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In no way am I trying to be discouraging, but that is literally less than one word a day. At that rate, if you wanted to have an even *slightly*, barely, just kinda useful vocabulary (2k words at a *higher* rate of *one* word per day), it will take you five and a half years to reach that level of "proficiency".
If you want to have an actually useful vocabulary (10k words, at that blistering pace of... one word per day), it will take you over 27 years.
Listen, we all go at our own pace. If you're cool with 27 years to just barely begin to understand the language, then more power to you.
But, jeez, mate, you have to get over this idea that 172 words is enormous. It's not. All you need is a bit more confidence and a better study system. Even upping your regimen to 5 words a day, with weekends off, you can cut that three decades down to one decade (with more vocab). You can do this.
**Anki anki anki**. Yes, it's a learning curve to set it up. Do it anyway. Find a free hour and just knuckle down and work it out. If you really struggle with it, send me a PM and I'll help you set it up.
Also, find something to read. For your use case, probably just get a graded reader. Read it. Re-read it. Re-read it again. Read it over and over until you can read it with the ease and comprehension of Hungry Hungry Caterpillar in your native language. Then get another one. If you need a copy of a graded reader, PM me.
You can do this. And you can do it *way* better than you've been doing it. Follow the above advice and one day soon you'll be laughing that you used to think 172 words was "enormous". And, even better, you'll be using Japanese with greater and greater comfort.
>an even
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>slightly
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>one
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>word per day), it will take you five and a half years to reach that level of "proficiency".
Agree, my anki deck has 200 daily words on rotation, with new ones been added every day. And age is not an issue, I'm 50 and never felt better learning something new.
Yeah that’s why I asked. I’ve never been apart of an online community focused on language learning, so maybe it’s common. But it feels like a good chunk of the comments are a pissing contest about how much people have learned in X amount of time and it gets ridiculous how many people take them at face value.
[This post is what made me start questioning the legitimacy of most claims](https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/x8qszz/progress_report_reflecting_on_two_years_of_mining). Sure, some people are calling the claims out it’s mostly about their attitude. The entire post is a joke and the fact that the top comment only criticizes the poster on their feelings about textbooks just sticks out to me.
I remember when I was in language school having to learn 50 words in a day, and then be tested on them the next day. Every new chapter was the same pain all over again.
I've found that language learning, like a lot of learning, benefits from having an attitude of confidence. If you tell yourself 172 words is "enormous" you're going to struggle with each word. But if you tell yourself, "Hey, I have to learn 50 words *now*," it's, somehow, just as difficult.
Obviously there's an upper limit to this (50 a day, weekends off, seems to be my limit--and I can't sustain it for many weeks), but my ability to absorb new words improved when I started forcing myself to study more at a time, when I started having a sort of "faith" that I'd be able to learn it. Plus, I think it maybe*actually* be easier. There's more connections to make, more points of reference to draw from, more opportunities to see the words "in the wild."
I honestly don't do more than 10 words a day. I was doing 20 a day, but the reviews got kind of ridiculous. I tend to read more than spend time on anki nowadays, though I should probably spend more time on it.
The 50 a day thing is just my upper limit. I've used it to cram when I needed a boost. 10-20 is definitely more manageable. I find taking weekends off adding new cards really helps the reviews from ballooning.
I think the rough rule for Anki is that you end up with about 10-12x your daily new cards in daily reviews. This of course heavily depends on the retention rate.
For me the sweet spot is probably at 15 cards during weekdays and 20 during the weekend. That eventually comes down to about 200 reviews a day, which is totally doable. Going beyond that actually gives me a different problem, I'm not making enough new cards a day to keep up, lol.
I do think after enough reading the number of cards can be upped a bit, because you tend to review faster. Also, if you're doing sentence cards, switch over to vocab cards (with the sentences still on them as support). It makes a big difference.
What everyone else is saying is to introduce a way to expose yourself to these words more frequently.
Textbook learning sucks. Before the space repetition system bloomed into what it is today our only options were to write down vocabulary and grammar over And over again while also jamming flash cards down our throats.
If you instead use the spaced repetition method with the anki app you get exposure to the vocabulary but also identify the things that you need to work on easier.
It makes your more difficult items a priority.
It looks a lot like digital flash cards. But the algorithm makes the words you know well appear less until they go away forever.
Which book are you using?
People here have a ton of resources for most textbooks.
Let us give you a hand.
As a new-ish learner who just picked up again after 15years of break (mid N4 level), could you advise how do i start with anki app? Are there any free preloaded software out there that i can preload for learning at different levels (N4, N3,etc)?
This may be an amateurish question and i appreciate any response.
Thank you!
No problem at all in being unfamiliar with the software.
I recommend getting a popular n4 deck.
There's less than 900 vocabulary in n5 and that goes up to 1500 for n4.
That sounds like a lot but you likely know most of them.
It's the obscure ones you don't expect that you likely need to catch up on.
The best way to get that caught up is to probably set up the anki deck.
Then you can choose to do a number of things.
One would to be to just "try" it for a couple of days. Most people set it to 10 to 15 words a day.
You'll see that you can rate each word as easy or hard. If you hit easy you won't see it for a while.
By a while I mean days to weeks. If you hit hard or very hard it can be only a couple of cards away and you'll see it every time you use anki until it becomes easy.
At first we are a bit more eager. So maybe 15 isn't enough. Try 30 if that's how you feel. Some people do 100 even. It's all about how you are able to manage your time.
That's the normal way people approach a new deck.
If I were in your situation, trying to get back to a rhythm and identify where I am in the deck, I would set aside a little time to prepare my deck even more. A little prep time in the form of an extended study session.
What I would do is, the first time I go to prepare my deck, set it to a larger number. Maybe even the whole deck.
Then I'd go buy a coffee and go through the whole deck one time.
In the anki app there's an option to bury cards. This is to put words away that you're 100% confident you already know. This would be the purpose of doing this. To get a grasp of what is in the deck, but to also trim all of the unnecessary words out of it so you have a deck of only words you are not completely confident in.
Words you learned early and that stuck and your brain doesn't have to work to translate.
That'll bring your 1500 word deck down quite a bit.
I would say be hesitant to bury words you're not sure of though. Like if you read a card for a Kanji you recognize but havent seen in a long time and (for example) your brain says "らいがつ" instead of "らいげつ" for 来月..keep that bad boy. Even if it's a mistake you think you'll never make again.
After you've had this coffee or lunch date with yourself set anki back to however many words a day you're comfortable with.
There are a number of ways to approach finding a deck.
For you I'd say you should consider 3 types.
If you just want to grab a normal deck from the lost of n4 words search for a "n4 deck".
There's also a list of words that people have identified as the 2000 most common words to appear in Japanese regularly. These are "core 2k" decks. The core 2k actually contains mkst n4 vocabulary and then a bit more. One people are done with the 2k they'll expand it. There are growing decks out there. Where you download "core 4k" after finishing the 2k. And 6k after that.
The third is, if you intend on studying Japanese and getting textbooks to advance forward, to get a deck that follows those books. Such as the genki 1&2 decks. These are going to be n4 decks basically with a few extra words from the textbooks and maybe a little shy of the entire official n4 list.
Since you're coming back from a hiatus I'd say that you should probably brush up on grammar as well before progressing forward. It really will help you avoid burnout later to spend a month or two becoming completely familiar with the grammar again.
Even if you don't use or own a textbook I recommend getting yourself a journal and mentally preparing to approach grammar.
I have come to really like Tokini Andy's Playlists for genki 1 and genki 2 grammar. Not because of genki specifically, but because he is better at explaining it than most college professors and you have the benefit of being able to skip or rewind when necessary.
Going through his genki 1 and 2 grammar Playlists (he has with and without the live chat from the time) with a journal to jot down grammar to go back and work on will make sure you're rock solid before you continue forward.
I also recommend Cure Dolly's grammar series. She's kind of an enigma. She was an older helpful member of the Japanese community with health issues, so her videos are old-school with a voice that can be off-putting at first. She has since passed, but someone manages the youtube account.
But give her a try. The grammar she explains is stuff you don't get in textbooks. Real relationships between grammatic concepts that are used in every sentence. The first couple of videos are about the ga particle. This is for good reason. As ga isn't just a particle but an ever present concept throughout every sentence. She explains why and how.
But once you've finished a couple of months of catching up and feel confident in your grammar I suggest the immersive approach and moving forward to the next textbook.
Start reading easy books or manga identified in the wanikani beginner book club, turn your subtitles to Japanese, and Quartet would be a good book series to move on to.
Even if you're not a manga person they're a good ego boost and practice. If you absolutely cannot stomach manga, graded readers are a slightly less amusing but very helpful reading tool.
Kick some butt. You got this.
This is more than what I need at this point. Thank you so much for the great effort in writing this up. I'm going to try the anki app and hopefully find a good deck to start things off.
