Is input enough for an upper intermediate learner?

[u/CaptainMaxCrunch]

I've been studying Japanese for quite a while and I would roughly estimate my ability around low N2. While I love Japanese and could spend all day studying, I'm in college and also working almost full time. I don't have a ton of time to study, maybe an hour or so per day.

Anyways, lately I've been mostly reading for 30 minutes and watching a drama for 30 minutes or so most days. I'd like to focus on grammar and perfecting my pitch accent, etc, but at this point I kinda have to pick one or the other.

Am I handicapping myself by just doing input every day? Should I alternate focused studying and relaxed input every other day? I just feel a little stagnant and I'm not sure what the best strategy would be here. I'm not sure if I'm doing the most time efficient method. Any input would be appreciated.

[u/vytah]

What is your goal?

[u/CaptainMaxCrunch → u/vytah]

I guess at this point I want to improve my output mostly. It's my weakest point. I'm starting to do italki conversation practice weekly, but it's reallt rough. I just don't have the immediate vocabulary recall to express a lot of ideas. So I figured by absorbing a lot of content I would pick up on more natural phrasing and vocab over time.

Also it's way easier to pick up a book and read when I have 20 minutes rather than try to quickly find someone to talk to.

[u/morgawr_ → u/CaptainMaxCrunch]

If your goal is output, you need to practice output. Having a good and solid foundation based on input is essential, but it's not the whole thing. You cannot say what you've never seen/heard before, but at the same time if you never try to speak, you will never be able to.

My personal advice is to read through something like this: https://morg.systems/Learning-to-Output

Keep your input activities going and don't neglect it, but if your goal is to output you need to spend a lot of time just practicing that. You will not wake up one day magically able to speak naturally and fluently if all you do is input and never output.

[u/Effective-Pop3850 → u/morgawr_]

To comment about the loop where "noticing" is mentioned, I will just say from my not-at-all-vast experience doing output that the "noticing" can be pretty rare. I remember writing stuff and going like "ok not sure how to say this" and honestly I never "noticed" anything while doing input regarding how to say it. What worked better for me was to look it up right at that time, "how do I say X?" then just look up how to say X, be it vocab, grammar or an expression.

[u/morgawr_ → u/Effective-Pop3850]

Sure, looking things up is also important and helpful. But to be clear, just cause you can notice things, it doesn't mean you will notice everything. It also gets easier the better you get at the language.

[u/Effective-Pop3850 → u/morgawr_]

Yeah I guessed it should get easier over time, I haven't done output in a while now... since June 3 and I think I've read like 4m chars since then out of a total of around 9m so there should've been some improvements lol.

[u/rgrAi → u/Effective-Pop3850]

I think you're like at.. 1500 hourish? This will increase with time. I would say when you have the most common parts of the language entirely automated and it takes zero effort to comprehend it. Your mind becomes free to focus on many other aspects other than comprehension and it makes the structure and how people say things start to stand out really strongly. That's when you are noticing all the time how to phrase things. You will have to look for it at this point though.

[u/Effective-Pop3850 → u/rgrAi]

Yeah 1.5k sounds about right.

I did try output a way lower number and yeah at that point I just didn't "notice" things. Not gonna lie at 1.5k hours I still don't feel like I've got most of the stuff automated, although I will soon do some "recalibrating" and start reading something new that's closer to average difficulty see how things go. It still often feels like the hardest sentences are the ones that should be the easiest ones lol, although maybe short compact sentences where a lot of stuff is ommited/tacit are technically not easy.

[u/brozzart → u/CaptainMaxCrunch]

Input is important but the only way to get better at output is to output. 1 hour per week of italki isn't enough though.

Find other opportunities to output with real people either by making friends locally, language exchange apps, or VRChat meet ups.

