Hello everyone. This isn’t a question about one thing specifically, but I hope it’s still allowed.
I have been studying Japanese for a little under a year now. There was definitely some time taken off in that time, so I would say total time studying is closer to about 6 months. I have been living in Japan for the last 2 months and attending a language school. The problem is I am just not improving much or at all. I still can’t even talk to my teacher, yet alone most people. I was just wondering if anyone had any real tips, strategies, apps, or anything you felt really helped you improve more than other things. I know that the question is open ended, but I’m willing to give anything a try. Thanks I’m advance for any advice!
31 comments
When you find out the secret, let me know.
Unless you’re really, REALY good at languages 6 months is nothing. You just have to keep practicing and immerse yourself as much as you can.
You need to study more.
I arrived with effectively no Japanese ability, spent 4 hours a day in class plus several hours a day studying and six months was right about the time I could barely talk. However that did break the floodgates open and a year later, with about the same study schedule and a lot of help from native speaker friends, I was able to hold fairly long conversations about familiar topics.
People vastly underestimate the time it takes to learn Japanese and how much raw information you need to straight-up memorize. You also can’t just binge study so you have to integrate it more into your daily routine.
One year isn’t that much. It probably took me over a year to be able to talk to people and 5 to 6 years to really get some what “fluent”.
Don’t waste too much time looking for the optimal way. Just keep at it!
But if you want advice, the one thing I would say is “when you live in japan. Just talk to people, a lot!” It’s the enormous benefit of living in the country of the language you learn. no matter how broken your japanese might be at the beginning, you will learn crazy fast.
Talk to yourself in Japanese as much as you can, out loud at home and in your head when walk
Watch kids media in Japanese. Older shows too, but start with the kids stuff. Ghibli like Kiki is especially great for listening practice. Try to write down words you catch
Go to conversation-exchange and find someone who speaks at a similar level of English to your Japanese, and do 50/50 conversation practice and enjoy struggling together
Pay super close attention to your surroundings! Look at signs, search for patterns, listen closely to train announcements. Eavesdrop on conversations.
imiwa? is an amazing dictionary app. Has example sentences, conjugation tables, gifs showing kanji stroke order and more!
You’re going to make mistakes. A lot. Accept it! Accept sounding like a goofy kid! Emotionally prepare for the embarrassment! Making mistakes helps you learn like nothing else.
Good luck. Plateauing is a normal part of the process- it’s a staircase, not a slope!
When I was in language school in Tokyo, I had 3 hours class in the morning then I stayed another 3 hours in the school studying by myself or with other students. Being with slightly better people than you is a must. You understand most of what they say but you are not completely lost.
I’ve done this for 3 months and was able to have short and simple conversations. Also, when I was sightseeing, I tried to read all the signs I could see on the street and figure out patterns. To be honest things just clicked after 4/5 months and I felt super comfortable talking to people despite my limited command of the language.
Learning a language takes time and sometimes progress will plateau despite hours of studying. You have to persevere!
Also, immersion is great but not for total beginner. Once you have the bases, let’s say a strong n4 level, you will make huge progress fast.
Do you have any conversation practice lunches or the like? I think the big thing that let me get to ‘talk to people at an alright leve’ in 3 months were the following:
– go to all the classes I was offered, no goofing off there
– hanging out with japanese people as much as possible
– having the TV on more or less all the time at home, and trying to figure out what was being said
– going to some “language exchange lunch” that was run by the university as many times as possible
Really trying to avoid “escape hatches” of English was really important, though it requires courage. I think that if you’re a student just going drinking with other students or something is a good first-order strategy.
Even if your native language is Chinese or Korean, which are somewhat similar to Japanese, 6 months is just not enough time for learning the language. Especially for Japanese, you need to spend the first few months just memorizing Hiragana, Katakana, and some fundamental Kanji characters.
There is lots of good advice already posted here. One thing that I’ve found extremely helpful lately is to have a reverse-language study partner (in my case, Japanese speakers who are working on improving their English). Basically, you correct and support I actually have a few partners that meet up with for coffee, drinks, dinner, museum visits, etc. We usually engage in pretty light-hearted conversation, and I was able to get over being shy/embarrassed over my awful accent pretty quickly. LOL
Basically, most conversation is present or future tense. We don’t discuss philosophical things or try to describe deep concepts. One of my partners is a guy my age and we usually talk about 1) music, ie. What kind of music do you like, who’s your favorite band, what concert did you go to last year…; 2) the many izakayas around here, ie. “have you been there, how’s the food, what did you drink, do you like this sake, was this your first time eating drink there, etc.” Another partner is the 10yo granddaughter of my neighbor. I see her twice a week for oyatsu. We giggle over Disney theme parks, Miyazaki films, video games, or J-pop, or we do a Q & A about her school and Japanese culture. I initially struggled with the ways to talk about relatives (I grew up without immediate family), and she really helped me tremendously to work out those relationships.