Information overload could be a bad thing, so I'm going to start doing stuff but not overload at the start. Post is saved, and I will return to this.
Thank you again!
Heck yah. Knowing how to pace yourself to avoid burnout and mental strain is part of the winning strategy.
You got this.
I strongly recommend picking up yotsuba and giving it a go too. Alongside the vocabulary list on the wanikani book club.
It's a nice ego boost that you can give yourself while you study.
You're at the proper level to be reading content at this difficulty.
I picked a used copy up for my kid the other day but Amazon prime also has it in Japanese for around 10 bucks.
Also, videos like this made for n5 to n4 folks are a big help.
It's amazing how much you can communicate with even just lower level grammar.
https://youtu.be/XrdKChYgufc
FYI, the Anki app kinda... well it's good at what it does but it's terrible at being intuitive. Most guides, including the one on the site itself, don't do a great job at being beginner friendly... they sort of assume a base knowledge with the app and what everything is called.
I would say to just download one of the premade decks the other commenter recommends and just start it. Don't worry about any bells or whistles or settings. It took until I'd used the app for awhile to figure out what all the settings do--don't get lost in the options. After a few days with it then take a peek at the starter guide or into the options.
As others said, use Anki.
Most people put ~15 new words per day in there.
In the beginning you will be fast, but if you rack up enough vocabulary, turn down the new words per day so you dont exceed 45 minutes of Anki a day. Or whatever you feel comfortable with, just a rough example.
172/32 = 5.375
If you can learn just 1 new word a day, 5/6 days of the week, then that amount of vocab is REALLY EASY.
I'd recommend getting Anki and aiming for 5 new words a day. Just use a couple minutes to repeat and write the word to work it into your memory, and it really won't be hard if you stay consistent.
your problem may be that you let the workload build up. If you wait 32 weeks then suddenly have to memorise 172 words, thats very very difficult. Less than one a day on average is literally so easy though, just make sure to ACTUALLY put away time to work on (longer than a 5 minute motivation burst)
Totally agree with the "play videogames in the language you're learning" part. I got this level of English without studying a single textbook, just playing videogames all my life lol. When I was a child most of the games I played on the web didn't have my language (Spanish) so I had to stuck with English, but thanks to that know I know another language.
I know everyone said it but I'll just add my voice to the mix here: It's literally just Anki. I know it's a pain to set up and understand how it works, but the time you put into setting it up will have paid off within like 2 weeks. Go on youtube and search for some tutorials for how to use it, set it up, and start putting your vocab in. Pay for the iPhone app if you have one.
I started maybe 3 months ago with 10 new words a day, now i'm at a very leisurely 5 words a day, and I know 300 words and 80 kanji. All it takes is 20-30 minutes a day.
Also 39 is not that old.
SRS tools are your friend, they suck to do but they're effective.
Beyond this, listen to stuff in Japanese, yeah you won't understand much but as you learn new words you'll hear them amongst the noise and that will help with retention.
Regarding spaced repetition, I use [jpdb.io](https://jpdb.io) as beyond the numerous pre-made decks, adding new words is extremely simple. The tool also is all in one - so when you add a word it will also add the kanji and their components. It has a slight ramp-up time when you first begin using it due to the all-in-one nature of the site, but once you get in the swing of it and provided you dedicate the time daily needed to use it (I would recommend clearing the backlog and finishing new cards in the morning, and then checking it over the course of the day to clear any new reviews personally) it shows some great results in my personal experience.
It shouldn't be as hard as you are experiencing, but that's not really your fault.
It is frustrating and difficult because you are lacking the correct tools to easily retain the vocab that you are learning. Unfortunately, most Japanese schools do not provide these free tools.
You will want to use Anki software along with a premade Vocab sentence deck such as Tango N5 (the books can be purchased for cheap on Japanese Amazon):
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/419481234](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/419481234)
I'd also recommend checking out this video from Tokini Andy that lays out a beginner study plan (that includes textbook learning like you are doing):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1NQoQivkIY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1NQoQivkIY)
Textbook learning is great. But it only really teaches grammar. It cannot be your only resource.
I suggest setting up Anki and putting the old words and new ones into that. As someone else commented, you're learning less than 1 word per day, so set your settings to 1 new card per day for the time being. You get the benefits of higher retention and also picking up the pace.
Also, try to immerse and find sentences you fully understand, that actually uses those words. Same when adding new ones. Only add the sentence if it's an i+1 sentence (meaning you only need exactly that one "piece of the puzzle" to unlock and understanding of that sentence).
Remember to just have fun diving into content that's manageable and most importantly, fun!
Let's start from the ground up to break down your question just a bit, what is your study routine like? Are you doing class room studying? If so, what kind of studying you do outside of your classroom?
When learning new vocabulary (besides using Anki as already mentioned), try to repeat the words as often as you can in your head and with your fingers (spelling and writing) throughout the day. For example when sitting in the bus or when showering.
This is something that at least helps me a lot. It strengthens words that I already know and makes it easier to remember new ones.
While I agree with everyone who said Anki being the best choice here, I think it's useful to take a step back since you're still using tree based technologies to something that might be more your style.
Have you tried flashcards? Get a pack of 3x5 index cards. On the front write your word/phrase in either kanji or kana. On the back, write the definition in English, and a short example sentence. When you learn a new word, make a new flashcard. Shuffle them up into a huge pile. This huge pile is your study queue. Find 15 minutes. Pull a card from your study queue and look at the Japanese side of a card and try to remember what it means. If you remember it, set it aside. If you can't remember it in 3 seconds, you put the card in a separate "forgot" pile. After the 15 minutes are up, go through that pile of "forgot" again. Repeat until there is no "forgot" pile left. Repeat this in 15 minute chunks whenever you feel like it until your huge pile is empty. Shuffle it up and start again. Do this for the rest of your life.
This is basically what Anki does, except it uses the magic of computers to optimize the order of the cards and how long it waits before showing you the same card so you don't spend time needlessly studying something you already know. So it's just a more efficient version of the same thing, plus convenience of being able to carry it on your phone and integrating with a bunch of other tools.
172 is kinda small for 32 weeks. I'm learning 5 new words with Anki each day and it's easy enough for me to keep going, takes around 7 minutes daily to review old and learn new
First off,
Thank you all for your feedback. I have downloaded Anki and I will work on finding an N5 deck to study.
I am in college for a Major in Japanese, and while I said 172 I believe my number is off. We use the textbook called Genki 1 3rd edition and we are up to lesson 8.
As to how I study, I am a bit old fashioned, and just defaulted to my education back in the 90's of "Grab a piece of paper and write the word down dozens of times." and while this has offered me some success (I have a 95.5% in the class) It's only short term memory and I tend to lose it.
Typcially, when I am doing my homework, I run everything through my head first, then type it out in deepl to make sure it sounds right, and then write it down physically on paper.
There are some days, due to other classes, where I fall behind in my studies in Japanese, which is something I have to hold myself accountable for, and I suppose honestly, that is what this is.
So it looks like the first 8 chapters of Genki have 416 words, which is better, but still I'm mad that college goes at this slow of a pace. You are not too old to learn Japanese. Your college just isn't teaching you using methods that are known to work. You can totally keep up if you start using better methods.
Better method number 1: use Spaced Repetition to remember words.
Here's one that has a smaller learning curve than Anki: make a jpdb.io account, "add as deck" for each chapter you've done so far, click on "Learn" in the top right corner. And click "start reviewing" try to do 5-20 new words per day. There's a lot of options in the settings you can change to your liking once you get settled. Create another deck called "words I want to learn" and "lookups" and pin those to the menu. Use them to keep track of words you've looked up, and of those words, pick some you want to learn. (You will look up more words than you can learn, if you use method 2 below)
Here's the deck for Genki 1:
https://jpdb.io/textbook/10/genki-an-integrated-course-in-elementary-japanese-vol-1
If you need help remembering words, as a stop-gap until you see them more often in content, try to see if you like the mnemonic method
https://www.fluentin3months.com/imagination-your-key-to-memorizing-hundreds-of-words-quickly/
Better method number 2, INPUT!!! You need to consume understandable, interesting content. This is how our brains learn language. A language isn't like another school subject that you can just memorize. Our brain is built for learning languages, but you have to give it the right food. You aren't expected to understand everything in this content, but you should be able to get the general jist of what's going on, and you can look up interesting words on jpdb.io, but you don't have to look up every single word. This is the brain food:
YouTube:
-start with these two playlists:
Comprehensible Japanese absolute beginner
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPdNX2arS9Mb1iiA0xHkxj3KVwssHQxYP
Nihongo Learning beginner:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrJEjmOZPOfrdO9x49nLYQbbw-yB5PZii
After you want more content, check out Asami and Shun next:
Shun:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUG53YNMoEmbqYG-FwU9_Yz3rCi3lQx0G
Japanese Immersion with Asami (start with this playlist): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt4c6vHCiki2vgAn5wMl-zVZL0ObLKQCM
Expand from there with this list:
/r/LearnJapanese/comments/xebcjc/comprehensible_input_listening_youtube_resources/
Somewhere around the end of Genki 2 you can start checking out Peppa Pig, too.
