I use a lot of Duolingo and a bit of Memrise, YouTube video’s and other apps and websites I might come across. I have have found that learning new grammar is easy for me. I have close to no difficult with any grammar introduced to me ever.
I can not for the life of me remember new words.
Unless I spend an obscene amount of time, like it feels like I need an hour per word, but not more than 5 new words at the time, else I need even longer, just to remember them for only a few days. Even though I am perfectly capable of writing the rest of the sentence if I could JUST REMEMBER THE WORDS.
With Duolingo it’s going a lot better than how I did with foreign languages in school where they said “open your textbook and learn these words and this part of grammar, if you don’t understand I will explain”, but Duolingo is introducing more and more new words at once, and ***I can no longer keep up.***
What should I do? I feel really stuck.
10 comments
Seems like you need to strengthen the vocabulary you’ve studied by doing some easy reading. Once that’s set you can learn some new words and then find something a bit harder to read. Rinse and repeat.
Have you tried active recall, like writing all the words you learnt today and before, everyday. You can try that and see if it works for you.
Something to keep in mind is that learning a language isn’t a race, and even if it was it would be a marathon and not a sprint. If you can’t “keep up” then slow your pace. Your brain with thank you later. I know how it feels to want to be good instantly, but brains aren’t computers and take time to make strong neural connections.
What kind of practice are you using with these words? Is it just repeating “dog…いぬ…dog…いぬ…” until it sticks? Or are you trying to, for example, form your own sentences using the words you’re learning and using it any chance you can get, even when not speaking in Japanese?
Learning is all about quality and not at all about quantity. If you take the time to reevaluate *how* you’re studying you can discover the fundamentals on effective ways your brain remembers things which will set the foundation for faster learning later on. You’ve had since before you were born to learn these tricks for your native language so it’s all subconscious now; you can get to that point with Japanese too!
Everyone learns differently, but some different methods include using pictures, mnemonics, writing the word while also speaking it aloud, reading it in a book, recognizing it in spoken conversations, trying to define the word in your own way much like when you forget a word in your native language (e.g. “you know, it’s a building made of cloth and held up by poles… A TENT! That’s the word!”), etc.
And if you need someone to practice speaking new vocabulary with I’m sure there are many people on this subreddit willing to help (including me)!
„I use a lot of Duolingo“
I figured out your problem after not even the first sentence 😉 In all seriousness though, Duolingo can be a fun supplement on the side and I enjoyed using it myself in the beginning for a while, but people need to stop making this the main part of their studies. One of its problems is that it is extremely time inefficient. For vocab, the ratio “time spent per word learned” was much bigger for me than with Anki. Try the Tango N5 deck for Anki instead, which a lot of people consider the easiest way to learn beginner vocab.
The problem lies not within your abilities, but rather your deeply flawed approach. Rote memorization is the *completely wrong way* to acquire a language. It’s guaranteed to be a miserable, frustrating, and ultimately impossible undertaking.
Try jpbd.io or anki
be friend of your limits. If it takes you an hour to remember a word that was an hour worth it. Then after a lot of practice and time it will turn in less and less time.
if you instead get frustrated everytime because of that, well, you’ll eventually give up
Learning five new words a day is a decent pace, I think you’re doing alright. It’s better if you learn them in context rather than using rote memorization. Duolingo does provide the context and should be an effective learning tool until you get to an advanced level. If Duolingo is introducing new words too quickly, you may be advancing too fast. You can repeat sections you’ve done already and Duolingo will provide slightly new sentences with the same vocab to help cement what you know.
If you haven’t already tried it, WaniKani is basically Duolingo for vocab.
With DL, when you look up the words, say them outloud, write/type them out (or copy paste even), write a short mnemonic (eg 休み is “person resting on tree”), then say it outloud again while looking at it. A bit after the lesson, repeat that for whichever words you wrote out. Besides that, since they don’t teach you vocab in an ordered way, you’ll basically just have to review the lessons you’ve already done, until they stick.
Also you said you’re good with kanji, so learn the kanji for those specific words. It will make it easier to recall them, or at least puzzle out the meaning and pronunciation. After you’ve seen the word a million times, it will eventually stick.
I can give tips for learning vocab more generally, if you want. Idk whether they’ll help with Duolingo right away though.
> but Duolingo is introducing more and more new words at once, and I can no longer keep up.
I had this problem. With all learning material comes a wall of diminishing return. I also hit one with Duo, where I just wasn’t picking up any new words. I since moved on to taking apart native media and just look up everything as I go.
I expect to forget words. A word often has to repeat a good dozen times before I remember it, and that’s fine. If a word is important, it will repeat until I remember it. If it doesn’t, then it must not be that important.
Also language learning is full of plateaus. You’re at one. Just keep chipping away at it and you’ll eventually start making progress again.