For example, once you were able to have a 80% fluent conversation with a native, or understand japanese media, did you stop studying? Or do you still keep on with your daily Anki?
I know there is no such thing as mastering a language, so I wonder if any of you had a natural stopping point or if you never stopped actively studying the language?
10 comments
I will take the JLPT for the immigration benefit more than simply having that N1 status. The reality is that even when I was able to easily pass the N1 – I could not read my target novels. Though they are among the most difficult books in the modern language anyways… however most manga and light novels let me just acquire new words without studying. This is the extensive reading aspect – but I already know 99%+ of the words. I still study and I keep up on the Anki (JPDB in my case) because there are literally tens of thousands of words I still do not know – and I do not want to lose what rare words I worked hard to learn.
I don’t study for jlpt and can have conversations fine but there are some words I still don’t know so I just do anki for vocabulary now
I didn’t know about the JLPT really until I got on this board. My learning to now has been such that it doesn’t line up well with the JLPT, so I just opted not to bother.
I gave up Anki a long long time ago.
Study now has just changed shape. Now mostly I’m just gathering new vocab. But I try to live as much in Japanese as I can.
From my observation and experience, majority (if not all) of people slow down a lot after achieving their goal, and the more you know, the more turtle like it becomes. For example, for natives, who usually don’t have any goal to learn their language specifically, natural vocabulary acquisition is around 300-500 words/year. If we learn 15 words/day, which isn’t such a high number at advanced stages, then it’s already 5.5k words/year.
You can basically map it like this. At starting point person knows nothing, everything is new and if we are focused, we learn with 100% efficiency no matter what we do (because we learn every bit we face). The more you learn, the more known bits appear and some of the time you spend on learning something new, while some of the time you already spend on seeing known bits, until eventually you become native-like and even after being surrounded 24/7 in such language you learn only 300-500 words in a year. Efficiency of active learning and passive learning diverges more and more.
There are methods of pushing our learning without using tools like Anki. For example, we can force variety. Cooking books and rock songs are quite different. Vocabulary, how it’s delivered and so on. Even using the same type, like cooking books and history books, or rock songs and rap songs would differ a lot. Variety speeds up our learning, because of smaller overlap. Overlap between several history books might be not so big, but if you already have read 100 history books, it’s going to be significant and almost any book from different genre would overlap less with things you already know. Another approach is to put more efforts into learning. Even if we don’t use Anki, there is a difference between sweeping through unknown words, because we understand the meaning from context anyway, and checking the correct definition from a dictionary. Similarly checking definition, and spending 10-20-30 seconds thinking where and how you can use such word would differ too. Even if there aren’t many unknown bits, we can compensate a bit by spending more efforts on it.
At the end it’s more like a question, if specific level is sufficient, is it wrong not to learn more? I don’t think so. There are many people living in Japan, who stays at around N2 level and have no problems with things they do. It’s only a problem when person wants/needs to learn more and does nothing for that, or does something that isn’t enough. Only then it’s important.
There are other tests you can take besides the JLPT, if you need that as motivation to study or to have some sort of goal to work towards.
But since the JLPT doesn’t even test for writing or speaking, it definitely isn’t the only way to study.
I hope you can find a method or goal that works for you
For me, studying just morphed gradually and imperceptibly into simply reading and using the language for real. There wasn’t a point where it clicked over from study to real–it was just the natural result of the process of doing most of my studying with materials I actively enjoyed anyway.
I never even considered taking the jlpt, it was never my goal. The only reason I’ve begun to consider it is because of this subreddit and how much people talk about it, but even then I’m not sure I care enough to pay and drive to a location for it. Plus I’m fairly certain I know which ones I’d pass and fail. I think I’d pass n3 pretty well, but fail n2. I’m pretty confident about that assessment so there really isn’t much of a reason for me to go through the trouble of confirming it. As for stopping studying? Well it happens. Everyone gets burned out or busy from time to time, but I always pick it back up a month or two later.
I only began learning because of my interest in understanding things. Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic are among my goals. Once I learned enough of what I wanted in Japanese, I stopped studying so intensely. My goal wasn’t fluency—it was just a basic understanding.
>I know there is no such thing as mastering a language
I have no idea what you meant by this sentence, but you are very much wrong. There IS such a thing as mastering a language. The fact that you don’t think it’s possible says a lot about yourself, and even your potential as a learner.
If there is a natural stopping point at which one could feel satisfied, it is well beyond the jlpt anyway.
JLPT is the tip of the iceberg, even passing the n1, there’s a lot more skill to develop.