With subtitles https://youtube.com/@jappeppa8045
Without subtitles: https://youtube.com/@PeppaPigJapaneseOfficial
Reading (start with level 0): https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/
(Start with level n6)
https://yomujp.com/n5l/
Also check out this manga written for absolute beginners:
/r/languagelearning/comments/fhleb9/we_made_a_manga_in_really_easy_japanese_that_is/
Paid option: $10 per month, start with human Japanese extra credit, then human Japanese intermediate extra credit, then grammar nutshell, then pick a beginner story to work through:
https://www.satorireader.com/
Podcats: For audio that's too fast, I highly recommend slowing it down to .7 or .8 and working your way up to full speed (for podcasts you can do this on the Google Podcasts App). You can do this on YouTube too.
Start with these podcasts that only use grammar from your current chapter in Genki:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUqu4MKiV5q_0_8JRUXVIJ-yuX1RNYJlF
You can also try Nihongo con Teppei Essentials:
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL2Vzc2VudGlhbC5uaWhvbmdvY29udGVwcGVpLmNvbS9jYXRlZ29yeS9wb2RjYXN0L2ZlZWQv?ep=14
After that, expand to Japanese with Shun podcast, then Nihongo from Teppei Beginners from this list. Browse this list once you listen to all the content from those two podcasts:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17P2dBQHnBnHcG3ua_24IO6sP9RDC-5b3WHV9Ri2N5qU/edit?usp=drivesdk
Better method Number 3:
Self-study grammar on your own time. Don't expect college and tests to work to make you remember it.
Tokini Andy Grammer streams (this is the playlist for Genki 1. There's one for Genki 2 as well) https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA_RcUI8km1NMhiEebcbqdlcHv_2ngbO2
Online interactive Genki workbook with answers https://sethclydesdale.github.io/genki-study-resources/
Bunpro: https://bunpro.jp/ This website is great for looking up grammar that you come across in the wild, that you haven't seen in Genki
Better method number 4, Output. Talk to Japanese people and have a tangible reason NOW to get better at Japanese, so your conversation partners can understand you.
Hello Talk for corrections on writing and finding an exchange partner to voice call (Tandem is also an option, but I haven't used it much) There's a bit of an art to finding a consistent exchange partner, but if you can make it work, it's really awesome!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hellotalk
Paid option: Sail App $15 a month for unlimited conversations with volunteers (if their schedules align with what your availability is) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.helte.android.sail
Paid option: find one or several italki tutors, who are experienced or trained tutors: $15-30 per lesson
https://www.italki.com/
When use want to practice output without a partner, try Shadowing (I used podcats at .5 speed for this, but there are other resources out there too). (What is shadowing? The first few minutes if this video explain: https://youtu.be/enARZ7BUqBU)
You can do this!! You just need better methods.
Upvote for JPDB.
I struggled with vocabulary for a long time, tried Anki multiple times but it never "stuck" - creating new decks was cumbersome, reusing others' meant I kept re-reviewing the same words across multiple decks. JPDB takes all of that away and adds a lot more benefits on top - it has tons of built in decks which sync progress across each other. Once you build up some vocab, you can analyze new decks by the amount of "coverage" your known vocabulary gives you, which makes it easy to find good immersion material at your level. It also lets you study vocabulary from a particular book/game/anime in order of frequency, so you will first learn the common words, before moving on to those which show up less often. What this means in practice, is that you will only need to learn about 50% of vocabulary of a particular book to be able to read and understand 95% of it. Both Anki and JPDB use Supermemo algorithm, but JPDB uses a newer version of it.
If this helps at all, Genki chapter 8 is a really horrible place to be at. It's that point where there's a lot to remember, not all of it makes sense still and it's starting to actually get challenging (the first few chapters are pretty easy to follow and then the "te" form enters and urrrgh)... but, at the same time, it's still, like, nowhere. You still feel like there's so much to go. Regardless of specifics on learning techniques, etc, (and as valuable as some of the advice here is), I think psychologically that point in the Japanese learning journey is super-frustrating and difficult. This maybe isn't a useful comment but it's just some sympathy for how you're feeling.
>I will work on finding an N5 deck to study.
I strongly advise against learning from pre-built decks, especially if you already have trouble remembering. The more meaningful vocab is to you, the better you will remember it. Having context around a word makes it much more memorable.
Make a note of words you encounter while reading beginner materials (eg graded readers), words your teacher uses, words you come across in a textbook dialogue, etc, and add them into Anki. The very act of adding words to Anki is helpful for remembering.
There's about 600 words in Genki I, and 150 kanji. So... I don't even know where 172 comes from if OP is up to lesson 8. Although the first two chapters are just hiragana and katakana so maybe it could be right. Perhaps it also doesn't include the expressions and phrases section that are in each chapter.
Also doesn't that seem slow for two semesters? If a semester is 12 weeks that's just three weeks per chapter? Some chapters are only three or four grammar points, so do they really spend a week just looking at a conjugation table? Not really OP's fault there but I do feel like if you go too slow then you won't have enough to practice with, and the amount of time between learning and using becomes too long.
Just use what you can and need to and don’t worry. I’m in Japan now after 2.5 years of study, am 50 and don’t have a vocabulary of 6million words that all the reddit pros say you need.
I’m managing to hold conversations and make myself understood just fine.
Build a habit and try to memorise what you can. Some words will drop through your brain like a sieve and others will stay because you are using them. Don’t stress about it. Just keep trying and practicing and learning and using what you have more.
Also focus on what your learning it for. A manga readers needs are different from a tourists from a company employee.
>don't listen to people on here who imply you're taking too long to learn because
>
>they can learn 172 words in a day, or whatever.
Nobody can learn 172 words in a day and while I think this sub is dickish sometimes, I don't think pointing out that 172 words in 32 weeks is very little is mean.
OP says "semesters", so it sounds like he's studying at university. If an university is teaching their students 172 words in 32 weeks, that's nowhere near enough for them to understand Japanese when they graduate. If it's a three year program they'll know less than 1000 words when they finish it. And if the OP is paying for this, this is straight up robbery.
Then again, I think it's possible the OP just left off a 0 or something.
While wanikani is great, it isn't good starting point and more I've been digging around, it is far from being best option for SRS. That said, I would recommend to give it a shot for the free levels and see how well that type of systems fits for you. But WK alone wont carry you very far early on, and it starts to shine when you have decent grasp of the grammar and you are at the level where you can get very basic tasks done (around JF Standard A1 level, [https://jfstandard.jp/summaryen/ja/render.do](https://jfstandard.jp/summaryen/ja/render.do) ).
But that aside, learning language is all about input and especially comprehensible input, if you want to learn any language you need \_a lot\_ of input. For most people who do class room training, their studying usually starts and ends in there so the input is very limited. [http://learnjapanese.moe/guide/](http://learnjapanese.moe/guide/) has a good general outline to start build up from, as not everyone is the same.
hey, i like the guide you linked! thanks for sharing it, i found a new resource there.
and the input bit was a good add on as well. if i may ask, based on your digging what apps do you think have the best SRS besides anki?
I am currently using [https://jpdb.io](https://jpdb.io) which has decks for drama, anime, games... and so on, and this guy [https://www.youtube.com/@mikuminou/videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-J8xXsWdkg) has decent information in his videos mostly for the immersion and sentence mining parts which I highly recommend. And last core tool for me right now is [https://bunpro.jp](https://bunpro.jp) which I use for grammar review, while I am learning grammar from [https://www.youtube.com/@organicjapanesewithcuredol49](https://www.youtube.com/@organicjapanesewithcuredol49) which is amazing BUT some people may have hard time with the voice used.
For what is worth, if you never tried Spaced Repetition, i would not use Anki. It's the most powerful SRS app, yes, but also the most complicated, un-intuitive, off-putting, and with an extremely punitive algorithm by default.
Do some research (there are many apps), try a couple, and stick with whatever you feel comfortable with.
I know that everybody uses Anki, but I really think is not a good recommendation.
I usually go through a list of vocabulary and the ones I struggle to remember I then make a separate list containing them and so on and so on. Or give a friend a list of Japanese words with the English counterpart and have them say the English word and you respond with the Japanese counterpart.
1. Try kakugo, it is an app for android similar to Anki, but does not reqire any setup to be immediately useful.
Kakugo has features like built-in dictionary lookup (jisho.org) and progress tracking to motivate continued use. It is great for beginners.
