I feel good, indeed 
i mean if i think about i was probably at that stage for literal years lol. i didnât really start thinking about how to properly learn until like the beginning of 2023? i really do think aiming to read, even if it was âlevel 0 contentâ, was the thing that broke it wide open.
Yop, I noticed that as well and wondered why they didnât space those out more. Guess there are reasons that are not readily apparent.
See, in that one sentence you learned about the quotation ăš, reminded yourself about the kanji for run, and experienced 3 new Kanji / 2 new words in context. Brilliant! With the furigana & audio youâd know how to pronounce it all, and the next time you read it youâd cement the meaning of everything.
Your translation was only off because ăè¶łăé ăăis a phrase that means âslow footedâ. In context Iâd guess that the hare was calling the tortoise that.
Reading Japanese is very hard and the kanji ordering in WK is unhelpful (why is ç level 42?) . You will need to grind basic material for a while, and then slightly less basic material, and so on. With the added audio you can practice listening, and pronunciation and speaking sentence structures.
Knowing half the words makes it a bit easier⊠but knowing half the words in a random sentence in a random book requires knowing many thousands of words by sight. At the early stages of reading with crafted beginner books itâs actually easier to learn the vocab as you go because that will be a few dozen words that youâll see again and again.
But looking at that sentence, it has almost all the introductory level particles ăŻăăšăăăă§ăă«ăăź - itâs just missing ă - itâs got Japanese punctuation, basic sentence structure⊠By the time youâve finished decoding that youâve learned a huge amount. The next sentence will already be easier, and when you read it again when youâve finished the book, youâll remember a lot of the meaning even if you wouldnât be able to recall the actual word on itâs own until a few more passes.
Unfortunately people donât really learn language in different ways. Many of the tools people use teach them about the language, which can give you a leg up in learning the language, but too much focus on them will waste your time. For specific purposes âI want to pass JLPT N2â they work, but for general purposes âI want to be able to read, and have conversations in Japaneseâ the effective actions are reading, listening/watching, shadowing, speaking; starting with easy material and gradually increasing the complexity. Adding in tools like SRS where memorization is necessary / helpful (Kanji, first 1500 words, etc).
I think itâs normal / relatable. (Oh my god @ all the verbs about mixing, intersecting, etc.) I have been languishing on my level for quite a while but Iâm not too worried about it; thereâs ebbs and flows. Maybe this is obvious but when I notice I am continually forgetting a term or mixing it up with another one, Iâll search each term up and really look at them and try to find some way to make a distinction that makes sense to me. Like for äș€ăă I kept putting âto mixâ instead of âto mix somethingâ so I decided that the dakuten was a little âsomethingâ that was getting mixed in. Itâs kind of nonsensical but if it helps me remember, why not? Sometimes I try to find alternative shapes in kanji to jog my memory. Like the fact that ćæ„ kind of looks like a âtâ and two âoâsâ stacked on top of each other helped me remember ăšăă. Or how the feathery diagonal lines in the wing radical in éœ and æčŻ look like warm rays of light (shining on the building, heating the water, etc). I kind of enjoy the challenge of trying to make sense of them with my own internal logic.
Thank you for letting us know that these levels seem to be a breaking point for some users. We will take a look to see if anything stands out, but if you see something in particular that should be prioritized for a move, let us know!
I reset levels now and again. It really helps me and I get a surge from wiping levels quickly to highlight what I do know so I can take time to look at the troublesome intransitive/transitive verbs when they reappear.
I now have no trouble with them ⊠but it did take a while!
Hi there,
Level 14 has been also a particular painful for me (even though I cleared it in the normal time - I marked it on my calendar as a particular difficult one).
But look, I am just about 10 levels ahead, and there will be some similar levels and some easier ones. Also, some kanjis will eventually âclickâ in place a bit later.
Hereâs what I told myself (and still am) to keep my motivation up:
- 14 levels is already pretty dope.
- WK is about quantity, not quality. It really doesnât matter if you miss out on some words, you will eventually consolidate them.
And hereâs something that also helped me out for a few of these kanjis or vocabs:
- Isolate them. I used a leech finder script to work on the most painful ones and it kinda helped (not for all, but it cleared about 50-70% of them I think)
- Read them in context. When I run across one of these in the wild (reading a manga or what-not), it actually sticks a lot more.
- Spend a bit more time on each to figure out YOUR mnemonics
The combination of the three will get you there.
Also, if you need to stop doing lessons for a few days to create the mindspace to relax and focus, thatâs okay. Also keep in mind the next levels from where you are will each bring a lot of value in your reading - keep it up!
That is one of the questions I have about random reading. How am I supposed to verify that my translation is correct? Does graded reading material provide one for me?
Unless I happen to have the luxury of knowing a native or a teacher I can run things by, there is no way to be sure and I might drill wrong data into my head that I have to unlearn later on.
