Hey everyone! I’ve been learning the language for only about 2 months now and I feel like I’m picking stuff up pretty quickly. I’ve been researching how long it will take to get to certains levels (n5, n4, etc) and I was wondering. Do the charts that show how many average hours it takes to get to certain levels account for time spent immersing? Or is it strictly time spent actively studying the language? I would say I only “study” for an hour a day but I spend a good 2-3 hours immersing with Japanese. Just wondering what you all count as studying in this sense. Thank you in advance!
12 comments
If this helps, once you reach a basic knowledge then you will learn more by staying a couple months in Japan rather than by ‘studying’ for years. So after a certain point I would say immersion is the *best* spent time. It depends on which immersion we talk about, though. You wouldn’t learn useful Japanese as fast if you watch anime instead of reality shows, for instance.
Yeah, immersion counts as study time. I’d say that’s the only time what you studied can really start to stick.
Honestly. Only if you take notes of things. I’ve been listening to the same Japanese songs for almost 2 decades now and there’s only so much I can understand unless I look at the lyrics.
I’d say don’t worry about that at all. The only thing the study time can do for you is make you think “Wow that’s a big number. I better take this seriously”. It’s not accurate enough to be of much more use than that.
Plus you’ll hit diminishing returns. One guy on here was doing 150 anki cards a day and spending 4 hours on anki. I do 30 cards a day and spend 20 minutes. It’ll take me more days but him more hours.
Watching anime is not studying stop lying to yourself
Those charts are bullshit and just loose averages anyway. Sure, watching anime can be ‘study time’. But not all time is created equal. 100 hours of watching anime is less effective than an hour of instruction from a real teacher, for a beginner. That number goes down over time, but it will never be 1:1. Dedicated study with real study materials will always be more effective per hour spent than just watching stuff. Once you get to a decent intermediate level, you’ll be able to just watch and read and chat with people to learn new things, but you need a solid foundation first.
It probably depends on what you’re doing for immersion. Reading and speaking to natives will get you far more mileage compared to going through dozens of repeated flashcards, but imo you’ll barely get anything out of watching anime or shows until you can roughly understand most of it without English subs.
Personally, I only count reading something difficult enough for me to be actively engaging my brain the entire time as studying.
the way I immerse is, which is to carefully make sure I understand all the sentences and look up all the vocab I don’t know
I can see sort of loosely immersing not putting effort into it, not counting, use your own judgement!
It doesn’t really matter how you define it, honestly. We know how to learn a language. You need to learn the foundations (grammar and vocab) and then spend a lot of time with the language in all kinds of natural situations (including immersing in native media, etc) while having fun. That’s it. Who cares what is “study” and “not study”, you just need to do that long enough until you know the language (and then keep improving forever). As long as you’re having fun doing that, you will improve. No matter if you call it “study” or not.
yes, it’s exposure
I’d say “active” immersion counts as study time.
Immersion is a meme. It works, to be sure, but it’s been twisted and defigured by things like AJATT and MIA. **Immersion does not work unless it’s comprehensible**. If it’s not, then at the very most you will be able to map out some of the phonetic sounds.
Imagine you put baby A into an office meeting, and baby B in front of a mother who speaks baby-words (“baby want milk?”, etc). Baby A will not learn English, baby B will.
Immersion is a meme. It’s a powerful tool, but people have misrepresented what it is for a long time now. If you watch Naruto and understand 3% of it, it’s hardly study. If you read a picture book of Momotaro and understand 80%, it’s great study. imo.