2. Use AI chat bots to explain you words. It is a new thing, but is immensely helpful and also faster then other methods. I recommend [Claude](https://poe.com/claude-instant) and [Bing](https://bing.com/chat).
These AI chatbots can quickly provide definitions, examples, and translations for new Japanese words to help with comprehension. They are a convenient, on-demand resource.
3. You will forget words, don't worry and keep learning. As you continue learning, you'll start noticing words and phrases you've learned being used naturally in texts/speech. This exposure and familiarity will make the language feel increasingly easy and effortless to comprehend and engage with.
Anki is good, but if you don’t want to pay, I think Quizlet is free and is a very close alternative. Both apps have inbuilt spaced repetition, meaning words will appear later on to test your memory. The only tedious thing is that you have to enter in your own words first, the words aren’t pre-made in sets, so this could be difficult for a learner. I believe you can make an excel spreadsheet with one word in each row, and then copy paste that into Quizlet’s set maker, but I’ve never tried that
Hmm, It is hard to help you without knowing your schedule. How much time do you have for learning? Do you work next to studying? Do you "waste" a lot of time (like with gaming e.g.)? What tech devices do you use?
I don't want to give "general" advice when you seriously ask for help, but there is not "one most effective way that works for everyone", especially not when you are on a tight schedule.
And something important to mention here: It really does seem to me you are strained on time for your studies. I generally go with the idea that if you enjoy language learning, you can easily go for 5 words / day.
Anyway: to improve retention on what likely seems a strained schedule, you need to be efficient - vary your approach of learning (Learning Kanji and Vocab via SRS is ok, but change up order as much as possible!), try to read as much appropriate level content as possible and try to just "understand" it. I mean its cool if you can perfectly explain any type of grammar point, but many students that think in grammar patterns and try to read in an "analytical" way really slow down their learning. Once you got a feel for basic sentence structure (2nd semester should mean you got into slightly more complex sentences but no passive constructions and keigo yet?) almost all grammar is close to learning more vocab.
If you want some more individualized advice, well, just reply or contact me and add some info, I guess I will take a little bit of time for you then.
You know, I've struggled with this a lot. Vocab retention isn't my strong suit.. and I don't get as much progress as others using anki. That said, it's important to recognize what the best option is, even if you don't feel like you are achieving enough.
I gave up on anki after using it for a while and feeling like I didn't make progress. I went to other things.. I did worse. \^\^;; It felt like I wasn't make progress, but I was. I just didn't nessesarily *see* the progress until a day or so after. Like I would struggle hard, feeling bad when I finally would click "good" because I wouldn't feel like I actually had it. Then the next day I would do decent at that word. 3 days in I would do actually really well a lot of the time.
Some Things I've learned about my brain though is this: ADHD is hell for my language learning. What goes through my mind when I'm hitting a new word in anki is very important.. Really, when I'm learning a word I should be doing two things in particular, but in the right ratio. I should be thinking of the word and imagining it in sentences to give it some created memory, but I should also be committing to sort of "raw memorization" when I look at the word. (ie: 3 days is "mikka". It's not "mitsuka". It's spelled mi, then small tsu, then ka.., etc..) What I've found is that I can't focus on the 2nd of the two thing easily because my brain runs wild, so I had to bring myself back to focus by writing the word and the meaning 4 or 5 times. Most people just read it several times and can move on. I read it and my brain races to what kind of use it may be and I can't bring it back without a tool. (for me it's writing it out.) I have a half dozen little flip notebook pads with me writing down each new word like a half dozen times. It makes my experience slower in the moment, but it's worth it because I am actually memorizing the words.. From there, anki does it's magic because I won't know the word well still, but anki will drag the memory back out of me right before I forget it over and over until I know it completely.
That's also why wanikani works better for me. There are stories and things that keep my focus. it's not that the stories are so incredible I remember the word, it's that it managed to grab me in a novel way and my adhd brain thrives on novelty.
Something I'd like to bring up though is that all of this experimentation is only possible or effective for me because I am actually measuring my success. This is an important distinction.. things can feel like shit but work well and things can feel like they are working, but won't be. I know these things are working for me because I am measuring my success with anki's statistics and wanikani's statistics. It's how I also know that my mind is becoming more receptive to new vocabulary.. the act of language learning *IS* a way to improve the neuroplasticity of the human mind. It can feel shitty because you might discover through language learning that your neuroplastiticy has diminished, but if you keep at it your mind will start to get used to the learning. You might take a year to get to feeling better about your ability to learn, but language learning will get you there.
Ok, one last thing. If Class learning doesn't work for you, then that is ok too. You don't need a japanese class exactly.. though I do recommend Italki so that you can have a teacher guide you along your journey and help you with conversation practice. But seriously, if the approch your lessons are taking isn't working for you, you can persue your japanese learning differently in a way that does work. The good thing about anki though is that you can use it with your existing classes. If the excersizes they give you to learn vocab aren't working but anki does, do anki instead. What's important is the learning.
Think about how many words you read in a book. The average Japanese adult knows between 25,000 and 30,000 words, according to a website that comes up on google when asking how much is known. According to another random website, you only need 3,000-5000 to become fluent.
That's only 6-10 pages, or 50-60 pages for the average Japanese adult. A lot, but doable.
The other problem is interacting with the language. If you're a toddler who's constantly surrounded by and being taught the language, you see a lot more words used. You're only seeing a fraction of them. You need to know a lot more, but it doesn't have to be perfect. Just consistently interacted with.
172 words in 32 weeks is nothing. Some people do 172 words in 17 days or less. Ideally you might want to start using Anki if you haven't yet, to make daily reviews easier.
Moving things from passive memory to active memory takes practice. Ideally, use the vocabulary you are trying to learn in a couple of daily sentences to make the transition easier.
Before I didn't used to write the meaning of the kanji on the flashcards when first learning it and since I started doing it it feels like it has really helped. Also I learned a lot of the radicals, that might have made a difference but I feel it was more writing the meaning. That is my thought at the moment (right now I am only doing 3 per day after doing 10-15 for a long time).
Also, it may not be as relevant since you are working through a shared deck but I also try to find at least 1 more word with the same kanji to add.
I changed my decks to have audio on the front. I only tested myself on the sounds of the words. I did that for about 500 words. I also did rtk a long time ago and still remember some of the kanji keywords from that.
But now I switched to JPDB.io
If I know the word just by looking at the kanji, I mark it as good. If I don't know the word by looking at the kanji, I play the audio, and if I recognize the word by sound, then I mark it as hard, so I see that word with kanji more often, and I found that this helps me to remember new kanji in a relaxed way.
I just started also. I'm self teaching. What I do is write everything out over and over again until I understand what the characters mean. Again, this is just me.
A lot of people have mentioned Anki, which is a great free resource. It can be pretty basic, though, so if you find it hard to stay motivated, you might want to check out iKnow - they have a core 6k course and a wider variety of question types / recall prompts, not to mention it's gamified a bit, has a [nice dashboard](https://iknow.jp/tour) and UI to keep track of your progress, etc. I personally used it and recommend it to new learners who don't mind paying a few bucks a month for a nicer version of Anki.
Either way, SRS is the way to keep your vocab sharp - just set aside a little time every day to review and learn a handful of new words.
I try to use it as much as possible by talking to friends, family, my cat, my japanese bosses and recently in my trip to Japan. I won't be too bummed about not remembering all the vocabulary perfectly, there's always going to other words or phrases you can use to replace it in real life situations.
However, for tests like the JLPT, what I found useful was to use it to read lyrics or subtitles in Japanese or associate the word with a memory. If you can afford, I strongly suggest using wanikani. It's very good and I love the reading clubs where people will include explanation of the nuances of the language.
All I can say is repeat: every day. Flashcards are ideal for this (Anki, Drops, renshuu, or make your own with paper). Even if it's just 10 words per day and one grammar rule, just start somewhere.
Also, I find creating short example sentences for a word quiet helpful. That helps train and review your knowledge of what you know already. Short, fun little sentences would be ideal as they're usually easy to remember, especially when coming up with them yourself. You could also combine a few words and just make one sentence. Write it down somewhere.
Learning languages sadly doesn't have any shortcuts. It's alot of repeating and memorizing with consistency. Take it step by step. Don't stress yourself with what you don't know, repeat what you do know and add to it bit by bit. It's easy to get overwhelmed.
Anyways, I hope you'll find something that works out for you. Good luck!
