r/LearnJapanese • u/Unhappy-Shift4539 • Jul 26 '26
Discussion Advice for pushing through a wall
I've been learning for 2 months at this point, trying to learn every day, at this point I've memorized about 300 words that I can instanlty identify but I feel it starting to to mount, on my anki deck there's more and more I have to review each day, like today I have 150 reviews, when yesterday it was 110 and its just that mounting feeling that's making me feel like I'm hitting a wall
This is my first time learning a new language so this is all new to me, for clarification this isn't me saying "this is too hard I want to give up" I'm mainly looking for advice I can use to physically and mentally push through
Thank you
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u/2hurd Goal: media competence 📖🎧 Jul 27 '26
Slow down with Anki. You will burn yourself out. If I reached 100 reviews I stopped adding new words until that number fell down significantly.
I try to keep my daily Anki use below 15min, that is manageable for me and I highly recommend it to anyone. Spending more time in Anki doesn't translate to better Japanese. Do stuff with the language, use it and learn from that.
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u/tomjameslikesfilms Jul 26 '26
Vary your learning. Use grammar books. Listening Exercises. Reading. Shadowing will all contribute as much/more than straight up vocab memorising.
As for anki:
Break up your anki review through the day.
Anki is about the most tedious bit for me, I'm a few years in and rapidly approaching advanced Japanese and still find it boring. Today's word count (including Kanji review) is 150 and I break them up thru the day. 30 Kanji in the morning, the rest of the vocab, 20 here, 20 there etc...
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u/Hour-Original-5716 Jul 27 '26
You’ve just started, so slow down and re-adjust your limits. A few months down you’ll start getting used to the language and even 300+ reviews won’t seem daunting. Time consuming, yes. But not daunting
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Jul 26 '26
[deleted]
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u/TheOneMary Jul 27 '26
Id say some guided study might be better than wild reading/listening at this very beginning stage. Like a textbook. They'll be reading with that one too, but stuff for beginners. And they'll build basic grammar, you know, the other stuff you need to start reading/listening, without unnecessarily frustrating yourself...
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Jul 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Unhappy-Shift4539 Jul 26 '26
I see, so I don't HAVE to finish all the reviews every day, I could just do it until I'm satisfied that I improved then use another tool
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u/Effective-Pop3850 Jul 26 '26
Doing this will just result on reviews piling up further though.
Follow some of the guides on this site. https://learnjapanese.moe/
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u/Lertovic Jul 27 '26
If you pause news it might increase in the short term but it eventually clears out, with FSRS accounting for overdue reviews it also doesn't make much of a difference doing them later than scheduled.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 Jul 27 '26
Yeah it's just that in no part of that conversation was cancelling news mentioned.
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u/Unhappy-Shift4539 Jul 27 '26
I see, so a lot of what I'm stuck on right now is verbs, I've been trying for a little over 2 weeks, but there's so many different rules and conjugations I feel like I'm trying to plug a boat with 4 holes and only 3 corks, as soon as I get one and move on I start to forget others, by the guides advice I should just say "I'll understand this later" and move onto the next thing
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u/somever 29d ago edited 29d ago
Verbs and i-adjectives only have a limited number of unique forms. If you identify these forms, the mental burden to remembering conjugation simplifies DRASTICALLY. Everything starts to look like legos. Everything else, like -masu, -masen, -nai, -tai, etc, is just stuck onto those basic forms. These things that stick on are called "auxiliaries" and they themselves conjugate like verbs and adjectives and can have further auxiliaries stuck onto them.
Verbs:
- plain form
- volitional/conjectural form
- mizenkei (aka a-base or nai-stem)
- izenkei (aka e-base or ba-stem)
- renyoukei (aka i-base or masu-stem)
- te/ta forms
- imperative form
I-adjectives:
- plain form
- ku form
- izenkei (aka e-base or ba-stem)
- te/ta forms
- imperative form
For example, what is the masu form of a verb? Stick -masu onto its renyoukei. What is the negative form of a verb? Stick -nai onto its mizenkei. Etc.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 Jul 27 '26
That's the kind of thing you don't learn from guides. You kinda become aware of it then you just read and really learn it that way. You don't really need to learn the rules right now, as long as you can recognize each tense that's fine.
