Headed there now!
I just bought a graded reader, so I can let you know how it goes.
I have yotsuba! I have had been chipping away at it, bit by bit. Agreed I think mostly I just needed to be told to be a little patientâŠ
Anyone whoâs struggling to get into native content, donât worry â itâs perfectly normal. Youâll get better at it, bit by bit. 楔ăç©ăăă°ć±±ăšăȘăă
Try to view it less as the next step in learning and more as something to augment and help your learning. Most of it will happen automatically. Human brains are good at picking up patterns. For example, when you read regularly, youâll get better at reading and distinguishing the characters, making it easier and easier to read example sentences, follow subtitles, etc. And when you listen to Japanese regularly, youâll get better at distinguishing the sounds and words and patterns in the language and so on.
There are quite a few resources out there that have been made more suitable for beginners. Thereâs Japanese Quest where someone explains and translates Japanese in games as they play them. Thereâs Nihongo Con Teppei For Beginners that gives you small chunks of natural Japanese on easy topics. Compared to even 10 years ago, todayâs world is a Japanese learnerâs paradise.
Also, donât be too scared to pick up things above your level. If youâre genuinely interested in something, this can be an extremely powerful motivator. Yes, itâs frustrating not to understand things, but donât worry about it and just focus on the stuff that you do understand. Itâs not like you have to get everything on the first go. And things are gonna get easier. Some day youâll put it together and youâll get it all done. Some day when your head is much lighter.
I am currently on my second time around and would say its definitely much easier. I recall most of the material, so its easy to breeze through 65% or so. I am also focusing on digesting native content while going through WK again to help solidify kanji and vocab knowledge. I would definitely recommend you do this. Focus on a lot of native input sources, especially reading while going through wanikani, otherwise your brain will just drop the unused material again.
With English reading, Iâm a mahoosive fantasy / sci-fi geek. The language they use in these stories such as new words to describe phenomenon, magic, discoveries and scientific terminology - I donât imagine Iâll ever be able to read that in Japanese!!! Wondering if anyone here has got to that level?
Iâm not sure if someone has already mentioned it but I believe there is a user script that allows you to do a burned item test. Why not do that every week or so and reset any burned items you get wrong. It might be interesting to explore some other user scripts too which could add to your learning. I believe thereâs a script which changes all the radical names to the actual Japanese names for example. Since youâve already made it to level sixty that would probably be more useful to you than learning all those made up radical names a second time, no?
Wow, heard about the leach training script but the radical one must be fairly new. Will give it a go. Cheers!
Iâm also on my second round. As others have said, it is much easier than the first go. I also read a lot of original Japanese reading material in parallel this time, that really helps.
Hey, youve been back for awhile so saying something doesnt matter. But, I absolutely do that and its made a huge difference in my recall. Generally, there arent very many that I have to pull from the dark if I burn them but it happens. When it does I just unburn them and honestly. After getting them back to master the speed that I can recall them at is almost instant. Like lightening.
So, personally, doing that has been amazing. Again, at this point, for me, its only like one item of every 50-100 burned so it doesnt set me back much. If its a ton of them the other advice seems solid.