Losing hope after 6-7 months. I know

Bunpro
#21

Well the thing is… I’m learning Japanese cause I love the culture. I didn’t get into Japanese through manga and anime. I do watch anime, specially movies, from time to time, and sometimes I watch some series, but to be honest, I never read manga. I got excited that a small store in my town sells secondhand manga, but it is all in my main language :frowning: I tried to find any of them in japanese, but it was impossible. I should get some online though.

I’m more interested in starting to read simple books, but I don’t know if I would be able to grasp the basic parts of it to just enjoy it. I thought about getting into it in a few months.

My japanese input comes from YouTube videos, sometimes I listen to Japanese radio stations at work and some podcasts and some news streams… but for the most part, I can’t catch any of it and I get demotivated pretty quick.

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#22

It sounds like your main problem is that you dont seem to have anything specific to measure your progress so you end up using arbitrary numbers of task completions.

It has nothing to do with “going too fast”, that’s different for each person and relative to their environment and situation.

This is great but try to pick one specific thing that you want to be able to do in Japanese. You can always change it later but you need something to avoid studying randomly and actually feel progress.

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#23

Maybe try to find a way to measure your progress. Eg apply for the JLPT exams starting from N5 all the way to N1… It would be cool to show all the certificates :smiley: :man_shrugging:

(I think it may be a bit too early) On the Bookwalker / BookLive websites, there are samples on (nearly) everything (manga / light novels / magazines), just click on the cover image.
NHK Web Easy should slowly start to become more accessible soon too… (depending on the news topics )

Personally, even now after years of study, there are shows / tv series where I hardly understand anything in Japanese. Try to find stuff at your level. Japanese is a bit complicated in the sense that in a way unlike European languages (from my experience), there is a much higher vocab / grammar requirement to understand stuff. So don’t worry, try to find stuff near your level.

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#24

I think no one has mentioned this so I’ll say it. I believe these averages are skewed by the fact that lots of people join Bunpro after they’ve already been studying for a little bit so it probably artificially boosts accuracy early on.

To me it sounds like you’re doing great. Japanese takes a lot of time and the start is intellectually the hardest part, in my opinion. As others have said, motivation naturally goes up and down. I think the reason you’re getting so many responses is precisely because your experience is so relatable; everyone hits a wall at some point (multiple points, normally). The only question is whether you carry on. I hope you do!

Knowledge is multifaceted and isn’t something you can “tick off”, so to speak. The grammar used in N5 is the foundation of everything else meaning so long as you aren’t overwhelming or overworking yourself it should naturally sink in over time as you progress. Relax. It will take care of itself so long as you keep studying and exposing yourself to the language. It’s totally normal to understand very little at first. Grammar is tough. Just keep going!

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#25

Duolingo and Genki are better at teaching you somthing the first time, SRS is better at reminding you so you don’t forget later. I recomend only adding bunpro reviews for stuff you learn first in Genki or Duolingo

I’ve hit a wall several times.
I started by going to Japanese class in college. I hit a wall when my class finnished What do I do now? I was stuck here for 3 years
The answer was lingo deer and putting the CD that came with the textbook in my car to listen to everyday.
Next wall: OK, so this retains the knowlage I learned in class, but how do I learn more? Stuck here for another 3 years
Anki vocab and kanji. and 4 years later I’m still studying anki vocab from premade decks. The first year was productive- and now I’m stuck again.
I know lots of Japanese, time to actually use it. Watch all the anime 10 years ago you wanted to watch when they started studying Japanese!

Maybe if I learn gramar on bunpro- then I’ll read Japanese. My 1 year subscription is up. I learned enough grammar to pass N4. I need to read manga and middleschool books (elementry school books don’t have enough kanji)

#26

If you’re looking for simple books, I would recommend Natively. The account is free, and you can sort books by free, if money is a concern.

You can also sort the books by level. I’ve been slowly working through the low-level ones in my spare time, and I feel like a young kid reading their first books in their own. Which for Japanese, is exactly what I’m doing! They also start off a lot easier than NHK Web News Easy. (NHK says it’s Easy, but it’s still a jump at first).