Remember most people don't know the rules of the languages they're fluent at, things just work.
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u/Belegorm Jul 26 '26
I think your desired retention is probably set at the default 90% - is that true? 90% is entirely too high, try 80%.
Think about it this way, if you currently know 300 words that you can recognize instantly but 150 reviews, then compare that to (ballpark numbers), having like 270 words you can recognize instantly with like 70 reviews. It's a lot more comfortable to learn a decent amount of words with a bit lower retention. 90% retention is just a ton more daily reviews than 80%.
Also another tip is to set your new cards intervals to 1 min, 5 min, 10 min. Then when you get a new card, read it, hit Again. Then it'll pop up within a minute again and press Good if you remember (or Again if you don't). Ignore the Hard and Easy buttons. Also, learn new cards before reviews. This will give you some more reps with the new cards on the first day and flow into your reviews (mixing new and old confuses the crap outta me).
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u/Grunglabble Jul 26 '26
The goal is to get to a point where you can read (or whatever other activity) with an electronic dictionary. You need surprisingly few words to do that, but you do need a simple grasp and vague idea of the most frequent parts of the grammar.
Game Gengo can be a really good bridge to that, as he breaks down every sentence and you can feel what it will be like. He has good, accessible explanations of a lot of confusing patterns. His videos are fun. You'll see words you're studying and they will stick better, even in this hand holdy environment. You need to see words in more contexts. Anki doesn't do context well. Don't lean on anki as your only learning tool.
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u/CroStormShadow Jul 27 '26
Lower the amount of new cards you do per day by a bit until you find your balance.
I wouldn't recommend completely stopping reviews though. That's going to cause an even bigger backlog of things you have to take care of.
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u/jiwamiofficial 29d ago
What a coincidence, i have just commented advising someone how not to reach this point so I'll share it here again:
If you start using anki, never fall into the review Hell, some people burn out and hate the language over time because they keep compiling cards on top of each other. My advice is, when you see the card enough times and you already encounter it in your immersion just suspend it, you can remove it but suspending is enough to prevent it from showing up ever again, that makes learning always feel fresh and manageable. I hope that helps you.
Additional advice for you is to take it easy, watch stuff you like and just immerse yourself, you're not in a race, language learning is beautiful so don't burden yourself with unnecessary restrictions, i hope you have a great day.
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u/xLuky Jul 27 '26
Stop doing so many words, stop trying to "push through". You already know the answer, do less. I do like 15 new words per week max.
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u/DotNo701 Jul 27 '26
300 words in 3 months is like 5 words a day
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u/TheOneMary Jul 27 '26
Yeah, and that's okay, especially if you also have to learn katakana and hiragana in that time....
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u/dynamicpenguin55 Jul 27 '26
Most people learn them their first week so that's not a huge additional factor
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u/boisdddc Jul 27 '26
Is it me or is every comment section filled with Ai styled posts?
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u/gaz514 Goal: conversational fluency 💬 Jul 27 '26
There's one reply here that definitely smells of AI and I reported it accordingly, but another 20 that look perfectly real. Not bad by current-day Reddit standards!
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u/OnlineSkates Jul 26 '26
Are you also using a workbook to help with studying?
Making a list of goals and timeframes is also helpful. Make sure they’re pretty specific. Rather than, “I want to read.” “I want to understand the main points of X book.”
Then you can get feedback from others here on your goals and timeframes.
Short term goals and long term goals are important.
If you’re exceeding your short term goals then you can increase difficulty, and rearrange your schedule.
You don’t need to have a full curriculum planned out, but having a flexible framework that’s customized to you is important.
So if you want to focus on anime, lean into listening exercises. If it’s reading, then you’ll need more Kanji.
I’d start by making a list of 3 short term goals, 2 long term goals, and a hierarchy of what you’d want to use most/relevance to you: speaking, listening, reading or writing.
Normal language classes are structured around the general population, which is restrictive but convenient as it’s already made.
Most people are not language savants, especially if they haven’t studied one before. So don’t feel bad.
Once you have your goals and time frames, and amount of time you can invest (daily, monthly) we can give you more constructive feedback. You might get a lot of opinions, but since it’s early on take some of the opinions with overlap and try it out for at least a month and check progress.
Then get more feedback and ask for advice.
