I keep falling into that same mindset, but you’re completely right. I need to focus on the positives, which honestly far outweigh the negatives. I’ve been studying pretty hard for almost 2 years now and while I may not be where I want to be, I’ve come a long way and don’t have any deadline I need to meet. I’ll take it at my own pace and work on my weaknesses at my own pace too. Thanks for the insight
To everyone else, Yes I am studying in other ways outside of WK, but maybe I’m just being overly critical of myself. I’m reading Learn to Read in Japanese Vol. 1 and sentence mining the sentences I don’t understand into Anki, which I feel is working pretty well so far. I appreciate it everyone’s support and advice!
I’m doing something along the lines of 5-6 episodes at the very least with japanese subtitles and it’s very useful. Japanese shows with japanese subtitles is so beneficial that it’s not even funny. Stop every once in a while and check up a few words with Yomichan or the like.
I’m at a point right now that I understand pretty much 95% of all sentences in japanese dramas, but the spoken japanese is something I severely lack in, understand about 50%. So as long as I glance at the japanese subtitles I get it vast majority of time.
Which is pretty crazy since I didn’t even know a single hiragana a year from today (annual anniversery today). But then again, the language has owned my life for that year, pushing 12hr days wasn’t uncommon.
The only thing that worked for me was to stop doing any new lessons for a few weeks. I was going to try to get my apprentice level down to a certain level before I started doing new lessons again, but I realized I was losing motivation without forward motion, so I started doing lessons again, but only 10 a day.
It can be really hard to figure out a good pace at times. There are definitely days where I feel totally burnt on WaniKani. But it works, and I want to see level 60, however long it takes to get there.
I agree with others who say more immersion is a big help - one reason I can’t remember WaniKani words is lack of context: so the word means “relation” - in what sense? However, if I see that word in some song lyric or in a manga or in the subtitles to a movie, maybe something clicks.
Even paging through paper dictionaries is good - just getting familiar with a shape here and there.
Supplement with other stuff. Be it grammar, additional vocab or, what’s best IMO, conversation classes and such with native speakers. The latter being the most important. It makes you think about how to use the things you’ve learned and actually forces you to speak. This goes really well with grammar supplements too.
Don’t sweat over mistakes and accuracy. And I know it’s very easy too. But it honestly really is just one metric and it is very insignificant. If you make a mistake while practicing in real life, you’ll actually retain it even better for next time. So it is valuable and as such mistakes don’t really matter. Taking aforementioned conversation lessons further solidifies it, especially so as you continue to learn more and more synonyms and the different ways you can use them
Just keep going. As long as you have something that’ll keep you motivated, just enjoy the ride, practice consistently and don’t sweat over mistakes. Humans, much like languages themselves, are imperfect, and no one expects you to be! So you shouldn’t need to ether
I’ve been studying Japanese since I was 19 (I’m 40 now) and I’ve come to realize that language study is a lifelong journey for me. There’s always going to be something new to learn and I am going to make mistakes as I learn. English is my first language and there are still times I make a spelling mistake or can’t remember the word I want to use, or mess up some subtle grammar points. Perfection in a new language is a nice idea, but I don’t think it’s grounded in reality.
It wasn’t until 2020 that I really took up learning kanji. I’d learned about 300 or so when I took some college-level courses, but other than that I used to tell myself that learning all the kanji was too hard and that I’d never be able to do it. And here I am a year or so later proving myself wrong. I just needed to find the method that would work the best for me. (And the extra time I gained working from home didn’t hurt either.)
Another thing I wanted to point out to you is that you’re teaching yourself. 独学者です！That takes discipline and self-motivation. 凄い！There’s nobody but yourself holding you accountable. That alone is a huge deal, isn’t it?
