Creation (writing/speaking) is a completely different skill from recognition (listening/reading) and require directly training in order to gain proficiency in. It's as simple as being only as good as how often you do it basically, which makes the solution equally simple: Speak. Write. You won't use every single one of those thousands of words and grammar points you're learning, but through practicing whatever you can in actual speech and writing you'll become used to expressing yourself, and eventually you'll develop your own distinct style of expressions, word choices, etc. just as we all have in our native tongues.

For speaking, just have conversations as much as possible. The more necessary being able to express yourself in Japanese is, the faster you're going to learn how to use it. If you don't have relationships or friendships in which frequent conversation is possible, then either resort to online resources (you'll find tons of people on Skype and the like), join clubs, go to social events, or even just have monologues with yourself. As an example, for English I used to write topics on strips of paper and put them in a hat. Whichever one I drew out I had to talk about for 10 minutes. Other methods you can do is just read things online, and then respond orally in Japanese; reply aloud to Facebook updates, or forum posts, or news reports, or whatever strikes your fancy. The source isn't nearly as important as the constant practice itself.

There is no wall. You have just finally started getting the real Japanese skills to deal with the real Japanese materials. Find something native speakers read and/or listen, there won't be much but you are probably getting to the place where you can find something you understand and are interested in, if you try hard. All the vocabulary and grammar points and remembering Kanji were precisely for this moment, the moment you start understanding the things outside the class. So take advantage of it, and start doing the real stuffs. If you feel like you've hit a wall, it just means you need to do something new. There is no wall.

Last edited by masaman (2010 July 29, 8:31 pm)

ocircle wrote:

I think the solution is to tackle harder material. So no more pokemon and naruto...

Naruto is "easy"? (i'm referring to the manga)

Last edited by SammyB (2010 July 29, 9:23 pm)

Language learning is like that. You feel your Japanese improved greatly at first, and then you kind of get disappointed by your slow progress. You don't think you've made any progress lately, then suddenly you feel like you just made a huge leap and got to the whole new level. And you feel like you got stuck again. That's how it works.

But of course you might actually hit a plateau if you've been thinking you haven't made any progress for a long time. In that case, you might want to rethink your goal, your study method, how much time you spend on Japanese each day, and so on.

It's not the total amount of time you've sent learning Japanese in your life that dictates how far you can get. It's how much effort you put at any given moment because language is "use it or lose it," i.e., your language skills always get rusty if you don't constantly hone them.

How fast can a car go? The longer you press the gas pedal, the faster the vehicle travels until it hits the limit the gas pedal dictates. To get faster, you should step on it deeper. You release your foot, and the car slows down.

The height of your own "plateau" is determined by the commitment/seriousness/effort/whatever you put while learning. As long as you keep learning Japanese, you will eventually hit the level you set by yourself. If you've been at the same level for, say, a couple years, most likely that's the limit you can get through your learning style.

If the level is not satisfactory, you might want to change either your learning style or goal. It doesn't seem like you'd make huge progress by the same on-and-off learning.

Some people put incredible amounts of effort because they're obsessed with the language. They may not even think they're putting effort at all. Some people work as hard or even harder because of the situations they're in such as jobs. They will eventually learn to speak Japanese amazingly well. And many people learn Japanese casually, and they get to the level they can reach because they didn't give up. Their foreign language skills may not be as good, but they achieved their goals.

Language learning is simple. Some methods may work really well for some people, but they'd reach the same level with other methods as long as they don't give up, though their progress might be slower.

Some people advocate "immersion" into Japanese. I think the philosophy of many of the immersion methods is that if you put your pedal to the metal, you'll eventually reach your max speed. And most likely it's the fastest way to reach any level as long as you don't neglect important basic grammar and such. Obviously, it's the only way to reach your highest possible level too.

I don't know what the OP's goal is or how fluent s/he wants to be. But I think JLPT 2 level is already pretty good. And if you want to improve your Japanese when you think you already hit the max level you can get by the current learning style, you just need to be more serious. I don't think your problem is complicated. It should be solved in a pretty straightforward way.

Because you know how you've been learning Japanese, you should be able to get a rough guesstimate about what level your plateau is. If your goal is higher than the level, all you need to do is work harder or lower the goal.

