I live in Japan, can speak and read reasonably well, but being a busy person with a lot of responsibility I don’t have much time to set aside for study. I don’t have a JLPT score but I’m somewhere in the intermediate doldrums of being able to engage socially and live a normal life mostly, but unable to go much deeper.
For kanji I’ve found some really useful apps and my knowledge has expanded there quite quickly, and coupled with regular reading this helps immensely. As for vocabulary, I work in a technical field and often I don’t have the vocabulary to fully understand what’s being said.
Im a PhD and in my native language I’d be expected to interact much more, but here I’m like a child who barely understands what’s going on in meetings.
I take notes and look up new words. It’s slow but I’ve picked up some of the vocabulary, but I really need to speed things up if I am to continue and actually contribute something useful.
Others in similar situations, how do you address this sort of hurdle?
by OddEntrepreneur3714