I’ve been “studying” Japanese for around 4 years now and I’ve been stuck in a rut in terms of my progress. At first it was going well learning a lot in college but ever since I started studying on my own I’ve gotten worse. I do Anki everyday (almost 3 year streak) but basically do nothing else with the language outside of certain weeks where I cram hours of textbook, grammar practice, and etc until I burn myself out for a month.
The reason I started learning the language is because intend to to move to Japan and felt like in order to live in a country I have to learn the language. I knew going in learning a language wasn’t going to be easy but my lack of interest is really holding me back. Additionally, because I don’t need it **right now** it becomes a “secondary” priority. If I want to work on some other hobby or have chores/work to do I’d much rather do that than study.
If I had no intentions to moving abroad I wouldn’t of even started the language in the first place. The problem that I’m having is that I do want to still move there. However, I can’t move there unless I know the language or I want to be an English teacher (which I don’t). I’ve heard in my industry that you don’t even need Japanese to move there (software) but I have yet to find a job posting which doesn’t require business level Japanese. Plus I’d feel rude moving to a country without a functional control over the language.
I used to like Japanese media but now hate seeing it because it’s study and not fun. However I made it my life goal to learn a language and move abroad from a young age and don’t want to give up. Sure I can read like 5,000 words but that doesn’t mean anything if I can’t make sense of them in text or speech. I was dumbfounded by the hotel staff speaking to me when I traveled there last year because I couldn’t understand what they were saying.
Doing my hobbies in Japanese didn’t work so I’m all out of ideas. I thought about getting a tutor but have no idea what I’d want out of it. Speaking, reading, listening… everything? I’m still continuing to learn Japanese but have no idea what to even learn and I mindlessly do JLPT content in hopes that I’ll understand something. I want to take a break but know I’ll just forgot things really quick. Me being unmotivated to do anything and getting the willpower to study a language is agonizing. So at this point I’m not sure what I can do to make the process less painful.
At this point do I just try to stick it out and force myself though hours of listening practice, anki drills, grammar practice, etc until I start to make sense of the language? Since application doesn’t seem to work for me. I try to avoid looking too much at posts online about JLPT 2 in X years and etc since it’s just a de-motivator for me, especially since I have 6-8 hours everyday after work to put into Japanese but I’m just lazy.
10 comments
You should definitely get a tutor and/or language partner.
Shake up your routine with some socialization.
Try chatting services and the like. Sounds like listening and speaking is something you need to practice more.
> I used to like Japanese media but now hate seeing it because it’s study and not fun.
try watching something fun and stop worrying so much. i dont understand how you stuck with it so long without doing this but hey what do i know
> 6-8 hours everyday after work
whaaaaaaat do you not need to eat or sleep
pick some skill you want to learn (drawing, coding, guitar, etc) and do it
if you don’t like JP don’t get stuck
change your life now and stop being stubborn you don’t get points for being stubborn
Just curious as to your first language(s) and socio economic background
I too am stubborn when it comes to quitting something. I’ve been self studying Japanese for 3 years and 2 out of the 3 years was studying for 8-12 hours…..about 7 hours JLPT focus (kanji 4 hrs, anki 2 hrs, grammar 1hr). The rest of the time it was just reading and listening.
Here’s the thing, you have to be ok not understanding. Most of my time within those 2 years was spent trying to make sense of things, or at least enough sense to where I can move on. Nowadays my time is only spent listening and reading, and there are times where I still don’t know certain grammar structures or certain things…and that’s ok..
I’ve come to realize things are mostly about interpretation than trying to think of a meaning for each word in my head. This helps me decipher a lot of words within the context in which I read/listen to them. It also greatly improved my listening skills as I wasn’t thinking of the word by itself but more as to “how it fits in a sentence”. You mentioned “consuming media is no longer fun because it is study and not fun”, but if you are ok not knowing everything that’s being said, it might make it a bit better…maybe just looking up enough to understand the gist and just trying to move on with the story as fast as possible.
If you want to move to Japan, of course you’d have to practice speaking. As other people have already mentioned, a tutor will always help. Even though you are not sure what you want to improve, if you tell them your situation and what you are hoping to accomplish they will work with you…they will probably assess your level and suggest what you may want to work on. They will also work to keep you accountable. Not knowing what you want them to help you with I’m sure is a pretty common thing so it shouldn’t be a problem for most tutors with decent experience
Watch One Piece in Japanese from episode 1, and don’t care if you understand what’s being said or not, just trust the subconscious mind to be able to parse what you hear better and better over time.
It sounds like you’re ratio of conscious, explicit learning to immersion was way too high.
How many new cards do you do daily? You have almost 3 year streak yet only 5k in passive vocabulary – that’s just awfully slow. A decent level when you can start learning completely passively and fully enjoy content starts after 20-30k words, which should take 2-3 years to reach given a moderate pace.
I would focus on the moving part and try to find a suitable job. You don’t have to be fluent to move, but you will need a visa and a job.
What you need my dear, is to let loose on that ideal that you need to be FULLY immersed in the language to start your move. If you can pass the minimum level for a non teaching job, for example an N5 level. Some places even offer vist work exchanges for food and stay if you work on their farm or in there shop.
You need to remember that with the DREAM comes your motivation. Of COURSE your not gonna understand the hotel staff, you haven’t BEEN in a Japanese hotel before. You wouldn’t understand the words for “cursed ancient Egyptian artifacts” if your watching a show about doctors.
You need to find a way to get there, even if just for a work visit, and spend time focusing on learning what you learn daily there. First day, you won’t understand half of what a combini worker asks, by the first month you’ll be telling them you DO want the bentou heated, no bag, and you don’t have your point card on you can you accept my number instead-
I to have let myself get caught up in the daydreams of wanting to be “enough” to enjoy it enough. But if your point of learnin is SO far away from the learning itself, you’ll always lose the motivation, you can’t be the entirety of the world without the world your trying to be in.
Maybe I missed it, but you’re consuming Japanese content, right? I ask because all I read was you doing grammar drills, Kanzen Master this, BunPro this, etc.. If you’re not, change that ASAP. Aside from the plethora of incentives immersion has like reinforcing grammar, vocabulary, sentence patterns, etc., it ultimately gives you a reason to use the language, which in turns motivates you to keep going. Since you’re having issues sticking to stuff, manga is pretty good at keeping you hooked and pretty low on the “stress”/”annoying” level since you get to go at your own pace, unlike with video/audio where you have to keep rewinding and/or just ignore whichever part you didn’t understand, which can be annoying at times. Plus, on top of that manga has that amazing art to stimulate your visual senses. Shameless plug for: Gantz and Berserk. You can’t go wrong with either of them. They’re both so much fun to read.
Also, 5,000 words in 4 years is barely 3.42 words a day. That’s just way too few. Judging from your Anki reviews comment, it wouldn’t surprise me if you’re going about Anki the wrong way. Do some research on the settings people use for Japanese, and how they go about it in their daily life. Since you’re doing WaniKani, you may want to finish it, and once you’re done with it, take a look at sentence mining* with Anki + yomichan. It’s an absolute game changer. I was able to effortlessly add 5 new extra cards to my daily routine by the mere fact of the words I was learning being ones I came across to through media I was enjoying. I knew the context in which they were used, so I had a connection with the words, which makes them easier to learn.
*:My template is a bit different from most(?) people doing sentence mining. I have the word alone on the front side, with a button that allows me to show the sentence before showing the back of the card. This makes it so that I don’t memorize the sentence itself, but I can also see it if I want to before flipping the card.