Personally, kanji turned out to be way easier than I had anticipated when starting, and grammar turned out to be way harder!
But I definitely agree that knowing the kanji well will make almost anything easier! Even listening is easier when you know a bunch of onyomi can take educated guesses at all those damn jukugo words!
Conversely, not knowing them will make you illiterate, which isn’t a super benficial position to be in!
uh why?? Do you do this for everybody i was studying for jlpt for the past few months so i didnt really need to do anymore kanji, and now i have exams starting monday so im busy right now …
Listening is by far my weakest area. How do you practice? I have listened to podcasts at work and tried to watch anime but a lot of it still sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher talking, with occasional words I know jumping out at me. I want to take the JLPT but I think listening will kill me.
For anime, I find that I need to focus on each sentence and actively listen for words that I know and grammar that I recognize. Otherwise if I get lost in the episode and I stop specifically listening to learn, my listening recognition will do less and I will rely more on the subtitles. So if you listen with subtitles I recommend just focusing on the hearing aspect and not the show visuals or subs as much.
I find it’s almost impossible to concentrate on what’s being said in Japanese if there are convenient subtitles in English right at the bottom of the screen. I learned years ago that a good way to get over this is to tape a ruler or yard/meter stick to the bottom of the TV to cover the subs. YMMV; I found it worked well for me if shows have hardcoded subtitles.
Hi! I think for me the turning point was when I started regularly watching Japanese tv shows when I was in Japan. I watched shows such as ametalk and getsuyoukara yofukashi. You can find these on youtube. At first I couldn’t understand most of what the people said, but as I continued studying kanji I was able to follow the subtitles (that are always used) more and more and so I could make out what they were saying more and more.
So I got over that first hurdle of not understanding most of the things said by forcing myself to keep watching regularly.
Then I improved through Japanese classes in Japanese (I recommend nihongo no mori on youtube to mimic real life classes on Japanese grammar in Japanese).
Then to actually pass the N2, I watched all available seasons of terrace house and listened to a lot of podcasts (hikibiki) and I could almost ‘hear’ myself improve.
Now, half a year after the July jlpt, I can follow terrace house without subtitles (though I still misunderstand a lot of the dirty jokes )
So all in all, just keep watching and listening A LOT, you will improve as you get more comfortable!!
Nihongonomori is really suitable for getting into it as well, because they speak Japanese to explain clearly, so they will use loads of synonyms, emphasis and gestures to help you understand!
Try Nihongo con Teppei. He also has a beginner podcast if you want something even more elementary. After daily listening for like half a year I think listening is actually my strongest area now
I haven’t. I just kinda scroll past in when I look at my subs, but I must have found it by recommendation and now that two people have recommended I guess I should really watch something!