First I want to say that I don’t want to offend anybody here. This is just purly my opinion and not everyone has to agree. Lately I noticed that from my opinion a lot of bad advice on how you should learn Japanese or what the best methods are is given here.
Often people here give advice without knowing what the goal of the person who asks for advice is. If someone’s goal is to understand and read japanese for example than your learning method should probably be different than a person who wants to be good at speaking first.
Also advice like “you don’t need to rush, just slow down and take your time, 15min of japanese a day is fine” is just bad advice if you don’t know what the person asking for wants to achieve. If someone wants to get to say N1 level in about 2 years 15min a day is just not enough. For example for N1 ~3000hours of learning is expected. Just do the math how long it would take. Even with 1 hour a day it would take years. If someone has just fun learning the language and doesn’t care about a slow progress than sure you don’t have to put so much time into it. But with 15min a day don’t expect to be able to read a novel in the next 10 years.
I understand that not everyone has the time or dedication to study multiple hours of japanese every day. But just realize that with little effort you only achieve little results. I don’t like it to give people false hopes but a lot of people here do that. “Just go with your own pace/ slow and steady and you will reach your goal”. Depending on the goal this is just a lie and false hope.
Sometimes I get the impression that people give bad advice because they don’t want others to have better results then themselves. Or they just think they give good advice but are still beginners themselves.Â
For anyone who is serious in learning japanese and achieving a high level my advice is:
Avoid or at least be careful with advice from beginners. How can people that still suck in japanese give advice on learning japanese? They still don’t know if the method they chose will work for them. I would only take advice from people that made it to a certain level of Japanese. Those people know what worked for them and can give advice from experience.
Also inform yourself about different study methods. From what I read a lot of people misunderstand the concept of immersion learning. Immersion is not blindly listening or reading japanese and not understanding anything at all. You learn from looking up words/grammar. It’s a great concept if you do it right. For people that focus on reading/understanding japanese I recommend themoeway website and discord. I’m surprised that it doesn’t get mentioned here more often. A lot of people got to a high level of Japanese with this method. If your primary goal is speaking than surely another method is probably better. Just know that there are so many more ways than traditional study from textbooks.
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edit your post to say input instead of immersion or five people will comment about the difference and derail the discussion
>Also advice like “you don’t need to rush, just slow down and take your time, 15min of japanese a day is fine” is just bad advice if you don’t know what the person asking for wants to achieve
Man, when i hear “japanese is not a race” it’s like you are assuming i’m just doing it as a hobby. I have reasons i want to go fast, most jobs require N2 (especially in my field) and i really want to have a 1/2 year experience living and working in Japan before i’m too old to do it / while i don’t have a familly yet. I really can’t afford spending 10 more years learning considering my goals especially with a full time job.
We may not have the same goals guys, please keep that in mind.
>themoeway website and discord
Even tho the moe way’s website already recommands it, i’m adding “anime cards” website wich has been a blessing to increase vocab, i wish i used that before spending all that time with core 6k
I’d also like to insert that the native’s response should be taken with grain of salt in some situations. Most of the time I read the Q&A here, I’m more puzzled by the complexity of grammar, and I have nerve to be surprised because I speak the language just by growing up in the environment in try & error basis. And I don’t think I have much practical advice to offer for remembering Kanjis, which we learned through years and years of rote learning as a part of life, not extracurricular activity or after-work hobby.
Not all natives here are like that, but I saw some offering the class advising learners to take the hard ways to get to our levels. (I did it in the past too, until some advanced learner pointed out how unrealistic, ineffective and impractical that is.) It’s nice to remind yourself that, just because one uses language natively, it doesn’t mean that they know how to teach and explain things for learners.
I’d say be careful with advice in general. Unless you know it’s from an expert then treat it as a suggestion.
>If someone wants to get to say N1 level in about 2 years 15min a day is just not enough. For example for N1 ~3000hours of learning is expected. Just do the math how long it would take. Even with 1 hour a day it would take years
Is that true? I set a goal for myself of reading something in Japanese for 1 hour every day. Is that enough? Should I try to get 3 hours or more every day at least or I won’t get anywhere in the next 10 years?
I say to start small because, in order to study any language, you have to build a habit of studying it. It’s simply not realistic for most people to start out studying for hours every day. Once you’ve built a solid routine of studying, you can increase the time you put into studying it, but I do not recommend forcing yourself to devote hours of your time to it if you’re only a beginner.
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OP warns people about taking advice from beginners, then gives own advice without providing any credentials that they‘re not a beginner.
But jokes aside, you should never take advice on Reddit at face value. You have no way of knowing if what they‘re saying is true. I can tell you right now that I just started yesterday, that I have N3 or N1 and you have no way of verifying that anyways. So take anything you read here as a suggestion, try it out for yourself and see if it sticks.
Personally, I don‘t know how many hours I put in because I can‘t be bothered to count all that. I do a little or a lot every day, depending on my mood, and I feel like I‘m making reasonable progress.
I think the majority of Japanese learners is doing it for hobby, casual, fun reasons. Of course if you‘re doing it for career reasons, you‘re going to have to treat it more like a career. But even then that involves trial and error, and no one can tell you what works the absolute best for you. So stick with what you feel works, and if it doesn‘t or stops working move on to something else.
„Learning is not a race“ in the sense that focusing on going fast is hindering your progress a lot of the time, especially as a beginner. And also in the sense that you shouldn‘t compare yourself to others who might, as another comment mentioned, have completely different goals and motivations.
I am a complete beginner and I LOVE to give people advice. I also join a gym, insist that everyone is doing the exercises wrong and make false form corrections, and then I quit that gym before the free trial ends.
> How can people that still suck in japanese give advice on learning japanese?
Boring answer: Because knowing something about language learning and knowing a specific language are two overlapping, but distinct, skill sets. Japanese is the third foreign language I learn, so I’m not at all new to language learning.
Practical answer: you will be using different tools at different stages of learning. Advanced learner’s advice will perhaps help you find good sources for comprehensible input. A beginner may help you with staying motivated, pointing to tools more suited to beginners, perhaps mention new tools that weren’t even around or weren’t good back when the advanced learner was a beginner him/herself.
tl;dr: Beginners are good at beginning. Advanced learners are good at advancing. Both can have useful advice, but you have to be careful and honest to yourself and find out what works for you.
OR… OR.. OR… you can just follow the general rule of being careful with ANY advice on ANYTHING online. It’s great to connect with people online and all, but the only people who anyone should ever take ANY advice from is people who you KNOW have been in your situation and found ways to become better. A few of these exist online, but the majority you’re going to have to meet in reality.
This is typical in every field I feel. I’m a professional musician and teacher and the amount of bad and downright harmful advice people find and use to learn an instrument/music is staggering. I’m definitely a beginner Japanese learner and the conflicting information online really reinforced my belief that no matter how much information is available nothing beats a teacher with expertise in the subject matter …if your goal is to achieve a high level in a reasonable amount of time.
Another subtle moeway advertisement… You guys are getting really desperate for those clicks and new members.