Complete Beginner

Japanese
#1

Hey everyone,

I’ve just started with bunpro and I’m level 3 on wanikani. So, obviously a complete beginner. I think I messed up my reviews on bunpro since I already have 122 at level 5. I thought I had to add every vocab word from every grammar lesson so… whoops.

My question for you all is, what should I be doing for listening practice? My routine right now is just doing bunpro lessons and wanikani each day. I listen to a little of nihongo con topei. Any other suggestions to a routine or daily practice would be appreciated.

Thank you!

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#2

I don’t think you have messed anything up! My limited experience with bunpro and more experience with wanikani is that a little over 100 is fairly standard. It’s a lot but you do get used to it! And if you think it’s too much, you can always do fewer lessons and that will result in fewer reviews! It takes a little bit of time to fix the issue and let it propagate down the chain, but please take it at a pace that will not burn you out! You’ll learn more in the long run if you do it that way. I say that as I’ve burnt out so many times that I’ve made an embarrassingly small amount of progress compared to how long ago I’ve started out learning japanese. But oh well! There’s always the next day to learn from your (or other people’s! lol) mistakes!

I don’t have much advice about the listening practice though, I am very interested in responses myself! Hopefully you can get some good advice! Have a good day :slight_smile:

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#3

Teppei is great as a complete beginner. He talks about casual topics in a slow, mild manner that makes every word super clear. Once you’re more comfortable, either move to his intermediate podcast, or look up videos about topics that interest you on YT - there’s lost of content there made for learns on about any topic possible

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#4

Thank you for the response! I’m trying to temper my expectations. Of course I’d like to be able to speak Japanese eventually but for now I’d really like to just be able to listen to native content and understand what’s being said.

I’m sure you are way further along than you are giving yourself credit for!

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#5

About how much listening each day would you suggest? I listen to a few of his podcasts on and off throughout the day.

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#6

If you repeat each sentence out loud, trying to match the speed of the speaker, you’ll get a great buff listening.

Also for new topic, on bunpro, you can set a setting to hide all the text, so before you open and read example sentences (when you just add a new topic) you can listen to each, and try to catch what they say.

I love this listening based practice as they as strengthen all the other skill massively as well. I would only do that for my studying if it just wasn’t boring doing that as an only thing

But if you don’t like any of this, your current routine is perfectly normal, just do what you can to get the most interest and concentration, and that will buff your studies

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#7

Just to check: did you happen to link Wanikani to Bunpro and set it to add the Wanikani words to your Bunpro reviews? That can sure add a lot of reviews to your pile.

#8

No, I did not link it.

#9

Keep at it with Bunpro and WK but also do extra things like the podcasts mentioned above.

I’d also recommend using the few things you know to sound like a crazy person and talk to yourself. As you walk around your house/apartment or even when you’re out and about, say out loud/in your head what you see.

ほん (book), たべもの (food),オポッサム (possum) etc.

You can start super basic with just single words but then slowly introduce grammar you learn. (ほんです、ほんがあります)

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#10

I have been studying Japanese for … some time? I have basically listening to 雑談 (ざつだん - free talk) streams for a few hours per day for close to 2 years now. Normally using 2-4 hours of them during work as a sort of radio.
Can find many sources of them on YouTube, and they tend to cover more basic day-to-day talks. “Met 〇〇 yesterday at a caffe” or “back in my school days we use to…” . And if you want can turn on the auto-caption to see either the Japanese writing or auto-generated English translation

With this (and kanji studying in other sources) I got up to functional fluency for spoken Japanese. A note that you do not necessarily have to fully dedicate your focus to the podcast, because early on one of the things to get used to is the rhythm of Japanese, and that is something you can pick up passively

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#11

Teppie podcasts are good for beginners, comprehensible input videos on YouTube can be good as well, I started with Nihongo learning, Natural Japanese and what is now Nihongo no Jikan.

The first link and last link I found particularly helpful for practice complete beginner stuff as they usually draw out or show images of what they’re speaking about and repeats the words multiple times so you get visual feedback as well as the audio. Each should also be native speakers meaning it should be a more authentic accent you’re hearing.

In addition to this, I also had audiobooks or programs like Terraced house playing in the background for a lot of the time while I was pottering around doing random stuff just to try to get my ear trained to the Japanese accent, which I found helpful (though I know not everyone benefits from that kind of passive listening).

There are some graded readers on Tadoku website that are free which also have free audio to listen to while reading. If you have a textbook with audio, you might be able to use that as well, repeating playback to try to understand more each time :slightly_smiling_face:

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#12

That’s pretty much what I did too at first. I listened to a few until I got too bored/distracted and kept on with my day.
Once you feel like you can shadow what he says, or that you want “deeper” content, move on to YT, ofc alongside your regular studies of grammar/vocab

#13

Wow! I didn’t know that Yuki 先生 had her own channel. I always assumed she only run the Comprehensible Japanese channel. I see she has a lot of intermediate and advanced videos already, which is something that Natural Japanese was lacking.

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#14

My understanding is that’s been a more recent thing as she wanted to go in a different direction but they all have their own pros and cons in regards to the way they teach :slightly_smiling_face:

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