Why is my Japanese not Progressing?
If you just started learning Japanese or have been learning for a while at one point you will probably feel like you are not making progress. The first thing to know is that it is natural to feel this way.
INDEX
The Problem with Learning Japanese
There is a lot of problems with learning Japanese that make it easy to become demotivated by not feeling progress.
https://japaneseuniverse.com/2024/02/18/pac-man-in-japaneseconcepts-behind-development-to-global-icon/There are lot’s of things you need to Learn
You could be studying for years without feeling like you are making any progress. For example, in order to understand a single sentence in Japanese, you need to have an understanding of several different things at once:
- You need to understand the pronunciation
- What the words mean
- How those words create meaning together,
- The intentions of the speaker.
That is a lot to understand all at once. Luckily though as you learn more Japanese you internalize many of those aspects so that you don’t need to be thinking about it. That gives you more room to focus on the conversation instead of the language. Since all of these parts of the languages build off of each other not understanding one aspect can throw off your understanding of the whole thing. It takes time to internalize all of these aspects and often you are unaware of what you remember and what you don’t remember.
It is Hard to Know what you Know and what you don’t Know
Another result of having so much to learn is that it is hard to keep track of what you know. Especially vocabulary. You have to learn so much vocabulary. There are some words that show up all of the time but most words you will not encounter that often. It is hard to know if you remembered a word or not if you don’t hear it that often.
Another thing about memory is that despite all of the methods and tools out there to learn words there is no way to tell if a specific word will stick or not. Some words you will only need to hear once and they will stick for whatever reason. But, every once in a while there will be one word that you keep hearing over and over but it won’t stick.
How can I feel like I am making Progress?
In order to feel like you are making some progress is to counteract these two natural language learning problems. You need to isolate and analyze your knowledge of each aspect of Japanese. Then, you need to find a way to measure your progress.
How to Isolate the Different Aspects of Japanese
You can break the Japanese up in many different ways. For example, the three main branches of language study in linguistics are:
- Phonetics and Phonology (Sounds of the language)
- Morphology (Words and different word forms)
- Syntax (Word order and function of words in a sentence)
Or, you can break it up by aspects and type of communication:
- Listening
- Reading
- Speaking
- Writing
If you want you can even isolate even deeper. Just take a look at vocabulary:
- Passive Vocabulary (The vocabulary you can recognize when you see but don’t necessarily use it)
- Active Vocabulary (The words that you know and use freely)
The more you can break it down will allow you to see better what you know and what you don’t. So, why stop there? You can take active vocabulary and break it down even more:
- Nouns
- Adjectives
- Verbs
- Particles
It is almost endless how you can categorize. If you are someone that is trying to learn the most frequent Japanese words first you could even break up the most frequent nouns by frequency:
- Top 100 Nouns
- Top 1,000 Nouns
- Top 10,000 Nouns
You can break things down however you want. The point is to separate things into different categories so you can more clearly measure what you know.
Measuring your Progress
After you have broken down Japanese it will be easier to measure aspects individually. So, whenever you think your Japanese is not progressing ask yourself, what part of my Japanese is not progressing? Now that you have narrowed it down you can start analyzing. Here is an example.
Let’s say you can read Japanese ok but have trouble understanding audio. Now that you know that listening is the issue you can ask yourself again, what part of the listening is the issue? If you are happy with your reading ability then you know that obviously, it is not an issue with the writing system. You also know that you have a decent grasp of at least a few thousand or more Japanese words. The issue could then be a number of things:
- You don’t have a good grasp of sentence structure
- You have been using Kanji to understand the meaning of words but no less than you realize
- You are sure that you know many Japanese words but are unable to recognize them in speech
Whatever the reason is you know what to work on now.
What do I do once I know what I need to work on?
From the previous example if you determined that you have trouble recognizing words that you know in speech then you would use that as a measure. For example, take a list of words that you know and then go to somewhere like Forvo.com and search those words to try to listen to them individually. Or, try watching videos without subtitles and then the same video with subtitles to see the difference in understanding.
順番 – Learning in the Right Order is The most Effective way to Learn Japanese
At that point make a note of the date and try to guess a percentage of the understanding you have on that date. Continue doing what you are doing and then measure again after a week, a month, or however long.
What if I have been measuring for months but still not progressing?
If that is the situation then you are probably focusing on an aspect of Japanese that takes longer to acquire. If you are measuring how well you can listen to podcasts and understand but you are not noticing any change then try something else. Try focusing on how well you can recognize individual words.
If you are at a higher level in your Japanese but still are not progressing then probably you just need to put more time into it daily or weekly. Then have reasonable expectations.
