I can’t find a way to study Japanese without just giving up in 3 days. I have autism and ADHD and I feel like none of the study methods I’ve used have ever worked for me, like they’re either way too hard or I learn them but the next day I forget them(what makes me mad is I have photographic memory for everything else) and it just leads me to get burnt out over and over again, I’ve been studying Japanese on and off for almost 5 years(I’ve been studying passively like for 10) and the only thing I have to show for it is I’m ok at pitch accent. I can’t even read Japanese even though I’ve been studying for years. Please recommend me some ways to study!
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Get a teacher that can guide you and give structured study plan to you. Also he/she can advice on how to learn things that you find difficult.
It’s all about discipline and routine.
First figure out one or two areas you want to improve, in your case since youre struggling with reading maybe make those vocab and grammar.
To start off with you could go at it without putting too much pressure on yourself like focusing on streaks in Anki and so on.
As far as what to actually use to learn vocab and grammar I think you’ll kind of have to try out and see what feels the best for you. I’ve worked with Genki, imabi.net, Youtube videos, podcasts and Anki and have now after around one and a half years figured out what combination works good for me.
I also forget stuff almost immediately unless I do a ton of repetition so you’re just going to have to do that as boring as it sounds but it will pay off in the end.
Find a partner to study with!
> I can’t even read Japanese even though I’ve been studying for years. Please recommend me some ways to study!
Hmm have you read much? I think it would be very good. IDK where you are at with that, but you can start with graded readers and then go to simple books like KADOKAWA ones with the green border, and then you can read like 10 of those or something and try something harder.
The ways your ADHD and autism express themselves might be different than how someone else’s are expressed.
Aside from making sure you’re getting the correct medical treatment you might need (meds for ADHD, etc)…
1) Try finding materials which are engaging to you. Study doesn’t have to be from a book. Videos like TokiniAndy’s Genki series might be a good way to get some studying in.
2) There is a point where you have to learn things by brute force, however. Specifically kana, kanji and vocab – but there are fun mnemonics you can use for kana and kanji, and you can use pictures for vocab (image of a dog on one side of the flashcard, and 犬(いぬ) on the other).
3) Hire a tutor and be very specific and up front about what you need/want and what’s working or not. Maybe you need a longer session with a break or two, maybe 2 shorter sessions in the week works better. The tutor might have a curriculum in mind which is helpful to know where you have to be.
4) Setting calendar alerts on your phone for specific study blocks might be helpful to stay in task. Let’s say every day you need to study for an hour: 25-minutes doing X, a 10-minute break, then 25-minutes doing Y. Plop that into your cellphones calendar app with alerts.
5) A study partner or two, or a class at a local language school might also help keep you on track.
I have both as well, I find I need a lot of practice each lesson. Genki didn’t really stick for me, so I switch to Minna No Nihongo with both of the grammar work books. It made a huge difference in the work sticking. Takes me about a week to get through a lesson, but I know the material at the end. I reinforce vocab with Anki too of course.
Then as you start to finish the first text book I highly recommend jumping into JP video games if you can. It’s a lot easier to read that a novel and is very interactive, gives a little feedback, and is rewarding. Just try to start with kids games that have furigana.
I have ADHD and not autism. My learning process has been frustratingly slow but the biggest help was finding some easy and consistent review that I can do everyday. I needed the consistent routine.
Not Anki. Anki is fucking crap for a person with ADHD. Customization is not king it is mental cancer.
I started on Duolingo which was easy enough for Hiragana. After getting down Kata I signed up for WaniKani to learn Kanji.
I still need to study separately on my own because Wanikani is just vocab. But it is a really easy and guided review system.
Even if I am totally swamped I can still find 10 minutes in my day for WaniKani review. That helps me keep my study consistent so I don’t randomly get bored or give up.
I have autism. It is my best tool. Study all day and love the feeling of improvement, while I’m hardcore it does not feel like work anymore.
That’s why I don’t like it when people seemingly use their disorder as an excuse, really the only one who can figure out how to cope or use your disability to your own advantage is you.
ADHD might be harder to deal with, but compared to learning Japanese it will be the easy part. Good luck and have faith in yourself, you are your best friend.
Some unorthodox method would be: play a game in Japanese only. Your goal is to beat it and decode everything you can’t read along the way. It’s a lot easier to learn a language when learning is the secondary goal of just doing something you find enjoyable.
I have ADHD and it took me a very, very long time to get into the groove of learning Japanese, but after I started, I went from knowing very very basic stuff to N4 working on N3 in 6 months (right now) with a pretty solid daily routine.
I know how you feel lol. I don’t have autism, so idk about that half of it, but hopefully I can help a bit.
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Of course, this stuff is all subjective and the way *I* did it might not work for *you,* but if I could give you some pointers:
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WRITING SYSTEMS:
I don’t know how much of a beginner you are, but **if you still need help with hiragana and katakana, I would really suggest looking up the** ***Hiragana and Katakana in 48 Minutes*** **flashcards.** They are pneumonic cards. You can find games to play with them on Quizlet or something too. They work well, and you will definitely remember them after you’ve used them a few times. I learned using them over a decade ago and still remember the cards.
**For Kanji, I would say you don’t really need to study them…** Most people don’t these days because they’re better learned as you go, and to be honest, trying to tackle a mountain of Every Kanji won’t work for most people, let alone someone with ADHD. But if you do want to, something like [Kanji Quiz](http://www.studykanji.net/kanjiquiz/chrome) might work. You can decide what you want to test yourself on, customize the quiz, do different levels, etc.
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GRAMMAR/VOCAB:
You said you’re having trouble getting much to stick. Do you think the biggest issue is understanding grammar? A lot of JP teaching materials are absolute ass at teaching grammar and don’t explain much of anything. **Stuff will not stick if it doesn’t make sense**, so it’s important to use good guides instead.
**You should check out** [**Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide**](https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar) **(good) and** [**Cure Dolly’s youtube videos on grammar**](https://www.youtube.com/@organicjapanesewithcuredol49/videos) **from the start of her channel (better) to help you understand it properly.**
**For vocabulary, at the N5 and N4 level, I used** [**JLPT Bootcamp’s Memrise courses**](https://app.memrise.com/course/554/jlpt-n5-vocab/)**.** I’ll explain why I think Memrise is good for ADHD later in the comment.
**A lot of people will suggest using Anki flashcards to help you read, but I don’t think it’s a good suggestion for people who aren’t at least N5 level**, because it can be very overwhelming at first. I tried it a couple years ago and bounced off it immediately, and gave up learning again for a while. Anki is very dry and can be confusing at first, which makes it basically ADHD repellant until you’re a little more proficient.
At the N4 level though, if you can start using Anki, I would! I learned all the vocab using Memrise first and then did the whole of an N4 sentence cards deck in a month (specifically TheMoeWay’s Tango N4), instead of learning grammar by studying it directly, and it worked really really well for me. Once you’re past the beginner stage, you can really start to learn fast. It rules.
What you can do instead while you’re still a beginner is do N5 practice tests online. There are some on YouTube (these are great to download and put on your phone for listening practice too). Or you can read graded readers too.
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**And for some more general suggestions on studying:**
**Suggestions like “hire a tutor” may not be ideal**, especially not unless you’re in a really good financial situation. With ADHD, I hated school and couldn’t learn unless I was doing 50 things at once, so this kind of other-person-directed-learning doesn’t work for me. You *probably* don’t need one.
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**Finding time to study:**
It doesn’t have to be “I study for 4 hours every day after work/school no matter what”.
I found that, when I started getting back into it again 6 months ago, **the best thing I could do was do little 5~10 minute study sessions whenever I wasn’t doing anything else, spread out throughout the whole day.** If your ADHD is anything like mine, setting specific times to study (i.e. “at 5:30PM, I do x” or “every hour on the hour I will do x”) might make you restless, or sit there and wait for the time to come.
Capitalizing on “I have nothing to do” moments is a good way to maximise the amount of study you’re doing, even if it is just in short bursts. Plus, ADHD tends to be at its most productive when you’re procrastinating on something else imo.
These days I do actually have actual set study times, but they’re “half an hour before I go to work” and “half an hour after I get back home from work”, so I’m not interrupting myself in the middle of something I’m more invested in.
I make sure I do them by having Anki open automatically when I start my computer up. I also still do spur of the moment sessions throughout the day.
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**Finding methods to study with:**
Following the previous advice… **you need to work out what the most accessible method of studying is.** By this I mean: **What keeps you engaged? What gives you feedback and makes you feel rewarded? What’s the easiest way to study on the go?** That sort of thing.
Especially in the beginning stages, you’re not gonna get anything out of forcing yourself to follow a normal study plan if you just can’t stay engaged with it. For me, the absolute best thing has been Memrise, which is useful for me because it’s gamefied like Duolingo, I can do it on my phone or at any computer, and it’s super helpful for staying motivated.
I would never suggest having just the one thing you use to study, though. Use anything you find that you like! [Drops](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.languagedrops.drops.international&hl=en&gl=US) can be good for vocabulary. Read [Tadoku Graded Readers](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/o7x7ha/2021_updated_free_tadoku_graded_reader_pdfs_1796/) if you have a few minutes at night, even beginners can do it. Just make sure you aren’t doing too much and overwhelming yourself trying to learn 70 things at once. **Do as much as you can, but don’t do more than that.**
**Also, you should be setting short-term goals to work towards.** It’s easy to do this with something like Memrise. You’ve got x amount of words to learn, so you just keep working at them until it’s done, and then move on to another course. JLPT N levels can also be short-term goals.
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BTW, **don’t be afraid to just start watching/reading/playing stuff in Japanese if you want to.** It will probably be really hard if you don’t know much, but give it a try and see how you go. I started watching Chainsaw Man (anime) before I’d finished N4 and could follow it pretty well.
For shows, you can download episodes of something and put it into [Animebook](https://animebook.github.io/), get japanese subtitles for it from [Kitsunekko](https://kitsunekko.net/dirlist.php?dir=subtitles%2Fjapanese%2F), and look up words automatically with [Yomichan](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/yomichan/ogmnaimimemjmbakcfefmnahgdfhfami).
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If none of this stuff works for you, then it doesn’t work, but there absolutely will be something out there that does. Please try your best to find it.
Every time you feel like giving up on studying give yourself a few days of just interacting with the language (YouTube videos, music, series, podcasts,…). Remember why you wanted to learn it in the first place, have some fun, recharge and study some more 🙂
Input is just as valuable as studying so it’s not like you’re wasting time (still need both tho).
ADHD, and depression
I figured out what time of day I am most “active”, tend to get my energy burst, etc.
Then I sat down with my tablet and music and started working through Genki.
I’d go through a set of questions in the workbook then check my answers. Then browse reddit for a minute or two lol.
Rinse repeat for an hour or so.
For vocab: I put the genki words into Quizlet, run through the learn function. Then import to anki for review.