Hi everyone. Currently I’m in my fourth month of Japanese working my way through N4-N5, I’m using this YouTube playlist https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLag_mhJfCJ-18WyYoklCPxIpYbeRgmWLJ
I’ve noticed that the first video has 1.7 million views, and the last has only 34K. That is a 0.02% follow through rate. Of course not all of these are people giving up, people might change over to different resources, obviously many people are part way through, but if I had to guess, it seems like at least 90% of people give up. And that’s not even the amount of people who give up trying to learn Hirgana, videos such as https://youtu.be/wD3FJgij79c have 28,000,000 views, the ratio of people who finish (or just learn competent Japanese) to people who start is unbelievably low.
So that all said, I want to be the odds but it is quite stacked against me. What do you guys remind yourself to keep.you motivated? I’d love to here from people at a stage further than me. I’m travelling to Japan in January so knowing some Japanese, even just maybe N3 level I think could greatly enrich my experience.
6 comments
* write down your schedule and see where Japanese fits in
* get in the habit if studying a lot
* write down your study times
* if you can study a few hours for 100 days in a row, the rest will be autopilot, but those first 100 days won’t be easy
This is the most important question one can ask to stay in that .01%. Language learning is about maintaining a consistent habit over a long period of time. Full stop.
I suggest reading a book like Atomic Habits. https://www.samuelthomasdavies.com/book-summaries/self-help/atomic-habits/#:~:text=An%20atomic%20habit%20is%20a%20regular%20practice%20or,because%20you%20have%20the%20wrong%20system%20for%20change.
There is no way to stay motivated unless you are obsessed. Its discipline.
And if you study efficiently after a few months/1 year youll be already “studying” by doing what you like, for example by watching anime, playing videogames or reading books.
“at least 90% of people give up”
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Well, Japanese is a hard language….but in my opinion you just need to find what works for you. For me, it was consuming content as soon as I could (right after learning kana). For some that could be de-motivational….but for me my motivation was that going into the content I could not understand anything, but by the end I could understand enough to know what was going on in the story…it worked for me
Motivation is unreliable in the long term. You need discipline, which most people do not have for the thousands+ hours needed.
It’s a combination of weak motivators and overexpectations.
Most Japanese learners have only internal motivators. I want to travel to Japan, I want to play games/watch anime, I like this novel and want to read it in the original language, etc. These are weak not because the individuals are “weak-willed” in some way, but because they’re internal and there are no consequences to not following through.
That is, if you stop learning Japanese nothing particularly bad will happen. You can still travel to Japan without knowing a single word of Japanese – plenty of people do this all the time. People can play games/watch anime/read novels in translation, and there’s enough of those about that they don’t really need to learn Japanese to interact with Japanese media.
Then there’s the overexpectations. People are constantly asking here about the “best” way to learn whatever facet of the language. Lots of people make their money promising they’ve found the magic key to perfect Japanese learning fast, etc. Then a month in people realise that this is really hard and they can’t do very much yet and they get discouraged and give up.
There is no best way. There’s only the way that works for you, and time – every day, over a sustained period, by which I mean years.
So, firstly: set reasonable expectations. By next January, you could reasonably be at a level that will make your trip more interesting – you could interact with shop staff, read some signs etc around you, have simple conversations, etc. But you will still be, in relative terms, a beginner. There will be lots of things you still can’t do. You will run across words/grammar you don’t know constantly. Speaking will be hard, and a lot of times you won’t be able to say what you want. You will make mistakes.
This is normal. Accept it, and carry on anyway.
Secondly: set a schedule up and keep to it. This does not mean you have to do 8 hours a day, it means finding space in your daily routine that you can use. The best thing I ever did for my Japanese was walk to work. At the time it was a half hour up the hill and slightly less down, and I had a learning podcast in my earbuds the whole way. 1/hr a day just listening study/practice (on top of evening classes and self study time).
I recommend not allowing yourself to do things like gaming/tv/doomscroll (in English, doomscroll in Japanese all you like), until your study session is done for the day. e.g. if you get home from work, either do your study session, then eat dinner, or the other way around. Don’t leave the studying till last thing.
If you’re one of those annoying morning people, doing it first thing works too 😉