Recently, I was in a Japanese learning server where an immersion learner and a few others were discussing the benefits of immersion. However, I don’t think immersion alone is enough to learn the language. In my opinion, you need to complete at least Genki 1 and 2, along with some other textbooks, before you can even begin to comprehend immersion.
Despite my opinion, they suggested that all you need to do is read a grammar guide and a few Anki cards, and then you’re good to immerse. I disagree because it’s not feasible to look up every word every second.
In my experience, using textbooks is much more enjoyable than watching anime or playing games. I don’t know why they recommend immersion so much because it doesn’t work for everyone. I intend to prove that you can achieve the same level of proficiency with textbooks as with immersion.
My friends joined an immersion Discord server and were met with statements like “throw away your textbooks” or “you’re not as good as the people here.” The owner and the moderators weren’t welcoming at all. In my opinion, the immersion community is a joke, and you can’t learn Japanese well with immersion alone.
Overall, I believe that using textbooks is essential to learn the fundamentals of the language. Immersion can be beneficial, but it should be used in conjunction with textbooks to ensure complete understanding. The immersion community should be more welcoming to those who prefer to use textbooks and recognize that not everyone can learn through immersion.
25 comments
1. You’re taking way too much of this to heart.
2. Immersion has been scientifically proven to be the best way to gain language skills. That doesn’t mean “look up every word you hear”. That means using context and asking questions to figure out meanings of words. Immersion requires you to actually be surrounded by the language, not just watching anime or playing games.
3. Realistically, no single learning method will work for everyone. I personally need a combination of study books and access to the language in use to grasp languages quickly.
4. Those discord server people were just assholes who probably hate studying. Don’t go on a whole crusade just because some people are jackasses.
5. Learn at your own pace and in your own way, regardless of what the topic is.
What is boobs?
I’m a visual learner BTW.
I didn’t use a textbook and can speak Japanese tho – still it depends on what you want and how you learn, what you enjoy. For learning other languages I use textbooks because there isn’t as much content that I enjoy in those languages I can use to immerse
Just reading and listening to stuff without studying on the side is a terrible idea in my opinion. Grammar guides are great as they list the points you’re supposed to look at, and if you can’t manage to write whole sentences, then workbook-style exercises are a great way to revise.
If you go with textbooks, you’ll have to do something to bridge the gap between textbook Japanese and real-world Japanese. Hence people recommend exposure to the real deal. Otherwise you’re gonna draw a blank when someone else says タメ instead of 同い年, or 一緒 instead of 同じ. Textbooks also sweep kanji study under the rug (no mention of the rikusho, ifu and onpu, explanations of meaning, incomplete lists of readings, etc.).
>it’s not feasible to look up every word every second.
Except it is. If you don’t like that, then feel free to try something that suits you better. I strongly prefer that to learning a diluted version of a language that will only hinder me in the long run. That said, natural, idiomatic use of language is the toughest part to tackle (kanji is dealt with over time).
>you can’t learn Japanese well with immersion alone.
You mentioned using grammar guides while immersing above. I think you’re being disingenuous here.
No offense, but this post reads like a rant/venting after having an argument.
what did you achieve in the past 25 days? did you start using genki yet?
>I don’t think immersion alone is enough to learn the language.
Most people in the “immersion community” think so as well. That is why they all (almost all) use Anki and go through some grammar guide when they start out. Pretty much nobody jumps into immersion with 0 learning outside of it.
>they suggested that all you need to do is read a grammar guide and a few Anki cards
Depends on what this exactly entails. Just as it is written here, I agree. I read Tae-Kims and created Anki cards from his example sentences, with his explanation on the back. Started immersion as soon as I was done with that.
>I disagree because it’s not feasible to look up every word every second.
And most immersion learners don;t think you should. If you know 0 words, pick easier material. Lookups are generally limited to 1 or 2 every 2-3 min. At least thats the recommendation most people give.
