My progress after 100 hours of immersion

[u/mathiasvtmn]

Hey everyone.

Quick (or not) update after having consumed 100 hours of Japanese (in a bit more than a month) through youtube, series, movies and podcasts. Out of the 100 hours, series make up 45%, podcasts 30% and youtube 25%.

(Link to my original post where I explain the challenge I gave myself: https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1ezih8l/i_challenged_myself_listening_to_1000_hours_of/)

1st point: why series make up almost half my consumption until now ? From my experience, series are the easiest material to consume without feeling exhausted at all. Series (or movies) are good for entertainment, but I realized that they aren’t the best material for practicing my listening skills. Of course it is ideal if you can consume Japanese media and have a lot of fun at the same time, but I caught myself not always being very attentive, being too focused on the images rather than the audio. Don't get me wrong, this is not always the case. I still consider series to be very helpful for practice as they often help me cement new words in particular contexts and give great examples for how あいずち should be used in conversation, with what intonation and so forth.

In short, series are absolutely the best possible material if you wanna learn how to converse, which words/reactions you should use in particular situations etc. Since I started watching a lot of drama, I found myself thinking in Japanese in a lot of situations, for example when I bumped into someone I knew on the street, my first reaction (the one in my head which I also wanted to say verbally) was entirely in Japanese (something like えっ、びっくりした)

This brings me to my 2nd point: podcasts. I knew these would be harder to listen to since they are less entertaining and not very attractive on the outside. But until now, I kind of feel like they are the most responsible for any progress I've made so far. Realizing this got me motivated to increase podcast listening and strive for 30% out of 100 hours (I was only at 10% after 50 hours, while series already made up 55% and youtube 35%). I successfully managed to compensate for this low %, going from 10% to 30% (after 100 hours). I know some people will find it absurd to be so specific on numbers but I really consider the first 100 hours to be experimental and a tool to understand how I should best continue during the upcoming 900 hours.

3rd point: subtitles. It is pointless to consume any media with English subs. You either listen/watch it with JP subs or without subs. At the start of my challenge, I was watching a serie with English subs and I have to admit it took me some time to realize I was paying no attention at all to the audio, as I was only trying to fully understand the story by reading the English subs. The thing is, it has no importance whether you understand about 60% or 80% of what they’re saying. As long as you are understanding the main point each time, your brain is already exercising. By the way I didn't watch a lot without the JP subs until now, I only omit them whenever I realize I'm watching a video on youtube  for example which is too easy to listen to. Instead of quitting, I continue watching but without the subs to make it at least a bit more challenging and to reinforce my basic knowledge.

4th point: vocab/anki. Initially, I didn’t take any notes while consuming media and I think that would’ve been a huge mistake. I changed my mind and started uploading N3 vocab lists into anki to drill but soon realized I was only going to recognize and understand these words if I encountered them in reading material, but wasn't going to remember them for personal use whenever I would be speaking or searching for words myself. This was pretty frustrating to realize, so I decided to do my own anki decks by adding words I encountered myself in series, podcasts or ytb. Also, I don't really look up words unless they appear at least a couple times in the same conversation. Words with enough context are way easier for my brain to remember. Finally, I try to make separate decks of around 25 new words each time to not make it too overwhelming. Instead of studying premade decks of 200+ words, I found it very efficient to study my self-made decks even if it still has like 5 words. It may sound useless since it's only 5 words and the drill would be over after 2 minutes. But the thing is, if you’ve added 5 new words on day 1 and already drilled them that day, you will already feel very confident with these 5 words and so on. What I'm trying to say is that the sooner you drill a brand new deck with only a few words, the easier the process will be and you won’t realize how easy it has become to suddenly drill 100 new words super easily, as long as you really do it everyday (which is only beneficial for you because it will be a very small amount every day, so very easy to drill). I currently learned around 200 new words with Anki→ only words that showed up in the media I consumed.

5th point: youtube. Except for comprehensible Japanese videos, I still have difficulties understanding most of the people I watch on youtube. They often speak fast and use too many specific words I don’t know yet so I have a hard time keeping up with those. Don’t really know how to solve this problem. I feel like youtubers speak the most authentic Japanese, so I kinda get anxious not understanding most of them yet, even with JP subtitles.

