I’ve hit kind of a rough patch in my Japanese studying. My listening and speaking is just really not where it needs to be for me to feel comfortable moving forward in classes. (I’m going to spend some time redo-ing/reviewing Genki II grammar for sure before I consider going into Quartet classes).
So while I’m open to just any recs on improving those, this is specifically about how to you use native content, especially somewhere around just finishing Genki II/N4 level.
If you watch a show or movie, or if you listen to a song or other Japanese content, do you just let it wash over you and try and grasp what you can from context clues, or do you pause and rewind and look everything up before proceeding? Do you watch new material or rewatch stuff you already know?
I’ve tried a couple things but not stuck to anything enough to know if it’s helping and just looking to see what’s worked for others.
I started watching something without subtitles that I’ve already watched with subtitles / in German or english. So I already known the Plot. I’m trying to hear words I already known and when I think that something was a whole Word I search for it in Bunpro and add it to a Deck / to my Reviews. I understand probably less than 10 % of what is Said.
I think improving listening and speaking will require different practice/study methods.
Listening
Consuming Japanese media is a great way to improve your listening. If you watch tv shows or movies in Japanese, make sure you have Japanese subtitles (or no subtitles) on. If the movie/tv show you are watching is too difficult, first watch it with subtitles in your native language then rewatch it with Japanese subtitles. Other commenters have mentioned this, but watching it with subtitles in your native language is just to get the gist of the story (and unfortunately isn’t Japanese language immersion).
Some learners say watching anime or cartoons in Japanese won’t help your speaking, because their speech is not natural. I kind of agree with this, but not entirely. In general, I don’t think watching dramas or anime will really improve your speaking that much. Dramas might help you understand some commonly used phrases and you might be able to use them after hearing them many times. I think your listening will certainly benefit from watching these shows and if Japanese subtitles are on your reading will also improve. So I think if you want to improve your listening or reading then watching any Japanese shows is great, but I don’t think your speaking will improve a lot.
Speaking
Speaking is a different beast. I have said this many times on this forum, but the only way to improve your speaking is to speak a lot.
A classroom is a great place to practice speaking. I don’t know the format of this class you mentioned, but honestly, if there are other people in this class I would suggest you move on to the next level even if you don’t feel ready. The reason is that there are so many opportunities to practice speaking (and listening) with classmates and your teachers in a classroom. Also, you have access to many people who want to improve their Japanese. Getting coffee with a classmate or doing a video call in Japanese would be a great way to improve your speaking and listening. Also if you have classmates whose speaking and listening abilities impress you, you can ask for their recommendations on how to improve your own abilities. (If I misunderstood the type of class you mentioned then you can just ignore this advice.)
I play Gacha and MMO games in Japanese that I’m already familiar with in English. Can work with any type of game you’re familiar with. You can even extend this to other media like movies, books, videos, etc. Key point is that the native material is something you’re already familiar with in English (or any other fluent language) because if you try to use something you’re not familiar with, you will get lost and hardly pick up on anything. You don’t need to understand everything right away, but familiarity will help with most of the things you encounter through immersion.
When actively studying, I’m more in the camp of rewinding several times to make sure the brain identified every individual word.
It can be tiring, but without it it’s too easy to blank out on whole sentences.
Having access to full (and correct) Japanese subs makes this more streamlined.
If you watch e.g. seasonal anime, I can recommend re-watching last week’s episode without subs before starting on the new episode. Really gives the brain some time to sleep on what you’ve learned.
Good content: short (5-20 minutes) show episodes with professional writing and sound, VN-style games where you can replay each line individually.
I do some extensive listening too, e.g. tuning in and out of a gaming stream, but don’t know if it’s very useful. E.g. half the TTS chat messages were all ending in the same word, but it took me about a year to realize that word was 以下略.
Around N4, finding native content where you know 90%+ of the words is probably a challenge. So I wouldn’t focus too much on learning new words. Just look them up from subs and then identify by sound once you know what to listen for. Also I’d choose something mostly in standard Japanese, without excessive accents and slang.
Around N1, I still regularly run into unknown words, but can usually look them up in a dictionary without resorting to subs, and then decide to SRS or not.
I find this does nothing at all; for me it becomes very easy to ignore. I will generally have learner podcasts on though, and ignore when I can’t focus on them, and listen when I can. But watching TV and picking up one word in 10 or whatever isn’t very useful.
I use Migaku for Netflix shows, and Absplayer for downloaded videos. If I get lost I’ll rewind and read the subs and use the translation if I have to.
I re-watch a lot. Comprehension improves when you’re expecting to hear something, and repetition is important for learning. If nothing else, it’s quite motivating to actually understand something better on a re-watch. Usually I’ll get 3 episodes in before going back to the first, so I end up watching 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 4, 5, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. I do the same for most native / non-learner material. I actually started this with pages of manga & paragraphs in novels, and built up from there.
For music, I’m not trying to learn Japanese from it, so I’m just pleased when I understand a few bits here and there.
