Losing hope after 6-7 months. I know

Bunpro
#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)

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#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.

#56

I guess everyone is different, some things may work for someone and not another one, but take into account that the Official School of Languages, which is a public entity in Spain dedicated to the teaching of languages, with a good reputation and more than 300.000 students per year: Escuela Oficial de Idiomas - Wikipedia currently differentiates 4 skills: reading, listening, writing and speaking (so 2 of them are consumption and 2 production), plus a separate skill that is introduced on third year I believe, called mediation, which consists on understanding something and transforming to express it in a different way. Note the first 4 skills are practiced since day one. Speaking with your fellow students, etc is basic. I tend to agree with this approach, but I think it depends on your objective. If all you want is to consume content (for example understanding anime or manga) I guess all consumption may be fine.

#57

I don’t think people are different in that using a language more gives more results.

You can do exercises for a thousand hours, but it’s a very sterile environment. I’ve come across vast amounts of dialect, archaic japanese, and colliquial language that people don’t really study.

Not a single person in my country learned English by studying it past the most basic grammar necessary to use the language. Everyone and I really do mean everyone learned from using the internet and watching TV shows, and then chatting with strangers online. It goes so far that the ones with higher English grades have a lower average income in their life because they spent too much time goofing off and having fun rather than studying in school.

1 Like
#58

I find this helpful personally and hope you might as well. When you study a grammar point, play with creating your own sentences using the grammar point. Make them fun and or relevant to you if you can. Incorporate some of the vocab you’re learning as well.

Send the sentences to Grok or ChatGPT for grammar review and they’ll either tell you that yes it sounds perfectly natural or they’ll give you feedback with what needs adjustment. They do a good job of picking up on nuances for grammar points. So even if something is technically grammatically correct, it might still sound unnatural (ex: this grammar point is not used for sequential events, rather it’s used for cause and effect).

I love to try and come up with sentences on the fly and type them into Grok for confirmation. Often times I’ll slip up and will get a really helpful explanation as to what went wrong or a different explanation of the grammar point that I’ll better comprehend.

I use Grok all the time in my language class. I don’t recall any times when my 先生 has said my Grok verified sentences are incorrect or sound weird. Not to say Grok or AI is perfect but definitely a very useful study tool when used correctly in my opinion.

Wishing you all the best! 頑張ってね！

2 Likes
#59

sounds pretty normal to me, i hit that wall every day when learning something new
just keep at it, eventually things will shift into place

#60

I don’t have any intent to avoid conversation or watching content in Japanese, in fact it is my first priority, I would love to do that.

The thing is at my level I feel like a huge barrier. I cannot express any complex idea or watch content without following the subtitles 100% of the time. It will help? Of course. But I remember when I was learning english, I learned a lot by just watching videos on YouTube and understanding at least 10-20% of it. With Japanese, I tried a lot of times, but my understanding is 0.001%. I feel like I need to absorb more vocabulary and grammar to get started with watching content and extracting something from it.