>I don’t know why they recommend immersion so much because it doesn’t work for everyone.
Immersion is essential. Even if you decide to study only with textbooks until you finished them all (however many books that may be), after that you will still need to immerse for many many hours to get good in a language. Simply from a volume perspective, just using textbooks is not enough. Your brain needs a ton of input to help you decipher and internalize a language.
Even most immersion learners do “grammar study”. The main difference is how that grammar study is conducted.
“Despite my opinion, they suggested that all you need to do is read a grammar guide and a few Anki cards, and then you’re good to immerse. I disagree because it’s not feasible to look up every word every second.”
It is feasible, comparatively when I started reading I started with maybe 60% of Genki 1’s knowledge (I didn’t use genki, I just broke down how the language worked on my own by understanding the basics; similar how I did it with numerous programming languages) and kanji radicals. I had to look up everything via kanji radical look ups because what I was reading was print media. Yes it took an hour to go through a manga page and maybe 2 hours for a book page. Slowly but sure I absorbed it and without studying at all and just consuming media and casually reading 30 to 90 minutes a day. I learned how to read and picked up the language.
That aside, there is no “right” method. There’s only effort put on a curve against time. How much effort do you want to spend for time spent, and optimizing that curve. It’s dumb to even argue the merits of immersion versus conventional study because you should be doing both. They’re both additive and compound the gains from each other.
A grammar guide + Anki for vocab that they’re recommending is just as fine as using a textbook in that both prepare you for stuff you see out in the wild. What are we even arguing about here?
Do it, but it isn’t going to get you nearly as far as you hope. You can *prefer* to use textbooks all day long, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to know Japanese by the end of it.
>Despite my opinion
You’ll quickly learn that most of the world and its methods are in spite of your opinion. Nobody is obligated to give advice that affirms your opinion, especially when their experience far outweighs yours and they know firsthand why the way you want it to work doesn’t.
>you can’t learn Japanese well with immersion alone.
lol
> The owner and the moderators weren’t welcoming at all.
> The immersion community should be more welcoming to those who prefer to use textbooks and recognize that not everyone can learn through immersion.
Not everywhere has to be welcome to everyone. If someone disagrees with the main premise a community is founded around, why should they be welcomed with open arms by that community? They’re just going to immediately complain and demand the community change in a way that suits the newcomer even if the majority of the original members don’t like.
Anyway, I see you’ve made this post multiple times. What progress have you made between 25 days ago (the first time) and now?
What do you think people did before textbooks were published?
good luck bro
OP has the same energy as [this guy](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/morede/_/gu6ug0b)
See you in one year with your big achievement of passing N4 by sticking to Genki.
What server was this lol
I will say it straight, I haven’t seen anyone achieve highly educated native level without any educational learning sources. Native and nearly native with pure immersion? Surely, it’s very common with enough time. But with occasional mistakes, and it’s up to a person if such level is sufficient or not. Like natives themselves not so often aim to learn their own language and some people are absolutely fine with mixing “you’re” and “your”.
Please do not make the assumption just because some idiots don’t look up words and grammar during immersion the rest are like this. In my opinion, you should always be looking stuff up while you immerse – a lot of immersers do this and thus a lot of us turn immersion time into our study time by looking up vocab and grammar while reading in our TL or listening.
No one even half serious about learning Japanese advocates just mindlessly watching anime for 5 hours a day. “Immersion learners” study grammar and vocabulary too; generally with a grammar guide, a grammar dictionary and Anki/jpdb.
>In my opinion, you need to complete at least Genki 1 and 2, along with some other textbooks, before you can even begin to comprehend immersion.
There’s nothing magical about Genki as opposed to other grammar sources. Do you think no one learned Japanese prior to its release in 1999?
One problem with textbooks is that no matter how many of them you read, unless they cover the same variety of subjects and tones that media and — dare I say — real conversations do (as far as I’ve read, they do not), then you will literally never have those bases covered the same way as if you’d just immerse.
