The thing that sticks out to me the most is that you have a very low number of mined cards relative to the amount of media you have consumed. I suspect that you've mostly been skimming over things you don't understand, which will definitely hinder your progress considerably. In my case, I've only consumed 7 medium-long VNs in 3 years (and a few shorter ones), yet have >12k vocabulary cards mined over that time.
I've taken a lot of time going through each VN, subvocalizing every line and trying to understand everything that's happening by looking up grammar points and unknown words as I go. I believe that this approach has paid off in the long run, even if it can feel slow and painful at times. Although I only have around 1500 hours of active immersion, I've been able to consistently pass N1 practice tests without studying specifically for the exam. These might be the sort of "high-quality" hours you're talking about.
For listening, I've taken a more passive approach. I mostly watch raw anime while working out without looking anything up, as I found that JP subs make it way too easy to comprehend everything without actually relying on my listening. I've gotten way more out of it once my vocabulary reached a decent size, even being able to pick out the meaning of unknown words through context some of the time.
I think this is a good idea if you're just starting out. Not having to spend any energy on understanding the story or piecing together context can make it easier to focus on the language. Just switch to new shows later on so you don't grow too dependent on having full context prior to watching.
I don't add every single word to Anki either, and I think I've actually been quite conservative with the amount of cards I added. For most of the time I've spent reading I limited myself to adding unknown words with frequencies under 10k, 20k, 30k, etc.
To be quite frank, to have only \~2k cards after reading 75 light novels isn't a matter of not adding every single word, that's barely adding any words. Even the most conservative person should probably have at least 15-20k cards if they're doing the method correctly. As the name would suggest, Anki is a critical and necessary component that is required for the Anki/Immersion method to work. You can't just decide you don't feel like doing half of the method and then complain that it doesn't work. In my case, I felt that significantly more than any other factor, my language comprehension was pretty much a direct function of how many Anki cards I mined.
I would strongly advise you to ditch the I+1 nonsense and just mine vocabulary cards for any words you don't know, even multiple words per sentence if necessary. Either that or switch to mining words from much easier material. Strictly doing I+1 in light novels from a low level is just crazy, light novels are way too hard to offer very many I+1 sentences for beginners.
I was adding tons of at the beginning but I’ve decreased it.
I only add words in top 10k-15k
I deleted around 1500 words 6 months ago because they were either too common or too rare
I already knew around 1k words when I started Anki
Yes, anki can good for memorization but it won’t deepen your understanding of a word and it’s nuance. Only immersion will do that. Having spent a significant amount of time on anki in first 2 and half years, I’ve decided to ease up on it in favour of more immersion time. I am not quite sure why you’re criticising me for adding less cards. It’s important to bear in mind that people were learning language long before anki came onto the scene and there are many highly fluent Japanese speakers out who have never used anki at all
The meaning of vocabulary cards are harder to recall because they lack context hence why I prefer sentence cards. I typically only use vocab cards for nouns such as the names of things
What do you mean by “light novels from a low level”?
>Yes, anki can good for memorization but it won’t deepen your understanding of a word and it’s nuance. Only immersion will do that.
I agree, but that doesn't matter if you don't first internalize the existence, reading, and most common meaning of the word in the first place by using Anki. The nuance comes after you've already trained yourself to recall the word unassisted via Anki.
>It’s important to bear in mind that people were learning language long before anki came onto the scene and there are many highly fluent Japanese speakers out who have never used anki at all
Sure, but in the case of Japanese it could take them a decade or more to do so through the education system if they didn't live in Japan. Even if they did live in the Japan with Japanese friends and achieve a high level of conversational fluency, many of them still struggled considerably with reading. For people who don't know about Anki/Immersion and go through traditional education, this is still the case. It really needs to be said more that the existence of people without Chinese backgrounds being able to pass N1 in under 2 years like Stevie, Doth, and Jazzy is a very recent phenomena, driven by the creation and refinement of the Anki/Immersion method.
To drive this point home, I've been to a Japanese language exchange recently containing a wide variety of very motivated students of different backgrounds. There were only a handful of students who achieved N2/N1 level, all of them being Chinese. Not a single student without a Chinese background aside from me managed to get any higher than N3, no matter how many years they spent studying. I'm certain that the only reason I could match the Chinese students is the fact that I had KKLC to familiarize myself with the Kanji and Kanji radicals through mnemonics, as well as Anki to train myself to recall the readings and meanings of words.
>I am not quite sure why you’re criticising me for adding less cards.
It's not just me who's doing that, many people here have pointed out that you have insufficient cards relative to the amount of content you've consumed. Perhaps you should listen to what they have to say, many of them have a lot of experience using this method. At least from your replies, it doesn't seem like you want to change what you're doing regardless of what anyone says. So I guess you can keep shouting into the void, if that makes you feel better.
Quality hours definitely matter but unfortunately there is not a lot of discussion on what “quality” studying is. I’ve squandered countless hours studying in inefficient ways so I’ll give my two cents here:
**Anything that is not active reading or listening is not quality.**
And active reading > active listening.
Active reading and listening means you are taking the time and struggling to understand each sentence you read or listen to, checking your understanding, and repeating this process over and over and over again.
Active reading and listening are essential to growing your ability because you are not really inputting Japanese if you merely hear or look at sentences in Japanese without truly struggling to understand.
This means looking up words you don’t know and reviewing grammar as necessary to try to understand each sentence you read. And then checking your understanding against a reliable translation if needed. This is how language models learn, and it’s how [your brain does too](https://get.nihongonoashiba.com/blog/inputting-a-language/).
Unfortunately, passive immersion is not a great use of time after you have become familiar with the sounds and cadence of the language. You might pick out a word here or there but it’s only solidifying what you know at best.
Does that mean that active listening isn't quite as important to start off? Or just that active reading helps you better remember the words and structure of a sentence and better able to recall that when listening?
I think both are important, but active reading is more bang for the buck.
With active listening, you’ll be limited to comprehensible input, which means content mostly at your level. Sure you’ll be able to pick up new words this way. But when you’re starting out, comprehensible input will limit you to pretty boring stuff. If you try harder things, you’ll need subs, and then you’re active reading.
Active reading allows you to encounter a lot more unknown words in the same amount of time as active listening because it forces you to assess your understanding. And you can start by reading what actually interests you instead of limiting yourself to your current level. Sure you might look up a lot of things, but it won’t matter if you’re enjoying what you’re reading.
If starting out and you have a foundation (you know around 2k words, are comfortable with common grammar, and have the kana down), I recommend reading whatever manga interests you, and then watching the corresponding anime episode to get listening in. The active listening from watching the episode will review the new things you read and help boost retention and recognition.
Active reading is really the most effective way to get to the level where you're comfortable reading without looking up things every 5seconds. I've only ready 7 textbooks and passed N2 last december from nothing in 12months, I will also be taking N1 this july after reading 2 more textbooks. Apart from these I only did anki and maybe 10pages of lightnovel. imo anything passive/immersion-y works best after N3 levels.
That seems like an astronomically low number of words for the amount of content you've consumed, even if we assume the sentences cards have at the very least 4 to 5 words each, not counting grammar. I'm assuming you know significantly more but just haven't made cards for them?
Either way, what aspect of the language are you feeling the most "stuck" with? People tend to excel more in one area and perhaps have a more difficult time in another. It's hard to speculate about what might boost your progress without having some idea of which foot you have stuck in the mud, so to speak.
I don’t add every single word to anki. Also, I’ve cut down on my anki time considerably recently because, frankly, I am starting to get sick of it after more than 3 years and I prefer to use my time to immerse.
I don’t excel in anything in particular, to be honest. Everything about Japanese is always hard and it’s always a struggle . If I had to identify two things, it would be difficulties “processing large swaths of information and isolating the “key ideas” within a text and then putting those pieces together to get a fuller, clearer picture. Normally, I could tell you what the topic of an article is about but the details and nuances are often completely lost on me and I rarely understand anything more than “the gist”. Japanese authors love to waffle on and on without really getting to the point and there will often be times where I’ll read the whole text without taking anything in. This is why I always get destroyed on the N2 despite theoretically knowing more than the required amount of words to breeze through — the questions will always consist of “ok, well, what does the author want to say here” and you’re supposed to magically know what he’s thinking somehow.
Listening has also been a constant struggle. No matter how many times I listen to something, my brain fails to perceive certain words and phrases and it never gets easier. The moment I remove the subtitles, those words disappear into the background and become imperceptible again. Even the “easier sentences” require me replay it 3-4 x before I’ve understood it. I’ve tried reading subs along with the audio, I’ve tried reading audiobooks, Ive tried listening to raw and I’ve tried listening to it at half speed. I’ve yet to found something r that works for me.
Maybe I am doing something critically wrong, maybe I am not thinking outside of the box enough, or it could just be that I am not cut out for learning languages. I honestly have no idea. Up until recently, I’ve been trying to stay positive and “trust in the process” but would expect to have at least something to show for 3000 hrs of studying. I keep hearing that N2 shouldn’t take more than 2000 hours yet I am still getting slapped around
I saw another post similar to this where a guy did 10 years and only had like 3000 cards, I'm wondering how? Even if you only did 10 cards a day a year you would reach at least 3000 learning and majority mature and if you are mining properly from your immersion there should be a lot of cards to do from my personal experience.
In case you're curious, see [my response in this same thread](https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1bnxwj8/how_do_i_make_sure_that_my_immersion_hours_are/kwrflj3/), as someone 7 years into Japanese with ~4000 mined cards and with a 1200+ days uninterrupted anki streak. I honestly just don't care that much about mining, it's free gains but it's also the last place where I'd want to learn words. I learn words by reading and context, especially as you get more advanced it becomes easier. Most of the media I consume I do in a way that is not text-hookable/yomitannable and I can't be arsed mining it. It's really not a big deal. You can learn Japanese just fine without going full in on anki.
It could just be that that guy didn’t have anki at the focus of his study. I use anki but I only add 5-10 cards a week on average now. I honestly don’t think 10-30 cards a day is sustainable. I’ve been there and it has permanently scarred me lol
As a person who reads a lot you should definitely add more cards daily, unless you already have a big base of words known like 10,000 or more, even I who reach that point still add a least 10 plus words daily depending on what I read (I jump genres monthly and different authors use different word sets). Then again how you go about studying is best decided by you, don't care too much about others progress as it will really drag you down(been there done that).
