So I’ve bought Genki 1. I’ve learned Hiragana, I’m trying to learn the rest of Katakana (I know about half)
Hiragana took me MONTHS to be able to read and I still trip up quite a bit.
Genki is great, but I have so much trouble with grammar patterns and staying motivated. I’ve kind of been brute forcing myself through it, and forcing myself to learn all the vocab with Anki.
I’ve been buying Japanese games, and even after months of effort it feels like I have made no progress. I’m only on chapter 2 of genki, as I’ve taken 2 weeks or so to seriously try to learn the vocabulary, but it all seems so impossible and feels hopeless when I can barely use anything that I’ve learned to consume media when starting out.
One thing that really got me was the numbers section in Genki 1. It threw so much at me regarding telling time and numbers that it kind of overloaded my brain and feels like another obstacle preventing me from progressing rather than learning.
Tldr, I guess I’m in a bit of a beginner’s slump, and it’s really tough to push forward. I know I will, but it’s scary moving on when I don’t have a 100% solid understanding of things. I think I’m using Genki 1st or 2nd edition.
Any advice? I know “just stick with it, Rome wasn’t built in a day” but damn after months I kinds start feeling a bit stupid you know?
Edit: Okay, so not to be an ass but please don’t comment something like “study more” or point out how behind I am compared to time spent without offering any advice. Its really discouraging to read and is an easy way to make someone feel really bad about themselves while contributing nothing helpful.
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See [here for some detailed guidance](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/s5mtva/comment/ht1lo0x/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) & (mostly) free resources.
I always think of hiragana & katakana as I think of upper and lower case alphabetic characters. Two different symbols per sound. As such, I focused on the sounds and mapped each of those to their two kana symbols (i.e. I learned them together). You need to keep drilling the kana at first though otherwise you’ll quickly start to forget them.
Reading in hiragana alone is actually quite difficult – more difficult than a mix of kanji, hiragana & katakana.
Grammar can take a while to sink in as well – getting the right model for you is important. Grammar just seeks to explain how the language is used; it doesn’t define the language, so there are several ways of teaching it.
You should also make an effort to learn about 1000 or so of the most common words. With that, and a basic understanding of grammar, you can soon start to read simple stuff. Don’t stress too much about kanji either. You only need to know the kanji that are used in the words you know (and subsequently learn) – and the pronunciation of those words will soon tell you the kanji readings you need to know. Don’t try to tackle thousands of kanji in isolation – that’ll probably discourage you more than almost anything else.
Above all, it all takes time – usually many years before you are reading and speaking without effort. Take your time and try to enjoy the journey.
It’s overwhelming. Building a better study habit (that is, be persistent and consistent) is going to do a lot for you.
Try doing things in timed increments. 25 minutes-on, 10-off or something.
My usual Genki Study Plan:
Two or three 45-60 minute study sessions a day are a good goal. Example: Chunk A – vocab, kanji and dialogue; Chunk B – textbook; Chunk C – workbook.
Before studying the chapter, get the vocabulary and kanji (if any) down. Genki marks the vocabulary used in the dialogue, so it’s easy to prepare for.
Try reading the dialogue WITHOUT looking at the English translation. Try to guess the meaning from the pictures and the dialogue prompts. Check to see how you did.
Chunk A: Everyday practice vocabulary, kanji (if any) and dialogue, shadow the audio, review the previous day’s work… you can preview the exercises you’ll be doing so you can brush up on the vocab you’ll need.
Chunk B: Everyday work in one grammar point. Do the associated exercises in the textbook. If it’s a speaking exercises, do both parts.
Chunk C: Do the workbook exercises sometime later.
Don’t forget to do the reading and writing in the back of the textbook. You can get your writing checked on an app like HelloTalk. Do corrections and resubmit. Move on to the next chapter and repeat.
Just keep practicing and studying
Well you did like 10 pages of a textbook got like 100 words, there is no way anyone could consume native media with this knowledge. People study 3h+ daily and still struggle with them after years.
Japanese games were made for, well, japanese people who are obv. fluent, you cant expect to understand them as a absolute beginner.
Try to use material for beginners, you wouldnt try to benchlift 200kg if you just started out lifting or would you?
Not meant offensive, there are many people that cant invest that much time because of various reasons, but 2 lessons of a textbook, hiragana and half of katakana is slow for months of effort.How much did you invest each day? if you actually want to consume native media, you have to invest a lot of time, for me it seemslike you studied maybe 10-20 minutes a day, which is very low for a language like japanese, people usally invest 2h+ a day.
As I said, this is not supposed to be some kind of shaming, people got reasons why they cant study a lot, but you have to be realistic about your time investment and the goals you want to achieve.