Try it if you can! It might be a bit tough to find partners initially, but maybe if you ask around at school, you can meet people.
(edited to fix the many typos…)
Find someone to talk to/put yourself in a situation where you need to use Japanese. There’s a point at which your knowledge goes from textbook knowledge/class knowledge to actually useable. This isn’t a level, this is a mindset. Let me explain:
I studied Japanese for about six months at the college level. Did well on all my exams, straight As etc. Went to small town Japan for study abroad, realized I knew nothing. Studied a lot, got to the point where I could go to the grocery store without too much trouble, learned vocabulary, still sucked at Japanese.
A few months after I got home, I was asked to host some students from that town. Junior high students, just for one week. They had better English than my Japanese and most of my time was spent translating between English with a Japanese accent and English with an American accent, but something clicked that week. My Japanese was still awful, but knowing how scary study abroad can be I got out a dictionary and a sentence form I knew “___に行きます,” so at least they could know where we were going. A week of “what’s this?” from both sides of the language barrier and many conversations in broken Japanese and English, I learned how to talk. No special study techniques, very little knowledge learned, but I learned how to communicate, even if it was in the most basic of ways. Probably couldn’t even pass the N5 at that point, but that was the time period in which my Japanese became functional.
It is probably difficult to put yourself in a similar situation, but maybe something similar is possible. Find some people to talk to in an Izakaya, join a conversation group, take a Japanese friend to a non Japanese restaurant and try to explain the food/culture to them, meet a teacher’s kids (who probably have endless questions and low Japanese skills too), volunteer to visit a day care, listen to school kids talking, do something that makes you need/want to use the language. Best of luck!
This isn’t a dig at you, as I’m sure you’re doing your best. But the internet, and social media, has created an environment where people assume that to get really good at something all you have to do is “model” someone who is good at it and “have a positive attitude” (and block anyone who looks like they might question your authority). They sort of gloss over the vast amount of work, sweat, frustration, confusion, and so on, because that doesn’t sell books / get clicks.
There’s a list out there somewhere of languages grouped according to how hard they are for a native speaker of English. They’re split up into 5 groups, from the easiest to the hardest. Japan’s in the “hardest” group along with (IIRC) Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese), Korean and Arabic, and some have suggested that even among those Japanese is the hardest. So we’re talking about possibly the hardest language in the word to learn if your native language is English.
Now it’s possible that someone will pop along and proudly announce that they cracked N1 and have a professional translation license and that was, like, *dude, it was like on my third day in Japan.* Maybe they did, but it still screams insecurity that they have to tell everyone about it.
For now, keep doing what you’re doing, but stop thinking in terms of “by this time I will have achieved X, and by that time I will have achieved Y”. Some people make the mistake of diving enthusiastically into one method of learning, then, when they don’t see progress in an unreasonably short frame of time, give it up and jump into another method, repeating the process until they realise that it’s not the method, it’s their expectations. All (OK, most) methods will have some merit to them, but everyone learns differently. In my case I could never sit down with pages of grammar and vocabulary, because they seemed to have no relation to anything. I’d prefer to try and read something that exists to be read. That could be a manga, a short story, whatever you find interesting.
You know that cliché “it’s a marathon, not a sprint”? Japanese is an *ultra*-marathon. You never stop getting better at it and you never arrive at the point where you think “yep. I got this”. OK, maybe if you’re Donald Keene, but we’re not).
The best way to learn any language is to spend as much time as possible with your target language in meaningful, non stressful ways. Now the specific stuff you do depends on the context you’re living. Someone who’s really into manga might find easy to read manga in japanese everyday for hours, some people hangout with native speakers as much as possible, some watch a lot of stuff on their target language and so on…
I’ve never studied English formally and learnt everything that I know by watching YouTube and playing videogames. Japanese was a little bit harder since I’m not really amused by media produced in Japan so I had to spend a lot of time reading in order to improve my vocabulary.
Read. A lot.
Start with easy stuff, then move to more diffucult readings. People really underestimate how much reading stuff in a foreign language can help you expand you vocabulary and increase your confidence while speaking/writing.
Bonus points: if you are good at reading, the JLPT is going to be a walk in the park.
