I know this may be hard to read for some, but hear me out.
I know a lot of people here are big advocates for immersion when learning Japanese. Immersion is a valuable learning tool, especially in middle to late stages of the learning process when you understand at least 50% of the content.
But I keep seeing a trend here where people advocate for immersion at the begging stages where learners have almost no vocabulary or basic grammar under their belt.
There’s something that may be learned here if there are no English subtitles, and you can pick up most of what is being said. But to use this correctly requires effort on the listener to actively pay attention to every word said.
Studying is hard, and requires effort. Watching anime does not.
I’ve been a lurker here for a while and a leaner for several years. I’ve watched some trends come and go, but one thing that made me write this is a little self study I did.
I went back on the subreddits history and found everyone advocating for full immersion in posts and comments for those just starting. 85% of those posters seem to have given up their learning journey 2 months-1 year in. I also checked those arguing against it and their retention rate seems to be in the 40-60% rate. Often times I also saw people demonstrate their level with Japanese with “been watching anime for x years with started genki last month” etc as if the x years of anime has made them better at Japanese.
I’m just asking everyone who may be immersing themselves in material they don’t understand without English translation and subtitles, could your time be better spent elsewhere, and are you using this to procrastinate real learning? We’re not babies anymore. We have the tools and knowledge to learn languages much more efficiently. Spending years listening to things you don’t understand is a major waste of time if your goal is to learn a language.
TLDR:
Watching anime/play games you completely don’t understand is probably a waste of time if you are passing it off as study time. And it would be much more beneficial to learn some of the vocabulary and grammar used in the anime before watching to get true value out of the content.
If you were to take two new learner’s, have one watch 10 hours of anime, and the other study a book for 30 minutes, the book guy is going to win 10/10 times in terms of things learned.
If you are still on the full immersion argument, give it a try yourself. Attempt to play a game or watch something you don’t understand for an hour. Then after the hour ask yourself “What did I learn?” And then repeat the same thing with another medium of learning.
9 comments
This is not unpopular this is the standard thing that is even enshrined in the sub’s sidebar which recommends textbooks.
I sort of wonder, why did you think otherwise?
Yes, listening to pure gibberish isn’t useful. There are people living in foreign countries who never learn the language despite hearing it every day for decades.
>85% of those posters seem to have given up their learning journey 2 months-1 year in
How can you tell? I would argue that successful learners are more likely to quit this subreddit than unsuccessful ones …
yes tho to be more specific: “incomprehensible immersion is a waste”. even at higher levels, if you’re only getting 10% out of some media, it’s going to be a slog at best and not real immersion, just a source of vocab mining (which is fine but it’s not immersion).
If you consider someone not active in the subreddit as someone having quit, your study is biased. They may have quit learning Japanese, they may still be learning Japanese, they may have reached their goal, but you don’t know any of it.
How is that unpopular? I’ve always heard that the input must be comprehensible to be valuable.
Immersion as a beginner is not a waste if you do it correctly.
Watching/reading stuff without even trying to understand the parts you don’t know is an incorrect way to immerse. Watching/reading stuff while looking up everything you don’t know, adding it to Anki and learning 20-30-50 new words/grammar points per day is the correct way.
Also, the difference between beginner immersion and intermediate/advanced immersion is the proportion of the time spent immersing versus the time spent on Anki. For beginners, it’s much more beneficial to do as much Anki as possible, whereas intermediate/advanced learners would benefit more from extensive immersion.
Saying that 40% vs 15% are still here after a year is like saying you have 40% user retention on a dating app, so it’s better than the one with 15% retention. Who knows whether they’ve quit, gotten good, became independent, or found a more useful community!
No I wasted 6 months studying off of textbooks and was never able to understand anything My progress was pathetic and nothing stuck. I’d spend so much time grinding learning material but couldn’t even pass any of the many N5 practice tests I’d taken, not even close
I think the real misconception even from people that prefer immersion is that it’s going to sync in through osmosis or something.
YES immersion should be the bulk of study in my opinion but you have to go in with a learning mindset. That means dropping stuff that’s too hard, using dictionary lookups to make things comprehensible when they aren’t, making flashcards for unknown words, looking up unknown grammar, leveraging tools that make the process easier.
In contrast to my multiple failed attempts to learn with textbooks and guides after 6 months of immersion I’d moved on from manga and anime to visual novels and dipping my toes into easy novels.
Going into immersion I couldn’t remember anything, make a cohesive sentence, didn’t know how grammar worked. You could say I had some base going on but honestly I think I’d of worked out what これはペンです rather quickly given my methods. And yeah my level was that basic it took me multiple tries learning the て form before I caved and gave into the immersion crowd
If you can build a base first good for you I couldn’t it’d probably be easier going in. I think there’s a certain kind of person that can’t learn from a textbook no matter how hard they try because it’s not interesting to them and for them immersion is at least worth a shot
Not sure how you managed to get your numbers….and I’m also a big advocate of “get input as son as you can read kana”..however, I do mostly say to start input after you have gotten somewhat acquainted with the structure of sentences…..I barely knew anything past kana when I started playing games….but I did it intelligent (imo)…
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I only played games with a story, but not a focus on story..,..also they were only text based games at the beginning….and also games where the text would stay on screen as long as I need them to be….My way of learning through games is a sort of graded reading approach..just through games…didnt pick up a book in japanese til after i’d say over a year of learning
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when I advocate for input as soon as you can, I mean comprehensive…I use this example a lot, but the second game I ever played in full Japanese was Paper Mario Origami King. According to [HLTB](https://howlongtobeat.com/game/78187), it takes 26.5 hours to beat for the average player….and it took me 130 hours….but I made sure I understood as much as I possibly could before moving on….I know this game may seem like it contradicts the graded reading approach i mentioned above..but it really doesnt….because I wanted to challenge myself and I also picked this game knowing what I was getting into…but I could easily picked games like Dragon Quest XI…..or FF VII Remake……but I knew I was not at a level where I could understand much of them…I could have picked even easier games than paper mario, but I felt like if I knew most of the content I was reading, I would not feel as satisfied as when I completed a more challenging, yet doable game
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The moment I started learning Japanese, I stopped watching anime that was not 100% in japanese (if it had subs it had to be jsubs)..meaning I stopped watching anime altogether.
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However, I did not start watching anime again till about 2 years into the language…meaning that I stopped watching anime…..for 2 years………and in order for me to get where I wanted to get, I stopped watching anime for 2 years…until I felt good enough listening or reading to start watching again..and when I finally started, I picked anime with a purpose…and whatever I did not get I kept rewinding and rewinding…each time it makes better sense…granted not everything I listend to made sense….but I was able to fill in the blanks from other things…..and if I didnt get something I would search on google using japanese
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While this stuff worked for me, it does not necessarily works for everyone else…you might just be of the idea to go through the entirety of duolingo Japanese tree before touching real japanese content…and that’s ok…if that’s how you feel, you do you :), other people just choose to do real japanese content as early as they can….personally, it kept me motivated…seeing I could not understand something first, and then I can
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Disclaimer: I started learning korean (from Japanese) a few months back……and I am planning on finishing the Lingo Deer tree before consuming any content….because for me korean is harder….I found japanese easier because of kanji….knowing kanji meant I could cheat when it came to reading when I didnt know much japanese…I feel I need to know a decent amount of vocab for korean to start input…and thats ok….japanese imo is so much easier, provided you dedicate the time to learn that is
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TL;DR: Big advocate for starting input as soon as you finish kana….but only selective input (not necessarily graded readers), and mostly comprehensive….at least at the 60% mark. What works for you is not the same that may work for other people…and that’s ok 😉