I like doing writing exercises where I pull from a grammar pile randomly and have to integrate that grammar within some time limit (1 or 2 minutes). It’s built up my confidence using new grammar.
I think is pretty true. One of things I’ve had coming from a post-graduate background in Latin and Ancient Greek is I’ve tried to learn Japanese grammar in that academic fashion…and I’m failing.
Japanese grammar just does not neatly match the categories of Indo-European languages. There’s just no point in trying to understand it in terms of its intertranslatability to English. I find I learn faster just by seeing the points over and over again. Focusing more on repetition and familiarity rather than explicit knowledge. Once my Japanese gets better then I can start learning Japanese grammar from within the Japanese language, not forcing its terms into the indo-European framework.
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For me as for developer method with learning language by dividing them on parts like we do with Ancient Greek sound efficient.
That’s why I’ve almost finished n5 grammar here but still not reading or listening much.
I think if I can identify and understand grammar without looking it up and without struggling it is very helpful, and just much faster than full immersion.
Especially with Japanese. There are no big problems in learning Italian with full immersion, but Japanese is so different, that getting it with explanations much easier
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Yeah, I wouldn’t be subbed to Bunpro if I didn’t want to go through the grammar at length, but it’s more about the mindset and how I respond to stuff I don’t know or stuff that’s too difficult. With indo-European languages I’m experienced enough to know what I don’t know because of how those languages work. With Japanese I feel the need to be a bit more ‘oh okay… we’ll see how this goes’ if I can understand it for now without being able to explain it in an examination that’s okay.
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In my personal experience, there’s always some (sometimes very significant) delay between learning a grammar or vocab and actually having it clicked and usable in daily basis. I’m studying for N2 now but I’m still mainly comfortable with N4 grammar and slowly getting more comfortable with some N3 grammar when speaking. Many friends have told me that there is a significant gap between N3 and N5/N4, so there’s that as well.
Someone said it up there, but combining study of grammar with immersion does help. Just hearing the same word or grammar used in different contexts help solidify when they are naturally used.
In any case, it’s a very slow process for me, and hard to see improvements on daily basis. But looking back even just half a year ago, the difference is quite staggering.
I.e., trust the process, do some real life reading/listening/speaking outside of grammar/vocab study, and stay consistent. You’ll likely continue improving that way.
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