When should I do grammar and reading practice? at ~300 anki cards

I am wondering when I should start doing grammar and reading practice. I am at around 300 words in core 2k/6k, doing 7 cards a day for around a month.(I dropped japanese and picked it up again after a 6th month gap.) I have been watching anime with japanese subtitles, and currently can only really pick out a few words every now and then, enough to just barely follow along with shows i’ve also already seen in english before, although thats to be expected. I haven’t started sentence mining cause it seems it a bit early to be doing that. I have gone through the first few lessons on tae kim’s website but i find grammar boring so it goes in one ear and out the other. What are some things I could do to learn grammar, or should I wait a bit and do it later? Or should I just buckle down and try harder with grammar now?

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Also a few questions if you’re willing to answer these. At what amount of words should I start immersing with reading content? I have considered playing through animal crossing new leaf in japanese but i don’t know if it will be worthwile yet.

When were you able to start understanding anime and such at a basic level? Not completely or anything, but like, more than just picking out words. Also could you tell me the same thing for manga and novels and such.

I’m not expecting to start really understanding anything for a while but honestly i am kind of an impatient person, so I want to keep my expectations in check.

5 comments
  1. Okay, by no means an expert; honestly in the same boat really, but here’s my take.

    Try and find ways to actually use the language:
    In class you follow the teachers instructions or recite reports or chat with classmates. Try and find a meetup group in your area to chat in japanese. (It won’t feel like chatting for a long while because you’ll barely be able to express yourself, but still make the effort). I’ve heard discord or gaming/online connections are good opportunities too or pen pals or r/writeStreakJP.

    I’d estimate my vocab now is around 1000-1200 words. I’ve just now started some sentence mining from Teasing Master Takagi San and it seems to be helpful/ I’m recognizing those words in other contexts. I tried sentence mining/immersion before and it was pretty overwhelming but maybe it was helpful. (Mostly just writing down whatever words I was looking up).

    As for grammar! I find Tim Kae also pretty dry. No matter whether you approach learning grammar by immersion or through a textbook/list of grammar ideas, you end up having to look up the grammar point eventually. Watching videos was more engaging but there’s not a video for everything! Maybe try Cure Dolly videos for some basics. Either you’re looking at grammar points and creating your own examples from the vocab you know already or letting the examples come up first, then finding out. Why not do a bit of both? Or treat immersion as a scavenger hunt for things you find in Tim Kae/other grammar references.

    For context, I tried to self-study and place into a 2nd level uni course. Also was using duo and anki. In the end those were very helpful. Anki helped with retaining words better than being in class, but being in class and having social pressure is also very encouraging.

    80% of all this was stuff I found on learn Japanese wiki, tofugu, refold, wherever else there’s advice, etc

    Good luck with the learning journey! Consistency and long term efforts 🙂 better you’re doing a little every day than over committing right?

    Edit: tadoku.org has some picture books you can actually read with little vocab which is pretty encouraging! Clozemaster gives example sentences with missing words that can help indirectly expose new grammar sometimes. Using yomichan on browser helps identify when suffix-like helping verbs are being used. Takoboto (dictionary) grammar online also is a good list of common grammar things.

  2. Just read through a grammar book. When you finish and realize you didn’t remember anything just go through it again.

    Use what you know to start translating stuff and when you realize that you don’t know something just look it up.

  3. Honestly I think the right answer is probably the most annoying one. Which is basically, you want to learn everything as soon as possible, while also not burning out and in a way that works for you which doesn’t work for everyone and a large part of learning a language is learning how you learn (which changes over time) and you’ll have to see yourself what works best lol.

    For a more concrete but less specific answer though based on my trawling on the internet.

    > When were you able to start understanding anime and such at a basic level?

    In the JLPT N3 range you’ll find media easier to understand, probably find anime/manga easier to pick up and have a good vocab/grammer range to build your own.

    JLPT N5 you’ll probably be looking at graded readers and the like. and JLPT N4 you might be able to start an easier game like Yokaiwatch.

    But this is all based on tenancity I guess, you could watch a whole anime knowing no vocab and look up word by word and grammer point by grammer point and you might love learning that way!

    > I have gone through the first few lessons on tae kim’s website but i find grammar boring so it goes in one ear and out the other. What are some things I could do to learn grammar, or should I wait a bit and do it later?

    Regarding grammer though, my 2c is use a textbook if you can stomach it and find you learn quickly (or have a teacher) it will be fastest. If not (like me) you can try bunpro and add grammer points as you go, and use videos from in there and try to back it up with some media (I use mango languages but you can learn from vids and stuff) which will help remember the grammar.

    Honestly I find grammer to be almost impossible for me to remember if I’m not seeing it in the wild/in media/using it. I will go over conjugation rules over and over again because its simple but doesn’t *stick* but then I see it/use it in a sentence and bam I get it now as I always remember that sentence.

    Which probably is the last piece of advice in learning grammer. You’ll find it way easier if you remember an example sentence then the grammer rules.

  4. You’ll want to start grammar ASAP. Grammar is one of the more difficult parts of Japanese if you’re coming from English. It’s just so different that you really can’t ignore it. When you don’t understand the grammar you’ll find that even if you define every word in a sentence, it still might not make sense.

    Some options if Tae Kim isn’t working for you:

    * Tokini Andy has free Genki lessons on YT that are very approachable
    [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaQBL4XHuSo&list=PLA_RcUI8km1NMhiEebcbqdlcHv_2ngbO2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaQBL4XHuSo&list=PLA_RcUI8km1NMhiEebcbqdlcHv_2ngbO2)

    * If you really like the SRS style of learning, there is the Bunpro app
    [https://bunpro.jp/](https://bunpro.jp/)

    * Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar
    [https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Basic-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789004546/](https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Basic-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789004546/)
    You can just find a simple deck on Anki [like this](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/735547011). And when you first see the card, read the full entry in the dictionary along with all the example sentences. Then just use SRS for the repetition.

    Regarding the watching/reading native Japanese content, I’d say u/eitherrideordie is spot on. Are you willing to look up almost EVERY word in a book? If not, you’ll need more vocab / grammar until it gets to a point that is comfortable for you.

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