I have been studying Japanese for about 14 months and grammar has continued to be something I just do not seem to be making progress in. I use Bunpro daily and have completed all of the N5 and N4 grammar points, but I my accuracy was so bad that I decided last month to just stop learning new grammar and keep drilling the stuff I have already learned. This does not seem to have helped at all though, as even without learning any new grammar, my daily review accuracy is always below 70%. I am not great at grammar in english either, so I expected some difficulty, but at this point it just seems impossible. I also read on Satori Reader, do vocab on JPDB and watch anime daily with more success. Does anyone have any tips?
9 comments
Keep focusing on what you have success with. It seems like you like anime and reading, and maybe you could advance to some approachable native books or manga. Seeing grammar in more contexts is more important for acquiring it than doing bunpro drills.
i also didn’t know what’s english grammar but as you can see… with that said en > jp was pretty useless to me since I didn’t know the ‘technicalities’, so I did the same on jp and was fine. what you’re lacking is immersing material, not everything revolves around reviewing, rather, that is only helpful as a supplement.
Immersion, immersion, immersion. Look up explanations for grammar points you don’t understand and just… Move on. At your level most grammar points should repeat enough for you to have an intuitive understanding of how they work.
hard to tell without knowing exactly what points are troubling you
but a lot of it comes from trying to twist japanese sentences into english ones, and translating word by word, which is impossible between english and japanese, there’s just too many differences (different parts of speech, different kinds of conjugations, opposite word order, different tenses, zero cognates, etc)
the grammar needs to be understood directly, not via a lens of english grammar, first phrase by phrase, and then full sentences will naturally follow
also, you need to actually utilize the grammar, not just memorize it on flashcards or something – rote memorization can have it’s place as a support technique, but there’s no replacement for in-context active usage
you need to read, write, listen to, and speak sentences that have the grammar and vocab you’re working on
read more. find example sentences with the grammar you’re learning and swap out the nouns and verbs to make new sentences but with the same structure. try to not do an intermediate english translation step
There’s a difference between studying grammar and learning grammar. Studying grammar is just reading textbook definitions of how the grammar works and using the few crappy example sentences the textbooks have. Learning is using. Seeing the grammar used in actual real life, hearing it applied in conversation, creating sentences with the grammar yourself. Find simple content to read where the grammar will repeat itself and try making sentences with the grammar point and vocabulary you know.
Keep pushing forward and consume as much native content as you can. Especially reading will help you recognising the patterns more and more. It is not impossible at all, it’s overwhelming you at the moment. And that’s perfectly fine!
Also, don’t aim for perfection. Sometimes we need quality over quantity but sometimes it’s just as fine to enjoy a manga or book, look up what you don’t know and move on. You’ll encounter grammar more the more you read and then you’ll notice your improvement eventually.
Also: sometimes, it feels like making one step forward and two steps back. But that’s natural. As the saying goes: forgetting is a crucial part for remembering.
Maybe it’s time to try a different perspective. I suggest trying [this series](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj). Turn on subtitles if you have issues with sound quality.
Have you tried looking up Tae Kim or Cure Dolly? Both have a unique way of explaining Japanese grammar that really made things click for me. There’s a transcript of Cure Dolly’s content if her voice is too annoying.
I had difficulty with grammar at first too. What I did is I stopped learning grammar points for a year and I just treated everything I didnt understand, grammar and all, as new words to add to anki…granted, this is not the best way to study grammar, but I just wanted exposure to the language….I just treated grammar points as words back then as I could not tell what was a grammar point /pattern and what was just vocab. I read all my content with that notion in mind…I played games, then moved on to visual novels and then started reading light novels….without having studied any grammar past N4 (and I already had forgotten the patterns I had studied as I didnt practice them)….,however, all of that exposure got me to be more comfortable around Japanese, even if I didnt understand absolutely everything…as I was doing this I was studying kanji…and even finished going through all JLPT kanji at this point…
then I came back to study grammar…,starting from N5 again……suddenly everything became sooooo much simpler….grammar points were not so crazy looking anymore….things started clicking a lot easier and faster…specially when I actually learned about grammar points lol
So thats what I suggest…just forget about grammar…and learn vocab through immersion and continue learning kanji…..and read read read…..its ok to not understad a lot…just keep going and try to do the best you can to understand….and in maybe a year or so from when you start doing that, you can go back to grammar and give it another try…it wont seem so difficuly then.. Hope this helps 😁