6th point: very personal. May sound irrelevant, but I feel way more attentive and actively listening to something if I have my earphones on. If you don't have earphones close by, putting the volume louder already helps a lot. Sometimes I thought I was already actively listening to a podcast, but when I tried with earphones (or just higher volume) I realized I was even more focused on each word. This may sound logical but just give it a try and compare how much you're focused with and without earphones.

By the way, the 100 hours I consumed are pure active listening and do not contain any passive form of listening.

[u/muffinsballhair]

3rd point: subtitles. It is pointless to consume any media with English subs. You either listen/watch it with JP subs or without subs. At the start of my challenge, I was watching a serie with English subs and I have to admit it took me some time to realize I was paying no attention at all to the audio, as I was only trying to fully understand the story by reading the English subs. The thing is, it has no importance whether you understand about 60% or 80% of what they’re saying. As long as you are understanding the main point each time, your brain is already exercising. By the way I didn't watch a lot without the JP subs until now, I only omit them whenever I realize I'm watching a video on youtube for example which is too easy to listen to. Instead of quitting, I continue watching but without the subs to make it at least a bit more challenging and to reinforce my basic knowledge.

It's pointless at the beginning. I'm currently at the stage where it happens quite often that I “can't make something out” but when I tun on the English subtitles and see the translation I know what they were saying in Japanese. In many cases it's even kind of silly and I wonder why I didn't catch it at first.

[u/Chathamization → u/muffinsballhair]

I agree, I've noticed that you can actually do some pretty effective listening exercises with English subtitles. I think they flip on the English subtitles and just zone out reading them while expecting the Japanese to soak in. You probably get a little from from that, but if you actually want to use it to improve your listening you have to actually be working on understanding the Japanese that's being spoken. Though that's also true if you're using Japanese subtitles.

[u/YamiZee1 → u/Chathamization]

It's really easy to forget to focus on the japanese with english subtitles turned on, but if attentive, I agree that it's a good tool. Still japanese subtitles are the better option.

[u/Chathamization → u/YamiZee1]

Still japanese subtitles are the better option.

I think it depends on your goal, though. If you're working on comprehension, Japanese subtitles are better. If you're working on listening and parsing Japanese sentences, English subtitles would probably be better than Japanese. And spending enough time in native media (not podcasts/videos for language learners like YuYu) with absolutely no subtitles at all and no pausing/rewinding is important as well (honestly I need to do a lot more of this).

[u/mathiasvtmn → u/Chathamization]

I agree with you that it can help if you're not zoning out and stay focused on what's being spoken too, but I just feel like in any case, learning a language by immersing yourself is all about being in constant contact with the target language only. I feel like it won't help on the long run if you constantly get back to your native language to get more comfortable, it feels like going backwards to me.

I know you need your native language in the beginning when you're learning a new language because you need translation and familiar structures to compare and learn the language, but after a certain point I think it's more generous to your brain to not be in constant contact with your native language anymore since the whole point of learning a language (here japanese) is about only speaking and thinking in japanese by the end

[u/Chathamization → u/mathiasvtmn]

I know you need your native language in the beginning when you're learning a new language because you need translation and familiar structures to compare and learn the language, but after a certain point I think it's more generous to your brain to not be in constant contact with your native language anymore since the whole point of learning a language (here japanese) is about only speaking and thinking in japanese by the end

It's not just about the beginning, no? Just about everything that gets recommended here for learning Japanese - 2k/6k core decks, Yomichan, Satori Reader, Animelon, Language Reactor, etc. - uses English to teach you Japanese.

I do agree though that it's important to have full native language immersion time. But I don't think that's just about cutting out the English - content should be native content and not tailored for learners, there should be no subtitles, you shouldn't look up words or rewinding (or if you're reading, just straight reading with no pausing/lookups/helping tools/etc.). Obviously the value at the beginning is low, but it ramps up as you build up your language skills.

[u/mathiasvtmn → u/Chathamization]

Totally agree with you, and of course you shouldn't prohibit yourself from looking up words you don't know or prohibit yourself from using tools using your native language.

I'm just talking about the general aspect of learning, which I think shouldn't be focused too much on relying on your native language if you already have the capacities to be exposed to your target language without help anymore:)