Now that I’m done with Genki 2, I’m keen to start immersing in native media. Of course I quickly hit a wall with the level of difficulty I found. And I’m not talking about Kanji (I’m chinese), it’s the complexity of long sentences and my lack of vocabulary.
So far I’m reading the Takagi-san manga and stories from Satori reader. I love the grammar explanations in Satori and I’m learning from them. For the manga, I ask questions in discord when I’m stumped. I’ve also started to watch Shirokuma Cafe raw without subtitles.
Is this good enough to continue or do I need to buy intermediate textbooks like Tobira? I’m not planning to take the JLPT.
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I tried it but reading native material that is actually aimed at adults without checking the dictionary every 15 seconds was just very unrealistic. I went back to trying once I passed the N2 and it was so much easier by then, personally I’m glad I didn’t waste any more time in trying to understand native material when I was still basically a beginner. For me, in my very subjective opinion, you gotta have a very strong foundation to immerse in native material and finishing Genki 2 is probably not enough to start reading literature or a newspaper.
Then again, that might be just me. I hated having to look up every single thing I tried to read. But if you enjoy it then it might be good for you.
Textbooks are never needed but they sure do help. Free online resources such as [IMABI](https://www.imabi.net/) probably would be enough.
Out of the three pieces of material you listed, Satori Reader makes the most sense to spend your time on if you already have a subscription. All the grammar explanations you need are often annotated by the Satori team or explained in the comments. Brian pretty much replies to every question too. I don’t know how he finds the time. It’s *insane*.
I’d suggest slowly weaning off of textbooks. N2 is about where you can start reading most things fairly easily.
I don’t think that’s the right way to look at the progression. You could go through all of Genki 1&2 and Tobira, and you still won’t be “ready” for immersion simply because there’s so much missing vocabulary that textbooks won’t give you.
Genki 2 (or even just the first) and the most common ~2k words is plenty to start immersion, IMO. You can do Tobira as well and that’s all well and good, but I don’t think you’re doing yourself any favors by delaying immersion if you’re at that point.
Why did you use Genki when you are Chinese? There are far better learning materials in Chinese for learning Japanese.
I wrote this post awhile ago on Chinese resources: https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/13gy3ym/chinese_resources_for_learning_japanese/
Get a a couple of books called read real japanese. there’s one for essays and one for fiction. It will be challenging but includes explanation and translation notes so should help the transition. don’t expect it to be something you breeze through though
I honestly think dedicating a day or two a week to textbook learning makes immersion much more efficient. You can prioritize immersion for sure, but without some sort of pedagogic guidance it’s gonna be way slower than it needs to be.
I skipped intermediate textbooks and relied on Anki+media consumption (“”immersion””). I read mostly children’s books, starting with chapter books aimed at 8(?) year olds. More enjoyable than you might think. Probably not optimal, but I’m happy enough with the outcome.
Your lack of vocabulary is going to be a much larger problem to overcome than grammar. You can learn words from media consumption, of course – but you can’t rely on it for memorising anything in particular or count on progressing at any particular pace. You can pick up grammar from context mostly – there will be holes in your knowledge and I’m sure a textbook can help with that, but it’s a pretty small barrier to understanding any given text vs vocabulary.
Yeah go ahead. You’re basically in the wild west now; you can do whatever you want (within reason) as long as it’s in Japanese.
If you’re good at analyzing sentences, you can see most sentences following a structure. On a basic level, kana is almost always grammar, and kanji is usually nouns/stems. Of course, I assume you already know this, and it’s about something else. Though, no matter how complex the sentence is, even if you go to random japanese page and find the longest sentence, if you isolate the sentence and analyze it for long enough, while utilizing a dictionary, you will eventually understand it. Whether this takes minutes or hours is up to you. If you have to use a dictionary, though, you are lacking knowledge in some department, though it can only logically be in grammar, vocab, or kanji, or some nuanced expression that takes immersion to learn. If you understand every little part of the sentence but still don’t understand the sentence as a whole, then you most likely aren’t analyzing the sentence long enough. Ultimately, you should be able to narrow down the source of any problem and work on it from there.
Where did you find Takagi-san raws?
It works, was just a lot of satori-reader, kids books, powering through easier native content.
I never used a textbook and I’ve read many novels in japanese by now
most textbooks are designed for you to fail anyone, they cater tourists with no real ambition
Honestly, nothing wrong with doing both. Using textbooks and using native materials.
I struggle with lots of books even at a roughly low N2 level. I feel like you have to really enjoy immersion to only do that at a beginner level, which is where a person is after Genki 2.
Most dramas though seem pretty straight forward for me at this level though. Books are just a different beast.
When I spent a year at Kansai Gaidai University (the school where the people who wrote Genki work/worked), after Genki 2 the classes switched to a barebones N2 grammar book, a reader, and a fair bit of media consumption. If you feel like you’re being productive then I think you’re probably on the right track.
Strongly recommend you to continue using textbooks to supplement. Try using Quartet.
Rather than immersion only, which will slow down your progress, you can mix textbook learning with immersion. You will be faster.
I think you could try native material, but super young kid stuff. It really depends on your tolerance for immersion with low comprehension. I can happily read or watch something I only understand 50% of, focused to try to learn and understand any new parts I can. Many people would be super frustrated by that, so its about jnowing yourself.
Full comprehension definitely isn’t required for immersion though, so you can always try it if there is something that interests you 🙂
I did genki 1 and 2 and move to japan. For about 5 years all I did was immerse. But nothing really changed except listening skills for things I already knew. I did WaniKani and the vocabulary with my listening skills changed my skill’s massively. I feel like I can read and listen to most things now.
I only used Anki grammar decks past Genki 2 and passed N2. I was also reading a lot of books. It’s definitely possible and you don’t have to use textbooks past the basics.
After Genki I went straight to the site Bunpro to progress through the N3+ grammar points and don’t regret it at all