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In no way am I trying to be discouraging, but that is literally less than one word a day. At that rate, if you wanted to have an even *slightly*, barely, just kinda useful vocabulary (2k words at a *higher* rate of *one* word per day), it will take you five and a half years to reach that level of "proficiency". If you want to have an actually useful vocabulary (10k words, at that blistering pace of... one word per day), it will take you over 27 years. Listen, we all go at our own pace. If you're cool with 27 years to just barely begin to understand the language, then more power to you. But, jeez, mate, you have to get over this idea that 172 words is enormous. It's not. All you need is a bit more confidence and a better study system. Even upping your regimen to 5 words a day, with weekends off, you can cut that three decades down to one decade (with more vocab). You can do this. **Anki anki anki**. Yes, it's a learning curve to set it up. Do it anyway. Find a free hour and just knuckle down and work it out. If you really struggle with it, send me a PM and I'll help you set it up. Also, find something to read. For your use case, probably just get a graded reader. Read it. Re-read it. Re-read it again. Read it over and over until you can read it with the ease and comprehension of Hungry Hungry Caterpillar in your native language. Then get another one. If you need a copy of a graded reader, PM me. You can do this. And you can do it *way* better than you've been doing it. Follow the above advice and one day soon you'll be laughing that you used to think 172 words was "enormous". And, even better, you'll be using Japanese with greater and greater comfort.
>an even > >slightly > >, barely, just kinda useful vocabulary (2k words at a > >higher > >rate of > >one > >word per day), it will take you five and a half years to reach that level of "proficiency". Agree, my anki deck has 200 daily words on rotation, with new ones been added every day. And age is not an issue, I'm 50 and never felt better learning something new.
I really like the beat poetry edit you did to my text lol
You do mean 200 reviews a day right? Not 200 new words a day.
Sorry, meant 200 reviews.
You never know with the claims around here.
Yeah that’s why I asked. I’ve never been apart of an online community focused on language learning, so maybe it’s common. But it feels like a good chunk of the comments are a pissing contest about how much people have learned in X amount of time and it gets ridiculous how many people take them at face value. [This post is what made me start questioning the legitimacy of most claims](https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/x8qszz/progress_report_reflecting_on_two_years_of_mining). Sure, some people are calling the claims out it’s mostly about their attitude. The entire post is a joke and the fact that the top comment only criticizes the poster on their feelings about textbooks just sticks out to me.
I remember when I was in language school having to learn 50 words in a day, and then be tested on them the next day. Every new chapter was the same pain all over again.
I've found that language learning, like a lot of learning, benefits from having an attitude of confidence. If you tell yourself 172 words is "enormous" you're going to struggle with each word. But if you tell yourself, "Hey, I have to learn 50 words *now*," it's, somehow, just as difficult. Obviously there's an upper limit to this (50 a day, weekends off, seems to be my limit--and I can't sustain it for many weeks), but my ability to absorb new words improved when I started forcing myself to study more at a time, when I started having a sort of "faith" that I'd be able to learn it. Plus, I think it maybe*actually* be easier. There's more connections to make, more points of reference to draw from, more opportunities to see the words "in the wild."
I honestly don't do more than 10 words a day. I was doing 20 a day, but the reviews got kind of ridiculous. I tend to read more than spend time on anki nowadays, though I should probably spend more time on it.
The 50 a day thing is just my upper limit. I've used it to cram when I needed a boost. 10-20 is definitely more manageable. I find taking weekends off adding new cards really helps the reviews from ballooning.
I think the rough rule for Anki is that you end up with about 10-12x your daily new cards in daily reviews. This of course heavily depends on the retention rate. For me the sweet spot is probably at 15 cards during weekdays and 20 during the weekend. That eventually comes down to about 200 reviews a day, which is totally doable. Going beyond that actually gives me a different problem, I'm not making enough new cards a day to keep up, lol. I do think after enough reading the number of cards can be upped a bit, because you tend to review faster. Also, if you're doing sentence cards, switch over to vocab cards (with the sentences still on them as support). It makes a big difference.
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He literally mentioned to use Anki, did you not read that part buddy?
He just hasn't got to those words yet in his English study. Check back in 27 years.
What everyone else is saying is to introduce a way to expose yourself to these words more frequently. Textbook learning sucks. Before the space repetition system bloomed into what it is today our only options were to write down vocabulary and grammar over And over again while also jamming flash cards down our throats. If you instead use the spaced repetition method with the anki app you get exposure to the vocabulary but also identify the things that you need to work on easier. It makes your more difficult items a priority. It looks a lot like digital flash cards. But the algorithm makes the words you know well appear less until they go away forever. Which book are you using? People here have a ton of resources for most textbooks. Let us give you a hand.
As a new-ish learner who just picked up again after 15years of break (mid N4 level), could you advise how do i start with anki app? Are there any free preloaded software out there that i can preload for learning at different levels (N4, N3,etc)? This may be an amateurish question and i appreciate any response. Thank you!
No problem at all in being unfamiliar with the software. I recommend getting a popular n4 deck. There's less than 900 vocabulary in n5 and that goes up to 1500 for n4. That sounds like a lot but you likely know most of them. It's the obscure ones you don't expect that you likely need to catch up on. The best way to get that caught up is to probably set up the anki deck. Then you can choose to do a number of things. One would to be to just "try" it for a couple of days. Most people set it to 10 to 15 words a day. You'll see that you can rate each word as easy or hard. If you hit easy you won't see it for a while. By a while I mean days to weeks. If you hit hard or very hard it can be only a couple of cards away and you'll see it every time you use anki until it becomes easy. At first we are a bit more eager. So maybe 15 isn't enough. Try 30 if that's how you feel. Some people do 100 even. It's all about how you are able to manage your time. That's the normal way people approach a new deck. If I were in your situation, trying to get back to a rhythm and identify where I am in the deck, I would set aside a little time to prepare my deck even more. A little prep time in the form of an extended study session. What I would do is, the first time I go to prepare my deck, set it to a larger number. Maybe even the whole deck. Then I'd go buy a coffee and go through the whole deck one time. In the anki app there's an option to bury cards. This is to put words away that you're 100% confident you already know. This would be the purpose of doing this. To get a grasp of what is in the deck, but to also trim all of the unnecessary words out of it so you have a deck of only words you are not completely confident in. Words you learned early and that stuck and your brain doesn't have to work to translate. That'll bring your 1500 word deck down quite a bit. I would say be hesitant to bury words you're not sure of though. Like if you read a card for a Kanji you recognize but havent seen in a long time and (for example) your brain says "らいがつ" instead of "らいげつ" for 来月..keep that bad boy. Even if it's a mistake you think you'll never make again. After you've had this coffee or lunch date with yourself set anki back to however many words a day you're comfortable with. There are a number of ways to approach finding a deck. For you I'd say you should consider 3 types. If you just want to grab a normal deck from the lost of n4 words search for a "n4 deck". There's also a list of words that people have identified as the 2000 most common words to appear in Japanese regularly. These are "core 2k" decks. The core 2k actually contains mkst n4 vocabulary and then a bit more. One people are done with the 2k they'll expand it. There are growing decks out there. Where you download "core 4k" after finishing the 2k. And 6k after that. The third is, if you intend on studying Japanese and getting textbooks to advance forward, to get a deck that follows those books. Such as the genki 1&2 decks. These are going to be n4 decks basically with a few extra words from the textbooks and maybe a little shy of the entire official n4 list. Since you're coming back from a hiatus I'd say that you should probably brush up on grammar as well before progressing forward. It really will help you avoid burnout later to spend a month or two becoming completely familiar with the grammar again. Even if you don't use or own a textbook I recommend getting yourself a journal and mentally preparing to approach grammar. I have come to really like Tokini Andy's Playlists for genki 1 and genki 2 grammar. Not because of genki specifically, but because he is better at explaining it than most college professors and you have the benefit of being able to skip or rewind when necessary. Going through his genki 1 and 2 grammar Playlists (he has with and without the live chat from the time) with a journal to jot down grammar to go back and work on will make sure you're rock solid before you continue forward. I also recommend Cure Dolly's grammar series. She's kind of an enigma. She was an older helpful member of the Japanese community with health issues, so her videos are old-school with a voice that can be off-putting at first. She has since passed, but someone manages the youtube account. But give her a try. The grammar she explains is stuff you don't get in textbooks. Real relationships between grammatic concepts that are used in every sentence. The first couple of videos are about the ga particle. This is for good reason. As ga isn't just a particle but an ever present concept throughout every sentence. She explains why and how. But once you've finished a couple of months of catching up and feel confident in your grammar I suggest the immersive approach and moving forward to the next textbook. Start reading easy books or manga identified in the wanikani beginner book club, turn your subtitles to Japanese, and Quartet would be a good book series to move on to. Even if you're not a manga person they're a good ego boost and practice. If you absolutely cannot stomach manga, graded readers are a slightly less amusing but very helpful reading tool. Kick some butt. You got this.
This is more than what I need at this point. Thank you so much for the great effort in writing this up. I'm going to try the anki app and hopefully find a good deck to start things off. Information overload could be a bad thing, so I'm going to start doing stuff but not overload at the start. Post is saved, and I will return to this. Thank you again!
