Hi I’ve been learning Japanese diligently for a couple of months now, I have managed to get 1000+ kanji under my belt and am now working on expanding my vocabulary and grammar knowledge. However, the one thing I desperately need more practice in is listening, which I know I can remedy with daily immersion, but finding the time and being entertained and engaged with the content isn’t issue. I get so bored because I can’t understand what’s being said. How do I help this?
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You need to listen to things closer to your level. There’s plenty of children’s material out there start with that. Are you also reading up on grammar and vocab? Raw thousands of kanji disconnected to vocab context is a waste of time.
The issue with reading something close to my level is that, understandably, you get bored with children shows. The fact that I have to deal with that boredom makes me not want to immerse.
You don’t necessarily have to limit your comprehensive input to childrens’ books. There are easy to understand material aimed for adults as well. I don’t remember the name but you have a website that transcribes Japanese news to respective JLPT level, for starters.
I don’t know what your level is, but when I immersed myself I read a ton of music lyrics, and even translated a couple for animelyrics.com. I also played pokémon in Japanese and watched a lot of YouTubers play text-based games. I understand material for children is boring, but you have a lot of alternatives.
Taking that leap is really hard.
Personally I’ve found it’s hard to find comprehensive input at my level. Children shows aren’t a guarantee either they can be pretty hard.
What I started doing was going through Netflix TV shows with Japanese subs and video games and looked up everything I don’t know.
It’s super slow at first. but it speeds up faster than you’d think. All pieces of media have a finite core vocabulary in them that repeats early and often. So as you pick those up more and more things become understandable, and the less you have to look up.
For listening skills what really worked for me was Netflix and Language Reactor. I’d play something in Japanese with the Japanese subs and set Language Reactor to auto-pause after every line. Then I’d replay as necessary until I could match everything I was hearing to everything I was reading, and maybe a time or two more without looking.
I did this all at the start of the Pandemic and within just a couple of months saw a DRASTIC improvement on all fronts.
It takes a little elbow grease, but TBH if you actually pick through MIA or AJATT you’ll find that things like sentence mining and word look up is actually a requirement. But it’s not where they consistently put their emphasis for some reason.
>I have managed to get 1000+ kanji under my belt and am now working on expanding my vocabulary and grammar knowledge.
Once you start to study more grammar and vocabulary you’ll get what you’re listening to more easy. If you’re vocabulary and grammar level are low, well, it’s pretty much obvious why you can’t get into immersion that easy.
If watching kids shows is boring to you then wait until you know at least N3 grammar and vocab to start using immersion with native material.
I mean, immersion alone wont make you learn vocab and grammar nor even particles magically, you have to learn them on your own and then recognize them when doing immersion
Otherwise use manga aimed for kids, if listening to kids shows is not your thing, maybe you can approach to immersion by reading while you acquire more grammar and vocab.
subbed shows are also a good option so you can read what you’re listening.
For listening I would start with something simple and slightly curated like Shirokuma Cafe or YouTube videos with Japanese subtitles (not close captions).
I vastly prefer video games over tv and movies. I feel more engaged and often can stop as needed to work something out. Do you have a pc or any consoles?
I’m sorry this is not answering ur questions but can you give me some tips on kanji and remembering how to spells and read kanji? I’m quite new to Japanese, I got interested in japanese culture and language a few days ago but I don’t know hot to start. I didn’t take any japanese classes yet (will/maybe). All I know so far is hiragana and katakana & Kanji (I believeis one of the hardest part) can you give me some tips? Please.
Listening to music may help, for some people chill music in japanese may help improve their japanese plus is not that boring. It may not improve much tho but you can listen to the words…. I’m new to Japanese so this may not be the most effective way. I’m sorry about that but I want to help out somehow. Sorry if it doesn’t help.
By no means I’m a successful learner of japanese, still long way to go, but, try noriko sensei podcast in spotify, it’s as entertaining as it gets for beginner level in my opinion.
She generally speaks about everyday stuff like the food you like, travelling, covid, etc.
N5 listening practice tests and Pimsleur are decent if you want structure listening material.
People keep recommending different material to watch/listen to and immersing more, but from your post I can’t honestly tell how much Japanese you understand.
What exactly do you mean by 1000+ kanji “under your belt”? Do you mean you did RTK and can recognize the characters and associate them with English “meanings”? Because, needless to say, that alone is not going to help you understand anything you listen to.
When you say you’re “now working on expanding” your vocab and grammar knowledge, how much vocab and grammar do you actually know at this point? What sort of level of Japanese do you feel capable of or comfortable reading and comprehending?
Again, I don’t mean to come off as accusatory or dismissive — I just genuinely can’t tell what level you’re at. If you’ve learned a bunch of kanji through RTK but have barely started studying the language itself, then almost no native materials are going to be anywhere near comprehensible to you at this point, and just bombarding your brain with incomprehensible input is not going to be a very efficient way to learn.
From how you describe it, it just sounds to me like you need a stronger foundation in the language before trying to take on native material (even children’s shows, which are designed for native-speaking children who already understand the fundamentals of their language and have surprisingly good vocabularies — *not* second-language learners).