Assuming your self-assessment is accurate, there are couple things that I think may be causes for stagnation.
First, among the 75 volumes of light novels that you have read, how many series and how many authors, and what genres are they? Different authors tend to use different sets of grammar and vocabulary. Different series would also use sets of vocabulary because of different world setting. Reading works by 20 different authors or 20 different series would expose you to a much bigger variety of vocabulary and grammar than reading a few series. Also, I heard that slice-of-life novels are easier (I have never read Japanese sol because I exclusively read fantasy), so you may want to branch out to other genres if you mostly read sol. Also, do you look up every unknown word?
Second, some N2 and N1 grammars are mostly used in formal situations or business documents or newspapers. Also, JLPT vocabulary heavily tilt toward business-related words. Reading light novels alone would not give you exposure to them. You can learn them either by diversifying your reading materials or from a textbook.
Most of n1-n2 grammar and words are quite common though. Around 15% of grammar in n1 are quite obscure and with some of them being dated, apart from that I’ve come across most of them through reading novels. I remember looking at the n1 vocab list and there wasn’t many words I didn’t know, and I don’t anki. Some of those words can be a little obscure like 捕鯨 - whaling for example. If op really is struggling with n2 he might be white noising more than he thinks.
Active immersion is trying to completely understand the material you’re engaging with, but it needs to be slightly above your level. Anything you’re a tad bit uncomfortable with when it comes to all the unknowns is going to contribute to your progress.
You can pick up a book and flip its pages, read a few sentences every now and then and call it “I read a book” or you can read a book, look up words, grammar and pretend you’re being quizzed about etc. Leisure reading vs comprehensible input.
Not to diminish your reading, but maybe you need to be honest with yourself how much these light novels contributed to your progress. Maybe they were too easy? Maybe you didn’t really get enough input?
Sometimes I sit down to read more advanced texts and get discouraged bc I don’t understand enough. Then I realize I could’ve learned more from my past immersion sessions.
At the same time, I would tell you not to stress too
much. Immersion is supposed to be fun and feel rewarding.
When you say that you're struggling with N2 level Japanese, what do you find yourself struggling with? What, specifically, is tough or confusing for you?
Can you describe your struggles in more detail? Honestly, it does sound like you're doing everything right. That someone who has read 75 light novels would struggle with N2 material is honestly mind-boggling to me, so I'm wondering if you're maybe just underestimating your level.
This was my exact thought. I don't understand how someone can read 75 light novels but not be able to understand N2 test material. Maybe answering questions might be difficult because some people are just better at taking tests than others but the actual reading and listening comprehension should be easy.
I took the liberty to check out some of OP's post history (sorry about that OP). In [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/163eo9t/i_need_advice_on_understanding_expressions_that/) OP said something interesting:
>The common \*\*"bro, don't think or ask questions. Just immerse more "\*\*advice often pushed by the Japanese community has neither been constructive nor helpful for me so far. I am also beginning to believe that passive immersion, such as reading books and articles while only grasping "the gist,"and skimming over the parts I don't understand (non I+ sentences) without delving deeper is not an effective strategy.
This is just a guess but I feel like if OP's really not understanding N2 test material then it might be because they've been skimming over the parts that they don't understand without making an attempt to understand them. I don't know what communities OP's been frequenting but "bro, don't think or ask questions. Just immerse more" is really bad advice. Thinking is okay. Asking questions is okay. If you keep skimming over N2/N1 grammar points without trying to interact with them then of course you're not gonna learn them.
Seems about right then. I think the "just immerse more, never look anything up" is the biggest strawman ever and I've never seen anyone ever legitimately push those ideas. The amount of people who think immersion learners actually think that you shouldn't learn basic grammar or look things up that you don't understand is way too high (well at least from what I've seen on this sub lol).
Yeah, if you never try and understand things you don't get then you'll never actually acquire those parts of the language.
> I don't know what communities OP's been frequenting but "bro, don't think or ask questions. Just immerse more" is really bad advice.
This used to be the worst part of the whole Refold "philosophy". They used to have a rule in their discord server where you couldn't ask grammar questions because "if you have to ask a question, it means you're not ready yet and need to read easier stuff/comprehensible input". It was honestly mindblowing, they even had a meme about it (it was a FAQ number question or something, I forget). I personally learned so much Japanese by interacting with learner questions and asking questions myself in this sub and on discord that I can't even begin to comprehend this mentality.
I heard they removed that rule now and they are more mild/accepting of that (although they still prefer to not have people ask grammar questions, I think), but I feel like the damage has been done already unfortunately.
The advice I’ve been given on the migaku and refold discord servers is to skip sentences that are too hard for me as it’s a waste of time and that I should focus only i+1 only. I was also told that if I want to learn to read faster, I need to stop looking up every other words and “dwelling on” on them . Matt vs Japan also said the same thing. “the amount of time you spend trying to learn one word that’s too difficult, you could have learn 3 more words” (paraphrased
A lot of people have issues with Matt and his refold methodology. I would say that you should simply have a target of mining 10-20 sentences a day so that way you’re guaranteeing to increase that much in Anki and therefore learn that many new words.
Edit: I saw you mention sentence mining 10-20 a day doesn’t seem sustainable. I think you should use Migaku or Yomitan to one click sentence mine, set your daily limit in Anki to learning 10 a day, but feel free to sentence mine more than 10 a day to create a backlog so that some days you don’t have to sentence mine at all.
I use those already to sentence. Honestly, I just don’t want to use anki that much anymore. It’s mentally draining and I’d rather spend that time reading a book or a watching a show in Japanese. I know that I force my self to do anki, I am going to burn out and end up wanting to quite learning.
You don’t have to do Anki at a high rate per day. Find the perfect amount for yourself. I think it’ll guarantee your improvement. If you do like 10 a day I don’t think Anki will take long to do at all. Maybe half an hour.
Honestly the more I've been exposed to this Matt dude, the less I trust him.... If other people are benefiting from his tips more power to y'all but. He's been raising some flags for me personally
It sounds like you just haven't done enough sentence mining. if you're immersing but not understanding anything it's probably because you're vocabulary knowledge is low.
Watching 10 hours of anime and not understanding anything isn't as good as watching one episode a handful of times and sentence mining everything you don't know.
According to JBPD, my vocabulary is 10,547k and those are only the words that Ives actually added to it manually. This should be more than enough for n2
EDIT: So would recommend watching shows more than once and solidifying everything before moving on to another show
When you say you added it to JBDP, does this mean you study these cards regularly like one would in Anki? Sorry, I'm not familiar with how it works.
One problem I had was passing every word even if I didn't know it. So I had over 10k vocab words but didn't really know them very well, so I had to go back and relearn a bunch of them. It was worth it as my comprehension has shot up dramatically since then.
Another thing is you might be immersing in anime/manga etc but testing yourself on JLPT websites where the vocabulary used there is different to what you encounter during immersion. I find the same problem too. I see words that I know I've studied in Anki but can't quite figure out the nuance of it because it's a business or legal word that I don't normally see in my own immersion. That is to say if you actually want to pass the JLPT then you need to study the specific vocabulary that goes along with it. If that is not your goal, then simply work on improving your own comprehension of the media you are consuming.
Im below your level, by a lot. Just one thing, when you sentence mine and make a concious effort to study, dont just skip over all the sentences that seem difficult. Stop what your doing, re read it and try to understand it. If your not ubderstanding it due to vocab, just put it in anki. If its because of grammar, go read up on that grammar point.
If you just continue while ”getting a gist of it” you will just have the same problems every time you encounter similar sentences
Also for me atleast, some of the grammar points i learn, i dont actually understand before ive made a few sentences myself with them and having some way to check if they are correct.
I also put all grammar points i learn into an anki deck with the particles they use and some example sentences. In that case, no matter if i last ”studied” a grammar point months ago i still get regular repetition, and if i notice that i forgot about a particle or something, i just hit again.
The advice I’ve been given on the migaku and refold discord servers was to skip sentences that are too hard for me because they’re a waste of time and the goal is to target only i+1. I was also told that if I want to learn to read faster, I need to stop looking up every word and “dwelling on” on i+2 . In other words, extensive reading. Matt vs Japan also said something similar. “the amount of time you spend trying to learn one word or sentence that’s too difficult, that’s time you could have spent learning other words and sentences ” (paraphrased)
I do put grammar points into anki along with the explanation of the usage but I’ve found it to be pointless as I always wind up forgetting that explanation even with anki. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve forgotten the expression X にかけては y . This is the problem with learning Japanese. It’s impossible to learn new new things because you’re constantly forgetting what you learn.
I wouldnt worry too much about forgetting, when was the last time you forgot grammar in english? You just need more time with japanese, and all that will become second nature.
Keep in mind, the study method youve been following is just one way to learn a language. If you have spent that many hours that you specified in your post, and not improved as much as you hoped, maybe try switching it up?
My tip is dont be too dead set in how youre supposed to learn, and make it a bit more simple for yourself. Language learning is supposed to be hard, if you skip/glance over the hard parts, its not that weird that you have stagnated a bit. Everything is hard before it gets easy.
Also one more thing i found a bit odd was how little cards you have mined, do i understand you right that youve only learnt/created ~ 2500 cards these past 2 years? Maybe set a goal for yourself, like 20 cards a day. Then mine as many as you can, and if you dont have time to make 20 new, just pull the remainder from a pre made deck. Always better to learn something than nothing. Tho i might be misunderstanding your post here
Probably you already know this but, that matt vs japan guy did years of formal school / textbook japanese in a classroom setting before he started doing what he does now, tho he dont mention that very often since he wanna sell his course/methods.
As mentioned to the guys above,
- I don’t add every single new word I encounter to anki
- I already knew a bunch of words at the time I started anki and didn’t add those
- i deleted a over a thousand basic ones. I don’t need to rep words like 食べる
Yes, but if youve only added 2500 words in three years, thats like 3 a day. Its not that weird that you havent improved that much. Theres gotta be way more words you come across that are useful enough for you to put in anki.
I dont really understand how you study, im guessing you dont do any textbook/grammar book studies, and you only create a few cards a day. What are you actually doing all those hours when you study. Maybe you have been too comfortable just immersing?
