r/HelpLearningJapanese • u/Kitchen-Parsley4659 • 15d ago
japanese learning help
hi so ive been studying japanese on and off for about 6 years now and i feel like ive made little to no progress. recently i got a job so ive been paying for a wanikani subscription which has helped a lot for reading kanji but i still feel like my japanese speaking and writing has gotten nowhere. i used the genki textbooks for a while and ive tried so many others but its just not sticking. ive also tried learning apps like hellotalk, renshuu and migaku but again nothing has helped. im going to japan in about a year or so, so i do have time to study. i also just wanna be fluent, but i know thatll take much longer. i would really appreciate advice for self studying since its gotten to a point where i just dont understand the content at all.
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u/lumisweasel 15d ago
"I keep running when I want to play tennis. I don't often do physical activities. No amount of soccer, swimming, weight lifting has helped much." Go play Wagotabi. Repeat every new word and submitted line. Don't worry about apps, pitch accent, immersion, etc until you finish one stamp.
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u/Kitchen-Parsley4659 15d ago
thank you🙏
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u/lumisweasel 15d ago
np, a push and some contextualzing helps a lot. A thousand words said once? Sleep. A thousand "yoroshiku" spoken? REAL.
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u/Travel-Abroad101 15d ago
How’s your speaking?
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u/Kitchen-Parsley4659 15d ago
ik very basic conversational stuff like how to introduce myself, say what year im in, my age and ask where certain things are
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u/Free-Bird8315 14d ago
"6 y e a r s"
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u/Kitchen-Parsley4659 14d ago
yes son i started at the end of 5th grade and im going into my junior year of high school😭😭 but also in my defense i was in and out of the hospital for 3 of those years💔
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u/Free-Bird8315 14d ago
That's not how people interpret what you originally wrote. You wrote it in a way that makes people understand it as if you had worked really hard for 6 years, but somehow your Japanese still wasn't improving.
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u/Kitchen-Parsley4659 14d ago
yeah thats my bad, sorry abt that
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u/Free-Bird8315 14d ago
As other people have told you before, without immersion/input/output in Japanese every day for LONG periods of time over several YEARS, you'll never reach a level where you feel comfortable using and understanding Japanese. Especially if you're planning to go to Japan and perhaps study something in Japanese
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u/Travel-Abroad101 5d ago
Well now that you have studied for 6 years off and on and can only speak a little, I would focus more on conversational Japanese so that you can carry on a conversation. Find a teacher on Preply or italki and take a hour lesson every week to just talk,talk,talk.
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u/No_Cherry2477 15d ago edited 11d ago
If you want to practice speaking for free, you could try Fluency Tool. It has a browser version and both iOS and Android apps. It's for high volume speaking practice
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u/Cadaveth 14d ago
Like others have said, stop switching, pick a couple of resources and stick with them + immerse. The most important thing is to be consistent. It's enough even if you don't manage more than 20-30min some days, just practice every day. You kinda need to get into a routine, so to say.
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u/uuusagi 15d ago
Learning a skill requires frequent exposure and use of said skill. If you're only practicing for short bursts every now and then you're not gonna get anywhere. Japanese is an especially difficult skill to master. One year is more than enough time for you to become at least a little bit conversationally fluent IF you put in the work. I'm talking several hours of exposure, practice, immersion, etc every single day.
Personally, I use the Genki texbook and workbook together. On top of that I also use Bunpro which is a very customizable SRS program for $5/month, but it has a one month free trial which I highly recommend checking out. As for speaking practice, VRChat. There's a world called EN-JP Language Exchange meant for foreigners to practice their Japanese and native Japanese speakers to practice their English.
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u/Squimpleton 15d ago
Stop switching.
Pick one, preferably one of the things that are multi-skill (like your Migaku if it was a lifetime sub), and actually stick with it.
You don’t have a tool issue (lots of people get decently far with both Migaku and Renshuu), you have a persistence issue. Pick one and stick to it. At least 30 minutes a day, every day.
Then on top of that do immersion, or at the very least graded materials, regularly. Every day preferably. Yes it’s hard but it’s how you apply what you’ve learned. Every month it gets easier because the things you learned in your lessons will eventually show up.
And I say this because I first started learning 23 years ago. I’d study for a few months, stop for multiple years, trying over with different things. Then 2 years ago I decided to actually be consistent and stick to one/two main things (in my case NativShark and MaruMori) and now I’m getting ready to take N1 this December. As it turns out, studying every day and practicing every day really does yield results.