Hi all,
I started learning Japanese 8 months ago today and I wanted to provide my experience as well as get some feedback on my methods and how to further improve in certain areas.
My first month of learning was what I refer to as the Analysis Paralysis stage. I am a bit of a perfectionist and I get obsessed with doing things the right way, so I spend a ridiculous amount of time looking through every guide I could find on the best methods of learning Japanese. I did manage to accomplish some learning this month, just not as much as I would if I weren’t wasting all my time looking for the “optimal path”. I spent my first week memorizing the Kana and had them down pretty well at this point. After that, I went straight into using the Learning site Busuu. My experience was actually pretty good with Busuu for getting the basics, but after about a month of spending an hour or 2 a day going through the lessons, I felt like the quality started to decline. It was around this time that I found [u/SuikaCider’s Guide](https://docs.google.com/document/d/10bRzVblKVOsQJjTc2PIi1Gbj_LrsJCkMkh0SutXCZdI/edit) which I cannot recommend enough, as it helped me get focused on my learning versus researching how to learn.
Month 2 was the first month that I really started to learn what works for me and what doesn’t. In order to get passed the Analysis Paralysis, I picked 2 SRS resources, 2 Grammar Resources and 1 Text Book and split my time evenly among them to evaluate the best options for me (again being a perfectionist, I needed an actual experiment to decide). For SRS I used WaniKani and Anki, Grammar was Tae Kim’s and Cure Dolly, and the test book was Genki. I had never been good with Text books when I was in school (I am 34 now) and it turns out, I still get to distracted using them. I make it about a week with Genki before giving up on it. I know many people swear by it, but it was not a method that was effective for me. I ended up reading all of Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide in about a week and continued watching Cure Dolly’s videos throughout the month. I cannot recommend either of these enough. Tae Kim’s guide gives a great outline, but Cure Dolly’s videos really helped hammer home the basics. I ended up making it to about level 5 in Wanikani before deciding that Anki was, for me anyway, much more efficient.
In Month 3 I started using graded readers, which are an amazing tool at the absolute beginner phase. When I finished most of those, I found Crystal Hunters, which I also highly recommend. I first read the simplified version of reach chapter that was out at the time and then I went back and read the traditional one. This gave me a big confidence boost in my reading ability. For Anki, I discovered Migaku Kanji God and found this to be an extremely useful tool to allow me to first learn the Kanji that make up vocab, before actually seeing the word. I also found the Comprehensible Japanese Youtube Channel, which was very helpful.
By Month 4-6, I decided to add Grammar into the SRS mix with Bunpro. This was definitely a necessary step for me, as it helped me put Grammar into practice. I also discovered Satori Reader at this time, which is the best reading resource that I have found to date. At this point I was spending about 1 hour a day on Anki, 1 hour on Bunpro, and 30 minutes reading.
In Month 7 I was still grinding Anki and Bunpro and reading Satori Reader I finished all the Beginner level stories in Satori Reader, and moved on to the Intermediate ones. At this time, I also noticed my listening was severely lacking, and started adding about 30 minutes of the Nihongo Con Teppi pod cast to my routine. Midway through this month, I decided to give the JPDB SRS a try, and I have not looked back sense. I imported my Anki cards into JPDB and find their SRS to be more efficient. I also found that some of the things that I had known really well in Anki, I needed refreshers on in JPDB. I am assuming this is because of the differences in font/presentation. I actually found this to be a positive and would now recommend others to try to mix it up to make sure you not memorizing context etc instead of the actual words.
As of right now, according to JPDB, I know about 1269 words and 519 Kanji. I believe it is actually a little higher though since I could not import my Kanji deck from Anki. I am still pushing through Satori Reader, but I am a little disappointed that I do not have that many stories left, as I found this system so useful. I would say at this point I understand about 70% of what I am reading. Sometimes I will have sentences where I do not have to look anything up, but the most common issue I have is difficulty getting the full message because of sentence structure. For Bunpro, I am at 135 out of 176 Grammar points into N4. Listening is still by far my weakest area and the one I am most looking for tips on how to improve. Even though I know a good portion of the words being said in Nihongo Con Teppi, they do not register unless I see the word in Kanji/Hiragana.
