Tried Everything, Nothing Works

[sameraii007]

I've tried learning videos, flash cards, Anki, learning apps, Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, iTalki and other websites. Nothing is sticking. I've hit a wall. I've tried picture association, developing my own sentences and mneumontics. And I've been doing and trying all these for years. Probably on and off for about 10 years. I've always looking for other things to try. The problem is, I get bored with them, and try to keep my interests by finding something else. The only thing I haven't tried, is traveling to the country itself and learning thru immersion, which I can't afford. Need Help!!!!

[rdearman]

How long have you tried these things for? If it is less have 5 years I wouldn't beat yourself up about it.

[Ezra]

Have you tried extensive reading?

[rdearman]

You don't have to edit your original post, you can just reply. OK, so looks like you're doing Japanese & Spanish. I don't do either of those, however I have been studying Mandarin & Italian, so close enough.

Firstly over 10 years did you study at least 15-20 minutes every single day? If you did study very single day for 10 years for 20 minutes then you'll have clocked up only 50 days of studying. You don't really think you're going to learn something as complex as a second language in only 50 days of study? I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you didn't study every single day. I am going to guess you did it for 7 hours one week, then 1 hour for a week, then nothing for 2 months, then 10 hours for a week, etc. etc.

If you want to learn a language then set yourself a goal, target, whatever you want to call it of studying for at least 30 minutes each and every single day. Also you need to pick one course and work it through to the end before moving on to the next one. You have to complete what you start, and you have to start every single day.

BTW, immersion is over-rated, but you can do your own version of immersion just replace everything you'd normally do in English with Japanese. Write on twitter, write in Japanese. Read Wikipedia, read in Japanese, watch films, watching Japanese. You get the idea.

So here is my advice.

1. Get a book in Japanese, copy each sentence character by character. Look up each character, translate into Japanese. (see example below for Mandarin)
2. Get some films in Japanese, watch them, then watch more of them. Only watch them with Japanese sub-titles or no subtitles. Do this until you've watched at least 2000 hours of films, TV, etc in Japanese.
3. Start a new Anki Deck. Put in the sentences from the book in the step above. Cloze deletion so you have to write them in. Get sound if you can (use the computer generated stuff if you have to)
4. Go to conversationexchange.com and find a couple of language exchange partners. Speak to at least two people every week.
5. Get a coursebook like Teach Yourself, Pimsleur or one of the many listed here and just go through the courses. Start one, get to the end, start another.
6. Start reading in Japanese. Get books, read a lot.

When you complete the book, get a new book. When you've watched all the films and TV, find more. Every time you see a new word, put it into a sentence, put the sentence in Anki as a cloze deletion. Each time you complete a course, start another. But make the commitment to consistency. Don't go to sleep without doing your 30 minutes of Japanese. Ever.

[devilyoudont]

I'm also studying Japanese. Currently taking a break from Spanish.

1) At the start, focus on developing a habit of studying the language. In terms of developing the habit, it's ok at the start if you do an incredibly small amount of studying daily. At this stage, it is most important to get a completely rock solid habit into place. Once you have a habit of around 100 days, you should gradually start increasing the duration of your study time, and the difficulty of your study material. Before 100 days, if you study too long or material that is too difficult, you are more likely to abandon the habit. If that happens you are back to square 1.

2) What are your interests? You should spend some of your study time on things you enjoy doing in your native language, but in Japanese/Spanish. I like Sci-fi, so I'm reading a collection of science fiction short stories in Japanese. Maybe you like cars, and should pick up some Japanese car magazines. It doesn't matter what the interest is, it just needs to be something you enjoy already.

3) If you've never learned a foreign language before: pick a language and get that language up to at least intermediate. Every additional thing you are learning at the same time will slow your progress in all the other things. If you've never learned a language before you are currently learning three things: Japanese, Spanish, and how to learn a language. Once you've learned what works for you for learning a language, you can add additional languages.

4) Learning any language takes a lot of time. This is especially true for languages that are extremely dissimilar from your native language, like Japanese. It takes repeated exposure, like encountering a word over ten times within context for the meaning to start to stick. Anki and mneumontics are a way to speed that process up. But it still takes a huge amount of time, and you will need to see the word in context at least a few times even with anki, in my opinion.

