Losing hope after 6-7 months. I know

Bunpro
#36

I only read the first post, hopefully someone else has already said something similar to this

if you feel like you’re guessing at grammar. Go ahead and hit the ‘beginner’ on the home page and see which of those you feel like you don’t know. Go to the page and remove them from your reviews. Now, the other ones in there that you feel like you do know- go to resources and study. With Wanikani I feel like yes it can be more of a memorization game, but grammar is not. You need to understand the rule to apply it. I personally only do 1 grammar point a day- on the weekends if I feel like it- I might do two. I have a 9 to 5. So I do 1 grammar point and I watch at least one youtube video on the grammar point and try to read the entry in Amazon.com: A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar: 9784789004541: Makino, Seiichi, Tsutsui, Michio: Books because I’m a spoiled adult with adult money. I actually have one of those books at home, one at work, and one in the car. So if I’m on chores with the car I can read it. I can study it at home. Or I can cite it when arguing with a friend over grammar points. I have become the grammar nerd of the group now.

You’re probably also doing too many words a day. I do 8/d on bunpro if I’m using a deck here. Only on Wanikani can I get crazy and do like 20/d (in which case I am doing 0 in bunpro) because it’s just a bunch of Kanji I already know with a little bit of Hiragana in certain patterns that tend to have a predicatble meaning.

2 Likes
#37

I love looking at ajatt@ for pick me ups like this when I need it. For example:

Maybe you suck compared to what you’re going be, but you’re amazing compared to what you used to be. Remember that.

https://x.com/ajatt/status/1480268146439303171

main thing; don’t burn yourself out. It’s really a marathon not a sprint. I’ve tried to make it a sprint too many times getting nowhere. When you make it a marathon, it’s a lot easier.

3 Likes
#38

Even if it’s a sprint, it’s just a marathon on a high speed. Even with 5 hours a day it’s going to take about 1 year to to start using it comfortably in daily internet life, as I assume.
Maybe 8 or 10 months, but anyhow it’s not a sprint anymore

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#39

never give up
頑張れ！

1 Like
#40

I see that there are already posted tips and things that I wanted to share, I didn’t read everything but I still want to write you something from me, れんしゅうするといい.
If you understand this you are for sure getting better and if not I am sure that you can read it.
A year ago you couldn’t so there is progress. Look behind and see how far is the starting line. Oh you don’t see it? even better. There is no finish line.
There won’t be a moment like after finishing a game, netflix series or school that you will close Japanese learning book or app stand proud and say.
-I know Japanese now.
I heard somewhere that you don’t learn a language but get used to it, so it becomes more natural and comfortable for you.
The fact that you mentioned percentages in your accuracy made me laugh as I saw myself half year ago that I was afraid to add new content to study and make mistakes because I didn’t wanted to make errors and ended up almost leaving my Japanese. That’s how we learn, by making mistakes. It’s scientifically confirmed that even if you got the answer wrong but made an effort of remembering it, you just got a little closer to knowing that, no mather if you know why you know that or you feel like you guessed. It is just also how the SRS works. System waits for you to forget something to remind you the content.
Also I wouldn’t recommend you forcing yourself to meet your daily learn goal (I feel like thats a wrong habbit taken from pubic school. Feels like a misconception that you can’t rest if you want to be succesfull). My is set to 1 grammar and 2 vocab daily, but usually it looks more like, not learning any new content for a weak, then wanting to learn and having free mind so I learn 4 grammar points and 12 vocab or add 40 new vocab that I found interesting in games anime or no one knows from where, instead of letting bunpro choose them for me (Sometimes it feels more fun).
The fact that I am still learning Japanese is that I rarely treat it like something important. That loosens the tension from it and let my brain just do it without a fear of doing it wrong.
I am glad that I am at the point that doing 80 reviews daily is something easy for me but I let myself play League of Legends and leave my day with less if I just don’t want to do them without feeling guilt.
I know that no one will open my account and say “WTF how did you answered this one review 7 times in one review session wrong”, and I will not say it to myself, because I know that some of them requires that many mistakes and other ones I will rarely miss. Sometimes I get drunk (I am adult, please kids don’t drink alcohol) and decide to open bunpro butchering my statistics. But that’s fine, who cares, I have fun, this is just a healthy hobby and I am not racing anyone.
I know it is getting very long and at the beginning I wanted to make it short and simple motivation pill but last thing. Find a person, like a friend, or this one crazy cousin that will listen you talking about new grammar point or some other learning step that you have and without understanding just nod and say “wow, you are achieving that and, I am happy that you have that much fun doing this”