You are actually at the perfect level for early immersion. The best way to practice listening is actually with Youtubers that speak only Japanese.
My favorites for people at your stage are:
– [Sayuri Saying](https://www.youtube.com/c/SayuriSaying)
– [Onomappu](https://www.youtube.com/c/Onomappu)
– [Miku](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsQCbl3a9FtYvA55BxdzYiQ)
Start here and branch out. Get used to just hearing people talk purely in Japanese.
You should install either of these as browser extensions:
– [Language reactor](https://www.languagereactor.com/)
– [Migaku](https://www.migaku.io/)
You can highlight words you don’t know to get translations. Migaku can help you make flashcards.
If you want short sessions on mobile, you can try [immersely](https://immersely.app/). I am currently making this and trying to solve your exact problem: helping people make the leap into immersion.
Mhh i think you just have to find someone you like watching even if you don’t understand all the things.
I’m still a noobie in japanese but i remember watching pewdiepie while learning english, i couldn’t understand a thing until i did… You don’t even notice when you start to understand. For me at least was like that.
Start with something that has both text and audio in Japanese. It’s also good to know most of the words already, because having to look up every other word might not help you feel engaged in the activity.
I think it’s a mistake to take reading and listening separately, especially at first. Develop both those skills together, your growth will be quicker and you will feel less lost.
If you get bored because you don’t understand most of what’s being said, then you’re skipping too far ahead your level and might need to be more patient. Stick with things at and right above your level. It’s always boring in the beginning, but try to move too far ahead and you’ll get frustrated.
I started learning that way almost 2 years ago now (and is the only way I’ve ever learned Japanese). When you first start:
1. If you don’t know any vocabulary you should start with a basic vocabulary flashcard deck. The Tango N5 (and optionally N4) decks are pretty good despite their flaws (their primary upside is that they are based around example sentences and in general they only introduce one new word per sentence — some of the free “Core” decks don’t do this and make for poor learning resources IMO).
2. You absolutely should watch native content with Japanese CC subtitles (preferably using a pop-up dictionary — mpvacious with Yomichan is what I personally use). Don’t try to deconstruct every sentence (when you first start, almost all sentences are going to be way above your level and trying to understand what’s going on is just going to lead to headaches and frustration), only go for the sentences which seem doable. Once you know enough words from your core vocabulary deck (1-2k words) you can start sentence mining (making flashcards from sentences you saw in the wild).
3. You won’t be able to understand anything at all through pure listening, even if you know all of the words being said. The only way to get better is through more listening practice, but in order to get to the point where that is helpful you need to know a fairly large number of words (I started practicing pure listening at 3k words or so?).
Also I want to point out that while “knowing 1000 kanji” will help you distinguish some kanji when you learn words, if you haven’t learned any vocabulary it isn’t really “learning Japanese”. I say this as someone who front-loaded about 1.6k kanji using RTK before I started learning any vocabulary (maybe RTK did help, but I think if I’d done half as many kanji I could’ve started learning vocabulary sooner).
I’m 6 months into learning and driving more into immersion. Try immersing in something that’s really designed for the beginner.
I’m listening to beginner level content on YouTube, Comprehensible Japanese is a favorite, because she draws as she speaks, and the videos often have question components.
I’m also listening to the Japanese with Shun podcast. Without the visuals, it’s harder to follow, but I’m catching enough of the info to get a basic jist. I might really understand about 1/3 of it on an initial listen.
For reading, I’m in a book club that’s reading Shirokuma Cafe. Having a group to work through the translation after I’ve given it a read is helpful.
For listening, I find it’s helpful to listen to the same thing more than once. Not in a row, but I’ll watch the Comprehensible Japanese video, and then a few days later, I might listen again but without watching the illustrations. I’ll listen to a few of the short podcasts at a go, but will then replay them another time.
As for me, I’m trying to read children’s books out loud. When I can clear one without looking up words or kanji, I add it to my “success” pile. There are four books on that pile so far. The road is long.
Use Migaku browser. It makes the content much more comprehensible (Netflix, YT, and local file compatible)
I found the easiest shows to be Flying Witch and Shirokuma Cafe. If I watch those while reading subs/sentence mining/repeating some sentences/pausing and translating then I can understand them pretty easily. Without Migaku I’d still pick up a lot but also miss a lot.
It’s especially nice when you have local .mp4 files to play in the dedicated migaku browser player so there isn’t any delay when you scroll through sub lines and sentence mine and so on.
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It generally makes immersing less boring since you’re actually able to follow what’s going on and sentence mine. I also recommend watching Seinfeld on Youtube in Japanese – it’s pretty easy too and is great for listening practice. The whole show is like 50 straight hours of dialogue
When I was starting out I used a version of the N5 and N4 tango anki decks that had 2 cards for each word, a reading card and a listening card. Both cards had native audio, but the listening cards had nothing on the front, you just listen and check if you understand or not, then look at the back. Doing the listening cards every day, listening to words in isolation and those short sentences over and over again and checking if I could understand them after hearing them once, really helped improve my listening.
what have you used to learn what you learned so far?