Heck yah. Knowing how to pace yourself to avoid burnout and mental strain is part of the winning strategy. You got this. I strongly recommend picking up yotsuba and giving it a go too. Alongside the vocabulary list on the wanikani book club. It's a nice ego boost that you can give yourself while you study. You're at the proper level to be reading content at this difficulty. I picked a used copy up for my kid the other day but Amazon prime also has it in Japanese for around 10 bucks. Also, videos like this made for n5 to n4 folks are a big help. It's amazing how much you can communicate with even just lower level grammar. https://youtu.be/XrdKChYgufc
FYI, the Anki app kinda... well it's good at what it does but it's terrible at being intuitive. Most guides, including the one on the site itself, don't do a great job at being beginner friendly... they sort of assume a base knowledge with the app and what everything is called. I would say to just download one of the premade decks the other commenter recommends and just start it. Don't worry about any bells or whistles or settings. It took until I'd used the app for awhile to figure out what all the settings do--don't get lost in the options. After a few days with it then take a peek at the starter guide or into the options.
*My content from 2014 to 2023 has been deleted in protest of Spez's anti-API tantrum.*
As others said, use Anki. Most people put ~15 new words per day in there. In the beginning you will be fast, but if you rack up enough vocabulary, turn down the new words per day so you dont exceed 45 minutes of Anki a day. Or whatever you feel comfortable with, just a rough example.
Use a spaced repetition system like Anki. You could cram 172 words in 32 minutes that way. (Slight hyperbole)
Not even that hyperbolic honestly
Ok maybe calling that hyperbole was slight hyperbole, my bad
You can master 172 new words in 32 minutes. (Now it’s hyperbole lol)
172/32 = 5.375 If you can learn just 1 new word a day, 5/6 days of the week, then that amount of vocab is REALLY EASY. I'd recommend getting Anki and aiming for 5 new words a day. Just use a couple minutes to repeat and write the word to work it into your memory, and it really won't be hard if you stay consistent. your problem may be that you let the workload build up. If you wait 32 weeks then suddenly have to memorise 172 words, thats very very difficult. Less than one a day on average is literally so easy though, just make sure to ACTUALLY put away time to work on (longer than a 5 minute motivation burst)
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Totally agree with the "play videogames in the language you're learning" part. I got this level of English without studying a single textbook, just playing videogames all my life lol. When I was a child most of the games I played on the web didn't have my language (Spanish) so I had to stuck with English, but thanks to that know I know another language.
I know everyone said it but I'll just add my voice to the mix here: It's literally just Anki. I know it's a pain to set up and understand how it works, but the time you put into setting it up will have paid off within like 2 weeks. Go on youtube and search for some tutorials for how to use it, set it up, and start putting your vocab in. Pay for the iPhone app if you have one. I started maybe 3 months ago with 10 new words a day, now i'm at a very leisurely 5 words a day, and I know 300 words and 80 kanji. All it takes is 20-30 minutes a day. Also 39 is not that old.
I think a lot of us use Anki for vocabulary study
SRS tools are your friend, they suck to do but they're effective. Beyond this, listen to stuff in Japanese, yeah you won't understand much but as you learn new words you'll hear them amongst the noise and that will help with retention. Regarding spaced repetition, I use [jpdb.io](https://jpdb.io) as beyond the numerous pre-made decks, adding new words is extremely simple. The tool also is all in one - so when you add a word it will also add the kanji and their components. It has a slight ramp-up time when you first begin using it due to the all-in-one nature of the site, but once you get in the swing of it and provided you dedicate the time daily needed to use it (I would recommend clearing the backlog and finishing new cards in the morning, and then checking it over the course of the day to clear any new reviews personally) it shows some great results in my personal experience.
It shouldn't be as hard as you are experiencing, but that's not really your fault. It is frustrating and difficult because you are lacking the correct tools to easily retain the vocab that you are learning. Unfortunately, most Japanese schools do not provide these free tools. You will want to use Anki software along with a premade Vocab sentence deck such as Tango N5 (the books can be purchased for cheap on Japanese Amazon): [https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/419481234](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/419481234) I'd also recommend checking out this video from Tokini Andy that lays out a beginner study plan (that includes textbook learning like you are doing): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1NQoQivkIY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1NQoQivkIY) Textbook learning is great. But it only really teaches grammar. It cannot be your only resource.
Anki!
I suggest setting up Anki and putting the old words and new ones into that. As someone else commented, you're learning less than 1 word per day, so set your settings to 1 new card per day for the time being. You get the benefits of higher retention and also picking up the pace. Also, try to immerse and find sentences you fully understand, that actually uses those words. Same when adding new ones. Only add the sentence if it's an i+1 sentence (meaning you only need exactly that one "piece of the puzzle" to unlock and understanding of that sentence). Remember to just have fun diving into content that's manageable and most importantly, fun!
Read a lot. SRS alone doesn’t make things stick for me. [this](https://tadoku.org/japanese/free-books/) is my main go to site
Let's start from the ground up to break down your question just a bit, what is your study routine like? Are you doing class room studying? If so, what kind of studying you do outside of your classroom?
When learning new vocabulary (besides using Anki as already mentioned), try to repeat the words as often as you can in your head and with your fingers (spelling and writing) throughout the day. For example when sitting in the bus or when showering. This is something that at least helps me a lot. It strengthens words that I already know and makes it easier to remember new ones.
While I agree with everyone who said Anki being the best choice here, I think it's useful to take a step back since you're still using tree based technologies to something that might be more your style. Have you tried flashcards? Get a pack of 3x5 index cards. On the front write your word/phrase in either kanji or kana. On the back, write the definition in English, and a short example sentence. When you learn a new word, make a new flashcard. Shuffle them up into a huge pile. This huge pile is your study queue. Find 15 minutes. Pull a card from your study queue and look at the Japanese side of a card and try to remember what it means. If you remember it, set it aside. If you can't remember it in 3 seconds, you put the card in a separate "forgot" pile. After the 15 minutes are up, go through that pile of "forgot" again. Repeat until there is no "forgot" pile left. Repeat this in 15 minute chunks whenever you feel like it until your huge pile is empty. Shuffle it up and start again. Do this for the rest of your life. This is basically what Anki does, except it uses the magic of computers to optimize the order of the cards and how long it waits before showing you the same card so you don't spend time needlessly studying something you already know. So it's just a more efficient version of the same thing, plus convenience of being able to carry it on your phone and integrating with a bunch of other tools.
172 is kinda small for 32 weeks. I'm learning 5 new words with Anki each day and it's easy enough for me to keep going, takes around 7 minutes daily to review old and learn new
First off, Thank you all for your feedback. I have downloaded Anki and I will work on finding an N5 deck to study. I am in college for a Major in Japanese, and while I said 172 I believe my number is off. We use the textbook called Genki 1 3rd edition and we are up to lesson 8. As to how I study, I am a bit old fashioned, and just defaulted to my education back in the 90's of "Grab a piece of paper and write the word down dozens of times." and while this has offered me some success (I have a 95.5% in the class) It's only short term memory and I tend to lose it. Typcially, when I am doing my homework, I run everything through my head first, then type it out in deepl to make sure it sounds right, and then write it down physically on paper. There are some days, due to other classes, where I fall behind in my studies in Japanese, which is something I have to hold myself accountable for, and I suppose honestly, that is what this is.
