Just a question about my Japanese studies

Japanese
#1

Hi everyone,

this is my first post on this forum and I’m pretty excited!

I have been studying Japanese for quite a while now but only recently started using Bunpro (for grammar and vocab). My vocabulary is mid-N3 now and I have just finished N3 grammar.

I try to immerse myself by reading short stories on Natively and by occasionally (very irregularly) listening to Japanese podcasts for learners. But despite being an intermediate learner I have great difficulties to figure out the meaning of many sentences even if they only contain grammar structures and words I thought to know. And I am aware that this is normal when you start out reading native material but I am getting really frustrated nevertheless.

I would be really grateful for some tips or simply your view on my situation. Maybe you have experienced a similar situation and could share how you overcame it. Thank you so much!
(And sorry that this got so long :sweat_smile:)

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#2

As someone who started reading native material for the first time this year too, I have found that just writing/typing out the sentence on a separate page makes a massive difference for this kind of feeling when you begin.

It allows you to highlight different phrases and add spaces, brackets, and commas that aren’t in the original sentence but that can help you parse what is going on. For me at least, this visual distinction was often all I needed to make sentences click.

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#3

That happened to me too when I started reading native materials. They feel completely different compared to things like graded readers. But I think its normal, don’t worry! You’ll get used to it. The more you do it the better you get at it. You WILL improve and everything will start making sense :+1:

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#4

That’s a really clever approach!
I have also tried to do this in my head but I think it is more effective if you do it visually like you said. Thank you!

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