Are example sentences on Bunpro and Anki enough of immersion for now before I start immersing fully from June on?

As I have already said before, June 1st is the day I will start immersing in Japanese. I am unsure how I will manage the time, because I also like to immerse in English and German.

I read all example sentences for each grammar point on Bunpro. That takes more time, but I believe it helps me greatly. Does anyone other than me also agree on this? In Anki I always read the sentences even for cards I already have matured.

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I wouldn’t call it “immersing”, but I do think it can be worthwhile to study.

BunPro’s sentences are solidly made and reflect proper grammar and sentence construction, making them good examples of what sentences should generally look like so that you can start constructing your own.

You can spend as little as 10 minutes a day or as much as 4 hours a day immersing, whatever you’re able to spare is what’s important. Any good immersion is better than none, “good immersion” being any immersion that actual places yourself in an environment where you have to rely solely on the target language.

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From the range of questions you’ve asked here, I think you’ve entered the point now where you’re reading a book on learning to swim rather than trying the swimming yourself. Give it a try for a month and your questions will have much more value to you.

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You’re gonna have to read at some point. Having sentences that are already translated for you that you can rely on to be mostly correct is a good starting point IMO. That’s why I always read the review sentences provided by bunpro. They’re also quite good at weaving in past grammar points which helps with memory and understanding. For the sake of time, I don’t read Anki sentences unless they’re for new and even then it depends on the word. You don’t want to get into the habit of using the sentences provided in Anki to recall the word.

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They are also quite good at weaving in future grammar and vocab, so when they finally pop up, you have already seen them a few times in use and it’s easier to remember them. Some dislike that, though and wish for a more i + 1 approach.

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I’m kinda curious: Why did you set june as startingpoint for your immersion?

Since I have no clue at which point you are in your journey I try to keep it as general as possible:

I feel like the most important point to get done before immersing (or to make it easier) is to remember vocabs. I feel like a lot people say that the magic number is 2k.
Personally I only finished the grammar N5 (even thou I recently started “new” since I slacked for months…) and I think grammar is less important compared to vocabs. Ofc you need to have a basic understanding for sentence structure but knowing the words will give you a good idea what is going on. And that’s usually enough for the start.

Edit: Oh and yes the example sentences are enough.
I never read any of the example sentences before immersion and I was totally fine. But reading them is probably pretty helpful none the less

I set it on June and not later, because I should be already immersing, because I have some foundation in Japanese from my last attempt to learn it.

I want to first try immersion in German to know how to immerse. Seems I immerse good, because I already learned many words and I haven’t even looked up half of them.

By June I should know around 700 words and be almost done with N4 grammar. Who knows how the part about almost done with N4 grammar will go.

very much this. I often caught myself reading the sentence to recall the word but it seemed counter-productive. “Oh this one means deep because the sentence mentions the pond”, “this one is like because it’s about wine” etc. So I eventually removed the example sentences from the front of the card.

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For what it’s worth:

I started immersing with native material after I finished N5 here on bunpro. That’s about 1000 vocab and no knowledge of N4 grammar. But from the beginning, I always tried to immerse myself with at least some sentences, some glimpses at manga, websites, tadoku readers, etc. Bunpro is doing a really good job providing you with example sentences and reading practices.

Still my first native manga (chis sweet home) was harsh! I heavily relied on the wanikani bookclub to help me through. But by book 3 or 4 or something, I was able to breeze through the series, I switched from intensively reading to extensively reading (both have their place and are important imho!).

Now, a few months later, I’m still somewhere in the beginner stages of N4 of bunpro. It looks like slow progress, but most of the time I add vocab or grammar I already know about half of it. I have done a lot of reading manga and watching anime and without trying too much, I learned to recognize a lot of grammar and vocab just by reading.

I hope by sharing my experience you will gain some confidence for your immersion practice :slight_smile: Have fun with reading :slight_smile:

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