I’m studying Japanese in uni with text book Genki 1&2. I just finished up to chapter 19 and had an end of semester test. This make me realise that while I can handle each grammar points on their own, I start to collapse or take a long time to understand when a sentence contains more than one grammar points. Does anyone have any tips to overcome these problem?
5 comments
Could you give some examples of what you’re having trouble with?
More exposure. There is no secret technique to this. After seeing the same things over and over you will eventually become better and faster at recognising them. If you are not doing it already you should start reading graded readers for your level or try and see if you can handle easy native material.
>I can handle each grammar points on their own, I start to collapse or
take a long time to understand when a sentence contains more than one
grammar points.
The problem is that you are trying to understand a sentence **via** grammar points. Unless you are a linguist, formal grammar is only a crutch you use when you initially encounter the language – or some new aspect of it. It involves conscious decoding of the new structure which is , of course, slow and tedious.
You need to train the fast unconscious circuits of your brain to rapidly decode the meaning of the words and their relation to each other and to their context. This can only be done via massive amounts of input. At various stages of this training you’ll use formal grammar occasionally, but the aim is to ultimately not need it (how much English grammar did you use to decode this post?).
If you really want to become fluent in Japanese then you have to use it, and use it frequently. Read and listen a lot – try to speak if you want (it’ll help) but the initial massive input is key.
I had this trouble too. I understood grammar points and could handle one at a time but longer sentences were impossible for me.
I fixed the problem by reading native material and using google translate to help me make sense of what I was looking at.
Over time I was having to use google translate less and less until I didn’t have to use it at all anymore.
Understanding English demonstrations of Japanese grammar is not the same thing as understanding Japanese grammar. That takes a looot of hours listening, speaking, reading, writing. I’m so sorry…