掲示板 Forums - tips on staying motivated

So, you always feel motivated to do something you like, right? Like watching a show you like, or playing a game, or talking about your interests. You can try doing that in Japanese. For example, a few months ago I decided to study by describing a few characters I like, like "これはスレーンドーマン. 顔ないので、怖いだ." ("This is Slenderman. Since he has no face, he's scary.")

Something else you could do is watch shows or read things in Japanese. You might not be good enough to really do that yet, but you don't need to watch a whole episode with no help. You could just read a tiny bit of a book and get a dictionary and learn some things from it. When kids are young, adults make them read so they can get smart and grasp language and learn, so it's like the same thing as that. I think there was a site called something like Animelon where you could study Japanese by watching anime with these subtitles and it had a dictionary attached? I haven't used it in a while so I can't remember well, but it was a cool site and you might like using it.

I also think it's good to romanticise it. Like, whenever I write diary entries or study Japanese, I like to just decorate the page nicely, and do a nice "Japanese Study" title in calligraphy and stuff. It makes it feel nicer.

Learning a language is a goal that takes a long time and a lot of effort, so if you're looking at it as "Im going to learn and get fluent in this language" that's a big thing which can seem overwhelming. Try and just have little goals. Like, "Today, if I can understand 2 song lyrics I'll feel good."

Speaking of song lyrics, do you listen to much Japanese music? I kind of do, and understanding song lyrics is fun and motivating, and whats even better is that it can help you learn it because you remember the whole lyric, if that makes sense. I like this one song, and a lyric is "僕の頭まだ若いだ、もっと時間をくれない？" ("My head is still young, won't you give me more time?") And just by remembering that lyric (which I already had memorised before I even understood it) I remember all the words in it, and that's how I never forget the words Jikan or Kureru or Atama. It's really useful! If I ever forget one of those words, I remember the song, and the melody tells me the words.

Also, if you still don't know hiragana and katakana, learn words and letters simultaneously. Like, don't just learn "あ" and "い", learn the word あい (love) AND the letters, at the same time, if that makes sense. It makes it faster and easy to remember.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

As a self-learner who never learned japanese at school, best advise I can give you is:

"Don't enjoy your japanese study!"

It's just a small trick but I basically do only 2 things to learn japanese:

1) Studying japanese actively (with renshuu for example)
2) Enjoying japanese and learning passively (with youtube for example)

And seriously 1) is just not fun. There is a part of learning which is simply tedious and while it's true that you should enjoy japanese to keep you motivated, I don't think there should any joy in doing things like renshuu schedule (or other kind of exercises). There shouldn't be also any tedious feeling for that matter. You need 1) but you don't need to be overdoing it.
Otherwise those "tedious" feeling will make you demotivated. And you will stop learning japanese.

You can see it as:

1) Spending energy (motivation) to learn
2) Replenishing that energy

And it works the best when those two activity are clearly separated. Also I know, it may seems a bit weird to advise "Don't enjoy your japanese study" but seriously, it helps a lot x)
It's a trick to stop your brain from being stupid. For example, if you doing your renshuu schedule and you manage finally to remember a word, sure, it's nice and you will probably happy about it (and it will get you motivated). Problem is, if, after that, you fail 20 words in row, that will just disapear immediately. The worst part is that you will even ignore the one word that you managed to learn. You're making progress and you should be happy about it. But your brain won't accept that.


So in that sense, it's better to do it without getting "emotionally involved" kinda. Just do it and try do it in a way that don't make feel demotivated after each studying session. Your only feeling after each session should be "okay, I did it and that's good enough for today". Even if you fail 20 words in a row. That's just normal and it's maybe because you're trying to bite more than you chew. And maybe, you should do less in those studying session. Every thing is good at that point. Reduce the number of words, block the words that you can't remember and focus only on the easy words first, etc. Because the most important thing is to stay consistent. And once, you're consistent, you can try do to more in 1). But even if the case, don't "spend" too much motivation at those moment where you feel better. Motivation is really like a currency that you need for 1). And when you get in the red, you will start slacking.

Anyway, once you're good with that, don't hesitate to apply any of the advise for the "fun" part. Anything is good to take too here.
And if you have a hard time restarting your daily study, just start with only 5 new words per day. Or even only 1. I often do that after a break. Just do it and take your time. Next week, try to do more if you're feeling motivated enough. Or try to found some way to gain more motivation to "spend".

頑張ってね!

That's a very wide range... B1 is really high as a floor (somewhere between N4 and N3). Honestly, anything above B1 is out of the question. For reference I'm around B2 (CEFR) and N3/N2 (JLPT).

Are you sure it's not A2 or something?

For games, I'd recommend stuff like Pokemon, Animal Crossing or Ni no Kuni. Things like Persona or Danganronpa are more intermediate, I'd say.

Instead of trying to watch full-length content you could try to watch some clips/highlights (切り抜き). They are short, have JP subtitles (to an extent) and are, at least in theory, the best/funniest parts. Not sure how interesting they'd be if you don't know any of the content creators though.

Having said that, to enjoy native content you'd need at least B1. Anything lower and you're just struggling to understand what's going on. In my opinion, of course.

Maybe some slice-of-life anime without subtitles? That might be fun. Even just re-watching a show.

These should be things you actually enjoy, not "learning" material. You'll pick up a lot of vocabulary, a bit of grammar, and some bad habits/weird slang

As for your actual structured studying, consistency is king. Pace yourself so you don't burn out. It might be better to lower your intensity to a point where you can stay consistent. No point in pushing hard for a few days only to get burned out for a week.

Not much more I can say, good luck!

If you can't avoid it, enjoy it.

And when studying, you don't want to think about the scale of things, but the little things you're happy to learn, which builds up to mastery in the end.

Besides, you're only thinking of doing it because you want to do it. If there's nothing stopping you, then get started already.