Me!

I have been self-studying Japanese for about a year. It took me 7 months to finish RTK 1. I am doing the Core vocab, kanji and vocab on Skritter and using assorted apps, books, etc.

I watch (and really enjoy) Japanese films. I listen to Japanese podcasts. I may not understand them, but I keep listening.

Yet, due to age, ADD and other issues, my learning seems incredibly SLOW. Especially compared to many others. I know it isn't a competition, but my slow learning and poor retention is getting me down.

Please tell me that others are slower learners. I don't plan to give up, but I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I've been studying again for seven to eight months now. Just went back to Skritter and to hand journaling to work on my writing, which I realized completely sucks, and was actually in some cases hampering my ability to understand certain characters correctly.

I could view this as a setback...but I don't. I enjoy what I've learned of Japanese, and I continue to enjoy practicing it. (I was entertaining my girlfriend by writing Japanese on the frosted glass this morning. I just hope that no Japanese speakers come walking by and interpret 助けてくれ！！ as a reason to call the cops.)

I think there's way too much emphasis placed on acquisition speed in some online circles. So long as you enjoy studying and practicing, keep it up. This is meant to be fun, not some sort of drudgery. If you feel like your learning isn't fun, change your routine until you re-discover the joy again.

This is nothing to write home about. Get back to us when you're several years in and still can't understand half of what's out there. You'll understand frustration only when, after spending years, tons of your time and efforts but yet the only good word to describe your ability will be: beginner.

1 year... please

thurd Wrote:This is nothing to write home about. Get back to us when you're several years in and still can't understand half of what's out there. You'll understand frustration only when, after spending years, tons of your time and efforts but yet the only good word to describe your ability will be: beginner.

1 year... please

this

[Zgarbas]

I said it before, but it took me 2 and a half years to get to N5 level ^^.

Keep in mind too that a year really isn't that long to be studying a language like Japanese. Students who study Japanese in college, after a year, are barely at the intermediate level.

I've been studying Japanese for seven years (living in Japan for five of them) and still haven't passed N1--I took it for the third time this December, results soon to come.

Anyway, I've seen many a learner on this forum who studied and talked as if they were Gods of language learning, and as if they were already quite close to fluent, only to then take a few extra years to be able to pass N1, which is basic working competency level. So I think this forum might be a bit misleading about how fast people are learning.

Incidentally, I don't think they were being dishonest--they were just working hard and excited and talking about.

Laughable. I don't think you can even be nominated for that award unless you've taken two years of college-level Japanese only to find out you can't even read a children's book. Or that after another two years you still get more out of the Portuguese subtitles of the anime than the Japanese dialogue, even though you've never actually studied Portuguese in your life.

... to give you an idea, after the above it still took me a good year in Japan to be able to read a newspaper with extensive use of a dictionary, and that was on stuff directly related to my supposed area of expertise.

What I've learned from this forum is that, the so called "advanced" or "fluent/native-level" of Japanese learners is: they failed so many times before they started to notice improvement and eventually reaching their goals.

I've been learning for 3 years+ and I still suck at speaking. My grammar is lacking at times, my writing needs a lot of work, I still mess up basic readings (due to forgetting how to read it in the right context), forgot basic vocabulary at times and still won't call myself fluent even after accomplishing this:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=9977

My advice to you is, just make sure you do something everyday(no need to be a hare like I was. I burned out a lot (due to do doing too many Anki reps and immersing like mad). Just keep working everyday and you will eventually be able to accomplish your goals. May take 1-2 years, make take 3-5+ years. I don't have an answer myself as I keep learning and my goals keep changing.

Just make sure you enjoy the journey, because you will be looking back and saying to yourself "It was all worth it!"

Irixmark Wrote:Or that after another two years you still get more out of the Portuguese subtitles of the anime than the Japanese dialogue, even though you've never actually studied Portuguese in your life.

This is a good observation. I realized after studying Japanese for three years or so that I could read about as good in Spanish as in Japanese, despite never having taken Spanish. I took French and it taught me how to wing romance languages a bit just by guessing based on cognates.

Then again, didn't know about RTK back then, so kanji was difficult for me.

[Zgarbas]

Nevermind romance languages (I can read entire novels with little to no issue), try being able to read Dutch* better than Japanese. Or realizing that speaking Swedish* comes easier than speaking Japanese. It's silly.

*1 year+ of Japanese (all theoretical, really; I only count that year as studying to remind myself of how lazy I can be), no study of Dutch what so ever cause Dutch is scary.
4+ years of Japanese but no speaking practice, versus informal non-intensive short-term study yeaaars ago.

Hahahaha.

I'm about 10 years in. I would probably classify myself as intermediate level for the past 6-7 or so. I even have a degree in Japanese language, and I still can barely function in it.

