I’m gonna get to the point, I’ve started learning since January this year and everyday my goal is to learn something new even if it’s small, currently I seen a lot of post about the N5 so I went to check out a practice one, I COULDN’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING, I went to check out the listening only section and found it quite easy, I obviously needed to slow slow it down and take some time to figure it out in my head but I knew almost all the words. It made me realize if my way of learning is beneficial, I learn new vocabulary everyday and am listening to japanese for about 10hrs everyday to help me remember vocab.
Sorry if this was long but just wondering if my goal is to understand japanese but not prioritizing reading and writing should I continue my way of learning.
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I wouldn’t discount what you have done so far if it’s helping your listening.
Just make sure to start getting reading practice into your study routine.
The grammar between listening and reading should be the same. So I’m guessing the main problem is that you don’t know enough kanji?
You are listening for 10 hours a day(!)
WOW
Anyway, can you take one of those hours and read?
> Sorry if this was long but just wondering if my goal is to understand japanese but not prioritizing reading and writing should I continue my way of learning.
Learning to read is invaluable when it comes to language learning. Reading gives people the most boost for general language comprehension. You **can** ignore reading and focus on listening but it’s honestly just going to make your life harder.
If you are good at listening, you can start reading stuff like manga with furigana and focus on the **sound** those words make (with furigana) in your head rather than worrying about kanji, etc. You will slowly pick up new kanji as you go by just doing that. It’s actually what I did early on since I also was better at listening than reading. Eventually you get interested in more complicated stuff and feel like you want to drill more complex vocab and kanji, but you don’t need to worry about that right now. Just start reading manga.
When you say you listen for 10 hours a day, are you really getting benefit from this? Not to say you can’t, but if you’ve only been learning since January and aren’t at N5, it’s possible you might be over doing and expecting to get more out of osmosis than you really will.
The rules for learning stuff:
You start off sucking at everything.
You can choose a few things to learn.
The things you actually do, you get a little better at.
When you stop doing those things, you gradually return to having zero ability.
So… OP, you have not practiced reading. Guess what?
You’re a beginner and you’re spending on average 10h a day doing listening practice? May I ask you how many words you’re learning a day? I’m assuming you’re actually learning those words (through Anki etc.), not just coming across them and instantly forgetting them after checking their meaning.
Assuming that your vocabulary as a beginner doesn’t surpass 2k words, if you’re listening for 10h every day, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that you’re coming across hundreds, if not thousands of new words every day.
Okay, others have told you to read more, but here are some more detailed recommendations:
JLPT N5 only requires you to know about 70 kanji. That’s not very much. You can learn them in a week or two with proper studying. There are many more N5 *words*, but most of them will be written with kana only on the test.
Of course, I assume you’ll want to keep going after N5.
For reading, I actually recommend using an Anki flashcard deck like Tango N5. You’ll likely know some of the words already, but there’ll be some you don’t know, and the flashcards will help you recognise them in writing. All the Tango vocab decks are available here: https://tatsumoto.neocities.org/blog/basic-vocabulary
That flashcard deck will also introduce you to all the necessary grammar, but it doesn’t explain it. Whenever you come across new grammar, I recommend searching it up on google, or looking it up on a grammar reference like https://japbase.neocities.org/.
For learning kanji, I recommend using the Ringotan app. It’s free, and also ad-free. I tried using RRTK before but that never worked for me and I always burned out very quickly. Ringotan is nice because you can do it in small doses as the reviews become due, and the fact that it makes you write the kanji on the screen makes them stick much better in your mind.
The above is what I’d recommend you to do right now.
Later on, as you get a bit more reading routine, I’d recommend starting to read actual texts in Japanese. Satori Reader is good for beginners and does have several free samples to peruse before deciding whether or not to pay for it.
It’s clear that you have both the drive and motivation. 頑張ってください！
The reason why you can’t answer any of the JLPT n5 questions is because you probably did not do any textbook learning like genki.
It could be worth increasing your new words per day and splitting your listening time up with some reading.
I also started in January and took it slow with 5-15 cards a day then a few hours of listening but after about a 1 1/2 months I increased to 40 anki cards per day and feel it’s greatly helped.
Like others have mentioned, it’s a bit rough when you first start reading with dictionary look ups on most sentences, but once you have enough vocab to get past that stage and can read a few pages of manga with only a handful of look ups it’s really enjoyable.