What am I even doing? Help

Been at this for four years, and I live in Japan and I still suck. So don’t worry about it too much. Just do what you can, however you can. Slow down and reevaluate your weaknesses.

Level 8 with little-to-no-grammar probably is too early for a book club, I should know, that’s where I am. Try picking up something grammar-y, and keep trucking with the WaniKani. Don’t be ashamed to slow down if you stop “picking it up” and need to work on one set of apprentice items for a while, just don’t stop doing the reviews and reading the grammar things with the example sentences. Your brain knows how to learn, it just doesn’t always learn at the same speed or feel like it’s at the same difficulty level all the time.

Start with baby-level grammar. So serious. Taking a break to guarantee you will understand the sentences for a day before you determine to something above your level is a major confidence boost.

Also also, start tracking your progress, or regularly revisiting things that don’t make sense to you, otherwise, you might continue to feel like you aren’t making progress because you won’t actually see it.

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I’m replying to you but it’s also kinda to everybody.

Thanks EVERYONE for all the support and advice. It’s nice to know I’m not alone in struggling with this language. I have read all the posts and plan to implement writing kanji I’m struggling with - I have been wanting to try it for awhile but now I think I’ll actually start.

I do think I’ll keep going with book club, if it’s ok for me to @ you sometimes. I’m a bit behind but I’ll try and catch up. I’m glad to know it’s ok for me to be struggling as much as I am. I hope I can learn stuff from book club. I’m only on chapter 3 of Genki - read it so I understand verb conjugations a bit but I haven’t done the exercises. I think I’ll review that again today and maybe try the exercises even though they’ve been making me incredibly anxious for some reason.

I appreciate all the suggestions and will be coming back to them multiple times I’m sure. You guys are amazing. I appreciate you all!

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Try to read from Genki every day. Turn that into a system. Even if you just read one paragraph, let that be a daily minimum requirement. So long as you read one paragraph per day, you’ll continue to make progress. You may even decided on some days that, since you already have the book out and have read one paragraph, you may as well read another one, or two, or three paragraphs.

From there, there are two approaches you can use to Genki:

  1. Intensive: Put the time and effort into understanding everything as you make your way through it. (This can include doing exercises per chapter.) In the short run, this gives you a stronger, deeper understanding of a smaller, lesser amount of grammar. In the long run, you’ll learn more grammar.

  2. Extensive: Focus on reading through the whole book, even if you don’t understand everything very well. In the short run, this gives you a weaker, shallower understanding of a larger, greater amount of grammar. In the long run, you’ll learn more about the grammar.

The approach you choose depends on your learning style. If you don’t know which will work for you, try one, and if it isn’t working, don’t hesitate to back up a few chapters and try the other method.

Personally, I did better with the second approach. I gained a shallow understanding of a lot of grammar, and filled out my understanding by looking it up as I started reading manga. It’s that shallow knowledge of a lot of grammar that helped me know what to look up (but asking for help can point you in the right direction as well).

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turns out that the only way i can learn vocabulary is with kanji readings and the only way i can learn kanji readings is through vocabulary. im here for the vocabulary. in that way, heisig lays a proper soft foundation in this wanikani prison by taking care of the kanji meanings for you, and reassuring you with the knowledge that there is good in this world, that the soft embrace of heisig is still with you.

it sounds really stupid, but using anki with heisigs radical system was like peeking into the inner workings of my brain, like i could feel every neuron connecting to other neurons and i could feel the srs algorithm work in tandem with me, it was almost surreal, 20 kanji a day was nothing, could write them and everything. im not sure if its a good habit or just a whole new insight into how to do things properly that wanikani just cant do, because its a box, and you sit in the box and thats all

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I’m in a similar spot as you, but I’m just not quite as ‘worried’ about it. I know that I know extremely little, and working through things one at a time.

I’ve started (trying) to make doing the genki exercises on the github (Genki Exercises - 3rd Edition | Genki Study Resources) as a main habit, moreso than any other form of study. Even though I’ve read through nearly the entire Genki 1 book, I’ve only gone through the site up to Chapter 4, and it’s still pretty hard without any experience. Whether that’s what you want to do or not, it’s up to you, but if you do one thing that is near your level and focus on that, it’ll be better than trying to do literally every beginner’s learning method possible and then burning out once WaniKani reviews become tough. That’s what happened to me, and I decided to only focus on Genki exercises instead.

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I somehow never knew this existed. I’ve only been using it for a few hours now and it’s already supercharged my translation game! Many thanks!

I have a Japanese acquaintance who’s… a jerk, but a fun jerk, you know? He thought my Japanese sucked and didn’t even try to hide it. Anyway, a few years ago, he wrote me a card in which he politely told me—in Japanese—that my Japanese could be good someday if I practice. He ended it with an aphorism I’ll never forget. It’s sort of become my Japanese studying mantra…

「塵も積もれば、山となる。」

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What a nice saying! Very motivating, indeed!

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Seems like you are in the process of learning.
You’re on the right track.

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I often feel the same (i.e. sucking) - and so much great advice and insight posted here in response.
All I wanted to add was that it’s so easy to think “gotta achieve” (speed! aughhh!) or it’s only pass/FAIL. I was getting mad at myself and thinking of WK reviews in an adversarial manner. Words cycle back for a reason and I began to relax and accept that as a good thing. I recently stopped all Lessons and have been churning through older stuff to move it to the right. Pleasantly surprised AND disappointed, but it will always be a work in progress.

Hang in there!

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:joy: :ok_hand:t3: :boom:

:heart: …this is almost word-for-word how I describe what WK feels like for me, especially at the beginning when the whole thing was brand new to me and the mere idea of learning 25 items a day was laughably inconceivable. :sweat_smile: So…perhaps it just feels different the first time you hit on something that works…and nothing else will ever be able to replace it. :crabigator:

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