This was in 1987 when I got here, but I listened to a tape of a native speaker reading a section of the text, practiced again and again, recorded myself and adjusted. Worked ok. Also, working backward to practice worked well for me. Ikimasu. Ginko e ikimasu. Kyou, ginko e ikimasu. And that sort of thing, to help myself get better at longer patterns. Finally, I just tried to use the phrase soon after learning it, out in the town where I was.
If you REALLY want to learn the language, you need to **burn all bridges**.
– By burn all bridges, I mean that you need to cut off all your escape routes to “get out” of having to actually use Japanese, and **Only Japanese**.
It is well known way to learn a new language **fast,** and many Polyglots use the “burn all bridges” tactic to quickly learn a new language.
Being left with no escape paths, you Only have the language they want to study left as a means of communication – Which is why they progress so fast (Because there is literally no other option but get good if you want to make yourself understood.)
That said, it is not a very… pleasant experience to go back to being like a toddler who can’t read, can’t write or even talk to make himself understood; But it is **undeniably effective**.
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The other golden ticket? – Get a Japanese Gf/Bf.
Be warned tho; The Burn all bridges situation will more then likely arise when arguments eventually come up.
Sooooo, to sum up; There is no easy path to learn quickly. – You either get comfy and learn slowly, OR you throw yourself head first into unpleasantness and learn quickly.
**Pick your poison**; Slow and steady pain that eventually lessens or Painful Violent Thrashing until your body has time to adapt.
watchin more anime and read more manga. listen to japanese music.
content consumption is key.
It’s also about how you’re studying. You can memorise kanji and vocab until the cows come home, but you won’t be any closer to having an actual conversation.
On the other hand, you can sit down and practice a pre-scripted conversation and be speaking actual Japanese in an hour. Sure, if the conversation deviates much outside of what you’ve practiced you’ll be helpless, but that’s what more study is for. Yes, this is how the eikawas work and there’s a reason for it – because it gives visible progress very quickly (and encourages the students to come back and keep spending money).
If you can’t speak and want to speak then finding a teacher that will work around scripted conversations with you is what you want. Greetings, common interactions like going to the convenience store, telling people about yourself, talking about your day, giving instructions to make a recipe, it can be anything.
One you have the framework it becomes much easier to add bits in yourself and modify it. It all adds up really quite quickly. And you’ll feel like you’re actually speaking Japanese, because you are.
I’ve been at it a year and a half and only speak
Basic casual stuff. I’ve done a ton of interviews but still rely on translation devices.
My advice to you is yet out in the wild. The age old saying goes practice makes perfect.
It’ll take about 2-3 years for an average person to get used to just speaking what amount of the language they know. I’m not good at all at japanese, but I can hold something resembling a conversation with what japanese I know. Not because I studied hard, but because I just happened to be around Japanese people for 2 or 3 years.
Prepare jlpt, like N4, to give you an objective. I got N3 after a year with just evening classes so if you’re full time student you should feel progression quite fast!
If you are in Language school make sure to avoid the “language schools don’t teach you real Japanese”, etc. attitude. I saw your post about conversation practice in class and that it isn’t helpful, so uh-oh.
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When I went to Japanese school everyone got better. The only people who didn’t improve were the people who stopped coming to class because they wanted to focus on “real Japanese”. One guy, I guess I should feel sorry for, but would often stop coming to class for weeks at a time and after a few months of that, he was so behind everyone and the teachers had to dumb down all the questions so he could answer.
1. Do your best to think in Japanese, even simple Japanese.
2. Make Japanese friends and practice typing on LINE with them.
3. Watch a lot of Japanese TV. Listen carefully and pay attention to subtitles, so you can become familiar with common Kanji.
4. Nail down commonly used situational Japanese, like ordering food, introducing yourself, or light conversation.
You’re still early in the process but one thing that really helped me click in conversation around my third year of study was just practicing speaking phrases that popped into my mind when I was alone. I would literally just think of some random thing I might want to say in the future, consciously imagine how I would say it as naturally as possible in Japanese, and then speak it out loud to myself randomly while alone like a psycho. I did this all the time and it drastically improved my speaking cadence and pronunciation. Still got a lot of work to do in various areas but purely in terms of developing a natural speaking rhythm I think this helped me a lot.
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If you’ve studied 6months, and started from scratch, you’re probably studying the basic grammar, low level kanji and textbook coversations. If you’re just following the curriculum at language school, you’ll need at least an additional year before you can start expressing yourself without sounding like a caveman.