Honestly, if you’ve spent “months” to learn hiragana and get through the first chapter of Genki, it sounds to me like you haven’t been spending many minutes per day on average studying.
Getting somewhere is mostly a numbers game, i.e. how many hours per week you will study. You need to decide whether you really want to do this and if yes, invest enough time to make progress at a reasonable pace.
Did you come from another second language like Spanish or something?
You likely aren’t factoring in that you learned a whole new alphabet and are about halfway through learning a second. You also probably learned a number of other things that you aren’t counting as forward progress because you think by now you should be at some place you manufactured in your mind.
The truth is that you learned a lot and are making good progress. Take a step back and look at all you have learned and stop getting caught up in where you think you should be. Reset your goals to reasonable outcomes and remind yourself that it will take years to learn a language.
Keep going a little bit everyday and ensure your expectations are reasonable. Good luck!
Genki I && II took me like 7 months. It’s not a fast process. The real drag was Genki 2. It seemed to go on forever.
I’m so glad I did it.
Also the numbers/counters knocked me for a loop too.
Not to demotivate you or anything but you won’t be able to play those games easily before being able to read novels easily. This had been my experience.
Convert those games to an aim.
you rly gotta study more. you keep saying months, but the progress you describe is maybe like 10 hours at most
it sounds like your studying method might not be right for you. have you tried SRS flashcards? they are remarkably efficient.
TL;DR we all have our own pace
I wouldn’t stress so much about getting every vocab from every chapter down perfectly. A lot of it (if I recall) is aimed at college students, so studying words like “economics” “major” “international student” is all well and good, but if you want to play a game they won’t come up very much. You’re just starting out- don’t stress! Take it at your own pace, and try to see how far you can get into Genki. What I did, is I read the chapter, skimmed the vocab and then tried to do the exercises. If I came up with a sentence or I wanted to say something a certain way, off to the internet I went to look up the correct grammar, vocab, and how to use it. Studying kanji early is great- but it almost sounds like your killing yourself with the details. Trust in repetition that even if you don’t have it 100%, you will see it more and begin to recognize it second nature, same with hiragana and katakana. I absolutely said stuff like “さんひゃく (300)” when starting out, and I was still understood. Repetition got me to saying it correctly, but I also moved on in Genki to the next chapter. I learned that regardless of how many times I read a chapter, I won’t really “get it” until I see it many times in context.
I was given the advice when I was starting out to read Tae Kim from cover to cover. Just read it. Don’t try to memorize it, don’t internalize it, don’t try to work out all the grammar structures and such… just read it, and then as I moved on to trying to read native material, I would see something and think “didn’t I see that in Tae Kim?” And I would look it up and that would help solidify that grammar for me. When I would study Genki, I would remember “oh, I saw this in Tae Kim” and reading another explanation of it and seeing more examples drilled it more. I’m sure there are better ways to learn, this is just what I did.
Your first native material will be the fight of your life. You will feel like you know absolutely nothing and it’s so heart breaking. You’ll be looking up every word. You might give up and just start plugging stuff into Google Translate. You might even just look away from anything Japanese for awhile (it happens to me!). But reframing how far you’ve come I hope will give you confidence. As in, “wait a second, I’m reading an entirely different alphabet than my native tongue”. I sometimes get this feeling when trying to play games, and while I’m feeling discouraged I’ll read a news article or get an email from my teacher in Japanese and understand it easily; just be gentle with yourself and understand that we don’t always see our own growth. If you’d like some free resources feel free to send me a PM. Good luck!
I’m not a brain specialist or linguist or anything, so I’m not speaking fact, but in my experience stress and feeling down about the learning process can, itself, slow you down.
It sounds like impractical advice to some when they hear “go at your own pace” or “it’s not a race” etc. but, purely from my experience, finding ways to enjoy learning and letting your natural curiosity guide you will actually help you learn faster.
I have, myself, struggled with getting down on myself or stressing about my studying process. Whenever it happens, I eventually take a step back, relax, and focus in on stuff I really enjoy practicing and learning, and it’s always at that point my pace starts to pick up a lot, because I’m motivated to study more and I’m paying better attention while I’m studying.
So, yeah, in lieu of better, professional advice I’d say: try your best to relax and enjoy yourself. Let your own curiosity guide you. Recognize that it’s going to be difficult, so don’t worry about it and just try to have fun.
Personally I have given up bothering with the vocab in most of the resources i use. If it’s not a word I’ll probably use then, at least for now, scr*w it. I got fed up not being able to form even the most basic phrases, whilst being fed dozens of words that I would never use in day to day life. Now, having said that, I still suck at Japanese, but at least I’m not so down that I’ve given up again.
EDIT:- If I see / use the word enough to remember it then I’ll take that as a sign.