I’m writing to seek advice on my Japanese learning journey. I have some previous experience with the language, having learned hiragana and basic sentence structures a few years ago. Recently, I’ve made some progress by completing katakana and starting kanji studies through WaniKani. While I’m enjoying the platform, I’ve encountered a challenge with the SRS – the quick level progression leaves me with extra study time, and I’m eager to make the most of it. I’m committed to studying at least 15 minutes daily and want to continue improving.
Following WaniKani’s advice, I’m planning to wait until level 10 before diving deeply into vocabulary and grammar. However, I’m unsure how to best utilize my current study time. Should I improve my kana reading speed (I still need to mentally recall each symbol when reading despite me doing well in flashcards apps), my pronunciation or focus pitch accent (is it early to focus on it?). and whatever you think is better can you help me with resources that can help me with it whatever the resource.
P.S.: Would love some help creating a roadmap for learning Japanese. Any insights or recommendations would be incredibly helpful!
edit:
Thank you alll for the advice most people said to start grammar so anyone with any resources please tell me and Heard about website called bunpro do y’all recommend it?
I agree with Belthazar, there is no point in waiting to level 10 before trying to learn grammar. Getting to level 10 takes a while as well, even if you’re trying to go fast.
If you can manage it, I would recommend studying grammar now and doing WK at the same time. I feel like the earlier you start learning grammar the better. It’s a very rewarding feeling when you can actually understand sentences, but only knowing kanji and vocabulary won’t help you with that.
Of course you can start studying grammar whenever you want, but I did it from the very beginning and I feel like that was a very good choice.
I recommend grammar and reading as much as you can. It gets faster with better vocabulary but I waited a long time to start grammar and I struggle with grammar the most. Reading daily might be helping on that, time will tell.
Lots of folks have talked about grammar already (and I agree with them), so I wanted to touch on these two points. You encounter quite a bit of hiragana when doing wanikani long-term, since you see it when you type the readings, and it’s in quite a few of the vocab items too. You encounter less katakana, but there’s at least some of it in wanikani with particular vocab items. So I wouldn’t focus too much just on kana recall. Now, if you wanted to, for example, practice vocabulary that happens to be written in hiragana or katakana, that could have some value, as it’ll help you retain more vocabulary and more hiragana/katakana at the same time.
For pronunciation and pitch accent, whether or not it makes sense to focus on those depends on your goals. Is speaking Japanese with Japanese people as soon as possible important to you? If so, then there could be value in doing speaking practice (preferably with a native speaker such as a tutor), and you can do some pronunciation practice as part of that.
But if you’re mostly seeking to understand Japanese, then it’s definitely very early to be worrying about pronunciation. You’ll catch on with time if you listen to Japanese-language media.
As for making a roadmap on how to study Japanese, you’ve already taken some great first steps! One thing you might consider is to start consuming Japanese media as soon as possible, as hearing/reading things in context can seriously help retention over just rote memorization.
I found the Genki 1 and 2 textbooks to be incredibly valuable😁.
They built a strong foundation for me to go on to forming my own sentences and helping me understand the formation of sentences that I would later read or hear.
They also teach kanji and vocabulary that you will likely encounter a lot, so if you’re eager to keep learning without waiting on WaniKani, I think you will enjoy how much you can get out of these textbooks😊
Depending on your level, if you’re comfortable with typing Japanese on your computer or cell phone, you could try picking up a manga, video game, anime, or whatever you find most interesting and translate what you are reading or hearing(subtitles). If you use an app like ChatGPT, you can ask it to not only translate what you are typing but also ask it to provide a breakdown, which will explain to you every piece of the sentence and how it works. This can be tedious, slow, and a lot of work, but if you keep at it, things will begin to click after enough repetition and seeing/hearing similar sentences over and over.
I agree with you. Genki is a very good book for a total beginner. It has a many detailed explanation
and a lot of examples and exercises to help readers to understand the grammar. And know how to use. What the short thing is, they only have two textbooks for N5 and N4
And honestly if you don’t mind a little bit of a challenge at this stage, start reading. Even if all you’re doing is just scanning the sentences to practice your hiragana or to see if you identify some kanji, regardless of comprehension. It all adds up!
Furigana books are great for those who are still learning basic grammar. Lot of people start with furigana manga, but even furigana novels can be great. If you like Disney movies, they have furigana book adaptations that can be very friendly since you already know what to expect!
I have a similar question regarding oral comprehension. What kind of stuff do you study ?
Recently, we had a japanese physics scientists coming to our japanese class. And it was quite hard to understand what he was saying without subtitles
Of course I’m aware that it was indeed a hard conversation to understand because of the topic obviously (and the fact that my level is matching A2 level right now) but I want to improve.
I have been using the jfk books while studying wanikani. The plan is for wanikani to teach me tons of vocab and jfz to teach me grammar and sentence construction and hiragana-katakana vocab. We will see how it works out, not looking forward to 300+ reviews one day. What’s the max reviews anyone studying normally has gotten?
You’re Level 1. That will change.
It’s a very rewarding feeling when you can actually understand sentences, but only knowing kanji and vocabulary won’t help you with that.