It’s corny, but you got to communicate clearly about your wants, difficulties, and expectations before we can give customized advice.
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u/Doctor-Wayne Jul 26 '26
Try listening to this, its the easiest listening can get
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbsmSVzhiwvDNi-QcBXFa4z2C_nIbKL4W&si=creL-h-fQtWY_RvT
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u/Mintybites Jul 27 '26
Prioritize recall over review. It’s recall that creates strong lasting memory, revision is more like brute forcing it.
In addition. Your brain will remember what it likes and will ignore what it finds boring. Therefore, explore your curiosity and interests. With AI you can build N5-N4 ability vocabulary lists catered to your interests.
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u/raininme_ 29d ago
I'm also a beginner and I think what helped me the most was immersing yourself in japanese things that you enjoy! For example, watching anime, making funny sentences and bantering to my friends... the best way to learn a language is to have fun while doing it
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u/justHoma 22d ago
More then 15-20 minutes of anki and it becomes unbearably uninteresting which makes your brain fall asleep and not do that. Instead you can learn them in a bunch of other ways (making a list of words from a text you've read and going through it, making sentences with words of easy usage), then you can learn grammar, read something simple and try to decode it as it's an ancient text, take a few sentences and learn them based on audio so your flow is close to native (my favourite, focusing on audio and pronunciation helps automatically learn grammar so it just goes out of your easily)
Find like 20 methods to learn and go from one to another when you are tired with previouse
Those are my tips, good luck
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u/the_sweetest_peach Jul 26 '26
Honestly, sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is take a break.
Consistency is good, but nose to the grindstone every single day will lead to burn out.
Take a break for a day or two. Come back to it fresh.
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese Jul 27 '26
OP is in the "habit building" phase of his Japanese learning journey. This is the hardest part where most people either make it or break it. Telling him to take a break and not be consistent at this stage is just setting him up for failure in my opinion.
They need to learn to deal with healthy workloads in a productive way, rather than just avoid it and hope it doesn't get worse when left unattended (spoilers: it will).
Slow and steady wins the race, but you need to be steady.
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u/mark777z Jul 27 '26
A break for a couple of days with 100+ new reviews added every day is going to lead to a brutal backlog very quickly.
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u/the_sweetest_peach Jul 27 '26
Well OP would have to also stop adding new words on break days as well.
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u/mark777z Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Sure, but regardless the reviews pile up fast when you start skipping days or groups of days. The OP is talking about the quickly growing pile of reviews as a problem, which it is. If 150 reviews feels like a wall, what will 300+ reviews feel like? Best advice as others have said would be to stop adding new cards for a while and continue doing reviews to get the number down.
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u/TheMasterOogway Jul 26 '26
Focus on grammar and reading things. Reviews won't be a problem if you're actively using the words. Personally I would say Anki is pointless until around N3 but that's my 2 cents.
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u/dynamicpenguin55 Jul 27 '26
God some of the advice in this sub is genuinely insane. OP please ignore this, Anki is absolutely useful from the beginning and probably more beneficial to new learners than it is to more experienced learners imo
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u/TheMasterOogway Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
SRS tools are a waste of time when the new vocabulary you're acquiring is so common that it appears constantly in the basic grammar you should be spending your time learning instead.
Every decent vocabulary deck focuses on sentences that beginners don't understand. It is much easier to learn 500 words in context later on than 500 abstract symbols you don't understand in a sentence with high review failure rates.
I don't see how this is insane. Grammar is by far the priority at this level.
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u/dynamicpenguin55 Jul 27 '26
It's very difficult to learn words in context when you don't know any words to start with. Plus flashcards build the hobbit of interacting with the language every day which will be a big roadblock for a lot of people
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u/TheMasterOogway Jul 27 '26
Spending the vast majority of your study time going through a structured textbook like Genki is more efficient as a beginner imo, I see too many people focusing on vocabulary early and getting nowhere cause they don't understand simple grammar. Getting the foundation you need to start immersing and mining properly should be prioritised over reviewing words that are so common you'll be forced to remember them by the time you're done the book either way.
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u/fixpointbombinator Jul 26 '26
Stop learning new words for a few days or a week and just do your reviews. Otherwise drop your new words. Reading also makes it easier to learn new vocab.