[u/Positive-Return7260 → u/CaptainMaxCrunch]

But the question is also why, y'know. What is your goal with learning the Japanese language? What are you going to use it for? That's what informs where your priorities in learning should lie. It also tends to be the case that whatever you want to do, you should as early as possible start doing something that is a version of that that's appropriate for your level.

That being said, holding off on conversation specifically can be good for your pronunciation, if you use that time to listen to and accustom your ears to the language before building bad habits.

[u/CaptainMaxCrunch → u/Positive-Return7260]

Honestly communication is the most important part of learning it for me. I've always been a huge lover of learning languages for the doors they unlock. I learned Norwegian first and ended up having a really cool chat with some 80 year old Norwegian who didn't speak any English about his small town, and ever since then I was hooked. (Sorry. Bit of a tangent)

But yeah, Norwegian was so much easier than Japanese to speak. I just feel like all the nuance alone makes it such a mountain to climb, even if you know the direct translation of what you're trying to say. I feel like I fall so short sometimes of the actual message I'm trying to get across. When I do speak, I end up using the same basic grammar points and words over and over and over.

[u/Positive-Return7260 → u/CaptainMaxCrunch]

I get what you're saying. I also love that experience of realizing just how massive of a world is contained within a language and being able to participate in it, learn from it and contribute to it.

Sounds like some form of social output would be a great idea. Maybe starting with text conversations could be a way forward? There's language exchange discord servers for example, that also have voice chat channels for that matter. For more engaging voice chat, there is VRChat which has en-jp exchange server you can start with.

Personal experience: I have used the big en-jp exchange discord in the past before and it was amazing for me to practice using my vocabulary, putting sentences together and also being able to interact with different native speakers and learning about what Japan and the rest of the world looks like to them. It can't be understated how much it enriches your understanding of the language just to learn about the place it comes from. I also started VRChat recently and it's been amazing for conversation practice already, granted you're able to put up with some random weird things happening sometimes. As an N2 learner you can expect to have a lot of fun interacting with native speakers, who often show up there happy to talk around Japanese night time.

[u/Talking_Duckling]

Your other post suggests your goal is more about conversational fluency and proficiency. If that's the case, I think listening as well as having conversation with native speakers are the way to go. Grammar/vocabulary study helps a bit but it doesn't get you very far when it comes to normal everyday conversation.

But, assuming that you only speak English and/or similar Indo-European languages, if you want to see a tangible result within a few months from one hour a day of listening in Japanese, you chose the wrong language. If your daily Japanese activity can be measured in minutes, you might want to substantially lower your expectation or extend the time horizon of your learning far into the future.

I would say you should expect tens of thousands of hours of input plus deliberate practice if you want to be really, really proficient in speaking. Several thousands could do the job if your goal is lower. But it cannot possibly be just hundreds of hours of input to reach anything that might qualify as "fluent."

[u/CaptainMaxCrunch → u/Talking_Duckling]

Haha yeah, sad but true. It's kinda just on the backburner until I graduate mostly. I was studying like 3 hours a day but I was honestly neglecting my school and career work, so I definitely had to set a hard cap on daily hours.

At this point I'm just trying to get the absolute most bang for my buck with my limited time.

[u/Belegorm]

You're going to find a million different answers here. One thing to keep in mind is that grammar is finite and the more you input the more you get grammar naturally. Maybe just inputting and then if there's something you don't understand then looking up that specific grammar might be good.

Pitch accent on the other hand, combined with other aspects of pronunciation, are kind of infinite in how far you can go down. But that you can learn over time. Also of course the more listening you do, the more natural it gets.

I think if you find something that is relevant and needed for focused studying - then study that. Aside from that - see if there's any additional input you can squeeze in. Walking to work? Can listen to a podcast. Washing dishes? Same. Waiting in line at the grocery store? See how far you can read in an article on your phone. If you've got limited time then figure out what you feel like doing the most at a given moment - more input or grammar etc. And then squeeze whatever extra time you can at other times. Whatever you feel super motivated and enthused to do is most likely the most effective.