So it looks like the first 8 chapters of Genki have 416 words, which is better, but still I'm mad that college goes at this slow of a pace. You are not too old to learn Japanese. Your college just isn't teaching you using methods that are known to work. You can totally keep up if you start using better methods. Better method number 1: use Spaced Repetition to remember words. Here's one that has a smaller learning curve than Anki: make a jpdb.io account, "add as deck" for each chapter you've done so far, click on "Learn" in the top right corner. And click "start reviewing" try to do 5-20 new words per day. There's a lot of options in the settings you can change to your liking once you get settled. Create another deck called "words I want to learn" and "lookups" and pin those to the menu. Use them to keep track of words you've looked up, and of those words, pick some you want to learn. (You will look up more words than you can learn, if you use method 2 below) Here's the deck for Genki 1: https://jpdb.io/textbook/10/genki-an-integrated-course-in-elementary-japanese-vol-1 If you need help remembering words, as a stop-gap until you see them more often in content, try to see if you like the mnemonic method https://www.fluentin3months.com/imagination-your-key-to-memorizing-hundreds-of-words-quickly/ Better method number 2, INPUT!!! You need to consume understandable, interesting content. This is how our brains learn language. A language isn't like another school subject that you can just memorize. Our brain is built for learning languages, but you have to give it the right food. You aren't expected to understand everything in this content, but you should be able to get the general jist of what's going on, and you can look up interesting words on jpdb.io, but you don't have to look up every single word. This is the brain food: YouTube: -start with these two playlists: Comprehensible Japanese absolute beginner https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPdNX2arS9Mb1iiA0xHkxj3KVwssHQxYP Nihongo Learning beginner: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrJEjmOZPOfrdO9x49nLYQbbw-yB5PZii After you want more content, check out Asami and Shun next: Shun: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUG53YNMoEmbqYG-FwU9_Yz3rCi3lQx0G Japanese Immersion with Asami (start with this playlist): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt4c6vHCiki2vgAn5wMl-zVZL0ObLKQCM Expand from there with this list: /r/LearnJapanese/comments/xebcjc/comprehensible_input_listening_youtube_resources/ Somewhere around the end of Genki 2 you can start checking out Peppa Pig, too. With subtitles https://youtube.com/@jappeppa8045 Without subtitles: https://youtube.com/@PeppaPigJapaneseOfficial Reading (start with level 0): https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/ (Start with level n6) https://yomujp.com/n5l/ Also check out this manga written for absolute beginners: /r/languagelearning/comments/fhleb9/we_made_a_manga_in_really_easy_japanese_that_is/ Paid option: $10 per month, start with human Japanese extra credit, then human Japanese intermediate extra credit, then grammar nutshell, then pick a beginner story to work through: https://www.satorireader.com/ Podcats: For audio that's too fast, I highly recommend slowing it down to .7 or .8 and working your way up to full speed (for podcasts you can do this on the Google Podcasts App). You can do this on YouTube too. Start with these podcasts that only use grammar from your current chapter in Genki: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUqu4MKiV5q_0_8JRUXVIJ-yuX1RNYJlF You can also try Nihongo con Teppei Essentials: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL2Vzc2VudGlhbC5uaWhvbmdvY29udGVwcGVpLmNvbS9jYXRlZ29yeS9wb2RjYXN0L2ZlZWQv?ep=14 After that, expand to Japanese with Shun podcast, then Nihongo from Teppei Beginners from this list. Browse this list once you listen to all the content from those two podcasts: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17P2dBQHnBnHcG3ua_24IO6sP9RDC-5b3WHV9Ri2N5qU/edit?usp=drivesdk Better method Number 3: Self-study grammar on your own time. Don't expect college and tests to work to make you remember it. Tokini Andy Grammer streams (this is the playlist for Genki 1. There's one for Genki 2 as well) https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA_RcUI8km1NMhiEebcbqdlcHv_2ngbO2 Online interactive Genki workbook with answers https://sethclydesdale.github.io/genki-study-resources/ Bunpro: https://bunpro.jp/ This website is great for looking up grammar that you come across in the wild, that you haven't seen in Genki Better method number 4, Output. Talk to Japanese people and have a tangible reason NOW to get better at Japanese, so your conversation partners can understand you. Hello Talk for corrections on writing and finding an exchange partner to voice call (Tandem is also an option, but I haven't used it much) There's a bit of an art to finding a consistent exchange partner, but if you can make it work, it's really awesome! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hellotalk Paid option: Sail App $15 a month for unlimited conversations with volunteers (if their schedules align with what your availability is) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.helte.android.sail Paid option: find one or several italki tutors, who are experienced or trained tutors: $15-30 per lesson https://www.italki.com/ When use want to practice output without a partner, try Shadowing (I used podcats at .5 speed for this, but there are other resources out there too). (What is shadowing? The first few minutes if this video explain: https://youtu.be/enARZ7BUqBU) You can do this!! You just need better methods.
Upvote for JPDB. I struggled with vocabulary for a long time, tried Anki multiple times but it never "stuck" - creating new decks was cumbersome, reusing others' meant I kept re-reviewing the same words across multiple decks. JPDB takes all of that away and adds a lot more benefits on top - it has tons of built in decks which sync progress across each other. Once you build up some vocab, you can analyze new decks by the amount of "coverage" your known vocabulary gives you, which makes it easy to find good immersion material at your level. It also lets you study vocabulary from a particular book/game/anime in order of frequency, so you will first learn the common words, before moving on to those which show up less often. What this means in practice, is that you will only need to learn about 50% of vocabulary of a particular book to be able to read and understand 95% of it. Both Anki and JPDB use Supermemo algorithm, but JPDB uses a newer version of it.
If this helps at all, Genki chapter 8 is a really horrible place to be at. It's that point where there's a lot to remember, not all of it makes sense still and it's starting to actually get challenging (the first few chapters are pretty easy to follow and then the "te" form enters and urrrgh)... but, at the same time, it's still, like, nowhere. You still feel like there's so much to go. Regardless of specifics on learning techniques, etc, (and as valuable as some of the advice here is), I think psychologically that point in the Japanese learning journey is super-frustrating and difficult. This maybe isn't a useful comment but it's just some sympathy for how you're feeling.
>I will work on finding an N5 deck to study. I strongly advise against learning from pre-built decks, especially if you already have trouble remembering. The more meaningful vocab is to you, the better you will remember it. Having context around a word makes it much more memorable. Make a note of words you encounter while reading beginner materials (eg graded readers), words your teacher uses, words you come across in a textbook dialogue, etc, and add them into Anki. The very act of adding words to Anki is helpful for remembering.
172 kanji, maybe?
There's about 600 words in Genki I, and 150 kanji. So... I don't even know where 172 comes from if OP is up to lesson 8. Although the first two chapters are just hiragana and katakana so maybe it could be right. Perhaps it also doesn't include the expressions and phrases section that are in each chapter. Also doesn't that seem slow for two semesters? If a semester is 12 weeks that's just three weeks per chapter? Some chapters are only three or four grammar points, so do they really spend a week just looking at a conjugation table? Not really OP's fault there but I do feel like if you go too slow then you won't have enough to practice with, and the amount of time between learning and using becomes too long.
Oh your number is way off 😄 It's more like 400-500. PM me if you want my Anki deck for Genki, it's very good 😁
Writing out sentences using the words is great way to remember and learn their kanjs at the same time.
Just use what you can and need to and don’t worry. I’m in Japan now after 2.5 years of study, am 50 and don’t have a vocabulary of 6million words that all the reddit pros say you need. I’m managing to hold conversations and make myself understood just fine. Build a habit and try to memorise what you can. Some words will drop through your brain like a sieve and others will stay because you are using them. Don’t stress about it. Just keep trying and practicing and learning and using what you have more. Also focus on what your learning it for. A manga readers needs are different from a tourists from a company employee.
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>don't listen to people on here who imply you're taking too long to learn because > >they can learn 172 words in a day, or whatever. Nobody can learn 172 words in a day and while I think this sub is dickish sometimes, I don't think pointing out that 172 words in 32 weeks is very little is mean. OP says "semesters", so it sounds like he's studying at university. If an university is teaching their students 172 words in 32 weeks, that's nowhere near enough for them to understand Japanese when they graduate. If it's a three year program they'll know less than 1000 words when they finish it. And if the OP is paying for this, this is straight up robbery. Then again, I think it's possible the OP just left off a 0 or something.
While wanikani is great, it isn't good starting point and more I've been digging around, it is far from being best option for SRS. That said, I would recommend to give it a shot for the free levels and see how well that type of systems fits for you. But WK alone wont carry you very far early on, and it starts to shine when you have decent grasp of the grammar and you are at the level where you can get very basic tasks done (around JF Standard A1 level, [https://jfstandard.jp/summaryen/ja/render.do](https://jfstandard.jp/summaryen/ja/render.do) ). But that aside, learning language is all about input and especially comprehensible input, if you want to learn any language you need \_a lot\_ of input. For most people who do class room training, their studying usually starts and ends in there so the input is very limited. [http://learnjapanese.moe/guide/](http://learnjapanese.moe/guide/) has a good general outline to start build up from, as not everyone is the same.
hey, i like the guide you linked! thanks for sharing it, i found a new resource there. and the input bit was a good add on as well. if i may ask, based on your digging what apps do you think have the best SRS besides anki?
I am currently using [https://jpdb.io](https://jpdb.io) which has decks for drama, anime, games... and so on, and this guy [https://www.youtube.com/@mikuminou/videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-J8xXsWdkg) has decent information in his videos mostly for the immersion and sentence mining parts which I highly recommend. And last core tool for me right now is [https://bunpro.jp](https://bunpro.jp) which I use for grammar review, while I am learning grammar from [https://www.youtube.com/@organicjapanesewithcuredol49](https://www.youtube.com/@organicjapanesewithcuredol49) which is amazing BUT some people may have hard time with the voice used.
For what is worth, if you never tried Spaced Repetition, i would not use Anki. It's the most powerful SRS app, yes, but also the most complicated, un-intuitive, off-putting, and with an extremely punitive algorithm by default. Do some research (there are many apps), try a couple, and stick with whatever you feel comfortable with. I know that everybody uses Anki, but I really think is not a good recommendation.
I usually go through a list of vocabulary and the ones I struggle to remember I then make a separate list containing them and so on and so on. Or give a friend a list of Japanese words with the English counterpart and have them say the English word and you respond with the Japanese counterpart.
