I’m having a bit of trouble, and I’m wondering if anyone else has felt this way before.
I feel like I’m making good progress. I have a lot of words and Kanji under my belt, and I have a good understanding of what most of the important particles mean and do.
What’s annoying though, is that I’m still having a lot of trouble creating my own sentences. Even simple ones. All of the puzzle pieces are there, but for some reason it’s still difficult.
It worries me because as I learn more vocabulary from stories and WaniKani, I feel like I’m wasting my time not learning them correctly. I’m just storing them in my brain and not putting them into action.
Has anyone felt this? Is it a normal feeling for a beginner?
11 comments
You need to practice creating sentences
i.e speaking and writing
I think this is fairly normal. In general, speaking is harder than listening, and writing is harder than reading. So it’s a lot easier to learn words and grammar than to actually apply them. But the more you practice, the better you’ll get. It might be a good idea to just keep practicing making simple sentences, even if its just stuff like “I eat an apple”, to try to get used to using the things you are studying.
Have you tried actually using a beginner Japanese textbook? Try it, it’s extremely helpful and will give you the tools needed to communicate at the level you’re at.
You might also just need to recalibrate your definition of simple. Start really *really* small. リンゴが好きです。おいしいです。level. Build from there. Make sure you’re practicing speaking and writing regularly. Language is a skill. Skills improve via practice
Something that works for me is attempting to structure a sentence beforehand (talking to yourself, or think it if you don’t want people to think you’re crazy) then after google the correct way to say that sentence. That trial and error has built my ability to create sentences, since you had to come up with it yourself but can correct it after the fact and learn from it. Just my thoughts
I had a “funny” interaction this weekend where we went to a food court and I was left alone with our Japanese friend, who tried to make small talk between a giant plastic barrier at our table. The question was “ima kita” and instead of saying “hai juupun kara” or whatever broken response was acceptable, it seemed impossible for me to carry that over the plastic, so I said YEAH NOW
Baka…
This may make sense only to me but I think about the core word (I guess the topic) and build everything else around it.
Like, if I want to say I went to the dentist yesterday, I start with the word for dentist in my mind, add yesterday to the start, and went to the end. For a result of 昨日、はいしゃに行った。
It’s hard to start creating your own (grammatically correct) sentences without having enough examples to pattern off so you can at least make the right kind of mistakes. If you’re just starting out, I’d recommend Genki 1 and the N5 Tango 1000 book for example sentences- you can practice your reading with these, then practice your writing while you come up with your own modified versions. You can listen to and shadow the audio, and then practice talking to yourself with the sentences you’ve created. If you can get a community tutor or teacher on italki, they can help, or you can use HiNative for corrections
If you have someone to correct you, you can write some 作文 as it is a good way to put both the grammar and vocabulary you know into practice since you have the time to think about your sentences.
You need to learn your grammar down pat. Or at least the very fundamentals. Check out the basic grammar part of Tae Kim’s guide on the parts of speech and particles.
Why invent sentences when there is a nation of native speakers doing that work for you.
There is no reason to create word salad that does not mean anything.
Copy natives until you no longer have to think about what to say in a circumstance.