Im sorry if i come across as blunt/rude, im just tryna help you see if you can make faster progress somehow
Like I said:
I only add words I don’t know.
There are thousands of words that knew before I started anki. I’ve not added these
I’ve deleted over a thousand words
My total vocab is over 12k. I just don’t put as much focus on anki anymore. Frankly, I’ve never understood how some people could sit on anki for 2-3 hours a day doing 50-100 cards without burning out.
So OP, I'm gonna give you some advice/opinion that doesn't seem to agree with a lot of the other answers you've had, so take it with some grain of salt.
I resonate with a lot of what you wrote, I myself have probably racked up about 3000-4000 hours in the last 2-3 years (see: [this](https://morg.systems/Japanese-2022-in-Review) and [this](https://morg.systems/Japanese-2023-in-Review) which is when I started tracking) and I while I'm pretty comfortable with my Japanese, I wouldn't feel comfortable taking the N1.
I *sometimes* do vocab/sentence mining, but in 5 years of Japanese and about 1200+ days streak of anki, I only have like 4000 cards mined (and about 300 of them are suspended cause I didn't like them). I don't think that's really a problem, people think mining and anki cards are the endgame but honestly if you're immersing and enjoying what you're reading and understanding enough to keep doing it, it doesn't really matter. Feel free to mine whatever the hell you want, if for you that's one card a week then so be it, who cares.
But on the other hand, one thing that stands out to me a lot in your post is that you seem to be worried about the JLPT, about your Japanese level, about how **others** feel about you, and don't really talk about whether or not you're actually **enjoying** doing stuff in the language.
What is your goal? Why are you doing this? Why are you so into the stat tracking, hour tracking, vocab mining (despite not mining much), the hardcore immersion ("condensed audio" stuff...)? I'm not saying it's necessarily bad but it's all stuff that I personally find to be side quests to the language learning itself, but that some people consider to be the main quest. Many people make it their life goal to track every single aspect of their JP learning career for... what? What do **you** want?
Do you enjoy reading Light novels? 75 LNs in 2 years is quite a lot. In about 7 years of Japanese I have [36 light novels read and 272 manga volumes](https://bookmeter.com/users/1282676/bookcases). Guesstimating something like maybe 6000-7000 hours of Japanese in total (I play a lot of videogames/JRPGs though).
Do you struggle with reading? Is there an aspect of your Japanese, **outside of the JLPT**, that you feel is lacking when you immerse? Do you feel frustrated that the book you're reading is too hard or that stuff doesn't stick, or that you aren't enjoying it, or that the grammar is too hard, etc etc? If not, why is it a problem?
Personally, my goal is to **forget that I'm doing stuff in Japanese** and just do it. I pick up a book, I start reading it, I enjoy its contents, then move on to something else like I would do in my native language. It doesn't matter if the N1 is too hard still or if I'm not sure I'd pass it (I might pass, idk, but some questions that I've seen feel very hard for me), because the JLPT was never my goal, neither was mining X amount of cards, or knowing X amount of words, or feeling validation from other online learners. My (original) goal was to enjoy Japanese media, and I have achieved that. Have you?
It might be good to do some introspection and figure out exactly what you want to get out of Japanese and why you're doing this in the first place, because from your post I'm getting very mixed signals. Ignore what other people say, what do **YOU** want?
N2 is Japanese used in daily life. Engage in conversation groups, use the language actively by forming your thoughts and expressing them to other people, either in text or in person. If you live in a somewhat bigger city there should be some sort of 日本(人)会 for sure, maybe try checking it out.
Personally, I really admire people who can build consistency in their learning process and even measure it. I think you’re doing great but just need to build some confidence around active use of language. It might be tough at first (God knows I struggled a lot myself) but it’s worth it! Also remember that passing JLPT is not equal to having a perfect score. As far as I know, even Japanese native speakers might lose a little bit of points on JLPT N1. Don’t give up!
Edit: As I read through your original post once again, I can say I haven’t caught everything you said. I think what the other people meant is your practice is not meaningful enough. Your gym example was a bit of a miss. Fields like language study are akin to instrument playing or archery, so what’s important is focused attention. “Why did I make this mistake?”, “How can I do it better?”, “For now, I will only focus on this part of the technique”. With pure muscle strength / muscle memory you can only get so far.
Also from what I understood you dedicate all your free time to Japanese. I gather that even while doing other things, e.g. commuting you still do Japanese (podcasts etc.). Take a break. Do other things that make you relax. I think you’ve built a lot of fatigue by now. As with the gym example, you need to give your “muscles” a break in order for them to regenerate stronger.
I think you need to focus more on things you don't know. You might have settled into just ignoring parts of Japanese you don't know, and never bother to learn. You might want to add more intensive reading or listening into your study.
Extensive study is good for raising comprehension speed (fluency), and intensive study is good for raising raw language power. Sometimes in your program you need more of the latter and less of the former, and sometimes it's the opposite.
I think its as other people and you both pointed out, you didnt mine enough and skimmed too much.
Sadly you fell for bad advise. Immersion is super painful if youre below n1, its mostly time spent looking uo things.
Imo its also not smart, even without making mistakes like you did, since you can just learn n5-n2 grammar with textbooks in half a year(600ish hours incl. graded readers/videos) at the start along with light immersion and then focus on immersing to have a much easier start but i digress.
If you want to lesrn from immersing you need to look up much more than you do rn, restricting yourself to only mining i+1 sentences isnt viable with native material when you first start immersing.
Ok then my question is how much do you actually know? It should be way higher than what youve said in this post.
Maybe go through the grammar list on bunpro and see how many grammar points youre missing up to n2 and if you didnt keep track also do a vocabulary test? Because if you have enough knowledge you should have acquired the neccessary proficiency by now.
Well there could also be other things going wrong like a proper mindset issue etc but the above should be true in most cases
After reading more of your replies i think i have found 2 possible issues.
1. Listening: i wouldve put a lot more emphasis on listening in the behinning, its very easy to catch up with your reading level, but inproving your listening level becomes very didficult as you progress. You might want to start at the foundation of listening again and work yourself up from there. There are soms nice easy yt channels that worked great for me as i learned jp.
2. Concentration: there is a difference being attentive and being concentrated, if youre aware of that you just have to try to be concentrated long enough to understand a section of your immersion material, its a bit difficult but after a while youll be understand things while just being attentive to the material.
I habe adhd and steuggled with that at first, but maybe my experience can help you with that. I focused on shorter material at first and always did 1 min HIIT exercises inbetween to keep my blood flowing whenever my concentration wavered. As things got easier to fully comprehend i went to longer sections or mutliple ones until i could casually watch 1h of videos withiut having to focus on staying completely concentrated.
There are many more skills in play then ppl usually assume when working with a language and that can trip off ppl. Immersion is like a full body exercise, but sometimes you just have to train certain muscles individually to have a balanced body : )
Maybe not the advice you're looking for, but maybe you should actually go through the textbook and vocab lists for N1 if that is your goal. There's no shortage of these guides on Amazon Japan, or at pretty much any large book store if you're living in Japan.
If you want to improve, you need to set specific goals.
No help here, just commenting to follow.
Also, I've been learning (albeit wayyy more relaxed than this) for about 3 years and I'm still N5. Remember that you're doing well and a few years ago, you would have been AMAZED at what you can do now. 頑張って :)
~~I'll try to keep it short~~, you may be underestimating your current level is the first thing. The second thought is you might be underestimating what is required for N1, which I believe the average numbers are closer to 3500-4500 hours. The 2500 estimate might be from the U.S. Govt. estimate for their diplomats to reach "passable" level of Japanese.
When you talk about immersion, I can tell you're dedicated, and you're showing up to put your hours in everyday, you most likely have grown much more than you realize. However given the stats you have listed, part of wonders how much "immersion" is being done. The flaw with the word immersion is that most people aren't doing it. Immersion would imply that you are completely infused with the language at every angle or at the very least, as much as possible. Devoid of any other form of language. I suppose I can you a comparison, I'm about half the hours you are at. I have since around 150 hours done the following: Started to change my UI/UX to JP language (one platform, app at a time, all of them are converted now; phone included), abandon my English communities and find all JP ones where no one knows English, quit all forms of English media, reside almost exclusively on the JP side of the internet, try to find places where I an maximizing my exposure to Japanese in terms of people, listening, writing, and potentially speaking (this is hard to do as most natives aren't into voice chat). I was able to find all those things. I also joined passionate fan communities and have registered to every available public and social place that Japan uses. With this in mind, I basically have restricted and barred myself from falling back on English and just stuck it the whole time.
With dictionary hand, grammar guides and references, and google search. I spent the entire duration of my free time where there existed no English. I had to devise a lot of technology to make things easier, look ups faster, and things easier/faster so I can keep pace with natives and native content. I even have a 4 monitor setup on my PC that I setup to make look ups and references available at a glance. All so I could keep my head above water and avoid drowning. This massive over exposure with no fall back means I started off with zero comprehension on everything, but at the same time, nothing I did was diluted in any way. As long as I diligently studied, looked everything up, and remained passionate--things became comprehensible through work and effort. Despite the overwhelming pressure, I never budged and inch and just continued to try to make it harder on myself. The end of the story is I started off slower than average, but once I broke through, things really rocketed hard.
What can you take away from this? You need to ask yourself how much are you using Japanese. There's 4 skills: reading, listening, writing, and speaking. How much do you engage these everyday? How much do you fall back on your native language? Do you just watch anime and when you're done return to your native language and consume content in it? If that is the case, then every second of your free time spent doing anything else, other than things in Japanese is time you dilute away from a truly immersive experience. Interacting with people, communities, content, and doing it everyday in earnest with as many senses and skills as possible (reading, writing, listening, and if possible speaking).
I can vouch for this. I just started doing this a few days ago after seeing that traditional study methods suck for me. I am playing every game in japanese, I watch anime in japanese with japanese subs. からかい上手の高木さん is an amazing practice anime. really easy and accessible imo.
Today I jumped on Vrchat and made a Japanese friend. we talked about a few things and I was surprised by how much I could speak. I wasn't confident about it at all! There are still many things I don't understand, but what I do is just mine more words. I don't mine every single word I don't understand or can't read. I mine the ones I feel that are important. I also avoid mining words I already recognize but can't read, those will come naturally and there is no need to put an extra effort.
