First of all, I know different questions regarding immersion have been asked a lot on this subreddit. However, I’ve been struggling to find satisfying answers in relation to my particular position.
Some context; I’ve been casually learning Japanese for about 1 year. I’ve been studying a small amount (anywhere from 10 minutes to 1 hour) basically everyday. My resources have been: some Genki in the beginning. Wanikani for half the time I think (level 10). My latest addition was Bunpro where I’m halfway through N4. I’ve also sporadically listened to Nihongo con Teppei and Japanese with Shun, which combined with example sentences on Bunpro has been my only source of listening practice.
To be clear I’m not complaining or worrying about my level of progression, since I know I can’t expect too much from the effort I’ve put in. With that said, my strategy so far has put me in a position were I’m familiar (not solid) with a fair amount of grammar points (mostly thanks to Bunpro), and my vocabulary is a bit all over the place, meaning I know words from different levels, but I’m lacking a decent amount of usual words and phrases (since a lot of my vocabulary comes from Wanikani).
So, all of this puts me in a position where I often have a fairly good potential to understand a simpler sentence “in the wild” (and also, let’s not worry about kanji for the moment). If a sentence mostly includes words I know, and in a grammar structure that I’ve been exposed to through my resources I can usually understand it quite easily. However, it does not take much before I’m thrown off. This can be a different conjugation of a verb or something else that makes the sentence sound different (even though I actually know 90% of the words and should “technically” be able to understand). Of course, a sentence that includes a lot of words or grammar that I don’t know will be unintelligible.
I know that the issues described above are because of a lack of exposure. This means that the easy solution would be to get more exposure, where probably the most effective could be immersion.
Here some challenges arise; From what I’ve gathered, immersion is most effective when the input is mostly comprehensible. This, in my case at least creates several different scenarios when immersing:
1. I am able to understand or mostly understand the sentence. Great!
2. I have the knowledge to understand, but, either I’m not enough used to listening, so I miss the meaning, or I’m not used enough to reading so I have to spend a long time before getting the meaning. The solution here is also easy; listen more!
3. The scenario I described above; when there is something in the sentence that I don’t know, and that makes me not able to understand the sentence even if I spend time looking at it. This comes from a gap in knowledge.
4. The whole sentence is mostly or completely unintelligible.
Now, finding stuff to immerse in. My intuition tells me that the optimal thing to immerse in would contain a fair bit of 1. but mostly 2. with a sprinkle of 3. When a certain resource becomes mostly 1. and stops challenging the ability to listen, one should move to something more advanced.
All of this is putting me at a crossroads every time I try to find a good resource for immersion. The most pressing issue is how I should juggle between just trying to listen to the content, and looking stuff up. Because of the way I’ve been studying and what I have learned so far, there is very little content that works optimally, meaning that it’s not just too easy, or that I don’t have to constantly look stuff up if I don’t want to only comprehend maybe 30%.
Basically, I have a difficult time with the transition from the resources I’ve been using to get a foundation of basics for learning the language, to resources for actually starting to acquire it. Even though immersion probably is the way forward, and I know it will be fairly hard in the beginning, I don’t think ONLY immersing is the correct way for me at this moment. I need to find a way to mix both studying and immersion.
I’m wondering if this situation sounds familiar to someone, and if there are any good strategies for me moving forward.
10 comments
In my experience, there is not a smooth transition. you just have to take the leap. Which means accepting that for a good while you will not be understanding most of the content. With that in mind, it helps to choose something that is engaging because of something other than just the plot itself. Art style, cinematography, music, fight scenes, cute actors/actresses, etc.
>I don’t think ONLY immersing is the correct way for me at this moment. I need to find a way to mix both studying and immersion.
Then do both! Immerse in an episode and then go do your typical study.
Another approach is to jump into a book. First book in Japanese I read was Harry potter. I understood very little of it, but because I knew the plot already I could find my way around and use my prior knowledge to help fill in. This won’t directly help with listening, but it will help understanding.
Last thing; You got this! its hard to be a beginner and have to immerse in content you aren’t able to follow, but I know that you will succeed if you just keep at it!
This is exactly the scenario Comprehensible Japanese is for: https://cijapanese.com/
Other good resources include Satori Reader (and graded readers generally) and the podcasts you mentioned. If you’re looking for material by native Japanese speakers for native Japanese speakers, that’s going to be *very* hard if you’re pre-N4. I’d recommend taking a look at the [WaniKani book clubs](https://community.wanikani.com/t/master-list-of-book-clubs/35283). Past Absolute Beginner book clubs will often have every question you could possibly come up with on your own already answered— and if you come up with new questions, odds are good someone would still answer it (you do not need a wanikani subscription to participate)
I remember years ago, it’s real tough going from the beginner stage to the never ending intermediate hell stage(sometimes I feel like I’m still stuck here despite passing N1 years ago).
