Hi, I was big into Japanese learning for a while, I had reached level 36 in WaniKani, had finished Genki 2 and had started on Tobira.
I then fell completely off the Japanese learning wagon, I have no excuse for this, I simply lost motivation for a time and fell so far behind that I ultimately gave up.
I’ve regretted that for quite some time but have only recently decided to do something about it, I’ve restarted WaniKani and started going back through my textbooks again, thankfully a lot of material still feels familiar even after all this time.
I remember this community being generally very friendly and helpful so I was hoping I could get some help here, I was wondering if:
Anyone with a similar experience had any advice for getting back up to speed?
Genki/Tobira are still the standard for Japanese learning
Any new, worthwhile resources for language learning have surfaced/been developed in the last couple of years?
I think that lots of people have done what you did, then gone on to recover.
Many people use Bunpro now for grammar. If you have already been through Genki, it will be a good review that uses spaced repetition.
I also lost the motivation quite a couple of times, it’s easy to lose your focus when you don’t have a clear goal. Think that actually writing down a feasible schedule, and sticking to it daily is what most matters when coming back to japanese (or to anything else I guess).
Regarding the resources, in my opinion the Minna no Nihongo/Genki and then Tobira are still the way to go. Looks like a lot of people been using Bunpro, but I always start watching some videos or playing something if I’m studying in a website, so books work way better to me. After that just pick up some books and watch/listen to native contents. Don’t know if you ever came across the youtube channel called 日本語の森, I really find it helpful.
Well, I’ve reached level 37 when, due to various reasons, I got stuck, let my reviews pile up and ended up doing nothing for a whole year. Then I did a reset to level one, started learning again, reached level 20 and it happened again. However, this time I was quicker to realize I need a reset. So, now this is my third attempt at WaniKani; I hope this time I’d succeed. My advice would be not to try to compensate for the lost time, but just go at the speed you are comfortable with. Also, I find that writing everyday’s goals in the
Reading manga everyday (even when I was taking a break from WaniKani) helped me keep up with my studies one way or the other. Having to look up unknown words and grammar helped me continue my studies, even if not in a formal way.
I had a similar thing happen before I started using WK. In my case I started studying long ago and study off and on for a few years, had a comeback drive and then a decade of no active study. Last year I decided to pick it up again and have been going non-stop. Since it was so long for me I had to start over. In your case I would recommend browsing through the textbooks to review grammar and vocab. When you start hitting that point of where you don’t remember most of the grammar then start actively studying. How much you have retained will depend on how long it’s been, how much you studied, how much you reviewed material, how much exposure you’ve had to the language and how good your memory is in general. So there isn’t a set guideline of where to begin.
As for WK it seems like some people start over, some people reset to a lower level and some people power through. I think it depends on how much you remember.
The one thing is while I regret stopping, instead of dwelling on that thought I turn it around to tell myself that I will never let that happen again. You can’t let the past hold you back.