I haven’t done a lot of this, but Disney has great dubs in Japanese of most of the animated movies. It’s a transition point where you can leave off the English subtitles because it’s an old familiar movie that you know fairly well. You can focus on finding the meaning you know is there without really needing English to get it.
For me, that would mean movies like Aladdin, Lilo and Stitch and maybe even Frozen.
I know this isn’t exactly “native” material, but the translation is done pretty well.
Have a look at the website “Comprehensible Japanese”. They have a couple thousand films at various levels. You can first watch the film and then read along, with all kana, kanji or kanj with furigana.
I’ve been trying to find a balance between “active study” and still enjoying the show.
What works best for me is watching normally first, then doing a second pass where I only stop for lines that feel useful or repeatable. If I try to mine everything, a 20-minute episode becomes exhausting really fast.
For Netflix/anime specifically, I’m experimenting with a Chrome setup that keeps Japanese subtitles, quick vocab lookup, and sentence saving in the same flow. It makes the “pause → lookup → save → continue” loop feel a lot less annoying.
I’d be curious how many people here prefer mining only a few high-value sentences vs trying to understand every line.
That’s very good advice. These days while doing my WK lessons (having returned from a 2-year hiatus) and studying Pimsleur lessons, I write ばめん scenes in situations that I find myself in when visiting Japan. I then rehearse them out lout, while standing, which is what I’m told actors do when learning their scripts. The trick is to really occupy ones character, like if you’re in a restaurant shouting すみません！ trying to get the attention of a waiter.
That said, I am intimidated when trying to speak in Japanese. So much so that the word recall fails me at times, which is a bit frustrating. It’s thus helpful when the words get into a “muscle memory” state where they’re “just there” like on autopilot.
This reminds me of situations I found myself in, in both China and Japan about twenty years ago. I used to travel to both pretty often on business. I was approached by students of English who asked me politely if they could shadow me in my wanderings around Shanghai and Tokyo, and have simple conversations to exercise their skills. Sure, I agreed, and spent maybe an hour with each group. Maybe that’s something we should try doing in Japan!
I enjoy watching Japanese movies and series on Netflix and Amazon. I certainly don’t try to mine everything! My listening skills are simply too weak. Sometimes, even after repeated listens I still have trouble discerning what they said.
For the most part I’ve simply enjoyed the programs with English subtitles on although it’s amazing how often the subtitles are incorrectly translating the dialogue. There oughta be a law.
I have joy when I am able to understand something said. enjoy rewatching particular movies and shows and note when I’m able to understand more and more, although the percentage remains very low.
I like someone’s suggestion here that at some point, turn off the subtitles entirely. That makes perfect sense to me especially for programs I’ve enjoyed several times such as “Sweet Bean” and “Perfect Days” on Amazon, and “La Grand Maison” on Netflix. Removing the training wheels of subtitles may be very rewarding!
If you’re interrupting that flow by falling back into your native-language-brain to try and decode a sentence or figure out a specific word, it can be difficult (and frustrating) to reap the benefits of it, at least in my experience. I even get peeved when an English ad interrupts my Japanese Youtube watching.
I try to really listen to each word in a sentence and correctly identify all of the sounds, but I try really hard to not define it at all in English.
Our brains learn best when we are relaxed and having fun, so pick something that makes you happy or makes you laugh (for me, that’s watching streamers play games or watching fashion vlogs), and try to just enjoy the sound of the language while making out each sound as best as you can. You will pick up on way more than you realize. I just passed my N5 last year and am studying for N4 this year, but this way of immersing has done wonders for my speaking and listening even though I don’t have a partner to speak with or listen to.
I barely mine at all unless a word really stands out to me or is repeated multiple times. I also mine words that I like the sound of/the way they were said, but otherwise, I try to just enjoy, and mainly, I focus on the patterns I hear since I struggle with grammar. The more quantity I listen to, the more patterns I’m exposed to. I have specific study time for listening for the purpose of mining words.
The grammar patterns part really resonates with me. That’s actually become one of my favorite things about rewatching anime on Netflix, coming back to something I’ve already seen and finally being able to make sense of the Japanese subtitles.
I used to have a lot of those “I know all these words, but I still don’t understand what this sentence is doing” moments. Lately I’ve been using a little browser tool that lets me dig into a subtitle line and understand the grammar and how the expression is actually being used, without having to leave Netflix.
It’s made rewatching stuff surprisingly addictive because I can finally understand why a line is phrased the way it is instead of just getting the general meaning.
True, and also the Japanese subtitles of the spoken Japanese are sometimes different enough, or simplified enough to not be that helpful. I really like how much Japanese there is on Disney and Netflix, but I often find that the word I was tripped up by is not in the Japanese subtitles.
That sounds like a great tool! I have loads of those moments of knowing all the words but not the meaning of the sentence, too, but thankfully it’s getting a little better with time. Wishing you luck with all your studies! :))
or doing a video call in Japanese would be a great way to improve your speaking and listening. Also if you have classmates whose speaking and listening abilities impress you, you can ask for their recommendations on how to improve your own abilities. (If I misunderstood the type of class you mentioned then you can just ignore this advice.)