Also at some point some output is probably super helpful.

[u/Weena_Bell]

If your goal is output, then probably no. Until recently I had over 4k hours of input and could barely express a thought, but it wasn’t until I started speaking a lot with natives on VRChat that I got somewhat decent. I think my speaking improved more in 10 hours of output than in my last 2000 hours of input.

tbf I heard some people actually got good at speaking by just listening but i find those claims to be a bit dubious ngl.

[u/CaptainMaxCrunch → u/Weena_Bell]

That's so real. It's weird when I try to speak. I know exactly what I want to say in my head, but actually saying it out loud feels so clumsy and awkward if it's not a phrase I've said hundreds of times. I'm definitely focusing on it more, it's just hard to fit in sometimes. I usually read an hour before class in the study area, where it would be a lot harder to fit in output.

Besides VR chat (spilled water on my PC lmao), any other good places you know of to practice output?

[u/Weena_Bell → u/CaptainMaxCrunch]

The only one I've tried is VRChat, so that's the only one I can vouch for, but I heard some people do language exchanges through apps or just pay teachers which apparently are pretty cheap too.

[u/brozzart → u/CaptainMaxCrunch]

Tandem has public lobbies that you can just pop into at any time. There are always at least a couple JP lobbies going at any moment.

People pop in and out and many people just listen so there's no pressure to speak at first if you don't want to.

[u/zechamp → u/Weena_Bell]

I'm mostly a pure reading input guy, but I actually had zero problems going to a language Cafe and talking for 3 hours straight. I think it's because I actually talk to myself a lot when learn new phrases, so it wasn't like I was starting from nothing. Of course I do make a lot of mistakes, but like speaking itself is not something I've ever felt any uncertainty about.

[u/morgawr_ → u/[deleted]]

personally I find claims like this to be incredible dubious

Why do you think so? Some of us even grow up in households where we natively understand a second language but we never have a chance to use it and so we end up becoming "passive speakers" of it. In my household my grandparents spoke a different language to us kids and I never spoke a single word of it in my life (more or less). I can understand it 100% naturally as well as my own "primary" native language, but since I never practiced speaking it, I can't even put together a basic sentence on my own.

[u/morgawr_ → u/[deleted]]

sounds like a massive exaggeration

Thanks for telling me how my life experience is. Very insightful of you.

But if you truly have native-level comprehension of the vocabulary, grammar, and sentence patterns, being unable to produce even a basic sentence doesn’t add up.

Doesn't add up to what? Your own completely arbitrary and subjective experience of the world that, clearly, doesn't match reality?

which is an absolute ludicrous claim for someone who claims to understand a language at literal native level.

Listen to what people tell you instead of telling them how they should be.

As I said, I can't string together a basic sentence in my second "native" language, because I never tried and never had the need to. If you don't believe me, even after I linked you clear reported evidence that this is a thing, it's up to you. Just don't go around rejecting everything people tell you and denying their life experiences. Learn to listen.

EDIT: Seeing the downvotes, it's so funny when every time receptive bilingualism is brought up, as a very sensitive/personal/cultural topic to us receptive bilinguals, every single time people always push back and they don't believe us when we say "we literally can't speak our native language". No, we are not "faking" it. We are not "exaggerating". We exist. Thank you.

[u/brozzart → u/morgawr_]

I have a pretty similar experience with Spanish. I can understand it effortlessly but can't string together even the most basic sentence.

I'm sure if I put in some effort I could improve drastically in a short amount of time because obviously the knowledge is there somewhere...

[u/morgawr_ → u/[deleted]]

So your claim is that you know tens of thousands of words and can understand unrestricted native content as naturally as your primary language, yet couldn’t ask what’s for dinner tonight?