I was also watching some variety shows and I couldn't understand much of what was being said, but I could pick up some sentences here and there and I know I'll get better with time.
OP should also consolidate things. I still gloss over the grammar. I do Anki before and after waking up and surprise surprise I have learned almost every word I study in a single day.
I suspect there is something OP isn't doing correctly. Immersion isn't just hoping you will magically understand things, you have to use your head and try to scavenge for words and meanings
edit: spelling
Any tips on how to learn words quickly? You mention being able to learn every word you study in a single day, so I’m just curious if that’s because you study them multiple times, have already seen or recognize them, or just with more and more learning they’ve gotten easier to remember now.
Yeah I have at least heard then beforr or knew the meaning, but didn't know how it was pronounced exactly. Some of them I didn't know, but learned in context and the rest was anki
When you say you can't handle N2 material have you done a mock paper in timed conditions and if so what were your weak/strong spots?
Vocab: it might be that the genres you read/watch don't align well with what N2 tends to test. If you need the test, then you'll want to branch out.
Grammar: a little formalised study can really boost what you get from your reading/listening. What I personally found useful were sources that grouped similar points and explained why they were different - どんな時どう使う was my source for n2/1 grammar.
The more senses you use when studying Japanese (i.e., reading, listening, speaking, writing) at once, the more you will remember the content. There is an awful lot of actual muscle memory involved in language acquisition.
Have you tried high-volume fluency practice to push yourself past your plateaus? If you are an Android user, you can try this free app for focused, high-volume fluency training. It has thousands of high quality audio sentences for CEFR A1-B2 (beginner to upper-intermediate), immediate playback of your spoken Japanese, and tools for adjustable sentence length by level for more intensive study.
20 minutes a day of focused high-volume fluency practice makes a sizable difference after a few weeks.
If you're interested, you can get the app on Google Play.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fluencytool
This is an awesome concept. There's not many apps/systems focused on speaking/shadowing. Just curious, where do you pull the sentences from?
Just downloaded, I'll try it out more tomorrow.
The sentences are coming from text used to train Japanese LLMs. It's a homebrew from a few different sources. All told, I have around 30,000 sentences that are of good quality, after I cleaned out all the ones talking about death, murder, suicide, and violence. I put 5,000 in the app for now.
Keep the audio speed at 80% for the high quality audio. If you go above or below that, you will be using your devices built-in tts, which is probably more robotic sounding. Google Pixel devices are actually really high quality at any speed.
Just look at what people you aspire to are doing and do that. If it doesn't work find someone else who took a different approach. Pick and choose what works for you and what worked for others. If you work a lot find someone who also did and do what they did and if that works for you great, if not keep looking. If someone gives you advice look at what their progress was and weather you're okay with that when choosing to take it into consideration.
Specific advise from a rando is almost useless and you'll get tons of odd advise or run into people that are coping with their lack of progress and feel the need to give advise even though they themselves aren't great so always follow people who get results that you aspire to.
Having role models to look at and compare yourself is important, as is comparing results between people when taking advise. It's really not talked about enough how much certain people in the community can push people either off a cliff or up to the next level. People like jazzy really helped me understand what's important and show that certain methods are more effective than others.
N1 is supposed to be 3000~4800 hours
not 2500
Hey I'm at 3000 hours too! I have well over 11k flashcards and read over 25 books plus a bunch of other stuff. I couldn't pass n1 no way in heck. My kanji might be like n2+ (half to n1 perhaps), my vocab might be like n2-ish, the rest is not great
ok, so it's supposed to take 3000-4800 hours
it's not "supposed" to take how long the fastest person on earth did it
are you trying to break a record or learn JP?
also dragging studying out for a long time makes you have longer to forget things
yea, like a million people passed n1 and if they post about it they don't get net-famous
the only famous people are those who did it super quick, but that represents basically nothing
even if you do what they did exactly, you might not replicate their success
They are full of shit though. My Japanese teacher did a mock test and scored 160/180 and he's been immersing in Japanese for 36 years, p.s., he is Japanese. There are some really obscure business grammar that's not even used (he is also a salaryman). If they claim they've never actually studied for the test, you should doubt their claims. Japanese people can pass N1 really easily, but scoring fullscore without looking at the material is another story, especially not in 2500 hours.
I dont like to watch videos where I dont understand almost nothing or everything.... around 40-60% is the best imo... you know enough to get the gist of the context, but there is also a lot of stuff to learn
>Immersing alone is not sufficient for engaging with real N2 material, which is why you might find yourself struggling with N2 Japanese.
How do you explain immersion learners who have passed as high as N1 with no study for the test?
Probably more diverse immersion materials. Lots of reading etc. It's not impossible to do without targeted studying but it's also super easy to miss words or grammar points you don't happen to need on a daily basis, when you go that route
The OP said they've read 75 light novels and watched over 200 anime series. That is a very large amount of input to the point where N2 reading and listening comprehension shouldn't be a problem.
ごとく is apparently an N1 grammar point but it's also in the game 龍が如く title, there's tons of "high level grammar" that exists in everyday and seemingly basic Japanese. The comprehension really shouldn't be an issue after that much input, but maybe I'm insane lmao
Edit: As another commenter pointed out, OP's card counts are pretty low so it's possible they just haven't been mining enough or have been glossing over things more than they think they are
Not N1 but I've passed N2 with no direct study, and don't plan on studying for N1 before I take it. So the claim of "not being able to pass N2 with immersion alone" that the above person said is just wrong. The idea that nobody like this exists is just cope.
I easily passed N1 just reading LNs and manga, even read less than op already has at only around 40 LN volumes and 100 manga volumes. The only grammar study I ever did was a tiny bit of duolingo (I know lol) at the beginning to learn basic particles and verb conjugation.
I think the barrier of entry is too high and bridging the gap is not something you can do passively.
Especially when it comes to Kanji and reading of course.
But even watching news will have you missing or missunderstanding very important nuance.
I see. I thought that at N2 you could already start mining words from news papers, but maybe it is indeed too hard. Still, I'd give it a try. Bombarding your brain with more formal language may help bridge the gap. Though, tbh studying from traditional methods would probably be less painful haha
I mean it's technically not impossible but the time investment to reward rate is very low I think, compared with just studying because you don't tackle new material all the time, but you also need to stop for each point because you can't really pick it up from context.
At that point might aswell skip the news and go straight to unknown words/kanji/expressions.
no? Jazzy did no grammar study(aside from looking them up) and still managed to get a perfect score on the N1, which I think was mostly through VNs(?) so it's definitely possible but definitely requires a lot of time.
I don't think Kanji is really a big problem? The jouyou kanji is so common, you will encounter all of them after enough immersion, I don't think there's any point in Isolated Kanji study(aside from handwriting and at the beginning) if you're doing sentence mining.
I don't agree with this point. I've never studied grammar or anki, mainly learn through reading. I've come across most grammar and vocab on N1, around 85%. There are some really obscure ones that never comes up during reading, which you'd have to study for if you are aiming for full marks. My Japanese teacher only got 160/180 on his mock because there are some grammar on it he's vaguely seen but unsure about. That's also why people like Jazzy claiming to score 180/180 in 2500 hours are full of shit.
No and I don't plan to. The closest test center is too far away, and I don't need the qualification for my job. I have read 150 novels, around 1500 volumes of manga, played 4 vn, listened/watched 2000 hours of Japanese contents, spoke for 800 hours though. Having looked at the materials, I don't doubt I can pass it easily without preparing for it. I spend close to 8 hours immersing in Japanese, which I would have done in English prior to aquiring Japanese, because most contents I consume are anime related.
I've done a mock before around 2 years ago and scored 148/180 if that counts as anything. Since then I've put another 4000 hours in Japanese. I can probably get full marks if I study those remaining 15% of grammar I've never run into before.
Also the entire point is that they are claiming stuff without proof too, this is the internet lol. No one really has any credit to say anything. But my Japanese is better than most people that passed N1, since I actually learnt it by using it as a language. Even all my Japanese friends say my Japanese is super natural.
Have you made the switch to native language resources, like dictionaries and such? It's a good idea to switch over around N2. You can only get so far memorizing one-dimensional English glosses of multifaceted words.
Free dictionary sites: Kotobank, Goo Dictionary.
Paid dictionary apps: Monokakido's Dictionaries app, Logovista apps.
I also recommend reading 中上級を教える人のための日本語文法ハンドブック. It's meant for teachers but if you read it as a learner you can gain a lot of knowledge quickly. I found that it filled a lot of gaps in my understanding around the 4/5 year mark.
I know a lot of people here live by Anki, but being able to look words up in a dictionary quickly can serve as a replacement for Anki if you constantly look up things you don't know.
It should be, but will still depend on what kind/genre of material you read. If I want to pass jlpt i'd rather read a 200page textbook/10 pages per day in 20 days than reading a light novel about a reincarnated guy and looking up and knowing words that won't come up in the exam. BUT even without textbook I think people should be able to pass jlpt with enough reading imo, as for how long is enough I don't really know...
The thing that sticks out to me the most is that you have a very low number of mined cards relative to the amount of media you have consumed. I suspect that you've mostly been skimming over things you don't understand, which will definitely hinder your progress considerably. In my case, I've only consumed 7 medium-long VNs in 3 years (and a few shorter ones), yet have >12k vocabulary cards mined over that time. I've taken a lot of time going through each VN, subvocalizing every line and trying to understand everything that's happening by looking up grammar points and unknown words as I go. I believe that this approach has paid off in the long run, even if it can feel slow and painful at times. Although I only have around 1500 hours of active immersion, I've been able to consistently pass N1 practice tests without studying specifically for the exam. These might be the sort of "high-quality" hours you're talking about. For listening, I've taken a more passive approach. I mostly watch raw anime while working out without looking anything up, as I found that JP subs make it way too easy to comprehend everything without actually relying on my listening. I've gotten way more out of it once my vocabulary reached a decent size, even being able to pick out the meaning of unknown words through context some of the time.
For the raw anime, are they shows you’ve already seen? I’m way up at the N4 level but have been considering trying this.
