Listening to Japanese audio / movies

[lamuness]

I was reading a few articles at All Japanese All the Time and the author was talking about listening to everything Japanese all the time. I'm a semi-beginner, and I found that I could listen to some Japanese Anime or movies without needing subtitles or translations, but when I listen to something like news or game shows or something like that, I can't understand them at all. Going by the author's suggestion, should I just stick it out and listen to those hard-to-listen Japanese programs? Or should I stick with Anime and movies and stuff that I can understand, roughly 50% of the time?

Thanks for the help.

[QuackingShoe]

Little bit from column A, little bit from column B.

[Tangram]

Listening even to things you don't understand will help you pick up sounds. You're not expected to understand anything yet.

[jbraswell]

I don't think you can be a "semi-beginner" and understand 50% of anime and movies.

If you watch a normal Japanese movie with subtitles, how much of the dialogue could you transcribe onto paper?

[lamuness]

Depending on how intensive the explainations are. If it's an anime or movie that's technical like Initial D, then there's no way I'll understand that. But if it's something that has less explaining, like Berserk or something like that, I'd be able to understand about 50% of it. Transcribing onto paper, probably not much, because I don't know how to write kanji, and/or how some words have extended consonants / vowels will throw me off too. I've gone through about 160ish episodes of beginner lessons and I could understand them before they translate it. I'm not sure about the other lessons, because I haven't listened to them.

One quick question kind of off topic, is I'm using Anki to learn sentences. The kanji is what I'm having problems with, especially names, but the sentence I understand just fine. Should I mark it as good? or hard?

[jbraswell]

Well, just my opinion, but from my experience, I would *guess* your problem is just raw vocabulary, then. Obviously, things like news broadcasts are going to use hard vocabulary, and if your properly parsing sentence syntax when you're using Anki but failing to remember all the words, then sounds like you need to make flash cards of just words.

I've sort of always thought that simple lack of vocabulary is a massively underrated part of learning another language. I mean, if you really want to learn a language well, then take a look at your native language. Depending on how you count, an adult can passively understand somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 words. (I know, it's a wide range, but as a said, a lot depends on how you count.) Regardless, let's say you're kind of dumb and only know 20,000 words in English. If you want to match that in Japanese. If you learn 10 words per day, it's still going to take your five years, not terrible, but not great either. If you actually want to sound intelligent, then you'll need more like double that.

I started out sort of like you, using sentences instead of words on most of my flashcards, but I quickly ran into the same problem you're having, understanding all but one word in the sentence, forcing myself to mark it as a miss. This is why one of the most basic principles of SRS learning is using the smallest piece of information possible per card.

Only now am I getting to the point where I know enough words, that putting entire sentences in makes sense, but this is only after a period where I *intensely* studied vocab.

By the way, using the same math as above should tell you that the All-Japanese website author is full of shit. If I recall, he basically claims to have become fluent in Japanese in, what, a year and a half? So, that's roughly 550 days, meaning to become fluent, he'd have to learn around 40 words a day. This is just vocab we're talking here, not "training his ear", not training his brain to parse Japanese syntax, not practicing his own speaking, just vocab. And it's certainly not enough words to allow him to, say, read a newspaper or intelligent magazine article.

Now he could just be some kind of weird prodigy or savant, but more than likely he's just full of shit.

[lamuness]

Thanks for taking the time to reply jbraswell.

I will admit that my problem *IS* really the vocabulary. I've identified this problem a while ago, but I'm still struggling for a way to learn it. I've never been much of a stare at something and drill it into my head- type of person, which is why I'm trying to use sentences from Anki to learn. I still need to find a system that helps the way I like to learn, and unfortunately, I haven't reached that point yet. I'd ask you to clarify SRS, because I have a vague understanding of it in the context of learning Japanese, but I'll probably start another thread on that.

I just started reading the All Japanese website, not really fully into it, but I'm always willing to try out new ways of doing things.

Again, thanks for replying!

[jbraswell]

”SRS" just refers to various methods of memory training that involve adjusting review intervals based on your performance, just like Anki does. There are several popular algorithms for determining the intervals, but I don't believe it makes a whole lot of difference which one you use (as far as anyone can tell).

Personally, I think Anki is freakin' awesome. Personally, I have a gift for doing repetitive tasks for hours on end, so it's OK for me. Even if you have trouble doing it, though, I'd still suggest forcing yourself to use Anki to learn vocab. I just can't imagine anything nearly as effective.