Between Natively for books, NHK Easy for news, and Jisho.org for the many words I’ve not learned yet, I can feel like an adult learning a language, but still accept that I’m at a kid level in terms of understanding.

I’ve been studying for about 6 months and finished N5 grammar, and I’m really hitting N5 vocab before moving on. I’d started with 3 grammar points a day, but that turned out to be a bit much. I felt like I was getting in too deep, because I’d not fully mastered earlier things before I was trying to build on them. I’d felt sad and hopeless and cut it down to 2 grammar points per day, hit the same wall, and cut down to 1 a day.

Something that helped was resetting progress on some of the grammar points. Around lesson 8 I’d gone through the Cram function and found all the points I didn’t just know, and I completely reset those points. And all my points with ghosts. And all my Troubled Grammar. Learn them from scratch, like I’d never seen them before. But I had seen them before! Like a week ago! It wasn’t totally new this next time, and seeing them again wasn’t so hard.

If grammar isn’t sticking, it’s okay to start fresh. Learning a language is new and exciting, especially when it’s so different from your native language. But it can also be overwhelming. Just take your time, and if today was rough, then tomorrow is a new day.

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#27

Hi! I have a minor in Japanese. (4 years of studying). I live in Japan. And every day, working on N4 grammar on bunpro makes me feel like I will never actually get good at Japanese. There seems to be an ephemeral space between true knowledge for me where I will react to bunpro with the right answer but cannot call to mind the answer later (outside of bunpro). However, I noticed that things are gradually starting to come into my mind. I am recognizing things that I learned in bunpro in real life conversations. Even noticing my gradual progress, I still feel like a failure when I bomb a review. I often get 60-70% scores. I have it set to “Rigorous” so it introduces 20 new vocab and 5 grammar points a day, because what I’m studying should be beneath my level. It’s still really hard. All that to say you’re totally not alone in feeling like this, it’s a very hard language for westerners to learn and the process is gradual. Don’t be so hard on yourself, keep going, and try to enjoy the process even though it’s frustrating is my advice.

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#28

I can recommend you CI Japanese or any similar channel on YouTube. Even if your vocabulary base is actually bigger, watching content for complete beginners where they repeat the same sentence a few times just slightly altering the grammar or vocab in it can make the language sink in better and help you get used to listening.

Myself, I’ve been watching at least one comprehensible video per day since June and I can already see the progress, so I really recommend it :slight_smile:

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#29

Hi! I agree with CursedKitsune: I don’t think that 85% average is real. I recently discovered Bunpro and I already have the N3, yet I’m still reviewing some N5 grammar. But it’s easier than reviewing grammar that is new. I’m guessing there might be more people like me and that’s why the average is higher in the first levels. The averages for N2 and N1 are around 75%, which is probably more realistic, and it fits your average as well. So I think you’re doing great!!
I love Wanikani and had an episode like yours, where I lost motivation. My advice is to let it rest. You will come back, don’t worry! You can try something else, or nothing at all. Just relax for a while. Right now, my Wanikani dashboard says “Your time on this level is 450 days”. And that’s OK, I’m still enjoying it and happy to be back. You don’t need the perfect statistics :slight_smile: Good luck!!

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#30

Adding on what you’re saying here, I think it’s entirely possible that the average for N5 and N4 is higher because of two reasons I’ve already seen on this thread:

  1. Many people do not come to Bunpro as fresh learners (like CursedKItsune said)

  2. Many people get waist-deep into Bunpro and reset their progress to start again

This means that for many people doing N5 and N4, this isn’t their first rodeo! Makes sense why the true percentages come out at the higher levels!

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#31

After 6.5 months, you understand and speak Japanese better than you did 6.5 months after you started learning your native language (that is, from the moment you were born).
It took you 6 years to reach, you guessed it, 6 y-o level in your native language.
As with any language, it takes time. The more time you spend learning the language, the better you will understand it.
Also, Bunpro is only designed for you to learn and review grammar. But it’s by actually consuming content in Japanese (such as books, news articles, films and TV, random conversations) that you’ll actually put all that learnt knowledge into practice.
Don’t despair. The wall is always there. Learning and consuming content is how you climb it.
Source: Japanese is my 5th language.

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