Is it normal for some days to just feel worse than others?

Bunpro
#1

My confidence on learning this goes up and down drastically day to day it seems. Some days I’m feeling great about how the learning is going, other days I feel like it’s going awful and I’ll never get it. It seems to depend on how well some of the reviews go – some days Bunpro just puts a lot of problem grammar in front of me and it’s just wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. When that happens, I just reach an annoyed kind of “yeah I don’t care anymore, just get these out of my face” mentality, and I don’t feel like studying anymore for the rest of the day. Days like that, I don’t add any new grammar or words because my brain feels fried from the bad experience and I can’t focus on learning anything new.

I dunno, man. I’ve only been doing this a year (started December last year with Duolingo) and I’m able to read N5 material just fine (where I couldn’t even do that a few months ago) so I know it’s sinking in, if not slowly. Just the constant ups and downs and inconsistency is exhausting and I don’t really know how to deal with it. I want to reach a steady state of confidence where I’m not constantly doubting myself at least once or twice a week, but I can’t.

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#2

One way to think about all this (and stay positive) is to ‘zoom out’ your pov whenever you feel down about your accuracy:

Mistakes are part of your growth. So sure there’s ups and downs on the daily, but from what you say, your overall trend line is only going up :chart_with_upwards_trend::muscle:

Personally i think this is only possible with a high level of fluency (or engaging with material that’s below/at your level) :laughing:

On another note, your best looks different every day. Doing what feels ‘right’ is better than pushing it and burning out, imo :raised_hands: however cheesy that might sound

Also, remember to have fun! On your bad days, if you don’t feel like studying anyway, you could do something language-related that’s easy on the brain. Something that would make you shift your focus, and maybe make you more inclined/motivated to come back to lessons later. Immersion is a classic

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#3

This is a concept I learned about in a pedagogy class and it helps reassure me on days when I feel like I can’t remember anything :sweat_smile:

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#4

Totally my experience, not sure I can speak for “normal”. My advice try not to think about it too hard especially when you feel its going badly. Trust the process, do your reviews, try not to look at the big picture if it was a bad day.

Not sure I’ve ever experienced a “steady state of confidence” so my opinion may not be worth much.

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#5

This is true. I’ve tried going back and reading Level 0/1 Tadoku books to help bring my confidence up, since those made almost zero sense a few months ago. Sometimes it helps.

Sometimes I’ll turn on a Hololive stream and see how much I can understand. It isn’t much at this point, I get barely any of it, but I try to remind myself that it’s at least getting me used to hearing people speak Japanese that isn’t rehearsed or scripted – and it does feel good when they say something and I understand it.

The fact that there’s a scientific term describing this makes me feel a lot better, haha.

I’ve heard the phrase “trust the process” a lot and maybe I should try to start doing that. It seems to have worked up to this point.

Thanks for the answers everyone, I feel better about it. I’ll just have to keep this in mind for future bad days as well. At least bad days aren’t as bad as they were originally – so many times early on where I thought, “that’s it, I’m done, I quit” and I haven’t had that thought for several months now.

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#6

Me too, sometimes I feel awful, but I have some videos and material that I wasn’t able to read before, mangas or anime, and I can feel the improvement and try a bit more.

Just keep doing and you will feel better, this is a rollercoaster, the important thing is never give up and you will start enjoying the travel to fluency.

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#7

I’ve been studying for several years and the feeling will be there for a while. Some people who seem completely fluent and live in Japan still go through it sometimes. Hell, I just had a conversation with a client in Japanese, and while he thought my Japanese was good, I felt that I fumbled a lot and didn’t leave that conversation feeling that great.

But you know what, sometimes you gotta look back at where you started and where you are now and things just become clearer. Relish in the small victories and learn from the failures. And truth be told, if someone isn’t feeling the way you’re feeling, in my mind they are either a savant, or just not learning anything. The struggle is a part of it all no matter what language bros tell you.

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#8

Review sessions of failing many cards in a row happen for sure. And then they all come back, because of course failed cards get shorter SRS intervals. So they leave a much bigger impression than correctly remembered cards.

I think it’s important to sometimes switch focus from SRS to reading/listening something approachable to remind yourself how much you actually already know.
Also if a certain card is haunting you for days, maybe remove it from reviews for now and add something else. Its time will surely come.

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#9

My experence:

  1. Changing fully study rutine so it feel really fresh
  2. First 7 days of a new routine, even quite a few hours every day of study feel very good, like I am having so much progress
  3. On days 7-10 feel like a little of, but still very productive
  4. Days 10-15 feels like a stedy decline, feeling like maybe thining about “oh do I need 10k words? Or 20k? What are those stats? What do people say?”
  5. Days 15-25 feels like I’m going to die if I continue, “Why do I learn this? There is to much to learn? I’ll get nothing from this as well as from any other thing in my life”, kind of close to brunout.
  6. Going to the first point
    And here I’m talking about somewhat heavy study regime, a few hours every days, so might not be fully applicale, but anyhow study is study I guess.

When I understood that it’s the case, and my brain just doesn’t like to do repetative stuff for more then a week, I just started comming up with learning strats only for 7-10 days and then switching then so I can keep my brain fresh.

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#10

“The more I know, the more I realise that I know nothing”

:slight_smile:
I think its very normal to have those kinds of days. I often wonder if I should just give up entirely. Then I have really good days, too. Keep on trucking, friend!

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#11

Something that helps me is to treat it like it’s your everyday routine, like brushing your teeth or something. I can say that I am going through a hard period in my life myself, but for me, I have my goals. Even if I feel tired, I try not to think about it, it goes on auto. Even if you just looked at a new word and basically didn’t remember it, tomorrow you will have a better day and more motivation. And yeah, you didn’t remember this word or grammar point the first time, but you will check the answer and try again. Remember why you started, go through it!

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#12

Definitely happens to me. Some days I feel like everything is going great and I feel confident enough to add a whole bunch of new cards, and some days I feel like I’m barely dragging myself through my review pile because everything feels difficult and miserable. I just try to focus on my overall progress since, say, last year rather than focusing on the day-to-day.

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#13

Thanks for all the answers, I’m feeling a lot better about it!

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#14

Happens to me a lot. If I didn’t have a supportive teacher I wouldn’t have made it this far in my own journey, my motivation and discipline is often lacking.

When I hear other people talk about their success stories they’ll leave out all the groggy details of how they got stuck on a word 10 times, or felt there were walls in front of them.

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#15

On the note of getting stuck on certain grammar points or words which can contribute to a feeling of frustration, being comfortable with not learning that item right away is helpful. I didn’t do this enough when I was less comfortable with vocab/kanji.

Language learning is like spray painting, even if there’s a small gap here or there, when you go over it a second time it’ll come out neat.

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#16

I think others have covered this, but I want to emphasize something I tell my kids and wife (we are all learning Japanese because we live in Japan… and it applies to life, in general). We always feel like we have good days and bad days, but the important thing is to look at trajectory/trend. If you zoom out, are you mostly going up? Yes! Just like in life, we have bad days, but the trend is usually up.

You got this! You are doing something that many people (specifically English native speakers) never attempt to do, and that’s a beautiful thing!

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#17

lol, finally someone with my learning style. we’re team “remember, learning a language is not a marathon, it’s many sprints” ^^

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#18

You are so right :laughing: