I’m fairly new to this reddit community, but it’s seems like the right place to ask for advice. I started studying japanese a month ago, mostly because I really like writing it. Kanji to me is beautiful and I love stroke orders and stuff.
The past few days, I haven’t been feeling so motivated to study. My anki cards frustrate me (Core2k) and I can’t understand stuff in my grammar textbook (Cure Dolly) and I end up just revising some kana and kanji I learned initially.
I am learning french currently and it’s steating to come pretty naturally. I’m frustrated it’s not the same for japanese. Sorry for the long rant, but is there any advice on how I can continue studying japanese?
4 comments
Try changing up your patterns, everything gets stale
Focus on a different aspect of listening/speaking/writing/reading than you were before
Engage different senses
Grab some Japanese origami instructions and work thru folding something, download a simple recipe and work thru making cookies, try calligraphy/shodo
And/or take a break, a hobby is supposed to be fun, don’t force yourself. Everyone has some off weeks or needs time to do something else for a bit
You may need to rethink your approach. For grammar, Cure Dolly is great but she is honestly probably better if you already understand some of the language, so you can either use another source (like tae kim. I don’t think textbooks are great, but they are also an option) or google stuff you don’t understand, and usually find a decent article by the likes of tofugu. Though, you don’t need to worry about 100% comprehension, you can’t get everything straight away, some you’ll need to see dozens of times in reading before understanding.
For anki, find what is causing the most problems. If you struggle to recognise kanji, do kanji study, if you spend too long on it, do less cards. You might benefit from changing your settings too, primarily learning steps/intervals. If the deck is a problem you can start a new one or change the format of what you have.
Don’t worry, you will probably end up like most people. Start, Quit, Start, Quit, Start….2 years later Quit. You wouldn’t be at all alone in your decesion.That being said, I am not that great either. Just now half way through studying for the N3 after 4.5 years. But, my motivation is one out of complete spite. I just want to tell all the people who quit, “look what you could’ve done if you stuck with it”.
French is a beautiful language. I made an N5 vocab list with French and Japanese translations on Quizlet if you ever need it.
Input methods depend on input material you can enjoy. Supplemental study such as Cure Dolly and any Anki work will be *horribly* difficult if they’re not building on that foundation.
So if you don’t have a emotional connection to people or content, it’s simply not going to work. If you want to practice 書道 I’d recommend starting with English-language instruction. That can naturally lead to “I want to watch how Japanese practitioners write,” and [YouTube can indeed provide](https://www.youtube.com/@takumitohgu)
If you get frustrated enough with your inability to understand Japanese, *that* will provide motivation. Progress in Japanese is slow and it demands a lot of dedication. You need some kind of itchy curiosity driving you forward, especially to motivate study activity.