I'm taking Japanese classes in college for my minor. I've been learning it for roughly five months. I really like the language and everything, but my class is really slow when it comes to knocking out chapters in Genki I. I decided to work ahead, and I'm almost done with the entire book now. I thought, "Hey, I finished this textbook. I might be able to read some of the Japanese children's books at my local library." Boy, was I wrong. I barely understood some of the words that they were using. I could pick out a word here and there, but most of it was completely new to me. It took me nearly five to ten minutes just to get through one page (I was looking up the words on Jisho), and these are the one's with pictures.
It was a huge blow to my ego. I've been doing wanikani outside of my class for extra kanji practice, and I see my myself slowly improving on that front. Many times the instructor has put up completely new kanji on the board, and I already know it off of the top of my head. However, it's really discouraging to have almost sludged through an entire 300+ page textbook to still be unable to read books that little kids can read.
I suppose another factor that adds to the discouragement is seeing all of my friends who have taken Spanish and French to be on a way different level than me. I know that Spanish and French are pretty much Tier 1 level languages while Japanese is a Tier 5, but I don't know. I don't really know how else to improve my language abilities. Genki is somewhat dry to me, and I'm getting really sick and tired of doing flashcards to memorize these vocabulary words. I'm looking at Genki II on my table, and I don't even want to crack it open because I'm afraid I'm going to put forth all of this effort again and still get smacked back into the ground by how bad my Japanese is despite how much improvement I think I've done.
Do you guys have any tips that might help me with my studies?
It was a huge blow to my ego. I've been doing wanikani outside of my class for extra kanji practice, and I see my myself slowly improving on that front. Many times the instructor has put up completely new kanji on the board, and I already know it off of the top of my head. However, it's really discouraging to have almost sludged through an entire 300+ page textbook to still be unable to read books that little kids can read.
I suppose another factor that adds to the discouragement is seeing all of my friends who have taken Spanish and French to be on a way different level than me. I know that Spanish and French are pretty much Tier 1 level languages while Japanese is a Tier 5, but I don't know. I don't really know how else to improve my language abilities. Genki is somewhat dry to me, and I'm getting really sick and tired of doing flashcards to memorize these vocabulary words. I'm looking at Genki II on my table, and I don't even want to crack it open because I'm afraid I'm going to put forth all of this effort again and still get smacked back into the ground by how bad my Japanese is despite how much improvement I think I've done.
Do you guys have any tips that might help me with my studies?
Edited: 2016-03-14, 3:19 am