment when listening really went up for my English, and I think Japanese will be the same.

9

yes! my suggestion is to pick something that you’re really interested in and rewatch it every day for a month. (or until you feel you understand every bit of it and are bored, but I anticipate the month might happen first, which is both fine and normal).

By repeated listening to something that is at the level you’re aiming for rather than the level you’re at, I’m confident that you will start to be able to see and gauge progress just based on how much of it you understand.

10

Come to think of it, this is probably why I like WaniKani. The system of having a bunch of “levels” of 35 or so kanji convinces me that I’m doing something and not just spinning my tires in the mud.

Something I have been doing to give myself a feeling of progression is every time I hear a new word, I put it into a bookmark folder on Midori. If I’m feeling stuck, I go dig through the folder and pat myself on the back for recognizing those ones.

11

Off to watch a month straight of Super Mario let’s plays!!!