掲示板 Forums - Grammar before finishing words?

Maybe im slow. Ive been using this app for a month or so and ive still not finished learning all the beginner intro words. It took me a while to get katakana and hiragana and i deliberately only learn 4 new words a day as i am not good at remembering vocab.

I have still managed to do several grammar lessons and progress and understand how to use certain particals and some conjugations. Obviously i am quite reliant on trial and error AND the translated hints the grammar questions provide.

is this a waste of time or bad learning? Should i focus my efforts purely on vocab?

I would advocate learning the words alongside. What is important is taking the quizzing situation that you are doing well with (as you described), and say "if I was expected to consume actual Japanese outside of renshuu, would these same things be there to help me?"

It sounds like you have a grasp on the rules and constructs of the grammar you are learning, which is great. However, grammar is just a set of rules, and you'll need to be able to have the ingredients (the words) in your back pocket to be able to take advantage of all that awesome progress (on the grammar end).

It's fine to have "preferences" and "weaknesses". Most people study like that in one way or another and it's never a problem because, at some point, they will be force to work on their weaknesses because they a hit a wall.

Of course, it's better if you can work on everything at the same time but I don't know a single person who is able to do that. Everyone has a weakness they run away from. And sometimes, they even just accept it and don't really care about it.

I can give you 2 extreme examples of that:

• Linguists: They're generally good at grammar, or rather theory, but their vocabularies is poor to decent, their pronounciation is crap and overall, they speak unaturally. Unlike what most people think, linguists are not that good at languages most of the time. Because they don't need to be good or at "native level" anyway. Being good at theory is different from being good at practice. A good researcher is not necessarily a good engineer and vice-versa.
• Online casual learners that learn only with natives: Bad at grammar, vocabulary poor to decent, can't write or read, good pronounciation and speak highly naturally but with grammatical mistakes. They also tend to "specialized". Good at small talk, a few specific topic, etc. For those topic, they can be close to native level but as soon as you start to talk about something else, they struggle immediatly.

You can find quite a few linguists like that on youtube for example. As for the online casual learners, you can find a lot of them in language exchange communities or later, in Japanese online communties. I met a few like that. One spend 6 years talking to natives online and if they didn't tell me, I wouldn't even have noticed that they weren't Japanese. I only notice after talking with them for a while. You can't distinguish them from natives with only basic small talk.

Anyway, none of them are perfect and they are not "good" example if your goal is to study, live or work in Japan. But they are not "bad" example either and if you end up like them, who cares as long as you're happy with that. Just have fun learning what you want. If you still really want to become good at Japanese later, you will work on that later because it will become the main wall that prevent you to progress futher. Until then, you don't need it to worry too much about it. Just move on until that weakness become so unbearable that you no choice but to work on it :D
Most people that suceed in learning Japanese end up learning like that. They run away from their weaknesses for 1 year, 2 years or even 5 years until they hit a plateau. Common examples on renshuu are running away from immersion or speaking/listening. Because they feel the same way you do towards immersion or speaking/listening. On the other, most people here are also good at grammar/reading. I've seen the opposite profils on other communities. For any of those profils, I've seen people suceed and seen others stop. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I've seen quite a lot give up on Japanese and convert to "pseudo polyglot" (not good at any language but good enough to enjoy casual small talk). Because they realized that they enjoy talking to various people from various countries more than trying to reach "native level" in a single language.

So yeah, don't worry.


PS: On another note, 4 new words per day is a LOT for a beginner. Learning a lot of words quickly is generaly not a good things for beginner and you shouldn't worry about your speed because, later, you will be able to learn faster. So focus on less words and take your if you need to. You also don't need to learn new words everyday too. You can study 10 words on Monday for example, spend the rest of the week doing review AND while you're doing your review, take 5 minutes to work on the difficult ones. Or add a simple sentences for those words in a sentence schedule. Or write them. You could find sentences with those words and the current grammar point you're studying. You could also block them and wait until you're done with all of the easy words of the schedule. You will have more time at that point to work on the difficult ones. They're tons of methods like that. And passively, just learning a certain number of words per day is among the least interesting/fun one. Also, the most numbing one probably, especially when you spent month doing only that. Go wild and experiment as much as you can until you find a method that suits you. If you find only one method like, I assure you that it will far better than right now. And it can start with just changing the number of words per day or using a second schedule for words you want to learn (instead of words you feel compel to learn).