Finished Tae Kim guide for quite some time now and the opinion of most people is that after Genki/Tae Kim one should start immersing in native content. But how do you immerse exactly? The part I’m most confused about is grammar, should I just look up the grammar I don’t know? Should I not look it up and jump over? Where does one look up grammar? I’m really confused about this approach and wondering if I should pick up another source for grammar to learn more, like a textbook of sorts. I’m confused and don’t know what to do, please help!
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I’ve found that jumping over grammar and vocab one doesn’t know does NOTHING to teach you anything.
Personally I would look up grammar on Maggie Sensei. You just type in the word/conjugation whatever and “Maggie Sensei” and I’d say about 9 times out of 10 I find it.
I look up everything as I go.
>Where does one look up grammar?
I know it probably seems like Japanese grammar would be difficult to look up online, but in reality the majority of N3+ grammar is easy to just google for. Search for “<x> grammar point” and you will almost always find something. You can even spell it in romaji and have the occasional spelling mistake and *still* get good results.
I think it’s a good idea to make a distinction between immersion for fun (and passive learning) and immersion for learning (and active learning).
If you’re looking to enjoy yourself, skip over a few things you don’t know as long as you understand the general gist. You’ll absorb a bit of content still.
If you’re looking to really improve your skill, analyze everything you don’t understand. Stop when you don’t understand something, look it up. Write a note about it to work more in depth later.
The former is, obviously, something you do just when you want entertainment and won’t make huge advancements in your ability. The latter will make much more significant advancements, but it takes a lot more energy and can’t usually be sustained for as long (unless you simply enjoy the process).
In terms of textbooks, I would suggest Tobira for after Genki. It’s one of the best intermediate textbooks out there. I think it’s still good to have some structured study in addition to your immersion.
There is nothing wrong with using a textbook or other directed grammar source after Genki like Tobira. In fact the people who seem to do the best (at least in my experience) combine using dedicated resources as well as immersing in native content.
As for whether to look it up or skip it that is something of a situation that depends. If you can get the general meaning out of what you are reading without looking it up then you may want to skip it and just keep going. The benefit of this is that it lets you read more, faster and is generally more enjoyable. The downside is that you can interpret it incorrectly or you will find the same grammar at a later point but not understandable.
Well, I think you should be studying grammar as well as immersing.. Or even use grammar resources in Japanese.
JLPT grammar lists are good for comprehensive grammar usage. There’s a lot of resources if you search for JLPT grammar.
It’s a bit lacking on the informal grammar, that they use in anime.
I think immersion can be good, but it has to be supplemented with more formal study.
immersing doesn’t answer grammar questions directly, you need both. so keep studying grammar and sentence patterns and vocab… just also read, listen to, or watch native material to the degree that you can. even kids books and fairy tales are fine. nothing wrong with going over your head and reading adult level material as well, it’ll just be more frustrating with either less comprehension, more lookup, and re-reading… or more stop and start lookups of vocab. looking up grammar is particularly thorny, which is why you need to keep learning. when tae kim runs out, consider [imabi.net](https://imabi.net), tho it’s heavier on the grammar/linguistic explanations for things.
OH! Another thing! What you watch is very important. It’s very easy to pick something that seems like you can pick through it, and then end up completely tanking your confidence.
Slice of life is pretty easy, some good ones are stuff like Aggretsuko, Good morning call, and Kakegurui.
Game wise, easy switch games include Pokemon and the mario games.
Things start getting harder as you dive into specialties. It doesn’t matter what the target audience is.
So like Carmen Sandiego, though it’s aimed at kids, is pretty difficult. There’s a lot of technical talk. It falls under the category of crime show and has a lot of crime/law/police related jargon.
On that note, for starting out, I DO NOT recommend shows DUBBED into Japanese. They WILL NOT have CC Japanese subtitles, and that is a real pain to navigate until you get good at listening and have a wide enough vocabulary.
Genres that WILL be difficult include:
Crime; Dare Devil, Death Note, Carmen Sandiego etc.
Military; Attack on Titan, Resident Evil, Gundam etc.
High Fantasy (lots of political stuff); The Witcher, The Dark Crystal etc.
Do feel free to try these though! It’s always good to broaden your horizons, but you will ABSOLUTELY feel like you don’t know ANY of the language. So take it in small doses.
Even if they don’t fall into the above categories be aware of things that are super specialized. I started Assassins Creed Black Flag in Japanese and it is absolutely kicking my ass with all the nautical terms.
If you want reading emersion look at a app called Easy Japanese News-You can select your level and every word can be translated by touching. It will also read it to you in Japanese.
For both reading listening to native speakers I go on ‘Twitch’ and search Japanese, native people will stream on there and interact with chat
From my experience, I would recommend a textbook/online source as well as immersion – for me, it was most effective to read about a grammar point first and with intermediate/advanced grammar, it is hard to say what is grammar and what isn’t sometimes. Then it is easier to have some resource to get back to when unsure about a grammar point. I would recommend Tobira – there is a ton of text to practice the grammar points/vocab in a particular lesson. Also it is much easier to get level appropriate content, which makes learning a tad easier.
some people might disagree but I think it’s ok not to know all the grammar. I think as long as you know a bit of how to build/understand phrases (in the sense that you kind of get the gist of what someone is saying) it might be good to start building vocabulary in a more natural and graded context (meaning understandable but still challenging) then you can kind of let the language itself let you know how the grammar works out. I think steven krashen calls this comprehensible input.
a good youtube channel is comprehensible japanese.
I think if you went through tae kim’s japanese that should be enough to start getting your feet wet and working on getting a lot of input (listening to a lot of native japanese, building the vocabulary, and working on grasping a lot of context and natural grammar)
>should I just look up the grammar I don’t know?
Yes, absolutely. Not everything is intuitive, and it will help you distinguish different structures with similar meanings. Things will eventually stop feeling vague and thing will feel feel a lot more fun and less draining to watch/read/listen to.
Basically, studying grammar structures is more or less like studying vocabulary, but you pay attention to the sentence’s structure itself rather than the specific terms used. Templates and example sentences are your friends.
>Where does one look up grammar?
Tons of resources for that, but I’m gonna recommend A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. It goes without saying that it’s reference material; you’re not meant to read it from cover to cover.