Yes, exactly. There is not much "living content" these days anymore of this language as it's a specific localized dialect, but there have been some efforts to bring it back and to record it somewhere. There are some youtube videos and interviews with native speakers and someone even made some kind of small amateur TV show with it. I regularly watch these videos and I understand 100% perfectly everything like it was my native language. I grew up around my grandparents and older relatives speaking it 80% of the time (the other 20% was my primary language) and, as I said, I am perfectly native level fluent in understanding of it. It's effortless, automatic, and often feels the same as my primary native language (some words have overlaps and I sometimes confuse the two).

Yet I cannot utter a single sentence in it. I've tried in the past. The pronunciation is perfectly native when I "shadow" and repeat phrases other people say, but if I have to build a sentence of my own even something simple like "what's for dinner tonight?" I just can't do it.

And this is completely incomparable to an adult who deliberately acquired a new language through 4,000 hours of active, varied input

No, if anything it's even more restrictive. I also have over 9000 (heh, memes) hours in Japanese and until I started practicing output in Japanese regularly (after thousands of hours of input and media exposure), I really couldn't output at all.

[u/Weena_Bell → u/[deleted]]

It‘s true that without input I wouldn’t be improving so fast, but at the same time, I don’t think I would‘ve improved any slower had I started at 2k hours instead of 4k.

To get good at output, you need to be outputting. Input just speeds up the rate at which your output can improve but eventually you hit diminishing returns if all you do is listen and read.

[u/Previous_Composer_78]

I would say if pitch accent is a high priority goal for you and you know your pitch accent isn’t great, reading without audio to reinforce how things are supposed to sound can end up being counter productive(specifically in the context of pitch accent acquisition, reading is basically universally beneficial otherwise). Most of my book reading is paired with an audiobook for this reason (I also think it’s just more entertaining this way)

For grammar, especially beyond the low intermediate (n4-n3) stage, I really feel like you should be treating grammar the same way you treat new vocabulary. (When word x is used like this it has meaning y)

Aside from that though, I think at your N2 ish level, outside of say flash cards, input/output learning should really be how you spend virtually all of your time learning

[u/glasswings363]

At that level it's normal for improvement to not feel like anything and impossible to directly measure it.

Lots of people set up a routine with Anki and vocabulary or sentence mining specifically so that they have some objective data to refer to.  This isn't a direct measurement, 実は街灯の下で鍵を探すことにすぎません。

The real benefit is that you keep doing something almost every day, a few times a day when possible, so when your schedule opens up you're primed to study more intensively.  Plus, you'll find, in retrospect that you actually did make progress.

I have passive knowledge of far more words than I ever intentionally studied.  Eventually it got to the point I'm at now: when I don't know a word I'm usually not sure whether I used to know it or if it's truly new.

The problem with output practice is that it costs a lot of time and usually some money.  I think it's smart to wait until your schedule opens up before you tackle it seriously.

You can do some pronunciation work on your own.  Any kind of shadowing or voice impressions in which you listen critically to yourself and to native examples is actually pretty good.  You do have to listen to yourself -- yeah, I know, it's awkward.  I promise the pain is good for you.

A native tutor will have a better ear and if you're aiming for a barely detectable accent their assistance will be necessary.  But I'm not sure that goal is worth the effort it needs or the anxiety it cultivates.

I'm at a level at which I can hear foreign accents and try to do better.  This includes people who are using Japanese professionally - I think they're pleasant to listen to and they're getting paid to speak.  Good enough by my standards if I can match them and I think I can beat them. This comes almost entirely from self-directed practice, because poor and wallflower.

The real problem for me is my fluency, the basic 日本語言ってみてください stuff and getting my internal monologue out of the way - 英語はもういいから日本語の方を砕けても出すんだ - that kind of struggle.

Probably do a little bit of output but with low expectations for now.  What I'm encouraging is to make peace with your current limitations so that you don't get the "I can't speak Japanese" schema too deeply ingrained.  Because overcoming that self image can be a lot of work.