I've been using SRS daily for years now, I took classes, I have penpals, I watch a small but respectable amount of media and read a bit. My progress is slow, but measurable. I'm getting there

Zarxrax Wrote:Hahahaha.

I'm about 10 years in. I would probably classify myself as intermediate level for the past 6-7 or so. I even have a degree in Japanese language, and I still can barely function in it.

I've been using SRS daily for years now, I took classes, I have penpals, I watch a small but respectable amount of media and read a bit. My progress is slow, but measurable. I'm getting there

Slow and steady as she goes.......will eventually win the race......

OMG, the Portuguese thing made me laugh - maybe you were just gifted at that particular language though, with a good eye for latinate roots.

I'd also like to nominate myself - my favored method of gaining Japanese vocabulary is to pick a "word of the week". So for that week, I study the word, write it down, look up instances of it on Google, basically make it my friend in the hopes that it will then go into long term memory.

But doing the math, with this technique, it would take 960 years to gain an educated adult vocabulary of about 50,000 words. If I live this long, I would like to receive the award.

I can't top mushi's nomination but I think I could put myself forward for a certificate of commendation for having started learning Japanese in 1977 and not yet passing N2.

Fine print: no contact with said language between 1980 and 2007. Finished two years of university study in 1980 to discover that I could not read anything that was not class materials that were specifically targeted at our class. Gave it away to earn living in my profession. Now seriously tempted to spend the same amount of time learning Dutch in order to compare the two learning experiences.

it's taken me 10 years to get to around the threshold for passing N1. i studied on the side while getting my ph.d. in science. i've suffered many setbacks in japanese but just kept pushing on and here i am.

if you learn to enjoy the journey, even when it's hard (and it will be), then you can do anything.

Chiller is in there ahead of me, but I started studying Japanese as a school kid in 1980 and came back after a gap of 30 years .... a handful of greetings and surprising number of kana survived the long break, but that was about all. Still trying to get the RTK kanji down, but suspect there is a fair component of Avoiding Picking Up Genki to the laggardly pace of the last few months (I read the last chapters of Genki II first, and thus killed off any suspense about what was going to happen with Mary and Takeshi. So don't cheat on the ending, folks. Gotta walk before you can run ....)

[RawToast]

Zgarbas Wrote:I said it before, but it took me 2 and a half years to get to N5 level ^^.

Guessing that was before SRS, smart.fm, etc?

I feel like in half a year of self study my Japanese (~N5) is better than my Spanish ever was at school (studied for 4 years) or German (1 year). So I can relate to getting nowhere after years of work.

Guess that just shows either: how bad teaching of languages is at school in the UK or how I wasn't interested in my Spanish GCSE!

Thanks for the great replies. I feel better now reading everyone's different experiences. (And, LOL, Mushi!)

I took Spanish for 3 years in high school (ahem, over 40 years ago). I had a wonderful teacher. I still remember some of it. I can watch some Spanish shows or listen to native speakers IRL and follow the gist of the conversation.

I hope to be at least that good in Japanese at some point in the future.

Here is a very good text about learning Chinese but almost all points are valid in case of Japanese. It even has the same "3 years of Chinese vs 0 years of Spanish" experience with the same conclusion. But my favorite part must be:

Quote:Someone once said that learning Chinese is "a five-year lesson in humility". I used to think this meant that at the end of five years you will have mastered Chinese and learned humility along the way. However, now having studied Chinese for over six years, I have concluded that actually the phrase means that after five years your Chinese will still be abysmal, but at least you will have thoroughly learned humility.

Thurd, that is a good read! Thanks for the link.

Chinese is that hard? Sounds like the guy just sucks at learning to me..

Learning a foreign language is as much about learning how to learn a foreign language as it is about the language itself. I studied Japanese for 5 years in college, and I did pass JLPT N2 at that time. However, I fully believe I passed due to a fluke. My level was barely past beginner level at that point. RTK allowed me to excel in certain areas that people at my level usually didn't excel in so I tended to test well even with a lower level.

Then I took a year or two off. Then I came back to Japanese, and I started to progress really fast due to having figured out what worked for me over those 5 years. I had to learn a lot about myself and my own learning style before I could start making significant progress.

Studying a little bit everyday even if it's for a short time is the most important lesson I learned over the years. Small amounts of effort really do snowball over time even if it's difficult to see changes week to week.

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:So long as you enjoy studying and practicing, keep it up. This is meant to be fun, not some sort of drudgery.

^This.

Also, finishing RTK is not to be taken lightly. I'm way behind in listening, talking and vocabulary compared to Japanese learners I meet, but they are suffering from Kanji and I just got reminded that most people made a nightmare out of Kanji.

Good to hear there are other slow learners out there