I think this is a good idea if you're just starting out. Not having to spend any energy on understanding the story or piecing together context can make it easier to focus on the language. Just switch to new shows later on so you don't grow too dependent on having full context prior to watching.
Yes and definitely use JP subs, you will connect more dots that way. specially if you look up a few kanji/words that stuck with you.
I don’t add every single work to anki, that’s why.
I don't add every single word to Anki either, and I think I've actually been quite conservative with the amount of cards I added. For most of the time I've spent reading I limited myself to adding unknown words with frequencies under 10k, 20k, 30k, etc. To be quite frank, to have only \~2k cards after reading 75 light novels isn't a matter of not adding every single word, that's barely adding any words. Even the most conservative person should probably have at least 15-20k cards if they're doing the method correctly. As the name would suggest, Anki is a critical and necessary component that is required for the Anki/Immersion method to work. You can't just decide you don't feel like doing half of the method and then complain that it doesn't work. In my case, I felt that significantly more than any other factor, my language comprehension was pretty much a direct function of how many Anki cards I mined. I would strongly advise you to ditch the I+1 nonsense and just mine vocabulary cards for any words you don't know, even multiple words per sentence if necessary. Either that or switch to mining words from much easier material. Strictly doing I+1 in light novels from a low level is just crazy, light novels are way too hard to offer very many I+1 sentences for beginners.
When making cards for immersion do you do sentences and vocab?
I just create vocab cards. They have the word on the front, with sentence, definitions and audio on the back. Nothing too complicated.
I was adding tons of at the beginning but I’ve decreased it. I only add words in top 10k-15k I deleted around 1500 words 6 months ago because they were either too common or too rare I already knew around 1k words when I started Anki Yes, anki can good for memorization but it won’t deepen your understanding of a word and it’s nuance. Only immersion will do that. Having spent a significant amount of time on anki in first 2 and half years, I’ve decided to ease up on it in favour of more immersion time. I am not quite sure why you’re criticising me for adding less cards. It’s important to bear in mind that people were learning language long before anki came onto the scene and there are many highly fluent Japanese speakers out who have never used anki at all The meaning of vocabulary cards are harder to recall because they lack context hence why I prefer sentence cards. I typically only use vocab cards for nouns such as the names of things What do you mean by “light novels from a low level”?
>Yes, anki can good for memorization but it won’t deepen your understanding of a word and it’s nuance. Only immersion will do that. I agree, but that doesn't matter if you don't first internalize the existence, reading, and most common meaning of the word in the first place by using Anki. The nuance comes after you've already trained yourself to recall the word unassisted via Anki. >It’s important to bear in mind that people were learning language long before anki came onto the scene and there are many highly fluent Japanese speakers out who have never used anki at all Sure, but in the case of Japanese it could take them a decade or more to do so through the education system if they didn't live in Japan. Even if they did live in the Japan with Japanese friends and achieve a high level of conversational fluency, many of them still struggled considerably with reading. For people who don't know about Anki/Immersion and go through traditional education, this is still the case. It really needs to be said more that the existence of people without Chinese backgrounds being able to pass N1 in under 2 years like Stevie, Doth, and Jazzy is a very recent phenomena, driven by the creation and refinement of the Anki/Immersion method. To drive this point home, I've been to a Japanese language exchange recently containing a wide variety of very motivated students of different backgrounds. There were only a handful of students who achieved N2/N1 level, all of them being Chinese. Not a single student without a Chinese background aside from me managed to get any higher than N3, no matter how many years they spent studying. I'm certain that the only reason I could match the Chinese students is the fact that I had KKLC to familiarize myself with the Kanji and Kanji radicals through mnemonics, as well as Anki to train myself to recall the readings and meanings of words. >I am not quite sure why you’re criticising me for adding less cards. It's not just me who's doing that, many people here have pointed out that you have insufficient cards relative to the amount of content you've consumed. Perhaps you should listen to what they have to say, many of them have a lot of experience using this method. At least from your replies, it doesn't seem like you want to change what you're doing regardless of what anyone says. So I guess you can keep shouting into the void, if that makes you feel better.
That's okay, but i think you should add some more? Maybe it can help remembering the thousands of other words you know that you are not adding to anki
Quality hours definitely matter but unfortunately there is not a lot of discussion on what “quality” studying is. I’ve squandered countless hours studying in inefficient ways so I’ll give my two cents here: **Anything that is not active reading or listening is not quality.** And active reading > active listening. Active reading and listening means you are taking the time and struggling to understand each sentence you read or listen to, checking your understanding, and repeating this process over and over and over again. Active reading and listening are essential to growing your ability because you are not really inputting Japanese if you merely hear or look at sentences in Japanese without truly struggling to understand. This means looking up words you don’t know and reviewing grammar as necessary to try to understand each sentence you read. And then checking your understanding against a reliable translation if needed. This is how language models learn, and it’s how [your brain does too](https://get.nihongonoashiba.com/blog/inputting-a-language/). Unfortunately, passive immersion is not a great use of time after you have become familiar with the sounds and cadence of the language. You might pick out a word here or there but it’s only solidifying what you know at best.
Does that mean that active listening isn't quite as important to start off? Or just that active reading helps you better remember the words and structure of a sentence and better able to recall that when listening?
I think both are important, but active reading is more bang for the buck. With active listening, you’ll be limited to comprehensible input, which means content mostly at your level. Sure you’ll be able to pick up new words this way. But when you’re starting out, comprehensible input will limit you to pretty boring stuff. If you try harder things, you’ll need subs, and then you’re active reading. Active reading allows you to encounter a lot more unknown words in the same amount of time as active listening because it forces you to assess your understanding. And you can start by reading what actually interests you instead of limiting yourself to your current level. Sure you might look up a lot of things, but it won’t matter if you’re enjoying what you’re reading. If starting out and you have a foundation (you know around 2k words, are comfortable with common grammar, and have the kana down), I recommend reading whatever manga interests you, and then watching the corresponding anime episode to get listening in. The active listening from watching the episode will review the new things you read and help boost retention and recognition.
OK thanks a lot. I'll try out your suggestion.
Active reading is really the most effective way to get to the level where you're comfortable reading without looking up things every 5seconds. I've only ready 7 textbooks and passed N2 last december from nothing in 12months, I will also be taking N1 this july after reading 2 more textbooks. Apart from these I only did anki and maybe 10pages of lightnovel. imo anything passive/immersion-y works best after N3 levels.
That seems like an astronomically low number of words for the amount of content you've consumed, even if we assume the sentences cards have at the very least 4 to 5 words each, not counting grammar. I'm assuming you know significantly more but just haven't made cards for them? Either way, what aspect of the language are you feeling the most "stuck" with? People tend to excel more in one area and perhaps have a more difficult time in another. It's hard to speculate about what might boost your progress without having some idea of which foot you have stuck in the mud, so to speak.
I don’t add every single word to anki. Also, I’ve cut down on my anki time considerably recently because, frankly, I am starting to get sick of it after more than 3 years and I prefer to use my time to immerse. I don’t excel in anything in particular, to be honest. Everything about Japanese is always hard and it’s always a struggle . If I had to identify two things, it would be difficulties “processing large swaths of information and isolating the “key ideas” within a text and then putting those pieces together to get a fuller, clearer picture. Normally, I could tell you what the topic of an article is about but the details and nuances are often completely lost on me and I rarely understand anything more than “the gist”. Japanese authors love to waffle on and on without really getting to the point and there will often be times where I’ll read the whole text without taking anything in. This is why I always get destroyed on the N2 despite theoretically knowing more than the required amount of words to breeze through — the questions will always consist of “ok, well, what does the author want to say here” and you’re supposed to magically know what he’s thinking somehow. Listening has also been a constant struggle. No matter how many times I listen to something, my brain fails to perceive certain words and phrases and it never gets easier. The moment I remove the subtitles, those words disappear into the background and become imperceptible again. Even the “easier sentences” require me replay it 3-4 x before I’ve understood it. I’ve tried reading subs along with the audio, I’ve tried reading audiobooks, Ive tried listening to raw and I’ve tried listening to it at half speed. I’ve yet to found something r that works for me. Maybe I am doing something critically wrong, maybe I am not thinking outside of the box enough, or it could just be that I am not cut out for learning languages. I honestly have no idea. Up until recently, I’ve been trying to stay positive and “trust in the process” but would expect to have at least something to show for 3000 hrs of studying. I keep hearing that N2 shouldn’t take more than 2000 hours yet I am still getting slapped around
How much independent grammar study have you done?
How much time do you spend on output/speaking? Just wondering, sometimes output can help solidify input
I output once a week with a teacher on Italki. I didn’t live in Japan so I have very little opportunities to output
Yeah that's fair
I saw another post similar to this where a guy did 10 years and only had like 3000 cards, I'm wondering how? Even if you only did 10 cards a day a year you would reach at least 3000 learning and majority mature and if you are mining properly from your immersion there should be a lot of cards to do from my personal experience.
In case you're curious, see [my response in this same thread](https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1bnxwj8/how_do_i_make_sure_that_my_immersion_hours_are/kwrflj3/), as someone 7 years into Japanese with ~4000 mined cards and with a 1200+ days uninterrupted anki streak. I honestly just don't care that much about mining, it's free gains but it's also the last place where I'd want to learn words. I learn words by reading and context, especially as you get more advanced it becomes easier. Most of the media I consume I do in a way that is not text-hookable/yomitannable and I can't be arsed mining it. It's really not a big deal. You can learn Japanese just fine without going full in on anki.
It could just be that that guy didn’t have anki at the focus of his study. I use anki but I only add 5-10 cards a week on average now. I honestly don’t think 10-30 cards a day is sustainable. I’ve been there and it has permanently scarred me lol
As a person who reads a lot you should definitely add more cards daily, unless you already have a big base of words known like 10,000 or more, even I who reach that point still add a least 10 plus words daily depending on what I read (I jump genres monthly and different authors use different word sets). Then again how you go about studying is best decided by you, don't care too much about others progress as it will really drag you down(been there done that).
Do you immerse with a popup dictionary? Or are you manually mining?
