I’ve been spending time dedicated to learning Japanese for two years now, I can get through reviews here pretty easy but applying them to real life is almost impossible, I either can’t recall them or don’t recognize them in text. English is my first and only language, though I did take 3 years of Spanish and was able to read books for children but after school I never used it.
I watch youtube videos of context input and don’t remember any of the words I was exposed to but didn’t understand, like I might’ve figured out that a certain word means Duck but the word itself doesn’t stay. (even now i think its like… aho? idk, i can’t remember!!)
I listen to japanese music and podcasts and watch japanese tiktoks, videos and shows whenever I can. I even put my favorite game audio in japanese or play the whole thing in japanese like Pokemon Scarlet and yet can’t remember the word for “tackle” despite seeing it and reading it outloud so many times. I even use Pimslur and Japanese Made Easy when at work but i’m constantly fumbling my way through them and even after multiple repeats I can’t recite the material or 100% correctly say the prompt.
I’m in a discord group where we go through the genki textbook every tuesday and still I struggle. I do try to say things outloud when I remember them, like today I said 図書館に行きます and then went to the library, but thats so basic!! literally a japanese child speaks better than me.
I’m just so discouraged, It feels like i’ve platoued on level 1. Can you tell me about your breakthrough stories? I’m willing to try anything, I won’t stop my journey because it’s something I want really bad but I’m feeling incompetent.
For the rest, what have you been reading besides pokemon games? I think it’s pretty uncontroversial that reading is the easiest way to get exposure to the language without getting completely overwhelmed as a beginner.
You need Japanese input at a level you can just about understand. So for example you can read graded readers, starting at level 0 if you have to. Listen to Nihongo Con Teppei.
One you can pretty much understand a NCT episode, then it’s worth moving on to output. If you can already understand it, or can already read a level 6 graded reader, then you need to (a) move on to more challenging material and (b) practice speaking - try shadowing.
It’s very easy to spend loads of time with apps and web sites and you tube videos and text books without learning the fundamental skills of a language which are listening and speaking. Reading is a skill in itself, but it’s an excellent way of getting lots of time in a language.
I read some manga in Japanese, I have a few volumes of MHA and a couple others, I also have a whole book called “reading In Japanese” and it has short stories that slowly starts to get rid of the hiragana for words used repeatedly but it was an hour long process trying to understand one paragraph and looking up words in jisho and I got annoyed with the feeling that I was wasting my time. Maybe if this is the way to go though I’ll keep at it.
I’ll make time to read more but I ran into the same problem with Con teppei as I did with my other podcasts. I also listen to Lets Learn Japanese from Small Talk and like, I know they’re talking about studying in England and going to Disneyland etc but I walk away not being able to say any words they said in Japanese or hold onto any vocab. I listen to people talking a lot, even ASMR where it’s slow and everyday things but it just goes through my ears and misses my brain. I’ll keep trying Con Teppei, maybe I’ll make a vocab list per episode and study those until I understand perfectly or something.
It might take longer for monolingual to learn the first foreign language I imagine?
For example in my mother tongue classes we were taught what “noun”, “object”, “subject” etc. were, but I never really understood those. Not until we used them in practice when learning English grammar.
From my experience, beginner level materials for immersions suck. They’re boring!
Try to do it my way:
Go fast at Wanikani (well done, you’re already here! 2 weeks 1 level? can you handle that?)
If you have no Wanikani reviews, do a chapter of Genki books every now and then!
Review what you learned with TokiniAndy series on YouTube. You don’t need to learn how to use the grammar yourself, just know how it works and that it exists when you encounter it. You’ll mimic/solidify it through immersion later.
Once you’re Wanikani level 30-40, you should be done with Genki I and II. Read a visual novel that might interest you. Install a textractor and note down unknown vocabulary.
It will be a pain, but by the end your reading speed will increase a lot!
← This is where I am right now, not quite sure which way to go.
After lvl.60 I’ll start read another VN so I don’t forget kanji, maybe try out Bunpro for grammar, start visiting Japanese worlds in VRChat for speaking practice… the goal is to start “thinking in Japanese” now.
People mentioned podcasts. I listen to some JP podcasts every now and then too, but I prefer listening to music instead xd
If you’ve been trying non-stop, maybe a short break of a couple day to a week could help? I’ve used this with other things before and it helped me there. Sometimes the mind just gets stuck somehow and needs a little reset or break.
