Nearly 2 months ago I posted here and got the very good advice to immerse myself more and more. My listening and reading skills have improved, my vocab too, but I feel like it the progress of my vocabulary is damn slow, like Im doing something wrong.
I tried Anki again and was happy with the core 2k sentence packs, but after some weeks and engaging in conversations I had the same feeling again: When studying I know the word, when talking I have no clue about it. So I began to drop it.
From reading I get a good feeling of which words fit, but often enough there are too many unknown words to guess from context. Or there are Kanjis, which I know and can guess – but thats not possible in a conversation.
So in the end, I hear and read a lot but dont get the vocabulary in my brain. Kanjis are somehow not a problem, guess because they are pictures. I figured I could try to write down everything I dont know and look it up? Or just take a long list and form a sentence for every single entry? I think writing helps me memorize, but how do I use that properly?
Thanks for reading – happy for any advice!
I can not really tell my vocabulary level, but its like advanced beginner maybe. For example, I can read Yotsuba and understand 70-80% without jisho, watch Shinchan and have at least mostly a clue what its about, NHK easy news with their jisho also makes 60-80% sense. In a conversation, there are a lot of words I dont know but in 30% there is a different way of explaining it so I get it. I feel like I lack a foundation of vocabulary.
2 comments
I’m not sure if this will help you, but I understand where you are coming from, and my approach so far has been to take it slower with the vocab memorization and instead apply it each time I come across it in my Anki. E.g. can I use this in a sentence? What simple imaginary conversation might this come up in and how would I use it/respond to it?
The other thing that gets in my way is that the words don’t sound right in my mouth, so I do my Anki in a room where it’s just me and I practice saying it aloud for each card.
I have this problem too
basically, I’m thinking this can only be fixed by grinding a lot
vocabulary is a beast of a problem, it’s huge