I’ve been reading novels and listening to them for at least 2 years in Japanese, I think I read 5 novels in that time. I’m up to 6800 words and my known word count grows extremely slowly… In my year report it said I added 1339 known words, 190118 words read. I try to read 1 hour before sleep every day, and listen to the passages about 2-3 times during the day. Listening comprehension is still rather bad. I get the outline of the stories I read, but lose the threat often. 90% of the time I plow forward through the novel, 10% I re-read and go back, but I get bored of that very quickly. I have a feeling my plowing method is very ineffektive. Or how I’m I faring compared to others?
I’m not at your level yet, but perhaps you’re reading things that have too many unknown words? Try for a while to read things that only have a small percentage of words that aren’t known and to fully understand that sentences and to listen to them and fully digest them and see if there’s a difference in acquisition? They talk about comprehensible input. If you’re losing the thread too much, then it’s not comprehensible and that makes it harder to learn.
Around the same word count as you with Japanese. Losing context early on in a paragraph can make the rest of the page impossible to follow, make sure you know what is going on at the beginning of each event in a story.
Consider using videos as well. Being able to see actions can help immensely.
Also if you find you are getting demotivated use easier material for a bit. It will remind you how far you’ve come since the start and will be a nice rest from the harder material.
A good friend of mine who reads books constantly gave me advice years ago on avoiding burnout. He would read a book that pushed his limits of understanding, maybe the content was dry and difficult, but he wanted to understand the topic better. He would push through this book. After he finished his next book would be a really simple read, something he could easily get through with little effort. Alternating the books kept him from burnout and frustration. Granted this wasn’t for language learning but I think the principle applies.
Suggested Material:
Kimi ha petto [You are my Pet]
is a Jdrama. Not really my thing but it was pretty good balance of new and old words.
Kids stories from Folklore. Some are Japanese folklore making them more interesting All subtitled.
Search for インタビュー
of people you find interesting. If you want videos sort by videos that have ClosedCaptions/Subtitles so your imports are correct
If you want to really speed up your learning grab a copy of TaeKim Grammar and the core 2k/6k/10k Anki decks and work through those on top of your reading. Both are completely free. Although this might suck the fun out of the learning process it will speed things up for you.
For grammar just read it like any book and make sure you understand what you are reading. Don’t try to memorize anything. Just keep reading the book over and over. Can be dl’d here: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/grammar_guide.pdf
For Anki adjust your settings according to the DJT guide located here: DJT Anki guide
AVOID the learnJapanese sub and JCJ sub. The former is 99% useless and the latter is just a**holes. I find spending time on those subs detracted from my learning.
Hope this helps. Don’t give up! The only way to learn is to keep going. The only way to speed up the process is do more work or more concentrated work. Reading and Listening will ALWAYS benefit you more than any method however so don’t ever cut out that portion of your studies.