Textbooks are necessary at the start, but, again, if you want to be able to keep up with the same variety of topics as someone who’s actually fluent, you’ll have to “immerse” yourself in said variety. Textbooks are known for a few things, but healthy variety is not one of those.
>In my opinion, you need to complete at least Genki 1 and 2, along with some other textbooks, before you can even begin to comprehend immersion.
No. Starting with me who don’t even know what Genki is, I can guarantee Genki or whatever textbook isn’t needed.
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>In my experience, using textbooks is much more enjoyable than watching anime or playing games.
Here it is… This is the only reason textbook is good for you. You enjoy it. But you can’t pretend it’s the same for everyone here. In fact, I don’t know much people who could do more than 1h of textbook per day and not burning out.
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>you can’t learn Japanese well with immersion alone
Well again … It’s a general statement for something that is actually false. Lots of people have done that.
And one more thing, except some extremists, most of the immersion community recommends skimming accross a grammar guide and learning the 2k most frequent words with anki. Though, without doing that, many people have just read books and learned the language without any kind of grammar study.
I’ll say like most people said here : what you enjoy (or what doesn’t make you quit) is right for you.
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>Overall, I believe that using textbooks is essential to learn the fundamentals of the language.
… Essential, no, as I said just above. Though, what makes you think you have to go through a **whole** textbook to learn the fundamentals ? There are plenty of free grammar guide out there that have proven to be sufficient, and really, you can assimilate most of their content in 2 weeks.
It’s literally impossible because at some point around N3, all the textbooks will be in Japanese only. So you’ll be reading books in Japanese, and around these parts people call that “immersion”…
More seriously though, textbooks are great at telling you how stuff works. They give you the tools to learn a language. In the beginning you haven’t acquired a lot of tools yet, so textbooks are super efficient. In fact N5 and N4 explicitly only test textbook knowledge anyway.
But there’s more to language acquisition than learning how stuff works. A very large part is getting used to the language; reading, listening, speaking, writing are all skills that have to be trained Skyrim style by using them as much as possible. Textbooks are meant to give you the tools, but then you also have to use them, and to some extent get past them and develop an intuitive understanding of the language. And that’s something that comes from practice, not from reading explanations.
This post is cope
Just do both, immerse and use textbooks lol. That is what everyone does at some point. You can tactfully immerse, kids shows, graded readers. I find it strange you are not using some metric to determine when is good to immerse and when is not. Are you okay with immersion for an hour a day if the person studied for two out of a text book? Seems like your attacking the concept rather then defining when it would be useful. Some people need to balance enjoyment and may want to immerse before the time frame you think is “efficient”. Your post makes me ask- who hurt you? But you already told us lol. Just ignore them and do you, its not a big deal, you don’t need to “ be right“ just enjoy learning.
You said in another comment that you only finished genki 1 in 25 days, right? You also said that in another comment that you saw more results form using textbooks. Well, I hate to inform you, but 25 days is not a lot, and doing grammar exercises only reinforces the concepts into your head. Of course immersion won’t work in such a short period of time. Textbooks are only meant to nail the basic concepts in your head. Immersion is meant to bring the language into your subconscious so that you can internalize it and use it fluidly. You said you’re gonna beat the N1 in a year? Well, look at most of the posts that have claimed to do what you want to do. They use immersion. And for the record, one, it is still effective to look everything up. You build your knowledge over time doing so, and it’s similar to studying from a textbook. 2. I’m sorry that you had that experience with people saying that “you’ll never catch up”, but textbooks are only good for nailing concepts into your head. Immersion internalizes it to allow you to use said concepts fluidly. You can still gain a lot from reading manga in comparison to using a textbook. If you find textbooks to be better, all the more power to you, but immersion, or rather, input, still plays a massive role in building your comprehension. Perhaps consider combining both input and textbooks and see how it goes.
I don’t think anyone who is an immersion learner claims you shouldn’t use grammatical resources like textbooks?