I can read and understand certain books and light novels okay but I can hardly understand anything in spoken Japanese unless I have subtitles. What do I do about this?
It’ll help a lot if you can specify whether your problem is closer to: a) Lack if listening skills as a whole, or b) Struggling to understand spoken form of Japanese
Listen to more, Even if you don’t understand it, listen to as much material as you can Even if you need subtitles, listen to it, multiple times, until the point where you don’t need subtitles
Start with children’s shows first, they’ll have a lot lower listening skill expectation. Listen to conversations or anything similar on YouTube,
Listening and reading have different requirements for improvement. With reading you just need to understand the vocabulary, grammar and recognise those between kanji, hiragana and katakana.
With listening you need to understand vocabulary and grammar, but additionally the sound of the word, the speed it’s said versus the speed you can comprehend, and how each word sounds when said together in a full sentence. Even if you prepare to listen to a sentence, you’ve written it out, you’ve said it to yourself plenty of times, it’ll usually sounds different or faster than what you expect.
Sometimes I just listen to textbook example audios, and write down either what’s being said in Japanese, to practice my word recognition, Or in english to practice my comprehension
Watch more youtube
It should be noted that different parts of the brain are being trained when you practice reading vs listening. That’s why it’s easy to fall into a disparity. You’re gunna have to listen more to make them even out.
I think you should not worry too much about that. Actually its a good thing. Now that you understand some Japanese with subtitles, you now have access to LOTS of content (with subtitles). That also means that you can watch/listen to stuff you are interested in and build up your skills from that.
When I started watching English content on youtube, I needed subtitles or I would not understand. Slowly but surely, I relied less and less on subtitles and eventually I didnt need any.
You know what is great about that? I didnt even realize I became good at understanding english because I was invested into the topic of the videos.
So what I suggest, is you watch stuff in Japanese with subtitles that you would normally watch. It can be gameplay, documentaries, podcasts, series, cartoon, anime.
Lots of input is key to being fluent, keep the good work and dont give up my friend! 頑張ってね
6 comments
It’ll help a lot if you can specify whether your problem is closer to:
a) Lack if listening skills as a whole, or
b) Struggling to understand spoken form of Japanese
Listen to more,
Even if you don’t understand it, listen to as much material as you can
Even if you need subtitles, listen to it, multiple times, until the point where you don’t need subtitles
Start with children’s shows first, they’ll have a lot lower listening skill expectation.
Listen to conversations or anything similar on YouTube,
Listening and reading have different requirements for improvement. With reading you just need to understand the vocabulary, grammar and recognise those between kanji, hiragana and katakana.
With listening you need to understand vocabulary and grammar, but additionally the sound of the word, the speed it’s said versus the speed you can comprehend, and how each word sounds when said together in a full sentence.
Even if you prepare to listen to a sentence, you’ve written it out, you’ve said it to yourself plenty of times, it’ll usually sounds different or faster than what you expect.
Sometimes I just listen to textbook example audios, and write down either what’s being said in Japanese, to practice my word recognition,
Or in english to practice my comprehension
Watch more youtube
It should be noted that different parts of the brain are being trained when you practice reading vs listening. That’s why it’s easy to fall into a disparity. You’re gunna have to listen more to make them even out.
I think you should not worry too much about that. Actually its a good thing. Now that you understand some Japanese with subtitles, you now have access to LOTS of content (with subtitles). That also means that you can watch/listen to stuff you are interested in and build up your skills from that.
When I started watching English content on youtube, I needed subtitles or I would not understand. Slowly but surely, I relied less and less on subtitles and eventually I didnt need any.
You know what is great about that? I didnt even realize I became good at understanding english because I was invested into the topic of the videos.
So what I suggest, is you watch stuff in Japanese with subtitles that you would normally watch. It can be gameplay, documentaries, podcasts, series, cartoon, anime.
Lots of input is key to being fluent, keep the good work and dont give up my friend! 頑張ってね
Come watch vtuber brother.