If you hadnât told me about this, Iâd have assumed that the wrong party was speaking, which is a pretty big mistake, all things considered.
So, thanks!
the more direct answer is that this is the sort of thing book clubs and discussion with other people helps with
another answer is a bit more philosophical; i think of it as âbeing okay with mistakesâ or âbeing okay with vagariesâ. itâs important that you can just sometimes accept you understand only a portion of a thing and move on. sometimes that can be just enough to get the gist, sometimes itâs only a single word you donât get, sometimes itâs pretty much all the dialogue but maybe you understand the situation through context clues. also you can always just come back and reread stuff. generally at this stage especially itâs better to be exposed to vast amounts of writing than it is to interpret every single piece of writing correctly imho
tbh i wouldnât be worried about having to âunlearnâ stuff that much. every mistake is just a chance to have the mistake overwritten by the right thing later
/edit THAT SAID sometimes graded readers do have side by side translations, i personally read a lot of manga where iâve already watched the anime/read it in english, sometimes i parallel read with a translated light novel - whatever works
Yes, absolutely this. Youâll never get to anything like fluent reading if you always stop to try to look up and make 100% sense of every sentence. Of everything you read:
- some of it you already understand well, and the reading is effectively practicing for how smoothly and quickly you can read it.
- some of it you sort of understand but are a bit shaky on â this is I think the area where extensive reading really shines, because every time you see the word or pattern in a different context it helps to really nail it down in your head. And if you did get the wrong idea about something initially this is where youâll figure out you need to look at it again.
- some of it you donât know but itâs at just the right level to look up and learn, because itâs in a sentence or context where you understand everything else except this one part.
- some of it is in the âjust move onâ bucket â often this happens when a sentence has multiple things you donât recognise or understand in it. Rather than spending a lot of time trying to untangle them, itâs better to move on; at some point the things you donât understand will reappear on their own in a context where theyâre easier to get to grips with. Also sometimes words you donât know clearly donât really matter to the overall meaning so you can skip them in the interests of making forward progress. Adverbs in particular are very skippable.
If you spend too much time on looking up individual things then you arenât getting enough of the âsort of understandâ input, plus very very slowly decoding a manga is usually a lot less fun than moving a bit faster through it.
If I recall, itâs the combination of levels and also the experience of getting more Master and Enlightened items start to cycle back down, along with the normal Apprentice and Guru level grind⊠When items drop down, it can be discouraging and it builds up the pile.
Additionally, these levels are where you start to deal with learning how to sort out different readings⊠Some kanji are recognizable based on the reading taught w/the kanji by WK but others start not to follow that pattern⊠Itâs a necessary struggle, but not simple, and one needs to find a good paceâŠ
In graded readers, often the last page is just the translation of the story - I expect it depends on the brand.
Here though you got everything right except the aim of the rabbitâs comment and thatâs where the context sensitivity of comes in - you know the story of the rabbit and the tortoise, and that the rabbit thought he was oh-so-fast and the tortoise oh-so-slow, so you can tell that the sentence is an interjection aimed at the tortoise.
If it had been the less obvious from the context - the rabbit saying he himself had slow feet - then the author / speaker would have made a bigger deal of it to make it clear.
No drilling!
Everyone else has made the point that you will make mistakes, and that they will become apparent later on, and thatâs just how it goes. For targeted material - graded readers, online learner stories, etc - itâs worth really understanding what youâre looking at. For everything else just accept that much of it will be opaque.
The first manga I read was ă€ăžăăȘăă§ăé·çăă maybe 3 years ago. Took me about a week, and it was still very unclear. Every so often I go back and read it again, and every time it gets easier, and so far every time Iâve understood something that wasnât clear or I got wrong the previous times.
The first light novel çĄè·è»ąç took me about a month, and if I hadnât seen the anime Iâd have been completely lost. Actually, if my kindle had been one of the ones that doesnât let you install custom dictionaries Iâve have been lost⊠Iâm just about to re-read volume one and hopefully itâll be less éąćăăăă
Also: looking at the kanji âfosterâ in Level 13 - looks like it might be a candidate for a move at some point? Or is there a reason itâs there while most of its vocabulary items are in the 40s and 50s?
Actually I donât, which is why I thought Tortoise-buddy wanted to get rusty rabbit back into action. :'D
Sounds fair.
Man I still remember when I started to watch Stargate in English as a kiddo. Had to watch each episode like 4 times to half get what was up and that was after having English in School for a couple of years already. Once I got used to it, going back to German dubs was no longer an option.
At Lv19, I definitely feel like I must now branch out from WK/KW as the only means of Kanji/Vocab acquisition and venture into actual reading material accompanied by giving more attention to grammatical concepts.
Good luck on your re-reading. Bet it will be fun to realize how much you have learned since your first attempt.
Indeed.
insert Tâealc gif here