I don’t remember exactly what I did. But I just kept up with my Anki reviews and added new vocab cards and sentence cards from Tae Kim’s grammar guide. In my free time, I just watched a shit ton of anime with English subs and idol variety shows on YouTube to hear the more natural Japanese even though I understood maybe 2% of what anyone was saying.
immerse in anything at any time, just set your expectations accordingly with the material. being pre-n4 and picking up an adult novel won’t harm you, but it will be very slow and possibly very frustrating – so plan accordingly with how you want to handle that. ultimately language learning is an enterprise in self assessment and self goal-setting, so try it and see and then re-evaluate.
Sounds like you’re looking for [graded readers](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=japanese+graded+readers&crid=22CLUEB01B1M8&sprefix=japanese+graded+re%2Caps%2C171&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_18).
I personally didn’t like any form of graded reading because it’s content that gets picked for me that I dnt really enjoy…what I did (a month after learning kana) was immerse myself in content I enjoy because I picked it myself…for me particularly was playing games where you have story conveyed through text instead of speaking) I didn’t do listening after about 1.5 years later…that’s because I needed to build up vocab to make it easier.. while you’re studying grammar, expect some sentences to be confusing…understand what you can and move on…
Of course since I did immersion so early I already expected to add pretty much every single word to anki and review 250-500 cards daily…
I only did immersion for 1 hour of my beginner days while studying grammar, kanji and anki the remainder of my time…but if you only have 1 hour total, I would at least take some time to do kanji practice on top of immersion and anki as kanji will just make reading very easy
In my experience, no matter what you do, it’s going to be painful at your level. IIRC, I mostly used the Watanoc N5 articles to practice reading at that point. Another thing I’d recommend is listening to Japanese podcasts like Noriko or Teppei. It’s going to be hard and you won’t understand much at first, but if you keep doing it, you’ll get better over time. I got necklace earbuds and listened to them in the background for hours a day while doing other things.
I’m too busy to read the entire thing, and i know my opinion doesn’t matter since I’m N5, but I think you should immerse yourself in the content you enjoy. I’m learning to consume manga and anime in JP, so I’m reading よつばと! And some Todai news for immersion.
> I’m wondering if this situation sounds familiar to someone, and if there are any good strategies for me moving forward.
This is everyone, the only difference is dedication. discipline and time. The people who move forward are those who put the time and effort in. It is also important to know most people mix studying and immersion, that is always the best route. At some point you don’t have to study as much because you’ve covered everything and only need to look things up.
The road is very long and the only thing is how optimally you choose that path, however the true reality is when you need to put in 1000, 2000, 3000 hours to fluency. Putting in 1 hour a day means it’s going to take 1000 days, 2000 days, 3000 days respectively. Obviously optimal is helpful, but really what you need is something to be interested in so you want to engage it beyond that 1 hour. It shouldn’t feel like studying but something you want to do, in your leisure, try to listen during your commutes, and actually enjoy and want to pursue everyday.
What I mean is what is most important is finding something you love and pursue understanding it, over strictly choosing what is optimal to immerse in. You can do both, and finding comprehensible is more optimal, but not the only path. For people who go to Japan and learn in Hardcore language schools. Their experience is being completely lost for hundreds if not first many hundreds hours and spending all day being drilled with the language, meaning most of it is entirely incomprehensible when they’re new. No matter how much the faucet is opened, your cup will still grow as you try to catch the water pouring out, as long as you’re continuing to study and build your vocabulary and keep engaging with the language a lot.
I highly recommend lingq you can upload your favourite tv shows, movies and ebooks, It makes it allot easier to look up and save words, you can create lists and do flashcards from the content your consuming, Anki is decent too but I personally found creating decks too time consuming, getting a subscription to things like audible JP or bookwalker can be useful so you can try out allot of different books to get an idea of what content is roughly around your level, manga series like yotsuba, teasing master takagi-san and dragon ball are definitely good beginner friendly series
I’m going to go counter here and claim something that may be wrong. I think part of your issue is because your getting your grammer from bunpro that unlike some other places that have bigger readers or more videos or partners you try it with (in real lessons) you just have the single sentence out of context that you can simply answer with some clues.
Bunpro is great, but when I tried that direction I sorta ran into a similar issue and felt like I never got to really “try” japanese. I will say though Bunpro has a reading practice part which was okay: [https://bunpro.jp/reading_passages](https://bunpro.jp/reading_passages) but I ended up using Mango languages purely for constructing setences together and practice (and it has a lot of its own problems).
In saying that, I’m still on N5 and use the Ask Graded readers and adore them (free ones are available here: [https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/](https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/)) the Level 1 is perfect for me part way through N5 and I can read like 97% of it . I have so much fun reading them and I hardly have to look up much. When I do its the occasional word and feels more like “oh whoa I know/got this now!” as opposed to just another word in my SRS deck.
My plan is to use graded readers from JLPT N5 to N4, then move onto Satori reader for N3 for more curated level content for me to practice.