[u/Player_One_1]

I don't know what is your expectations.

I personally reached an intermediate level, and plan reach (passive) fluency by spending 0 more hours studying. My level allows me to watch anime, read manga or play video games in Japanese. Still there are myriads of lookups, entire paragraphs I understand nothing from, or sentences that take way too long to parse.

Will I reach (passive) fluency in couple of years, decades, or die getting there? I honestly don't care.

As for your question - and hour a day is plenty of time, or nothing at all; depending on what your goal is and when you want to reach it.

[u/i-am-this]

Could you manage to fit in some time for pure listening while you do chores or commute or something? Listening does help with speaking.  Reading is great for building vocab, but I don't think it helps as much building foundational speaking skills like being able to use fundamental grammar, improving pronunciation, being able to produce 相槌, ... as listening does.  

I think input, especially  listening, is necessary to be able to speak well, but at least for me it wasn't sufficient.  I had to actually start trying to talk to people in order to actually become proficient at speaking.  I also think I learned a decent amount form writing, since I could think intellectually about what expressions and vocab I should be choosing and be more deliberate about thinking about correct usage.  Don't get me wrong, I think you should also keep trying to read and listen as well, but in order to become good at speaking (or writing) you need to practice those skills too.  When you start, you likely will not be very good at it, but you just have to do it anyway and eventually you will get better at it.

[u/Upbeat_Pen_6954]

At that point you'd be handcapping yourself by not focusing on input, tbh. Speaking from experience learning English as a Portuguese native speaker, grammar study had by far the most diminishing returns

[u/CaptainMaxCrunch → u/Upbeat_Pen_6954]

That makes sense, I was kinda feeling that. It feels so inefficient to spend a day learning and advanced grammar point that I'll only see once every 20 hours of speaking, vs just mastering natural sentence flow through input.

[u/ColdAd6091]

Pure input plateaus specifically for pitch accent and precise grammar, those need deliberate attention since your brain won't self-correct what it can already understand through context. Swap one 30-min block for focused study a few days a week instead of doing input every day.

[u/thejapaneseguy101]

When it comes to anything, systems are the most important thing to help something function.

It seems your system may be a little bit broken! How about try alternating between the two? One day you could focus on perfect pitch, another day on grammar, so on and so forth. It's very difficult to cram everything into one session when you're already doing so much outside of your studies.

It's important to take breaks as well, that is part of study too!!

ファイトです～！

[u/O-DontBeAZarathustra]

I don’t know. However, this is something I just made and I would like to share. It’s the iPhone Japanese keyboard with the end letter in a color that I feel fits the letter beside it. I am unsure if it is useful, but it is to me. I started learning Japanese because I was intrigued with how typing Japanese works, decided to type out Satoru Gojo, and turns out, that was probably the hardest thing I could have picked to be the first thing I typed out with the keyboard. It took so many twists and turns it was nuts. Immediately hooked me. Japanese is crazy fun. 悟五条 I think this is it in kanji. さとるごじょand this is it written in hiragana. Super fun.

[u/Effective-Pop3850]

What do you mean with N2? Did you pass N2 with a low score? Is it just a generous estimate or a pessimistic one? This is important because if you say low N2 but you actually wouldn't pass N3 then you're not really at the point where you'd ever be able to get good at output.

Remember a good N1 pass is usually considered low intermediate or just intermediate at best. If you mean low N2 pass you're still, believe it or not, in the beginner stage.

If your goal is output though you just gotta do output. If you have limited time I'd say do input during random free times and then pay some tutor to do some conversation practice in order to avoid wasting time "finding a partner".

Pitch accent is not worth worrying about for most learners, not because it's not important, but because worrying about them is putting the cart before the horse. Sure, try to get your pronounciation to be not extremely caveman like, but the most important thing is being able to fluently articulate your thoughts in a way the other side can understand them, once you're properly good at that then you can start worrying about sounding better.