4 Likes
#41

Lower accuracy (75% accuracy in your case) is a sign of learning too much at once and needing to slow down and absorb what you’ve already learned. Pick up some easier reading/listening material and reinforce rather than adding more (while keeping up those reviews!)

I’m at a stage where I’m relearning a lot of Wanikani from levels 40-60 right now because I didn’t follow this advice, so I felt compelled to respond to you :slight_smile:

From my other post - a WK+BP Level Recommendations. I recently completed N3 studies in Bunpro and have completed WK. My last post was back in April, and after 6 months, I have reaffirmed my reflection on my own study and changed very little. An abridged version here with minor updates - check out the original for a bit more details.

Recommend WK 10 and ~100+ Katakana vocab from Bunpro N5 deck before doing pretty much any grammar. It will save you time on understanding sentences and ensure you learn your own way of doing SRS.
N5: WK 10 Complete, Avoid going past WK 30.
N4: WK 25-30 Complete, Avoid going past WK 40

N3: WK 35-40 Complete, Avoid going past WK 50/51
N2: WK 50/51 Complete, STOP WK!! Do immersion!!

“N0”: N1 is more academic and may not relate to your Japanese goals. It would be better to start a custom Bunpro deck or manually add vocab/grammar as you run into it, or just manually learn from the existing decks.

I’d recommend not even looking at WK 52+, but I know some folks have tendencies toward completion, so if you feel like it, go for it during N1 study.

(Now with N2 complete, reaffirming my position)

6 Likes
#42

It seems like you’re feeling a lot of pressure, and I understand your mix of enthusiasm and lack of confidence. To improve, you need to practice speaking Japanese with native speakers and fellow learners. I suggest finding conversation groups in your area or online. Engaging in real conversations is essential for progress, even though it may be daunting. It’s definitely worth the effort!

1 Like
#43

Thanks for your response. I would love to have conversations with japanese people, but I’m afraid I live in a small city and there’s no japanese people here.

I know I can go online and find some people, but to be honest… I don’t know where to look. I installed an app called HelloTalk on my phone that helps finding people that is trying to learn a new language, so in that case, I look for japanese people trying to learn my language (spanish) and well… I exchange some basic sentences with them but for the most part people lose interest since the conversation doesn’t go too far: they know nothing about spanish and I know nothing about japanese :smiley:

I finished the N5 vocab deck and the grammar deck a month ago and I’m still solidifying those concepts while trying some new ones from the N4 decks. But still I’m not confident in regards to “creating” phrases. I would love to learn basic structures since I’m quite comfy with my vocab, but my grammar is still extremely basic and I don’t know how to place all the particles in a phrase.

3 Likes
#44

While I like Bunpro, I think at the beginning level, I got the most out of Wagotabi. It’s 5 bucks, but definitely the best way I’ve internalized several things. Playing the ninja mini-game definitely made the Kana intrinsic and their lectures definitely cover a good scope. It looks a little retro, but it is a fun game. As you progress there is less and less english meaning you have to understand more of what is being said, plus the timed responses in the “battle/tests” and other mini-games really gets that information deep.
It IS still in development for getting all the way to N5 (although it does have a good spread already) but they estimate depending on your current comprehension, they estimate play time to be 3-30 hours, but I don’t think that accounts for playing the mini-game or daily topic quizzes. I can’t recommend this app enough.

#45

I strongly suggest watching Japanese media with JP audio and Eng subtitles at your level to familiarize yourself with the language using native speakers.

