I started with WaniKani in December. Got to level 8 before I quit and moved over entirely to an N5 anki deck and Bunpro for grammar. I’m about 10 days out from “completing” both of them, but some of the grammar points are really just not sticking for me. I feel like I’m in a weird spot where I can read most of the grammar points I’ve covered and understand (for the most part) what it means, however I’m not really able to reproduce some of them reliably, even if I take time to think about them. Does that really matter at this stage? When I say this I’m talking about things like some of the more nuanced usages of から, まで, くらい).
Should I just keep rolling through Bunpro so I can get into the N4 stuff and “unlock” actual content? Or alternatively, would it be best to slow down and explore some of the grammar points that are giving me trouble in more depth?
3 comments
N5 grammar and vocab are so common you’ll see them everywhere and soon it will all be impossible to forget. Don’t worry about it just move on
N5 is really common grammar and vocab. But I’ll say as a beginner a few years ago I had issues getting specifically grammar to stick…what I did is I stopped learning for a bit…read a lot…got to be able to read light novels (with difficulty)….then I went back to grammar all the way from N5 to N1 and everything was so much easier to understand because I got more used to the language….maybe it will work for you too…one thing I also did (which people usually recommend against but also worked for me) was to add all grammar points with example sentences to anki and review them on a regular basis….it got it to stick for me…at least while reading/listening…n5 grammar is really common…but n2 and specially n1…although they are technically common, they dont come up enough during input for me to get them to stick any other way than using anki…idk, just an idea 😀
N5-N4 grammar is probably the most difficult to wrap your head around because they’re so fundamental to the language and so different from your native language. It can only make so much sense by explanations from textbooks and drills, but the more exposure you get to Japanese from reading and listening, the better you’ll be able to understand them. The goal is that grammar should become a feeling, not just knowledge.