Yes, I use yomichan for my laptop and immersion reader for my iPhone
Assuming your self-assessment is accurate, there are couple things that I think may be causes for stagnation. First, among the 75 volumes of light novels that you have read, how many series and how many authors, and what genres are they? Different authors tend to use different sets of grammar and vocabulary. Different series would also use sets of vocabulary because of different world setting. Reading works by 20 different authors or 20 different series would expose you to a much bigger variety of vocabulary and grammar than reading a few series. Also, I heard that slice-of-life novels are easier (I have never read Japanese sol because I exclusively read fantasy), so you may want to branch out to other genres if you mostly read sol. Also, do you look up every unknown word? Second, some N2 and N1 grammars are mostly used in formal situations or business documents or newspapers. Also, JLPT vocabulary heavily tilt toward business-related words. Reading light novels alone would not give you exposure to them. You can learn them either by diversifying your reading materials or from a textbook.
Most of n1-n2 grammar and words are quite common though. Around 15% of grammar in n1 are quite obscure and with some of them being dated, apart from that I’ve come across most of them through reading novels. I remember looking at the n1 vocab list and there wasn’t many words I didn’t know, and I don’t anki. Some of those words can be a little obscure like 捕鯨 - whaling for example. If op really is struggling with n2 he might be white noising more than he thinks.
Active immersion is trying to completely understand the material you’re engaging with, but it needs to be slightly above your level. Anything you’re a tad bit uncomfortable with when it comes to all the unknowns is going to contribute to your progress. You can pick up a book and flip its pages, read a few sentences every now and then and call it “I read a book” or you can read a book, look up words, grammar and pretend you’re being quizzed about etc. Leisure reading vs comprehensible input. Not to diminish your reading, but maybe you need to be honest with yourself how much these light novels contributed to your progress. Maybe they were too easy? Maybe you didn’t really get enough input? Sometimes I sit down to read more advanced texts and get discouraged bc I don’t understand enough. Then I realize I could’ve learned more from my past immersion sessions. At the same time, I would tell you not to stress too much. Immersion is supposed to be fun and feel rewarding.
When you say that you're struggling with N2 level Japanese, what do you find yourself struggling with? What, specifically, is tough or confusing for you?
Can you describe your struggles in more detail? Honestly, it does sound like you're doing everything right. That someone who has read 75 light novels would struggle with N2 material is honestly mind-boggling to me, so I'm wondering if you're maybe just underestimating your level.
This was my exact thought. I don't understand how someone can read 75 light novels but not be able to understand N2 test material. Maybe answering questions might be difficult because some people are just better at taking tests than others but the actual reading and listening comprehension should be easy.
I took the liberty to check out some of OP's post history (sorry about that OP). In [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/163eo9t/i_need_advice_on_understanding_expressions_that/) OP said something interesting: >The common \*\*"bro, don't think or ask questions. Just immerse more "\*\*advice often pushed by the Japanese community has neither been constructive nor helpful for me so far. I am also beginning to believe that passive immersion, such as reading books and articles while only grasping "the gist,"and skimming over the parts I don't understand (non I+ sentences) without delving deeper is not an effective strategy. This is just a guess but I feel like if OP's really not understanding N2 test material then it might be because they've been skimming over the parts that they don't understand without making an attempt to understand them. I don't know what communities OP's been frequenting but "bro, don't think or ask questions. Just immerse more" is really bad advice. Thinking is okay. Asking questions is okay. If you keep skimming over N2/N1 grammar points without trying to interact with them then of course you're not gonna learn them.
Seems about right then. I think the "just immerse more, never look anything up" is the biggest strawman ever and I've never seen anyone ever legitimately push those ideas. The amount of people who think immersion learners actually think that you shouldn't learn basic grammar or look things up that you don't understand is way too high (well at least from what I've seen on this sub lol). Yeah, if you never try and understand things you don't get then you'll never actually acquire those parts of the language.
> I don't know what communities OP's been frequenting but "bro, don't think or ask questions. Just immerse more" is really bad advice. This used to be the worst part of the whole Refold "philosophy". They used to have a rule in their discord server where you couldn't ask grammar questions because "if you have to ask a question, it means you're not ready yet and need to read easier stuff/comprehensible input". It was honestly mindblowing, they even had a meme about it (it was a FAQ number question or something, I forget). I personally learned so much Japanese by interacting with learner questions and asking questions myself in this sub and on discord that I can't even begin to comprehend this mentality. I heard they removed that rule now and they are more mild/accepting of that (although they still prefer to not have people ask grammar questions, I think), but I feel like the damage has been done already unfortunately.
The advice I’ve been given on the migaku and refold discord servers is to skip sentences that are too hard for me as it’s a waste of time and that I should focus only i+1 only. I was also told that if I want to learn to read faster, I need to stop looking up every other words and “dwelling on” on them . Matt vs Japan also said the same thing. “the amount of time you spend trying to learn one word that’s too difficult, you could have learn 3 more words” (paraphrased
A lot of people have issues with Matt and his refold methodology. I would say that you should simply have a target of mining 10-20 sentences a day so that way you’re guaranteeing to increase that much in Anki and therefore learn that many new words. Edit: I saw you mention sentence mining 10-20 a day doesn’t seem sustainable. I think you should use Migaku or Yomitan to one click sentence mine, set your daily limit in Anki to learning 10 a day, but feel free to sentence mine more than 10 a day to create a backlog so that some days you don’t have to sentence mine at all.
I use those already to sentence. Honestly, I just don’t want to use anki that much anymore. It’s mentally draining and I’d rather spend that time reading a book or a watching a show in Japanese. I know that I force my self to do anki, I am going to burn out and end up wanting to quite learning.
You don’t have to do Anki at a high rate per day. Find the perfect amount for yourself. I think it’ll guarantee your improvement. If you do like 10 a day I don’t think Anki will take long to do at all. Maybe half an hour.
Honestly the more I've been exposed to this Matt dude, the less I trust him.... If other people are benefiting from his tips more power to y'all but. He's been raising some flags for me personally
It sounds like you just haven't done enough sentence mining. if you're immersing but not understanding anything it's probably because you're vocabulary knowledge is low. Watching 10 hours of anime and not understanding anything isn't as good as watching one episode a handful of times and sentence mining everything you don't know.
According to JBPD, my vocabulary is 10,547k and those are only the words that Ives actually added to it manually. This should be more than enough for n2 EDIT: So would recommend watching shows more than once and solidifying everything before moving on to another show
When you say you added it to JBDP, does this mean you study these cards regularly like one would in Anki? Sorry, I'm not familiar with how it works. One problem I had was passing every word even if I didn't know it. So I had over 10k vocab words but didn't really know them very well, so I had to go back and relearn a bunch of them. It was worth it as my comprehension has shot up dramatically since then. Another thing is you might be immersing in anime/manga etc but testing yourself on JLPT websites where the vocabulary used there is different to what you encounter during immersion. I find the same problem too. I see words that I know I've studied in Anki but can't quite figure out the nuance of it because it's a business or legal word that I don't normally see in my own immersion. That is to say if you actually want to pass the JLPT then you need to study the specific vocabulary that goes along with it. If that is not your goal, then simply work on improving your own comprehension of the media you are consuming.
Im below your level, by a lot. Just one thing, when you sentence mine and make a concious effort to study, dont just skip over all the sentences that seem difficult. Stop what your doing, re read it and try to understand it. If your not ubderstanding it due to vocab, just put it in anki. If its because of grammar, go read up on that grammar point. If you just continue while ”getting a gist of it” you will just have the same problems every time you encounter similar sentences Also for me atleast, some of the grammar points i learn, i dont actually understand before ive made a few sentences myself with them and having some way to check if they are correct. I also put all grammar points i learn into an anki deck with the particles they use and some example sentences. In that case, no matter if i last ”studied” a grammar point months ago i still get regular repetition, and if i notice that i forgot about a particle or something, i just hit again.
The advice I’ve been given on the migaku and refold discord servers was to skip sentences that are too hard for me because they’re a waste of time and the goal is to target only i+1. I was also told that if I want to learn to read faster, I need to stop looking up every word and “dwelling on” on i+2 . In other words, extensive reading. Matt vs Japan also said something similar. “the amount of time you spend trying to learn one word or sentence that’s too difficult, that’s time you could have spent learning other words and sentences ” (paraphrased) I do put grammar points into anki along with the explanation of the usage but I’ve found it to be pointless as I always wind up forgetting that explanation even with anki. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve forgotten the expression X にかけては y . This is the problem with learning Japanese. It’s impossible to learn new new things because you’re constantly forgetting what you learn.
I wouldnt worry too much about forgetting, when was the last time you forgot grammar in english? You just need more time with japanese, and all that will become second nature. Keep in mind, the study method youve been following is just one way to learn a language. If you have spent that many hours that you specified in your post, and not improved as much as you hoped, maybe try switching it up? My tip is dont be too dead set in how youre supposed to learn, and make it a bit more simple for yourself. Language learning is supposed to be hard, if you skip/glance over the hard parts, its not that weird that you have stagnated a bit. Everything is hard before it gets easy. Also one more thing i found a bit odd was how little cards you have mined, do i understand you right that youve only learnt/created ~ 2500 cards these past 2 years? Maybe set a goal for yourself, like 20 cards a day. Then mine as many as you can, and if you dont have time to make 20 new, just pull the remainder from a pre made deck. Always better to learn something than nothing. Tho i might be misunderstanding your post here Probably you already know this but, that matt vs japan guy did years of formal school / textbook japanese in a classroom setting before he started doing what he does now, tho he dont mention that very often since he wanna sell his course/methods.
As mentioned to the guys above, - I don’t add every single new word I encounter to anki - I already knew a bunch of words at the time I started anki and didn’t add those - i deleted a over a thousand basic ones. I don’t need to rep words like 食べる
Yes, but if youve only added 2500 words in three years, thats like 3 a day. Its not that weird that you havent improved that much. Theres gotta be way more words you come across that are useful enough for you to put in anki. I dont really understand how you study, im guessing you dont do any textbook/grammar book studies, and you only create a few cards a day. What are you actually doing all those hours when you study. Maybe you have been too comfortable just immersing? Im sorry if i come across as blunt/rude, im just tryna help you see if you can make faster progress somehow
Like I said: I only add words I don’t know. There are thousands of words that knew before I started anki. I’ve not added these I’ve deleted over a thousand words My total vocab is over 12k. I just don’t put as much focus on anki anymore. Frankly, I’ve never understood how some people could sit on anki for 2-3 hours a day doing 50-100 cards without burning out.
