So, I’ve been extremely curious about how I should approach a full immersion study (or as close to as possible) and I’ve got some questions for it
Should I watch series and shows with Japanese subtitles? Or nothing at all?
Even if I don’t understand anything without english subtitles?
Should I focus heavily on grammar? I know some methods encourage not worrying about it, but I’ve found that hard to do
Though, natives can learn it without having to worry about it?
If grammar still should be pursued, then what’s the best way to confidently absorb it? I’m only good at reading it, and then using it whenever I read it, not confidently out of habit or fluency
How should I approach new words? Because without a doubt, every third word is going to be new to me. Wouldn’t it be overwhelming for me to put every new word into my flashcards?
And what’s a healthy and realistic limit to how many words I learn in a day/week/month
I would happily accept any help or advice from anyone who’s done something like this before! Thanks everyone!
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Well full immersion would be just that, full. All of your TV is in Japanese, all of your video games are in Japanese, all of your books, music. Even the people you talk to would all be in Japanese. That’s how everyone learned as a kid and it’s a way to learn as an adult. You have the benefit of being able to also look up grammar rules and vocabulary and the like so it’s not quite the same of course.
However most people do partial immersion because they have responsibilities and hobbies and can’t spend all day every day with another language. In this you would spend as much time as possible with your target language so watch TV in Japanese, read books etc. The issue is getting to the point where you can start reading/watching/doing because you cannot just pick up a book in Japanese and start trying to read. To that end most people have what is called comprehensible input.
The idea is you start learning the traditional way with textbooks, audio programs, grammar guides, vocab cards etc until you are able to find materials you can use for fun. You don’t have to understand 100% the material, but you should be able to figure out what is going on. The idea is that as you watch TV and read books the words and grammar will make themselves known to you naturally the same way you learned your first language.
Some popular guides for this style of learning:
* https://learnjapanese.moe/guide/
* https://refold.la/roadmap/
I’d however still recommend you to grab a textbook (personal recommendation would be Japanese From Zero), this will give you a decent foundation to work with and then get into the never ending grind of consuming content and putting unknown things into flash cards.
You can passively watch and listen to as much Japanese as you want, just keep in mind that the less you understand, the less you will learn. If you understand close to nothing, you will learn close to nothing. That’s why most immersion-based methods (the ones I know anyway – I lost track of how many there are ages ago) stress active immersion using content that you can follow at least somewhat comfortably.
That’s obviously not going to be possible right from the start, so you should probably either work your way through an introductory textbook or guide like Genki or Tae Kim, or complete some Anki decks that teach both vocab and grammar, like the Tango N5/N4 decks.
IIRC the Tango decks should leave you with basic grammar knowledge and a vocabulary of about 2000 words, which is probably around the minimum required to start mining flash cards from native content.
Immersive only works if you have a good grammar template (which it’s how most linguists think we learn languages) or the new concept from AI that you are able to basically fill in the blanks, ex: I (blank) a pizza (blank) has no pineapples because (blank) hate (blank). It’s actually quite funny because it’s related to how the cloze system works in Anki.
Edit: I’m not saying immersion is bad but the reason most people give up is because they feel it’s too hard or they haven’t accomplished anything. Immersion is literally Nightmare mode, why put yourself through that unnecessary stress.
Is the goal to be able to speak? or read? or write? or all of them? depending on that the approach might change. I did most of my study years ago so I’ve no idea about these systems that people use today. My method back in the day was to just try and actively think as much as I could in Japanese. First, look around my room or surroundings and make sure I knew the vocab for anything that I might look at and think about… from there I started thinking of small sentences I might think and translated those. If you limit your thinking to your current level and then gradually increase the complexity with what you can actually produce, you will pick up the grammar you need along the way. My focus was on being able to speak the language and I found the above method super helpful with that.