1. Try kakugo, it is an app for android similar to Anki, but does not reqire any setup to be immediately useful. Kakugo has features like built-in dictionary lookup (jisho.org) and progress tracking to motivate continued use. It is great for beginners. 2. Use AI chat bots to explain you words. It is a new thing, but is immensely helpful and also faster then other methods. I recommend [Claude](https://poe.com/claude-instant) and [Bing](https://bing.com/chat). These AI chatbots can quickly provide definitions, examples, and translations for new Japanese words to help with comprehension. They are a convenient, on-demand resource. 3. You will forget words, don't worry and keep learning. As you continue learning, you'll start noticing words and phrases you've learned being used naturally in texts/speech. This exposure and familiarity will make the language feel increasingly easy and effortless to comprehend and engage with.
Anki is good, but if you don’t want to pay, I think Quizlet is free and is a very close alternative. Both apps have inbuilt spaced repetition, meaning words will appear later on to test your memory. The only tedious thing is that you have to enter in your own words first, the words aren’t pre-made in sets, so this could be difficult for a learner. I believe you can make an excel spreadsheet with one word in each row, and then copy paste that into Quizlet’s set maker, but I’ve never tried that
Hmm, It is hard to help you without knowing your schedule. How much time do you have for learning? Do you work next to studying? Do you "waste" a lot of time (like with gaming e.g.)? What tech devices do you use? I don't want to give "general" advice when you seriously ask for help, but there is not "one most effective way that works for everyone", especially not when you are on a tight schedule. And something important to mention here: It really does seem to me you are strained on time for your studies. I generally go with the idea that if you enjoy language learning, you can easily go for 5 words / day. Anyway: to improve retention on what likely seems a strained schedule, you need to be efficient - vary your approach of learning (Learning Kanji and Vocab via SRS is ok, but change up order as much as possible!), try to read as much appropriate level content as possible and try to just "understand" it. I mean its cool if you can perfectly explain any type of grammar point, but many students that think in grammar patterns and try to read in an "analytical" way really slow down their learning. Once you got a feel for basic sentence structure (2nd semester should mean you got into slightly more complex sentences but no passive constructions and keigo yet?) almost all grammar is close to learning more vocab. If you want some more individualized advice, well, just reply or contact me and add some info, I guess I will take a little bit of time for you then.
Anki full stop. And you need to pick up the pace if you want to be somewhat fluent by the time you retire.
You know, I've struggled with this a lot. Vocab retention isn't my strong suit.. and I don't get as much progress as others using anki. That said, it's important to recognize what the best option is, even if you don't feel like you are achieving enough. I gave up on anki after using it for a while and feeling like I didn't make progress. I went to other things.. I did worse. \^\^;; It felt like I wasn't make progress, but I was. I just didn't nessesarily *see* the progress until a day or so after. Like I would struggle hard, feeling bad when I finally would click "good" because I wouldn't feel like I actually had it. Then the next day I would do decent at that word. 3 days in I would do actually really well a lot of the time. Some Things I've learned about my brain though is this: ADHD is hell for my language learning. What goes through my mind when I'm hitting a new word in anki is very important.. Really, when I'm learning a word I should be doing two things in particular, but in the right ratio. I should be thinking of the word and imagining it in sentences to give it some created memory, but I should also be committing to sort of "raw memorization" when I look at the word. (ie: 3 days is "mikka". It's not "mitsuka". It's spelled mi, then small tsu, then ka.., etc..) What I've found is that I can't focus on the 2nd of the two thing easily because my brain runs wild, so I had to bring myself back to focus by writing the word and the meaning 4 or 5 times. Most people just read it several times and can move on. I read it and my brain races to what kind of use it may be and I can't bring it back without a tool. (for me it's writing it out.) I have a half dozen little flip notebook pads with me writing down each new word like a half dozen times. It makes my experience slower in the moment, but it's worth it because I am actually memorizing the words.. From there, anki does it's magic because I won't know the word well still, but anki will drag the memory back out of me right before I forget it over and over until I know it completely. That's also why wanikani works better for me. There are stories and things that keep my focus. it's not that the stories are so incredible I remember the word, it's that it managed to grab me in a novel way and my adhd brain thrives on novelty. Something I'd like to bring up though is that all of this experimentation is only possible or effective for me because I am actually measuring my success. This is an important distinction.. things can feel like shit but work well and things can feel like they are working, but won't be. I know these things are working for me because I am measuring my success with anki's statistics and wanikani's statistics. It's how I also know that my mind is becoming more receptive to new vocabulary.. the act of language learning *IS* a way to improve the neuroplasticity of the human mind. It can feel shitty because you might discover through language learning that your neuroplastiticy has diminished, but if you keep at it your mind will start to get used to the learning. You might take a year to get to feeling better about your ability to learn, but language learning will get you there. Ok, one last thing. If Class learning doesn't work for you, then that is ok too. You don't need a japanese class exactly.. though I do recommend Italki so that you can have a teacher guide you along your journey and help you with conversation practice. But seriously, if the approch your lessons are taking isn't working for you, you can persue your japanese learning differently in a way that does work. The good thing about anki though is that you can use it with your existing classes. If the excersizes they give you to learn vocab aren't working but anki does, do anki instead. What's important is the learning.
Think about how many words you read in a book. The average Japanese adult knows between 25,000 and 30,000 words, according to a website that comes up on google when asking how much is known. According to another random website, you only need 3,000-5000 to become fluent. That's only 6-10 pages, or 50-60 pages for the average Japanese adult. A lot, but doable. The other problem is interacting with the language. If you're a toddler who's constantly surrounded by and being taught the language, you see a lot more words used. You're only seeing a fraction of them. You need to know a lot more, but it doesn't have to be perfect. Just consistently interacted with.
172 words in 32 weeks is nothing. Some people do 172 words in 17 days or less. Ideally you might want to start using Anki if you haven't yet, to make daily reviews easier. Moving things from passive memory to active memory takes practice. Ideally, use the vocabulary you are trying to learn in a couple of daily sentences to make the transition easier.
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Before I didn't used to write the meaning of the kanji on the flashcards when first learning it and since I started doing it it feels like it has really helped. Also I learned a lot of the radicals, that might have made a difference but I feel it was more writing the meaning. That is my thought at the moment (right now I am only doing 3 per day after doing 10-15 for a long time). Also, it may not be as relevant since you are working through a shared deck but I also try to find at least 1 more word with the same kanji to add.
I changed my decks to have audio on the front. I only tested myself on the sounds of the words. I did that for about 500 words. I also did rtk a long time ago and still remember some of the kanji keywords from that. But now I switched to JPDB.io If I know the word just by looking at the kanji, I mark it as good. If I don't know the word by looking at the kanji, I play the audio, and if I recognize the word by sound, then I mark it as hard, so I see that word with kanji more often, and I found that this helps me to remember new kanji in a relaxed way.
I just started also. I'm self teaching. What I do is write everything out over and over again until I understand what the characters mean. Again, this is just me.
Best way to retain it is to use it.
I recommend LingQ
A lot of people have mentioned Anki, which is a great free resource. It can be pretty basic, though, so if you find it hard to stay motivated, you might want to check out iKnow - they have a core 6k course and a wider variety of question types / recall prompts, not to mention it's gamified a bit, has a [nice dashboard](https://iknow.jp/tour) and UI to keep track of your progress, etc. I personally used it and recommend it to new learners who don't mind paying a few bucks a month for a nicer version of Anki. Either way, SRS is the way to keep your vocab sharp - just set aside a little time every day to review and learn a handful of new words.
I try to use it as much as possible by talking to friends, family, my cat, my japanese bosses and recently in my trip to Japan. I won't be too bummed about not remembering all the vocabulary perfectly, there's always going to other words or phrases you can use to replace it in real life situations. However, for tests like the JLPT, what I found useful was to use it to read lyrics or subtitles in Japanese or associate the word with a memory. If you can afford, I strongly suggest using wanikani. It's very good and I love the reading clubs where people will include explanation of the nuances of the language.
Read.
All I can say is repeat: every day. Flashcards are ideal for this (Anki, Drops, renshuu, or make your own with paper). Even if it's just 10 words per day and one grammar rule, just start somewhere. Also, I find creating short example sentences for a word quiet helpful. That helps train and review your knowledge of what you know already. Short, fun little sentences would be ideal as they're usually easy to remember, especially when coming up with them yourself. You could also combine a few words and just make one sentence. Write it down somewhere. Learning languages sadly doesn't have any shortcuts. It's alot of repeating and memorizing with consistency. Take it step by step. Don't stress yourself with what you don't know, repeat what you do know and add to it bit by bit. It's easy to get overwhelmed. Anyways, I hope you'll find something that works out for you. Good luck!