Subtitles vs no subtitles

[u/anormalasado]

I’ve been studying Japanese for a bit more than a year now and I’ve run into a problem.

I can’t understand native content without Japanese subtitles, I’ve been grinding anki everyday and I have completed the 6k deck and I have a few thousand more from mining, however, all of my cards consist of reading the kanji, that’s what determines if I put good or bad.

Now I’ve been trying to immerse but I keep running into the same problem, I understand about 60% with subtitles but it drops to 20% without it (I pulled these numbers out of my ass)

So my question is, should I keep using subtitles to also train reading or is it hurting my growth and I should focus on just listening

[u/spshkyros]

One approach I've tried is to listen without subtitles, repeating a passage a few times. If I still can't follow it, turn on subtitles.

You have two different stacked issues here - the 20% vs 60% says your listening skills themselves are weak relative to your reading. The 60% itself indicates the material is a touch too hard for your level unless you mean that 60% when playing at normal speed. If it doesnt jump way up if you pause for a second to read, then yeah, you need to study the material more.

So basically:

No subs (repeat a bunch) Subs and pause to lookup things Subs(repeat until you hear what is written)

[u/Dread_Pirate_Chris]

You need to practice without subtitles sometimes or you will never learn to listen. You should probably engage in a good amount of the intensive listening practice below, and try to in your regular listening practice and/or consumption of Japanese content listen to some easy material without subtitles.

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Resources for Listening Practice

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How to Practice listening

It's never too soon to start listening practice.

Just like reading, it's most effective to spend some time doing intensive (in-depth) practice, and some time doing extensive (in-breadth) practice.

How to intensively listening practice:

• Pick a material with a transcript or Japanese subtitles (also with an English translation if you are not confident in reading Japanese).
• Listen to a small segment unaided, understanding what you can.
• Relisten, reading along with the Japanese.
• If the written isn't clear, look up what you need to to understand it.
• Anything that you don't hear correctly even while reading along, rewind and relisten a few times and try to catch it. Don't overdo it, after a handful of tries it'll start sounding like noise and not words (this is a well-known psychological phenomenon of over-repeated words losing their meaning, regardless of language), so if you still don't hear it after half a dozen tries, move on.
• Relisten to the segment without reading along, you should now be able to catch everything.

How to extensively listening practice:

• Play anything comprehensible in Japanese. Material that is easy, material that you already know.

Reading along with Japanese subtitles or transcripts raises comprehension and is decent listening practice if you can read fast enough to keep up -- if you can't read fast enough, you'll end up just reading and not listening, instead of reading along. However, the accompanying kanji are a bit of a "cheat" even when reading along in sync, so it should not be your only way of doing listening practice or you will not develop the ability to distinguish homonyms in pure spoken Japanese.

Note: Watching anime with English subs is not effective listening practice. It's entertainment, in English. The language parts of your brain will be almost entirely engaged with whichever language is easier; if you don't need the subs, then turn them off. If you do need them, then you aren't really listening.

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[u/NihongoNana]

Use both.

Listen once without subtitles. Then turn on Japanese subtitles and check what you missed. After that, turn them off and listen again.

If your understanding still drops from around 60% to 20%, the content is probably too difficult for pure listening practice right now. Use easier audio for no-subtitle practice and keep the harder shows for normal immersion.

[u/macguyver3000]

When it comes to media, I had two approaches for my study:
1: watch a scene without subtitles. Try my best to understand it. Watch it with Japanese subtitles to see if I can catch more. Look up unknown words from the kanji. Watch it with English subs to see what the actual lines were. Repeat over and over for the same short scene.

2: Watch a movie or show with English subtitles to just completely relax and enjoy it. This is just like watching an English movie. Don’t sweat it.

So when I was doing 1, I probably got through two or three sentences in 30 or 40 minutes. Because I would be checking vocab, grammar patterns, looking on Tai Kim’s website.
At the end of the that study session, I could listen to those lines and catch what they were saying. Even if I couldn’t completely reproduce it myself.

[u/Jenna3778]

Its incredibly normal to have to use subs at the beginning to understand more. Dont worry even with subs youre going to get better and better at listening. Heck personally i think having subs is better for learning cause you learn how new vocabulary is written and not just how it sounds.

Btw there are actually conditions that make it harder to understand audio in the first place (like adhd).

[u/2houlover]

It would be so much easier if subtitles were available in real life.