Any feedback on my current process is appreciated! Also, here is [My Resource List](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1g62KowFBVg0TmvpqZSqJkMXwvhD3eOf7EeMoJlNxAN8/edit?usp=sharing) that I have compiled over the months. Hopefully this could help someone looking for more learning resources.
6 comments
Nice progress. If I were you, I would now focus more on getting a wide set of vocabulary and kanji. Your ultimate end goal should be 20,000-30,000 words, and 3000-4000 kanji. Just looking at your current pace, that’s going to take up to 10 years. The fastest way to do this is to read and listen more, combined with SRS. IMO, 2 hours of study and 30 minutes of reading should be inverted.
I can relate to that story. I started 5 month ago, I am a perfectionist too, and I spent countless hours searching for the method of learning that suits me well.
But I already had an experience. I’m french, and learned english a little at school.
I was watching TV shows in english with subtitles every day for years, and someday, I became good at understanding them without subtitles. I learned english without really trying (Though i’m not that good when outputting as you can see).
When I understood what worked for me with english, I found methods similar to yours to prepare myself, and then immerse. So I did 2 month doing useless Duolingo (at least for me), then downloaded the core 2.3k deck (and translated 2000 english translations to french to learn faster) + did Tae Kim and Cure Dolly.
I did the 1000 remaining words of the deck in 1 week and nearly burned out, but succeeded (i work 40h, but have a lot of free time around).
I am going to start reading seriously when my review count on anki diminishes. Right now, i’m reading tweets of japanese musicians, web developers and finance enthusiats, and I realize how Anki (and Tae Kim + Cure Dolly) bootstraped me for understanding them.
I just need to stop reading reddit and go all in 😅. However, i’m pretty happy with what I’ve done until now, because I often stay stuck in analysis paralysis and never get out of it. This time, I’ve been learning both japanese and how to learn japanese.
For listening, I am weak too, and I will follow my experience with english => Becoming okay at reading, reading faster, putting japanese subtitles on anime. My brain will make connections between what I read and what I hear by itself.
Listening to something and hoping I’ll get it someday is not for me … I am not that resilient.
>I decided to give the JPDB SRS a try, and I have not looked back sense. I imported my Anki cards into JPDB and find their SRS to be more efficient.
Can you elaborate on this? Why do you prefer jpdb over Anki? And what do you mean by “more efficient” exactly? Do you not miss the ability to sentence mine?
>I also discovered Satori Reader at this time, which is the best reading resource that I have found to date. (…) Listening is still by far my weakest area and the one I am most looking for tips on how to improve.
FWIW, Satori Reader is not only a good reading resource but also a good listening resource. All the stories have audio. What I usually do is I listen to the audio a couple of times first, trying to understand as much as possible (usually close to nothing at first). Then read and work through the story by reading it a few times. Then listen to the audio again (at which point I usually understand almost all of it). You can also download the MP3 files for each story and listen to them on the go, while doing dishes, whatever.
Thank you for sharing your experience and resources list, I’ve just post it to my friend who is studying japanese even he does’nt knows english… Thxs
Thanks for sharing!! Also, great resource list!!
For listening, take something like Nihongo Kon Teppei, or Japanese with Shun, and go phrase by phrase. Listen to it, try to work out the words, compare to a transcript, listen again, start to associate meanings or visualize the word while you’re listening. (Shun has transcripts with vocab on his Patreon, btw). Slow things down to 0.75, if you’re not making out the words the first time or two.
If anything, I’d think Satori Reader would be useful for this, since you already know the vocabulary and story, you can link what you’re hearing to something familiar.
Making Anki decks via Subs2srs could be another way to tackle it. Just remove the reading field from the front of the cards.