I usually have 50-60 reviews per day and like a third of them are ghost reviews cuz I get stuff wrong a lot lol. It’s moreso an output problem of me trying to guess which grammar point they want and getting it wrong after 5 different tries of stuff with the same meaning and having forgotten about the 6th. I feel like most of everything I’ve learned if I read it I could make out its grammatical meaning. But the vocab is different. Like half the sentences they show have vocab that are beyond what I know where it’s like 2-3 words in a grammar point that I don’t know. Not sure if I should increase my vocab first for the n+1 input thing.
What would you do if you were me? Start grinding n2 tomorrow or just focus on reviewing everyday for a bit while working on other aspects?
Are these grammar reviews only? I would work on just maintenance (no new stuff) until that number is down to less than 30 and ghosts are gone. N3 sucks for similar points making ghosts. Don’t add more to the confusion pool until you’ve hammered out n3.
N2 won’t invoke ghosts nearly as much, but get your queue down a bit first
Are you doing vocab decks at all? Here or anywhere else and what level would you say it’s at? If you want to do vocab I would catch up with it while you’re waiting for you grammar reviews to come down/kill ghosts.
If theres no rush or time crunch, take it easy with new grammar and either work on vocab or enjoy the language with books/games. Or both
For vocab I’m using wanikani and I’ve done genki 1 and 2 vocab and am working through quartet 1 with a tutor. I just recently bought the tango n5-n1 books and am working through those for vocab as well. But I’m on the n5 book right now. It’s way below my level, but I’m adding every word to anki and doing reviews both J to E and E to J to help with recall for when I speak. So I figured it was worth going back to the very beginning. And I’m also doing like 30 words per day. N5 has 1k words and I’m on almost word 500. I’m planning to breeze through the n5 book. I haven’t run into a word I didn’t know yet. I’ll finish it in like 2 more weeks and then should actually start learning a small number of new words when I do the n4 book. Depending on how many new words I run into, I’m planning to keep the 30 words in anki per day (there’s 1500 in the n4 book) and it should take me only a month and a half to do. So 2 months from now I’ll be studying the n3 level words (that book has 2k). But I don’t think I’d take a break from new bunpro points for that long
I don’t really immerse much because it pisses me off knowing little to nothing lol. It took me like 30 minutes to play 3 minutes worth of Pokemon Let’s Go Eevee the other day (most of it was looking up kanji). I think when I get way better at kanji I’ll start immersing more. It was mainly a kanji issue tbh, I’d look up so many words and be like “oh i know that word”. So when I get higher level in wanikani I’ll try again (I’m level 22). I don’t mind reading and listening to things that are tailored practice for japanese learners. I’m in no rush to immerse. When I get to the point I want to immerse, I want to actually enjoy things and know what’s going on, rather than having to slog through it. If that means I need to be n1 level before then then so be it. I love studying and I find srs study fun. I don’t need like need immersion as my “reason” to study. Although it is the goal eventually.
Quick question, are you making a deck yourself as part of your learning process? Because those anki decks are available for free with proof of purchase to a redditor
With this then I’d say yeah focus on vocab. You can get the gist of a sentence knowing more vocab and less grammar than the other way around. I think I played let’s go Pikachu around early n4 just for funsies. I made a point to not look up everything though. It helped me get over the needing to know everything before moving on stage, and let me enjoy completing the game, practicing what I knew. Pokejisho did help me with items and such.
At some point you have to accept a certain level of ambiguity. Once you do it opens up learning. Ironic I know.
tldr anyway, if it were me I would just work on vocab and their kanji
Yes I’ve been working on the decks myself. I didn’t know I could get a premade deck for them. I input the sentences too so it can take me like 15 minutes just adding the cards each day to anki. If I could skip that it’d be great lol
I also think you should focus on vocab for a bit. For these synonym-full grammar points, it may be a good idea to change the review type to “Reading”, it’s working very well for me.
Immersion doesn’t need to be that much of a drag. If you have Yomitan (a popup dictionary) installed in your browser, you can create Anki cards with a single button, including the sentence, sound, images and definitions. There’s ton of ways to make this process even easier for each media type:
For games you can setup something like Textractor (automatically reads your screen), or use programs like ShareX to copy the image text you want manually
For anime, you can check animelon, or mpv with kittsuneko subtitles and addons
For manga, you can check bilingualmanga, or setup mokuro
Most paid streaming services have transcriptions, covering series, podcasts, movies
On android, check up jidoujisho, it does almost all of the above
If you are struggling with “intensive reading”, it may be a good idea to try “extensive reading” like what IcyIceBear did with let’s go Pikachu. Ideally you should do a mixture of both methods in your immersion until it reaches a point where they are completely indistinguishable.
Regarding the first 3 minutes of pokemon, along with low vocabulary, you are experiencing the “First Few Pages Effect”, and you will feel this in every media for a long time. After struggling through the first “pages”, you will get accustomed with the writer vocabulary and grammar choices, and the subsequent pages will get progressively easier. Read on Narrow Reading for more information on this.
Very of opinionated, but that’s kind of a trap. Even on wanikani lvl 60 and after learning all n1 grammar points on bunpro, you will still struggle and find immersion a slog. The thing that makes you good at reading japanese, is in fact, reading japanese. Vocab is a kind of exception, but learning them in context (in the wild) is better than in a sterile ambient in a vacuum. If you know 2.5k words that’s more than enough to start with native material.
Most of my reading immersion is from NHK Easy Web News, but I also really like Natively. There’s plenty of free content with levels starting at super easy, all the way up to novels.
At this point, I’m reading things well below my level just to get more context for Japanese culture in general (and reading all of the free content in a completion-ist style).
Yes things get less ambiguous as you move into N2 and N1 because the use cases get understandably more narrow. You also get better at picking out the nuances that would lean you one way or another, so it’s certainly less guess and check than N3 and below