1 Like
#46

Hey Momo, I had a similar sentiment. I crashed and burned ultra hard several months ago after maybe 9? months of completing my 100+ queue of Wanikani daily. (Bunpro would get added to this mix maybe seven months in or so)

Couldn’t even look at WK&BP for months. And doubly so when I kept seeing the pile just continue to grow with every passing week…

I managed to get some motivation back thanks to VRChat, of all places lmao
There’s a community called the EN-JP Language Exchange that meets every weekend as we get to practice each others’ languages, and get a bit of cultural exchange as well!

It got me back to slowly chipping away at my mountainous queue. And I’ve learned to not get disheartened at said size of the queue, and leaving a majority of it to take on another day. One step at a time!

If you decide to check out the community, I hope to see you there sometime :heart:

3 Likes
#47

I’d like to add on to your never give up trick with this video. It never fails to give me motivation, and it’s in Japanese!

2 Likes
#48

Something that really helped me is to take already existing sentences and just change a few word/s.
Simplified example: これはりんごです to これは ペンです.

Also maybe if possible, finding a Japanese teacher could help? eg iTalki . That way you can make a bunch of sentences to experiment different grammar points and ask the teacher to check and explain.

On that note, there maybe even an evening language school that has weekly Japanese lessons in you local area?

#49

I think of bunpro more like a review tool rather than a learning tool. I go japanese classes, and I don’t like to think about grammar as “points” as usually different grammar concepts will be mixed together, and it is a cummulative process, but if you want to think about it like this, usually when we start a new unit, we may see 2 or 3 new related constructions on a class, and then work on it for 1 or 2 more classes, doing exercises by writing or by being asked directly. I think you need to internalize grammar by doing exercises. Our teacher mostly selects a pattern and goes through each student requesting for a phrase that follows that pattern or brings pdfs with exercises that I believe come mostly from minna no nihongo, but sometimes from others.

So I’d say, use the SRS as a review tool. If you fail an answer, then go to the explanation on your favourite guide (bunpro or somewhere else), and then find exercises and practice. And I’d say reduce the amount of lessons per day. To give you a hint, we are going to do the official N5 exam after 2 years of classes. Some people like to follow primarily a textbook, and then come here and do the lesson of what they learnt on the textbook. As I said in my mind it is a good review tool (tells you what you have forgotten) rather like a learning tool (teaches you new stuff).

Regarding wanikani. I don’t think it is comparable. Wanikani is very efficient at a very very specific thing, which is teaching you how to read (i.e. consume, not output) a lot of kanji/vocabulary in a small amount of time (out of context and so on). This is very useful, but also a small part of learning a language which by chance can be very efficiently learned by a combination of SRS plus mnemonic rules. I don’t think everything can be reduced to SRS this way.

2 Likes
#50

There are so many free resources, such as Meetup, iTalki, Discord (any social media), local colleges, libraries, and many more, that I cannot think of now. You have to put the work in, but they are there.

#51

Also, HelloTalk is a mess IMO. Unless you use the paid version, it’s just a bunch of content crammed into the smallest space possible, with little to no direction.

#52

Well the thing is, even if I find someone (I did a couple of times), most of the times my level is not enough to maintain a basic conversation… so I feel like I cannot practice conversation without a basic conversation level, but in order to achieve that level, I have to engage in a conversation?

#53

I learned grammar entirely with bunpro and reading. Zero exercises. I think reading all day (I watch things too, but I prefer reading for fun) and seeing natural Japanese used in thousands of contexts every day is more effective than doing some exercises. It is hard to produce and feel natural at producing if you don’t have thousands of hours of input.

Bunpro is definitely a learning tool, but the exercise as with all language learning is simply just using the language to deepen your understanding.

#54

You can reach a conversation level with immersion, but you need to put in an absurd amount of hours. It’s advisable you do this either way to understand other people better.

You can also get a tutor to practice your way past the initial hurdles without feeling guilty about your inadequacy in the language potentially bothering your conversation partner, and then drop the tutor and move on to just talking with strangers for free.

#55

It is a mess indeed (believe me I’m a UX/UI designer), but I only use the chat section. The thing is, people don’t follow conversations that much and to be honest I don’t know why.