1. Man I dont understand what they are saying at all even after I studied for 1 year
2. I cant believe I managed to get some of these crazy difficult rules in my head or I managed to learn some words I didnt know before, how cool is that.
Guess what, the answer is 2.
I recommend the perfect youtube video for you at this stage in your learning process. Channel name is JapanSocietyNYC and the video is called: Going to a Destination - Japanese Lesson 4
Well there are a lot of videos on the channel, cant recommend it all. But for those japanese lessons, I can really say it helped me a lot. It helped me with days of the week and some counting (though its still very difficult hahaha). What I loved is that she made me understand grammer which I find very difficult. I like how she changes words to show that you can make a basic sentence in many combinations. Its a bit hard to explain but i guess what I mean is that she changes for example house into park and the sentence can still be used.
Maybe you should focus more on actual language? I mean, maybe you study too much theory and if so, you should listen and read more. It's important to keep the pace too. It's not good to learn advanced grammar if you don't understand basic.
Try to do more review until the problem dissapears. In renshuu, practice more with sentences schedule! I usually hide translation (with my hand
) read them out loud and guess the meaning. Then check . When quizzing it looks similarly.
When practicing with sentences schedule, I focus on understanding nuance of the sentence, not words, so if I don't understand vocabulary, I click "yes" in this question:
...or, when there is too many words I don't know and I don't want for now, I simply choose "don't study" when learning sentences.
I had the same problem but I solved it by using the sentences schedules with the basic question (like Nastki). I simply look at simple sentences, try to guess the rough meaning and check my understanding with the translation. Then rince and repeat. It helped a lot in my case.
Words + grammar are just building blocks. If you focus only on those, you will struggle. Also, just knowing more about japan or watching japanese people talk can help. Like just reading a book about the history of japan or just watching how people behave and a basic conversation doesn't go in the same way as an english conversation. Basically, a language is not just a bunch of words and rules. It come with a whole society with its own social rules. Even watching a few clips with english subtitles can help you with that.
So, yeah, it's not enough but at least you already some building blocks =p Now, you just need to go see that language from other perspectives (and work also on combining those building blocks)
I mean, maybe you study too much theory and if so, you should listen and read more. It's important to keep the pace too. It's not good to learn advanced grammar if you don't understand basic.