I know several people who dedicated themselves to Japanese and got JLPT N1 in about a year, living outside Japan. So if you really want to see some improvement, set a personal goal and a deadline. A example would be to aim for a passing grade at a certain JLPT level by the next exam, or going up two levels at your language school by the end of the current course.
For kanji Anki is a great app to use.
For speaking, try becoming a regular at a smallish bar. The staff probably won’t be that busy most days poif they regularly see you they’ll be happy to chat. May take awhile still, especially if you’re still a pretty low level, but it’s a pretty low pressure environment.
I used to work near Roppongi, finished around 5ish and had a bar I’d frequent there. It was usually just me and the bartender for the first hour I was there so it was easy to practice some basic conversation. Plus drinking alcohol makes you less nervous about trying too.
By a year, do you mean you studied from 0 in one year, and lived here for 2 months? I think that’s pretty normal… It takes a LOT of comprehension ability and vocabulary to conduct even simple conversations, because you need to be able to understand the people speaking to you as well.
How are you handling everyday situations? Can you use simple Japanese when shopping, doing tasks? Since you are here there’s an unlimited chance to absorb new words and keep learning.
In my case, I basically came here with an N5 (which I got years ago) and improved myself to near N3 level in about one year (I didn’t pass the test, but it was close and I can conduct simple convos in everyday situations) with minimal classes (I didn’t attend language school). When I came here I couldn’t speak or understand much for the first few months. But I was determined to improve, so here’s what I did:
– Consume Japanese media. I read manga, watch tv and movies in the theatre, watch youtube, go to karaoke, etc all in Japanese and try to catch as many words as possible and recognize the sentence patterns. If you don’t really like Japanese entertainment, maybe try something like using Japanese subtitle+dub while watching English/Western/other foreign series/movies.
– As much as possible, avoid relying on someone with better Japanese/resorting to English or other languages in everyday situations. Plan the necessary vocabulary to converse in a given situation. I.e. getting a haircut? Look up words to describe the hair that you want in Japanese.
– Take note of the new words you learn, and try to use it again to remember better.
– Don’t be afraid of sounding silly and making mistakes, everyone knows you’re a foreigner who is learning.
Use it, use it, use it. Ask for things, make conversations with strangers, read the tissue box. If people don’t understand you, ask your teachers & study a little more.
One neat technique for improving your speaking is called shadowing. Listen to a passage, or the news, and try to speak along. You really have to open your ears and let it flow out your mouth. Start with 10 seconds at a time, three repetitions, and work your way up to longer bits.
Magazines with lots of pictures can be less daunting than textbooks. Of course, manga can be good, too. Your local library will have a supply of both. Bonus: put the words you don’t know in some sort of app — vocab or kanji.
And of course, pay attention in class. Take notes. Ask if it’s OK to record (but try to limit this to short bits — reviewing three hours of class at double speed is still a lot of time). And take advantage of question time or office hours.
Alternatively the only ‘study’ I did was kanji with RTK (which is like speedhax for japanese).
The rest was just me trying to make sense of sentences, then manga, then short messages, and finally full text-based conversations.
I didn’t speak much until after I was able to express myself fairly well via text. After that it was just constant improvement until my speaking caught up. It didn’t take that long. Maybe 2 years or so and I was having decent chats.
If you study you’ll just be wasting time listening to/reading a bunch of English explanations. It’s better to get a rough equivalent or one translated example and then try to understand a few other sentences imo.
But what do I know. I only failed N1 by a few points in the 読解 section without study or review.
¯_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯
I feel the struggle. This is something I wish other people, particularly employers, would appreciate more. Language can be just like any other skill and take YEARS for significant proficiency. This is why when you grow close to fluency it usually gets attention, deep down most people know it is hard to do.
I studied Japanese in school for one year, then everything else was learned through immersion so to speak. I’ve been here 10 years and while I’ve never taken the JLPT, I have a job where Japanese speaking/reading/writing is a requirement and I have little difficulty.
The biggest things that helped me were truly immersing myself whenever I could. I taught English for a long time so I couldn’t use Japanese much at work. So I would always have the TV on at home, tried changing the language settings in everything I comfortably could, played video games in Japanese, watched Japanese media with Japanese subs on streaming. I try to have my tiktok and YouTube algorithm mostly stay Japanese. I found a few friend groups who don’t speak English. A few of my hobbies also have only very limited English translation so I have to use Japanese to interact online.
A lot of what helped for me is that I truly like Japanese media like dramas, variety, and video games. I’m also really really interested in comparing the Japanese localization of English media, it’s like an obsession of mine lol. Anyway, if you find things that truly interest you in a second language, it won’t seem like “studying”.