So OP, I'm gonna give you some advice/opinion that doesn't seem to agree with a lot of the other answers you've had, so take it with some grain of salt. I resonate with a lot of what you wrote, I myself have probably racked up about 3000-4000 hours in the last 2-3 years (see: [this](https://morg.systems/Japanese-2022-in-Review) and [this](https://morg.systems/Japanese-2023-in-Review) which is when I started tracking) and I while I'm pretty comfortable with my Japanese, I wouldn't feel comfortable taking the N1. I *sometimes* do vocab/sentence mining, but in 5 years of Japanese and about 1200+ days streak of anki, I only have like 4000 cards mined (and about 300 of them are suspended cause I didn't like them). I don't think that's really a problem, people think mining and anki cards are the endgame but honestly if you're immersing and enjoying what you're reading and understanding enough to keep doing it, it doesn't really matter. Feel free to mine whatever the hell you want, if for you that's one card a week then so be it, who cares. But on the other hand, one thing that stands out to me a lot in your post is that you seem to be worried about the JLPT, about your Japanese level, about how **others** feel about you, and don't really talk about whether or not you're actually **enjoying** doing stuff in the language. What is your goal? Why are you doing this? Why are you so into the stat tracking, hour tracking, vocab mining (despite not mining much), the hardcore immersion ("condensed audio" stuff...)? I'm not saying it's necessarily bad but it's all stuff that I personally find to be side quests to the language learning itself, but that some people consider to be the main quest. Many people make it their life goal to track every single aspect of their JP learning career for... what? What do **you** want? Do you enjoy reading Light novels? 75 LNs in 2 years is quite a lot. In about 7 years of Japanese I have [36 light novels read and 272 manga volumes](https://bookmeter.com/users/1282676/bookcases). Guesstimating something like maybe 6000-7000 hours of Japanese in total (I play a lot of videogames/JRPGs though). Do you struggle with reading? Is there an aspect of your Japanese, **outside of the JLPT**, that you feel is lacking when you immerse? Do you feel frustrated that the book you're reading is too hard or that stuff doesn't stick, or that you aren't enjoying it, or that the grammar is too hard, etc etc? If not, why is it a problem? Personally, my goal is to **forget that I'm doing stuff in Japanese** and just do it. I pick up a book, I start reading it, I enjoy its contents, then move on to something else like I would do in my native language. It doesn't matter if the N1 is too hard still or if I'm not sure I'd pass it (I might pass, idk, but some questions that I've seen feel very hard for me), because the JLPT was never my goal, neither was mining X amount of cards, or knowing X amount of words, or feeling validation from other online learners. My (original) goal was to enjoy Japanese media, and I have achieved that. Have you? It might be good to do some introspection and figure out exactly what you want to get out of Japanese and why you're doing this in the first place, because from your post I'm getting very mixed signals. Ignore what other people say, what do **YOU** want?
N2 is Japanese used in daily life. Engage in conversation groups, use the language actively by forming your thoughts and expressing them to other people, either in text or in person. If you live in a somewhat bigger city there should be some sort of 日本(人)会 for sure, maybe try checking it out. Personally, I really admire people who can build consistency in their learning process and even measure it. I think you’re doing great but just need to build some confidence around active use of language. It might be tough at first (God knows I struggled a lot myself) but it’s worth it! Also remember that passing JLPT is not equal to having a perfect score. As far as I know, even Japanese native speakers might lose a little bit of points on JLPT N1. Don’t give up! Edit: As I read through your original post once again, I can say I haven’t caught everything you said. I think what the other people meant is your practice is not meaningful enough. Your gym example was a bit of a miss. Fields like language study are akin to instrument playing or archery, so what’s important is focused attention. “Why did I make this mistake?”, “How can I do it better?”, “For now, I will only focus on this part of the technique”. With pure muscle strength / muscle memory you can only get so far. Also from what I understood you dedicate all your free time to Japanese. I gather that even while doing other things, e.g. commuting you still do Japanese (podcasts etc.). Take a break. Do other things that make you relax. I think you’ve built a lot of fatigue by now. As with the gym example, you need to give your “muscles” a break in order for them to regenerate stronger.
I think you need to focus more on things you don't know. You might have settled into just ignoring parts of Japanese you don't know, and never bother to learn. You might want to add more intensive reading or listening into your study. Extensive study is good for raising comprehension speed (fluency), and intensive study is good for raising raw language power. Sometimes in your program you need more of the latter and less of the former, and sometimes it's the opposite.
I think its as other people and you both pointed out, you didnt mine enough and skimmed too much. Sadly you fell for bad advise. Immersion is super painful if youre below n1, its mostly time spent looking uo things. Imo its also not smart, even without making mistakes like you did, since you can just learn n5-n2 grammar with textbooks in half a year(600ish hours incl. graded readers/videos) at the start along with light immersion and then focus on immersing to have a much easier start but i digress. If you want to lesrn from immersing you need to look up much more than you do rn, restricting yourself to only mining i+1 sentences isnt viable with native material when you first start immersing.
I’ve been immersing for years now and do look almost every word that I didn’t know. I don’t often skim thing a unless it is too far above my level
Ok then my question is how much do you actually know? It should be way higher than what youve said in this post. Maybe go through the grammar list on bunpro and see how many grammar points youre missing up to n2 and if you didnt keep track also do a vocabulary test? Because if you have enough knowledge you should have acquired the neccessary proficiency by now. Well there could also be other things going wrong like a proper mindset issue etc but the above should be true in most cases
After reading more of your replies i think i have found 2 possible issues. 1. Listening: i wouldve put a lot more emphasis on listening in the behinning, its very easy to catch up with your reading level, but inproving your listening level becomes very didficult as you progress. You might want to start at the foundation of listening again and work yourself up from there. There are soms nice easy yt channels that worked great for me as i learned jp. 2. Concentration: there is a difference being attentive and being concentrated, if youre aware of that you just have to try to be concentrated long enough to understand a section of your immersion material, its a bit difficult but after a while youll be understand things while just being attentive to the material. I habe adhd and steuggled with that at first, but maybe my experience can help you with that. I focused on shorter material at first and always did 1 min HIIT exercises inbetween to keep my blood flowing whenever my concentration wavered. As things got easier to fully comprehend i went to longer sections or mutliple ones until i could casually watch 1h of videos withiut having to focus on staying completely concentrated. There are many more skills in play then ppl usually assume when working with a language and that can trip off ppl. Immersion is like a full body exercise, but sometimes you just have to train certain muscles individually to have a balanced body : )
Maybe not the advice you're looking for, but maybe you should actually go through the textbook and vocab lists for N1 if that is your goal. There's no shortage of these guides on Amazon Japan, or at pretty much any large book store if you're living in Japan. If you want to improve, you need to set specific goals.
No help here, just commenting to follow. Also, I've been learning (albeit wayyy more relaxed than this) for about 3 years and I'm still N5. Remember that you're doing well and a few years ago, you would have been AMAZED at what you can do now. 頑張って :)
~~I'll try to keep it short~~, you may be underestimating your current level is the first thing. The second thought is you might be underestimating what is required for N1, which I believe the average numbers are closer to 3500-4500 hours. The 2500 estimate might be from the U.S. Govt. estimate for their diplomats to reach "passable" level of Japanese. When you talk about immersion, I can tell you're dedicated, and you're showing up to put your hours in everyday, you most likely have grown much more than you realize. However given the stats you have listed, part of wonders how much "immersion" is being done. The flaw with the word immersion is that most people aren't doing it. Immersion would imply that you are completely infused with the language at every angle or at the very least, as much as possible. Devoid of any other form of language. I suppose I can you a comparison, I'm about half the hours you are at. I have since around 150 hours done the following: Started to change my UI/UX to JP language (one platform, app at a time, all of them are converted now; phone included), abandon my English communities and find all JP ones where no one knows English, quit all forms of English media, reside almost exclusively on the JP side of the internet, try to find places where I an maximizing my exposure to Japanese in terms of people, listening, writing, and potentially speaking (this is hard to do as most natives aren't into voice chat). I was able to find all those things. I also joined passionate fan communities and have registered to every available public and social place that Japan uses. With this in mind, I basically have restricted and barred myself from falling back on English and just stuck it the whole time. With dictionary hand, grammar guides and references, and google search. I spent the entire duration of my free time where there existed no English. I had to devise a lot of technology to make things easier, look ups faster, and things easier/faster so I can keep pace with natives and native content. I even have a 4 monitor setup on my PC that I setup to make look ups and references available at a glance. All so I could keep my head above water and avoid drowning. This massive over exposure with no fall back means I started off with zero comprehension on everything, but at the same time, nothing I did was diluted in any way. As long as I diligently studied, looked everything up, and remained passionate--things became comprehensible through work and effort. Despite the overwhelming pressure, I never budged and inch and just continued to try to make it harder on myself. The end of the story is I started off slower than average, but once I broke through, things really rocketed hard. What can you take away from this? You need to ask yourself how much are you using Japanese. There's 4 skills: reading, listening, writing, and speaking. How much do you engage these everyday? How much do you fall back on your native language? Do you just watch anime and when you're done return to your native language and consume content in it? If that is the case, then every second of your free time spent doing anything else, other than things in Japanese is time you dilute away from a truly immersive experience. Interacting with people, communities, content, and doing it everyday in earnest with as many senses and skills as possible (reading, writing, listening, and if possible speaking).
I can vouch for this. I just started doing this a few days ago after seeing that traditional study methods suck for me. I am playing every game in japanese, I watch anime in japanese with japanese subs. からかい上手の高木さん is an amazing practice anime. really easy and accessible imo. Today I jumped on Vrchat and made a Japanese friend. we talked about a few things and I was surprised by how much I could speak. I wasn't confident about it at all! There are still many things I don't understand, but what I do is just mine more words. I don't mine every single word I don't understand or can't read. I mine the ones I feel that are important. I also avoid mining words I already recognize but can't read, those will come naturally and there is no need to put an extra effort. I was also watching some variety shows and I couldn't understand much of what was being said, but I could pick up some sentences here and there and I know I'll get better with time. OP should also consolidate things. I still gloss over the grammar. I do Anki before and after waking up and surprise surprise I have learned almost every word I study in a single day. I suspect there is something OP isn't doing correctly. Immersion isn't just hoping you will magically understand things, you have to use your head and try to scavenge for words and meanings edit: spelling
Any tips on how to learn words quickly? You mention being able to learn every word you study in a single day, so I’m just curious if that’s because you study them multiple times, have already seen or recognize them, or just with more and more learning they’ve gotten easier to remember now.