Also, I think it's important to always keep in mind that native speakers have been flooring it for their entire lives. Maybe they didn't take advantage of an efficient, systematic learning method. But they've been using it 24/7 (They dream in Japanese too!) and leaned tons of stuff at school (How long do you think you need to learn all those words and phrases from science jargon to expressions from classical Japanese?). So reaching even 1/100 of native fluency is already a remarkable achievement if you consider how much time and effort you have to put to achieve that.

I don't know who would read this long post, but what I thought when I read the OP was that pressing down the gas pedal halfway on and off only gets you so far when it comes to speed (= fluency) for obvious reasons.

Last edited by magamo (2010 July 30, 12:16 am)

Great advice magamo.

Hi all. Thanks a lot for all of your advice- it IS really helpful, and its good to hear other people feel like they are in a similar situation too. I think one probably is that I've come to treat Anki (SRS program for those who don't know) as some kind of 'magic' learning resource- that if I add enough cards and whizz through reviews eventually I'll automatically become good at Japanese period- which of course is ridiculous.

The second problem is that I guess I'm not used to working so hard for something! Seriously, learning Japanese has easily been the hardest thing I've done so far in my life, including studying for my university degree and postgrad degree that I'm finishing at the moment. It requires a different type of study from academic work that is incredibly time intensive I find, and, dare I say it, quite tedious at times.

Still, this recent setback, as well as all of your posts, has made me really think about the WAY I study, and about how I can adjust that. As life will interfere, I thought I'd try and do an hour of study a day, every day- which may not sound like much, but if I use it intelligently I think it will really help. More specifically, I have revision goals to get through- finishing the UNICOM 2kyu vocab book, as well as the Green KANZEN Master grammar book. I need to find a method by which to revise the listening section, but I'll also try and increase the amount of natural reading I do - news articles and so on, as I'm interesting in Japanese politics (and baseball). Finally I'll try and practice speaking as much as possible.

Anyway, thanks again for all of your replies- I reckon this setback can actually be a turning point for success if I treat it in the right way.

8+ hours a day is a lot more than the average learner, yes. Most people who take up a foreign language do it casually, with school, job, and other interests they find more important taking up the majority of their time, so that only a few hours a week tend to be spared on the language, if even that much. You've made great progress it sounds like though, so just keep it up

Even when I was studying language "hardcore" (or at least what I considered hardcore), I don't think I ever spent more than 90 minutes in a day on Japanese study, and I didn't do that 7 days a week.  It depends a bit on what you consider studying, but even if you include some other stuff that may be considered "studying", I *maybe* got as high as 3 hours on some days.  I don't believe I have ever studied Japanese 8 hours in a day, much less every day.

This thread beats the encouragement thread hands down. Let me join the others in approval of magamo's post. What an incredible read!

By the way, Yonosa, I envy you. You can't believe how much I wish I could study 8hrs/day. I've had the chance to study that long a few times thanks to an unusual amount of solitude, and the sheer amount of work I was able to accomplish was astonishing. Whether it's impressive or just plain sad, I confess that there is something remarkably satisfying about learning 250+ sentences, adding them to Anki, and then dreaming entirely in Japanese.

Last edited by vileru (2010 July 30, 1:27 pm)

I had a dream in Swahili before I ever had a dream in English. And I don't even know what Swahili sounds like.

The mind is a ... unique thing to say the least.

I think once you pass the interemediate stage in any field then improvement will come in a series of plateaus. I'm at that same 3kyu/2kyu level in my reading/writing ability and it's been a real struggle to push myself to learn anything new.

A part of it for me has been that at this level, the improvement is much, much slower. When you first start learning, every new word or grammar point gives you exponential gains the amount you can express. Now that its just a case of learning vocab and more rarely used grammar, the gains are incremental.

I discovered Heisig and RevTK at the beginning of this year and they sort of rekindled my love for Japanese study, as Kanji was this big elephant in the room that I had no way of taking on. Now that I've got to the end of RTK, I feel a lot better about improving and am a lot more motivated to hit the books and take my Japanese to the next level.

Then it sounds like you don't feel that you learn enough from Genki? Personally I'd increase that 'little bit here and there' and take solace in the fact that the more we delve into the language the less progress we feel that we make.

I've posted this before but http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqMXRpREFO8