Getting past mid-level plateau

[yurden]

Hi everyone,

For the past few years I have diligently been doing exercises every single day on both Wanikani and Bunpro. I have basically finished Wanikani, just burning the last few items currently. In Bunpro I’ve done all grammar up to (including) N3, and for vocab I’m up to around half of N3.
I have already spent 6 months in Japan and am going back there for 3 weeks next spring. My objective is to be able to get a job (in IT) and live there starting in like 4 years or so. So I want to be as close to fluent as possible at that point.

I can read well enough stuff like shonen mangas and simple LNs, and was able to easily get by every day life when I was there. I listen to a lot of J music and am able to pick up a few words and some sentences in there.
But since I came back home a year ago, I feel like my level has regressed a lot, especially when it comes to oral comprehension and expression. When I try looking at videos of Japanese TV shows or interviews of artists where they speak normally, I can’t really understand anything if there are no subtitles.

I’m at that plateau where I am comfortable with the basics but realise that the next step to become fluent is so huge that it is a bit overwhelming, and I know that just doing Bunpro won’t get me there (although I’m not stopping until I finish it all!).
I don’t really know where to start, I feel like forcing myself to listen to native speakers every day would be tiresome and pointless at this point because I just won’t learn much from it, it’s like a step too far currently. But listening to teachers slowly repeating basic sentences won’t teach me anything new either.

For you guys that are at N2/N1/fluent level, how did you get past that plateau? What should I do to make my dream of living there in a few years possible, language wise?

[amberglade]

You main goal from here is to build out your vocabulary and increase comprehension for more complex sentence patterns. It takes about six months to start noticing positive bumps in your understanding. Consistency over volume/speed is an important part of learning, especially in avoiding burnout. Do things that are fun and keep you interested in learning. Try to maintain a balance between challenging yourself and having fun with the language.

Use Bunpro as an immersion tool rather than just doing the minimum SRS cloze questions. Switch hints to Japanese nuance first, then English nuance, then short meaning, then full translation. Try to guess the word by reading and doing your best to understand the whole sentence. Only reveal a hint if you can’t guess. Once you answer, play each of the audio example sentences. Try to understand the sentence before revealing the Japanese written version, then try to understand that, then check yourself with the full translation. When you miss something because you’re remembering another similar pattern that doesn’t fit, stop and understand the nuance differences and grammatical context. Do the JLPT practice and reading exercises. Cloze takes more time, but is good for writing/speaking practice. Instead, you can cover more ground when trying to vacuum in more words by switching vocabulary to read/grade. Eventually you may want something that will test vocabulary with cloze questions so you can make sure you can say/write & distinguish between words that have double vowels or consonants, or that are similar to each other: てきおう てきよう、おうじる not おじる、さっそく not さそく、意思 意志.

Add all the N2 and N1 grammar patterns. For each grammar point, look it up on youtube and watch all the videos you can find for that pattern. Start with 出口日本語 N3 and turn on subtitles. They’re sometimes wrong but are mostly helpful in understanding a majority of the words.

Get the Monokakido app and/or the Logovista app. Monokakido has the better UI and is geared toward learners. Logovista has encyclopedias and a few extra dictionaries geared toward natives. Buy at least a learner 国語 dictionary and a 和英 dictionary. Buy the bunkei jiten for grammar. Look up words and read the definitions in Japanese first, then switch to English to check your understanding. If you don’t know a word while you’re reading the Japanese definition, highlight it to jump to another definition and read that.

Buy a lifetime subscription to Migaku, subscribe to Netflix, and watch shows in Japanese with Migaku’s subtitle browser. Track words that feel familiar and once you start recognizing the meaning, add it to an SRS app.

Use AI to compare and contrast grammar points and to help build mnemonics, but always double check what it tells you and ask for sources.

Subscribe to Satori reader and read through the grammar discussion section. Make an SRS card out of any new concepts that will help you understand Japanese better. Listen to the audio and focus on parts that are difficult to make out. Play then read the sample sentence in each SRS card during your normal SRS reviews.

Use Audible and find a book that has both English and Japanese print versions available. Listen, read the Japanese, look up words in Japanese, then check your understanding in English.

Buy a lifetime subscription to Migii for extra JLPT practice.

Hire a tutor for guided speaking practiced and quick access to expert help on things you have difficulty with.

[travv0]

If you’re talking listening comprehension, I can share what drastically improved mine over 6 weeks (going from only getting a few listening questions right that I happened to guess correctly on an N1 practice test to getting 46/60 on the one I took at the end of the 6 weeks). It’s fairly tedious, but it was very effective for me.

I spent about an hour a day watching or listening to something that had a script or subtitles, without referencing the script or subtitles at first. For each line spoken, if I understood it (which was very rare at first), then great, keep going, but if I didn’t, I’d rewind that line and try listening to it a few more times to see if I could get it. If I still couldn’t, I’d check the script/subtitles to see what was being said, and listen to the line some more until I could actually make out all the words being said and understand it. Then I’d move on to the next line, and repeat those steps.

Once an hour was up, I’d take what I had done the intensive listening with, extract the audio from it if it was a video, use this tool to trim out parts where people aren’t actually talking if I was using subtitles and not a script, and then put the audio in a playlist. Any time I was doing anything where I’d normally listen to music or something (driving, getting ready in the morning, etc.), I just listened to this playlist on repeat. After an audio file was in there for 10 days, I’d remove it to keep what I was listening to cycling along.

Like I said, not a very fun or exciting method, but it did drastically improve my listening ability in a pretty short length of time. I had read about it a while back on the Tatsumoto AJATT guide, but didn’t do it because it seemed very tedious. When I took the N1 practice test at the beginning of the 6 week period and realized how screwed I was on the listening, I figured I should suck it up and try it, and knew that it wouldn’t be forever so I might as well just power through and hopefully improve my listening as a result.

There are certainly other ways out there, but this is what finally worked for me, so thought I’d share in case it helps someone. When I wasn’t doing the intensive hour of active listening, I spent a lot of my free time watching Japanese YouTube (mostly let’s play type of videos), and my comprehension of what the person in the videos was saying was noticeably increasing over time which was motivating. Not sure if the watching YouTube thing contributed to my listening improvement any (doubtful since I watched stuff on YouTube before and that didn’t have any noticeable impact obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t have tried this method), but figured I’d mention it since it was something I did a lot of during the 6 week period as well.

[yurden]

Wow thanks a lot to both of you, there are a lot of cool ideas in there.
I am mainly worried about talking/listening right now indeed, as I am fairly confident in the fact that Bunpro will help me get my reading skills up to par over time, once I finish it all the way to N1.

@amberglade I have always been using Bunpro as fill-in/cloze, but with the English version of the expected word as default hint. I switched it to Japanese nuance as you suggested and will add listening to the examples to my routine. I have also made it stricter by going down 3 levels instead of 1 on mistake, and ghosts are always active. I didn’t realise Bunpro added so many configuration options since I started .
I’ll be looking into all those resources you shared, I had no idea about any of them. I won’t be able to use them all as I have limited time everyday to practice but it’s nice to have such a panel to choose from.

@travv0 that sounds like a great idea, I actually like this sort of intense/try-hard methods to step up in short bursts while still working on vocab/grammar a little everyday. Out of curiosity, what level where you at when you started doing that?