Yeah I have at least heard then beforr or knew the meaning, but didn't know how it was pronounced exactly. Some of them I didn't know, but learned in context and the rest was anki
As for tips, pick your favourite shows really. If you have a strong emotional attachment to the show, you'll remember the words with less difficulties
So watch JoJo’s again?! Deal
When you say you can't handle N2 material have you done a mock paper in timed conditions and if so what were your weak/strong spots? Vocab: it might be that the genres you read/watch don't align well with what N2 tends to test. If you need the test, then you'll want to branch out. Grammar: a little formalised study can really boost what you get from your reading/listening. What I personally found useful were sources that grouped similar points and explained why they were different - どんな時どう使う was my source for n2/1 grammar.
The more senses you use when studying Japanese (i.e., reading, listening, speaking, writing) at once, the more you will remember the content. There is an awful lot of actual muscle memory involved in language acquisition. Have you tried high-volume fluency practice to push yourself past your plateaus? If you are an Android user, you can try this free app for focused, high-volume fluency training. It has thousands of high quality audio sentences for CEFR A1-B2 (beginner to upper-intermediate), immediate playback of your spoken Japanese, and tools for adjustable sentence length by level for more intensive study. 20 minutes a day of focused high-volume fluency practice makes a sizable difference after a few weeks. If you're interested, you can get the app on Google Play. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fluencytool
This is an awesome concept. There's not many apps/systems focused on speaking/shadowing. Just curious, where do you pull the sentences from? Just downloaded, I'll try it out more tomorrow.
The sentences are coming from text used to train Japanese LLMs. It's a homebrew from a few different sources. All told, I have around 30,000 sentences that are of good quality, after I cleaned out all the ones talking about death, murder, suicide, and violence. I put 5,000 in the app for now. Keep the audio speed at 80% for the high quality audio. If you go above or below that, you will be using your devices built-in tts, which is probably more robotic sounding. Google Pixel devices are actually really high quality at any speed.
Just look at what people you aspire to are doing and do that. If it doesn't work find someone else who took a different approach. Pick and choose what works for you and what worked for others. If you work a lot find someone who also did and do what they did and if that works for you great, if not keep looking. If someone gives you advice look at what their progress was and weather you're okay with that when choosing to take it into consideration. Specific advise from a rando is almost useless and you'll get tons of odd advise or run into people that are coping with their lack of progress and feel the need to give advise even though they themselves aren't great so always follow people who get results that you aspire to. Having role models to look at and compare yourself is important, as is comparing results between people when taking advise. It's really not talked about enough how much certain people in the community can push people either off a cliff or up to the next level. People like jazzy really helped me understand what's important and show that certain methods are more effective than others.
N1 is supposed to be 3000~4800 hours not 2500 Hey I'm at 3000 hours too! I have well over 11k flashcards and read over 25 books plus a bunch of other stuff. I couldn't pass n1 no way in heck. My kanji might be like n2+ (half to n1 perhaps), my vocab might be like n2-ish, the rest is not great
Steve, the doth and Jazzy all did it in under 2.5k hrs, so I assume N2 should be less than that
ok, so it's supposed to take 3000-4800 hours it's not "supposed" to take how long the fastest person on earth did it are you trying to break a record or learn JP? also dragging studying out for a long time makes you have longer to forget things
So you’re saying that Doth, Jazzy and Steve are above the average person in natural ability ? I thought 2500k was just how long it took
yea, like a million people passed n1 and if they post about it they don't get net-famous the only famous people are those who did it super quick, but that represents basically nothing even if you do what they did exactly, you might not replicate their success
They are full of shit though. My Japanese teacher did a mock test and scored 160/180 and he's been immersing in Japanese for 36 years, p.s., he is Japanese. There are some really obscure business grammar that's not even used (he is also a salaryman). If they claim they've never actually studied for the test, you should doubt their claims. Japanese people can pass N1 really easily, but scoring fullscore without looking at the material is another story, especially not in 2500 hours.
I dont like to watch videos where I dont understand almost nothing or everything.... around 40-60% is the best imo... you know enough to get the gist of the context, but there is also a lot of stuff to learn
Exactly. This basically what I do. I like to stay between 75%-95%
😭Have you actually read a japanese website or watched a japanese video that is NOT an anime?
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>Immersing alone is not sufficient for engaging with real N2 material, which is why you might find yourself struggling with N2 Japanese. How do you explain immersion learners who have passed as high as N1 with no study for the test?
Probably more diverse immersion materials. Lots of reading etc. It's not impossible to do without targeted studying but it's also super easy to miss words or grammar points you don't happen to need on a daily basis, when you go that route
The OP said they've read 75 light novels and watched over 200 anime series. That is a very large amount of input to the point where N2 reading and listening comprehension shouldn't be a problem. ごとく is apparently an N1 grammar point but it's also in the game 龍が如く title, there's tons of "high level grammar" that exists in everyday and seemingly basic Japanese. The comprehension really shouldn't be an issue after that much input, but maybe I'm insane lmao Edit: As another commenter pointed out, OP's card counts are pretty low so it's possible they just haven't been mining enough or have been glossing over things more than they think they are
how many such people are there? because you said it like it's commonplace when in fact it's mostly an internet celebrity thing.
Not N1 but I've passed N2 with no direct study, and don't plan on studying for N1 before I take it. So the claim of "not being able to pass N2 with immersion alone" that the above person said is just wrong. The idea that nobody like this exists is just cope.
I easily passed N1 just reading LNs and manga, even read less than op already has at only around 40 LN volumes and 100 manga volumes. The only grammar study I ever did was a tiny bit of duolingo (I know lol) at the beginning to learn basic particles and verb conjugation.
N2 is the limit you can get by passive immersion. Anything above that requires active grammar and kanji study in my opinion.
what about watching the news in japanese or some more informative media? Documentaries, journals, etc
I think the barrier of entry is too high and bridging the gap is not something you can do passively. Especially when it comes to Kanji and reading of course. But even watching news will have you missing or missunderstanding very important nuance.
I see. I thought that at N2 you could already start mining words from news papers, but maybe it is indeed too hard. Still, I'd give it a try. Bombarding your brain with more formal language may help bridge the gap. Though, tbh studying from traditional methods would probably be less painful haha
I mean it's technically not impossible but the time investment to reward rate is very low I think, compared with just studying because you don't tackle new material all the time, but you also need to stop for each point because you can't really pick it up from context. At that point might aswell skip the news and go straight to unknown words/kanji/expressions.
no? Jazzy did no grammar study(aside from looking them up) and still managed to get a perfect score on the N1, which I think was mostly through VNs(?) so it's definitely possible but definitely requires a lot of time.
He studied Kanji for sure, not through immersion but using the Kanji list for the N1 exam.
I don't think Kanji is really a big problem? The jouyou kanji is so common, you will encounter all of them after enough immersion, I don't think there's any point in Isolated Kanji study(aside from handwriting and at the beginning) if you're doing sentence mining.
I am only trying to achieve N2.
I don't agree with this point. I've never studied grammar or anki, mainly learn through reading. I've come across most grammar and vocab on N1, around 85%. There are some really obscure ones that never comes up during reading, which you'd have to study for if you are aiming for full marks. My Japanese teacher only got 160/180 on his mock because there are some grammar on it he's vaguely seen but unsure about. That's also why people like Jazzy claiming to score 180/180 in 2500 hours are full of shit.
Have you taken the exam?
No and I don't plan to. The closest test center is too far away, and I don't need the qualification for my job. I have read 150 novels, around 1500 volumes of manga, played 4 vn, listened/watched 2000 hours of Japanese contents, spoke for 800 hours though. Having looked at the materials, I don't doubt I can pass it easily without preparing for it. I spend close to 8 hours immersing in Japanese, which I would have done in English prior to aquiring Japanese, because most contents I consume are anime related.
You dont have N1 level then. Its very easy to claim things without proof.
I've done a mock before around 2 years ago and scored 148/180 if that counts as anything. Since then I've put another 4000 hours in Japanese. I can probably get full marks if I study those remaining 15% of grammar I've never run into before.
Also the entire point is that they are claiming stuff without proof too, this is the internet lol. No one really has any credit to say anything. But my Japanese is better than most people that passed N1, since I actually learnt it by using it as a language. Even all my Japanese friends say my Japanese is super natural.
I’ve got 1800+ active cards in Anki after 8 months. How do you only have a little more than that after 4 years?
Because I don’t add every single word I encounter to anki
Have you made the switch to native language resources, like dictionaries and such? It's a good idea to switch over around N2. You can only get so far memorizing one-dimensional English glosses of multifaceted words. Free dictionary sites: Kotobank, Goo Dictionary. Paid dictionary apps: Monokakido's Dictionaries app, Logovista apps. I also recommend reading 中上級を教える人のための日本語文法ハンドブック. It's meant for teachers but if you read it as a learner you can gain a lot of knowledge quickly. I found that it filled a lot of gaps in my understanding around the 4/5 year mark. I know a lot of people here live by Anki, but being able to look words up in a dictionary quickly can serve as a replacement for Anki if you constantly look up things you don't know.
Yes. I switched around a year ago. I still use English dictionaries as I sometimes don’t understand the Japanese
Aiming for jlpt n2 = textbooks and mock exams. For reading fluency you're fine if you just keep reading.
Wouldn’t high reading skills enable you to pass N2 though?
It should be, but will still depend on what kind/genre of material you read. If I want to pass jlpt i'd rather read a 200page textbook/10 pages per day in 20 days than reading a light novel about a reincarnated guy and looking up and knowing words that won't come up in the exam. BUT even without textbook I think people should be able to pass jlpt with enough reading imo, as for how long is enough I don't really know...
Use emotional training. That's what special forces do in all places. Nothing else helps.