Apart of that I also think that it’s best to start with simple but still challenging material. So something where you can understand enough but there is still things to learn. If it’s too difficult, it just gets overwhelming and at least for me, my mind just shuts off.
My breakthrough came when I bought the 0 level graded readers, not thinking I could read them. Much to my surprise, I DID read them! I had to look up a few words, but not many. I had learned some grammar and vocabulary from Rocketlanguages.com, as well as WK. But I was reading with some success at level 6 in WK. I was truly stunned at the success.
From what you’ve described you suffer from data overload and you’re spreading yourself too thin. It is very hard to actually learn something this way, since there’s no clear direction in what you’re doing and things don’t build upon each other that way. It’s better to choose one way/app/textbook that will get you to intermediate and stick with it so you’ll be able to see some linear progress grammar wise.
Being able to produce a language without a real need to do so is very difficult, you’ve gotta be in a headspace where you don’t mind saying これはえんぴつです like it’s the most exciting thing in the world and keep going with whatever the program you’re using prompts you to even if you think you’ll never use it.
And as was mentioned by others before me, reading material that suits your level will give you better results. Understanding a word you don’t know or can’t remember is easier when you do understand the rest of the text. And repeating is a must. There is no escape from it in the beginning.
You are building something from nothing- it takes time, and there are layers of understanding. You have to hear and read a word so many times in order for it to become an asset, so hearing people speak about something on a podcast and expecting to remember those new words afterward is a recipe for disappointment.
Some people read a lot, some people mine words and srs them.
Try to find what level of engagement excites you the most.
When I watch an anime or play a game in Japanese, I stop and look for words I’m not familiar with and I’m ok with it. That’s what I did with my mother tongue then with english and with any other language I’ve chose to learn. You can either do this with apps like satori reader that has everything you need in it, or look at the books in the beginner’s book club here on wanikani if graded readers are too
easy for you (from what you’re saying I think you can still get a lot from graded readers), but even with apps with built in dictionaries, dictionaries are your best friends when learning a language. And practicing what you learn in a way that motivates you.
TLDR Less is more.
Same, I think I was level 10 and used the white rabbit app, I then bought on of the book series in Japan. That positive feedback is mind blowing. I picked them up after not studying Japanese for 4 years and was surprised I could still read them.
I agree! I use two learning sites and a few readers and a listeniing program. That’s it. No use trying to go through a gazillion different books, websites, etc. You’ll just burn out. Less is better.
it was an hour long process trying to understand one paragraph
I second @Simian60 , you need to bring down the level of your reading material to something you are more comfortable with. Graded Readers such as the imaginatively named “Japanese Graded Readers” series are excellent, if you start at level zero you can gain experience and confidence as you work your way up. For me, actually completing a whole ‘book’ was transformative - a whole new world!
There is a learning technique called “Tadoku” or “comprehensive reading” which is sort of the opposite of looking up every word (“Intensive reading”). See にほんごたどく – NPO多言語多読 for an intro.
I’m confused. You say you’re able to understand what they’re talking about in an episode, but you still feel like you’re not learning. Isn’t that a success? You can understand conversational podcasts! That’s really good, actually!
It sounds like this is two different issues as well, understanding (you have it ) and production. Production can only be improved by doing it. Maybe get on a language exchange site like LangCorrect or HelloTalk and start writing!
Also, for reading, I recommend Satori Reader. It’s very painless and has so many helpful tools built in to the app already.
Or something like that. Your first task (assuming you understood that intro) is to work out what the (何か) is, if you don’t recognise it stop the audio and look it up. Once you know what he’s talking about you’ll be ready for the sort of things that he will be saying, you’re primed for the vocabulary.
Listen to the next sentence, replay it, look up words, grammar. To start with you are decoding what’s going on, it won’t magically make sense no matter how much Genki or WK you’ve done. There’s a lot of repetition in each episode so you’ll hear the thing you’ve looked up again. Once you’ve spent half an hour going through a 4 minute episode, listen to it again, try and pick out the things you worked on the first time. The next day, try again. Stop, re-listen, look up. When you are heartily sick of that episode, move on to the next one.
By the time you are 10 episodes in you’ll be able to talk along with the intro (or type it from memory…) do it! If on repeated listening you remember something well enough to say it, do just that. Gradually you’ll be able to listen through once or twice, maybe stopping to look up words or just note them down to look up later.