Hope this is helpful.

Learning a language takes a lot of time and a lot of work, but it is also extremely rewarding. Don't give up!

[Flickserve]

I've tried learning videos, flash cards, Anki, learning apps, Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, iTalki and other websites. Nothing is sticking. I've hit a wall. I've tried picture association, developing my own sentences and mneumontics. And I've been doing and trying all these for years. Probably on and off for about 10 years. I've always looking for other things to try. The problem is, I get bored with them, and try to keep my interests by finding something else. The only thing I haven't tried, is traveling to the country itself and learning thru immersion, which I can't afford. Need Help!!!!

Happened to me as well. Either I would get bored with the learning technique or I would get annoyed with myself and give up for an extended period.

Simple learning materials were too boring, stuff I am interested in are too complicated.

Simply travelling to the country and expecting immersion will be difficult. It's better to go there with a purpose and use the language to carry out some sort of simple project such as exploring an area away from the big city.

First, re-examine your aims for learning the language.

Secondly, realise that tenacity is important.

Here's the gist of a conversation I had with an italki tutor about this very same problem a few years ago. My Mandarin was pretty basic. Tutor had made a video speaking something like 40 languages in a row and had lots of positive comments.

Me: how did you learn so many languages?

Tutor: Practice. Keep on practicing the same thing over and over again.

Me: But that's boring isn't it?

Tutor: Yes

Me: Everbody writes that language learning should be interesting and fun. But you are telling me a method that is boring.

Tutor: It's the only way. The only way

Me: ohhh. (Light in my brain switches on).


A lot of emphasis is placed on being interested in the language and material. It's true. But also realise that there is a lot of very boring studying and repetitive practice is required which outweighs the time on interesting stuff.

Once you can get through all the basic stuff and using it, that's when things can get more interesting.

[Sayonaroo]

I recommend tae kim's grammar guide and the yomichan plugin for chrome for japanese
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... i?hl=en-US

for spanish I recommend who is she stories on lingq. it has audio, video, and translation! lingq is free to sign up though you pay if you want more features (I have a free account since the content with the text and audio is enough for me). I also recommend lingoes off-line pop-up dictionary. http://www.lingoes.net/en/dictionary/index.html

https://www.lingq.com/en/learn/es/web/course/20449
https://www.lingq.com/en/learn/es/web/l ... ranslation

If you decide to learn more on lingq I also recommend the mini-stories
https://www.lingq.com/en/learn/es/web/course/321309
https://www.lingq.com/en/learn/es/web/course/276527

Lastly, I highly recommend Steve Kaufmann's youtube videos! It seems that you'd benefit from learning about language learning. You don't have to rote memorize or make up mnemonics to learn vocabulary. You can learn from vocabulary from encountering it multiples while reading (ie 20x 10x etc etc before it sticks depending on the word) and listening.

[sjintje]

Sounds like you haven't tried Michel Thomas or Assimil yet.

[Arnaud]

Assimil Japanese is not especially user-friendly and amusing like any other Assimil courses, imho.
Michel Thomas Japanese is excellent, on the contrary (but you have to like the MT format with the two students): anyway, the structure of the language is nicely presented, as usual.
On NHK, there is also an introductory audio course that you can listen to when commuting: https://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/

In fact for Japanese, I've tried 4 or 5 different courses and always gave up quickly: perhaps it's a problem of motivation, perhaps the language itself is difficult to present in a simple and user-friendly way: the kana, the kanji, the structure itself of the language are so "foreign" that it's an immediate suffering whatever the method used...I don't know.
I don't have that problem with Chinese (Assimil Chinese coupled with Hello Chinese are currently doing wonder)

For Spanish, MT or Paul Noble followed by Assimil is the ideal receipt.

[lavengro]

Peppa 豚

ETA: I note your comments about having already given language apps an unsuccessful try, but for what it may be worth, I understand Duolingo will very shortly be releasing a beefed-up version of its Japanese course, though I understand from others that non-European language Duolingo courses generally are considered to be not strong. This would not get you super far into the language, but it might create some momentum to get you over the early hills arising in some of the other learning material.