掲示板 Forums - Kao-chan! Motivate me, senpai!

Hi! i highly recommend you using comprehensible input, is a learning study method in which you find a suitable series or videos for you level in Japanese, you turn on the cc subtitles, then read it at the time you listen to it.

Something you just need a break of learning new words, and CI is the best for that kind of moment, but in general you could always add it into your schedule, I usually review 45 minutes in renshuu an 45 with the CI method. 🤗 That's how I started learning english, chinese and now japonese for the past two or three years, I have a B2 in English and a HSK 5 in Chinese. ✨

I recommend you taking a few days of renshuu (you could freeze your schedules so it doesn't add new review terms), then starting slow with reviews once you feel better, 50 per schedule is more than enough, then adding 5 new words each time you feel like it. There's no shame on having only review days and only CI days, just always strike for your goals, no matter if it's for understanding anime without subtibles or maybe you want to travel to Japan, remember it every single day.

With your level of vocabulary I can reassure you that you will understand more than you ever imagined before. 🤗

Also, please have a break day once a week or one time in 10 days if you feel you have more endurance. I personally beed a break once in seven days, otherwise I will only get burn out. 😵✨

Pd: if you learn 5 new words each day, the minimum so the repetition works is 50 reviews per day. I learn like 10 words a day a I reviewed max. 100 terms, please don't be shame by decreasing your review count, sometimes is just necessary. 🤗

To get the first question out of the way, here is what I did a few years ago. You can go on "legal" manga reading sites and find scanlations for almost anything out there that is somewhat popular. That way you'll be able to get exactly that look into certain functions.

Now about the other stuff you've described:

Here's the thing, SRS is a one way road. You are never done. Even if you master a vocab word you will forget it if you do not see it in the wild. The next thing is that you probably don't have an emotional connection to these words or kanji. For example, the first series I read was The Promised Neverland, it took me three attempts to read it fully. I can, to this day, recite scenes and certain words from that series because I have a connection, a feeling stored with them.

That is also the reason why I quit renshuu eventually. The only thing I needed was the SRS aspect which other apps did a better job at delivering. Renshuu as a whole, is unmatched, but I always found that for people learning for enjoyment (not JLPT) it just does not provide the best resources. This is my personal opinion, I still love renshuu to death, it has given me a lot of valuable knowledge, however, the more I learned the more I realized this wasn't exactly what I needed to succeed and that is ok.

The struggles you describe reminds me a lot of myself. (I am sorry this is going to be a bit of rage segment here) The biggest problem is that "textbook" Japanese grammar is nonsense in the wild. The fact that we are talking about grammar patterns or points is nonsensical. This isn't math where you learn a formula and then propagate it with stuff, getting the same result all the time, it's a language. And the majority of that problem is the JLPT in itself.

Learn only what you need. Whether that is grammar, kanji or words, does not matter. If you are interested in how to aim your studies in a more personal goal focused direction let me know and I'll help you out. You can do this within renshuu as well.

Well, first of all you need to narrow down what your goal is as "master something" is very, very vague. Consider this if you could speak Japanese fluently tomorrow. What would you use it for what kind of shows would you watch? What kind of Manga would you read? What conversation would you like to have? What people would you engage with? Take a sheet of white paper or text editor for that matter and write down as much as you possibly can about that. This will from now on act as your gasoline, your drive as well as a guide. Whenever you feel down or unmotivated, you will look at this to get motivation or guidance.

Next, we need to make sure at which point you are in your journey at the moment. We need to know what you know to find out what you don't know. And there's a pretty straightforward method to find that out. First, pick any Japanese material that you would like to read, listen or watch. You then watch, listen or read that material and find out if you can actually do it. If you cannot do it, lower the difficulty. You will continue doing this until you find the exact level that you're at and comfortable with.

Let me explain why mastering is so hard by kind of copying something that I already have written on the forum:

Let me introduce the concept of "vocab spheres" - vocabulary that's covered through certain media. Take myself as an example: I used to love reading fantasy novels, so I became well-versed in terms related to magic, mana, dragons, and various military and imperial concepts. When I first started talking to natives about two years ago, I could tell them I was a level 10 fire mage, but I couldn't handle a basic day-to-day conversation. Did that mean my Japanese was bad? After all, I'd spent well over 500 hours learning it at that point. On the contrary, I was able to pick-up most fantasy novels and read them no problem. What I am saying is that you grow knowledge in the spheres you expose yourself to. While fantasy novels gave me specific technical vocabulary, slice-of-life stories overlap much more with conversational Japanese, making them more practical for everyday communication.

Research strongly suggests that reception is superior to production in many ways, which makes sense - after all, you can't produce what you don't have, just as you can't pour water from an empty bucket. Research also came to the conclusion that you typically need to see a word in context about ten times before your brain can accurately reproduce it. This varies depending on the word's learning burden (how easily you can link it to concepts in your native language for example). The challenge with Japanese is that most words have a relatively high learning burden to begin with - another factor that can lead to people quitting.

There are 2 main pillars, receptive and productive. And both these pillars branche out into 2 subtopics: Namely, reading and listening as well as speaking and writing.

Don't be scared. Japanese isn't necessarily hard to learn but oh man, it's a time sink. I would suggest you to reconsider reaching fluency or mastery (certainly not impossible but it would take way too long) and think about what the most important skill or pillar for you is. It's definitely possible to reach a level where you can do all of those things, you may miss more or less details here and there while immersing but thats something you need to expect.

I cannot write a guide for you as I don't know your situation well enough and it's a very personal thing in general. If you want you can add me on Discord and we can work out a general direction: RDE2111

P.s Japanese can be super enjoyable if you start appreciating the fact of not knowing something. As an analogy, think of it like finding gold in a mine. You found exactly what you were looking for, knowledge to acquire. This is not limited to Japanese but to learning in general. If you have a question you can find an answer. If you don't have a question there's no use looking.

Going back to Icepick's original question, if you're looking for a structured "complete" way to learn Japanese, maybe look at Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese (there's the Complete Guide and the Grammar Guide). It's online, for free, does include vocabulary, grammar, some exercises (and should be easy to supplement with renshuu or the other way around)

It is very structured, from a slightly different perspective than most guides in that it tries to teach you the "mindset" behind how sentences are formed and used in Japanese, the logic from a Japanese perspective.

(For example, does include stuff like 「...」と言いました

https://guidetojapanese.org/le...

But I think it is made to be read in the order of the chapters since they build on each other.)

I'd like to thank everyone who made an effort in answering my question. I'll take my time reading all of your replies thoroughly, and will surely get back to you afterwards.

I wish you all the best.

Thank you!

Likewise, feel free to add me. I'll accept when I'm home later.

"On second thought, I don't know if the intended meaning of my last message was conveyed... While the Discord route is no longer an option, I'm still true to my word that I'm happy to make your acquaintance, and if there's anything you'd like to share with me here, any questions, please go ahead! You are welcome to do so. If not, no problem. I appreciate your effort anyway.

Thank you!

OH GOD! I'm terribly sorry for Icepick! I'm relatively new to Renshuu and I'm still getting used to the system here. I'm really lost. How do I open my own post?

My apologies again for icepick.

That's very nice of you! Thanks for your kindness and help!

How silly of me. I had overlooked the fact that Renshuu does this funny thing that puts 「と言いました。」 after quotes I tend to delete, and that was there the whole time without me realizing that's precisely what it says.