There are easier listening videos on YouTube, simple 「ウサギはぴょんぴょん」sort of thing, which maybe would be a starting place if Teppei is too much, but I think it’s worth pushing oneself more.
I think learning to read was made easier for me because I have taught children to read. I have been through the “C. A. T. C. A. T. C. A. T. C-A-T. C-A-T. CAT!” stage second hand as an adult, and so know that it is not a natural skill even if you speak the language.
But decent graded readers ease you in to the language as much as is possible.
It’s a good advice but I’m not sure @CaffeineCoccine is ready for such a commitment, because of what he wrote about pimsleur
I’ve used Pimsleur and the way you describe how to listen actively to Teppei San (which I am also familiar with), is very similar to the way Pimsleur works, only there they teach you every single word and sentence using an english narrator - you first repeat, then you need to be able to remember how to say it and then to answer correctly when there’s a question in Japanese that will need it as an answer. It incorporates previous material in future lesson in a kind of srs method that checks if it entered your long term memory. And there are optional reading exercises in the app.
So my point is that if with a pre made app they feel they fumble, doing it all by themselves will be even harder (unless the english throws them off, then it’s a different story).
As has been said already you’re overloading yourself too quickly with material too difficult for your current stage. You should be aiming for stuff with something like 80-90% comprehension already.
The reason for this threefold:
You can practice the 80-90% you already theoretically know at a relaxed pace
The 10% or so of material you don’t know you can study more intensively
You finish things faster and build more confidence.
I find podcasts and ‘general’ immersion are very costly at the start (Let`s Learn Japanese from Small Talk in particular I still find quite difficult at an N3-ish level tbh, though I don’t really practice listening). Con Teppei is a lot easier (but more boring) than that.
Start with lvl 0 graded material, but if you find that boring you can try native material as well - just start from a lower place (Natively is a great resource here). Boku no Hero for example is like a lvl 29 on here - I would be aiming much, much lower for an absolute beginner.
Maybe - it’s difficult to tell over the internet. The initial learning curve is steep for an English speaker, especially a monolingual one (I should know) and at some point you just need to focus and grind up that slope in every language skill.
I’ve not used pimsleur, but speaking Japanese is a great way to learn it once you’re comfortable with hearing it, and have enough grounding in vocabulary. Early speaking feels inefficient though - you’ve not developed an ear for the language, so the words are hard to learn, the grammar is easy to forget, and you haven’t got a hope of pronouncing it correctly.
My way of having a feeling of progression has been to read physical children’s books. I get great satisfaction from completing one after weeks or months. Each time i’ve finished one i’ve felt I could start reading a slightly harder one. I started off with ones with big pictures and a couple of sentences on each page and now i’m reading ones with no pictures. I use jisho.org and DEEPL language translator.
That is a very good point, being monolingual and the huge gap between monolingual native english speakers and Japanese.
I would also add learning on your own for the first time is a challenge and paying attention to the how not just the what is extremely important. What the op described is a barrage of negative feedback loops.
Structuring your study is not something that just happens, you not only need to learn a new language but learn how to learn, how to learn as an independent learner and finding out what personally suits you, and that is a learning curve a lot of beginners are completely unaware of.
You can structure your learning into a success feedback loop or a Failure feedback loop.
One of the ways to maintain a balanced success and failure rate is to take your end goal and divide it into small short term goals. The short term goal should be challenging yet achievable and defined clearly.
I admit I had it easy with speaking, because my needs defined my short term goal - to be able to speak tourists Japanese. I laser focused on a very specific material, I didn’t have a lot of time to do that so that also worked in my favor.
Now that I’m not in a time crunch keeping my focus on specifics is way harder. I still try not to do everything everywhere all at once, there are so many options, and when things are online it is very easy to forget they exist when you don’t see them, so making a clear choice and doing one thing from start to finish is a challenge.
No doubt, self discipline is a thing when it comes to independent learning, and you gotta stay on top of it and check yourself every once and awhile.
I’ll keep trying Con Teppei, maybe I’ll make a vocab list per episode and study those until I understand perfectly or something.
) and production. Production can only be improved by doing it. Maybe get on a language exchange site like LangCorrect or HelloTalk and start writing!