#Difficultly understanding without target language subtitles

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tall flower
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Hey all, I've been learning Japanese for about a year and a half total. I have over 4000 known words through doing SRS and have been immersing a decent bit.

I am starting to notice where I can understand what's being said when there are Japanese subtitles, but with no subtitles, listening to a podcast, etc I really struggle to understand what's being said comparatively. I wanted to see if anyone else has had a similar struggle / what they did to get better at listening. Wondering if it makes sense to mix in more non-subtitle immersion till it just starts to click, or keep doing normal immersion with target language subtitles til it clicks.

Thank

pure boltBOT
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<@&1248039856404431062> Difficultly understanding without target language subtitles

spice stream
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The answer is to the mix in more listening immersion without subtitles. The roadmap recommends starting to do this at stage 2c, and it sounds like you might be there from your description. Please check #stage-selection and choose the stage that sounds most accurate so we can give you more accurate advice.

tall flower
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Just updated. Yea reading over it, I'd say I'm at 2c.

spice stream
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Nice nice

tall flower
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And that makes sense about mixing in more immersion without subtitles. I'm guessing it probably makes sense to start with things like anime, or where there's visual context to go off to help?

spice stream
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Yeah, that does make it easier. What you could do is split up the activities of reading and listening rather than having them together.

So for example, if you're going to watch anime or a show, subtitles off. That is listening time.

If you want to read, read manga, visual novels, novels, etc.

tall flower
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Gotcha that makes sense. Thanks for the advice!

How long did you feel it took for that transition to happen? I probably get 1-2 hours of immersion a day outside of flashcards.

spice stream
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Hmm, hard to say because everything is so gradual. But I think after a month of dropping subtitles, I was more used to it. To help the transition, you could have the subtitles on shows still available, but hidden, and only toggle them on if there is something you are really struggling to hear. This is easy to do with asbplayer.

The other thing to keep in mind is that listening problems are not always caused by poor listening skills. At 2c, it's still highly likely that your vocabulary size just isn't there yet. So you'll want to identify if your issues listening are coming from a lack of knowing the vocabulary, or knowing the vocabulary but not being able to hear it.

tall flower
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Ah yeah, that's fair. I typically to try find content where I know roughly 80% of the vocabulary, but have gotten to the point where my eyes can scan the kanji quick enough to get the rough meaning, but my ears haven't caught up lol.

I'll give it a shot, hoping that helps!

spice stream
chilly bobcat
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dropping the subtitles is hard at first but you do get used to it, and doing lots of reading as well improves your ability understand more

tall flower
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Thanks, yea sounds like anime without subtitles and starting to read manga/light novels is the plan for the next few months of immersion time lol.

chilly bobcat
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i also briefly lowered the difficulty of what I was listening to as well, so easier sol shows,

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basically i moved into easier native podcasts but tried to keep the shows i was watching easier because thats the part i was finding more difficult so I had a good mix of easier and harder content

tough jungle
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I also agree that using content on the easier side is a great way to train your listening. The higher the percentage of vocab you know, the easier it will be, because you can filter out not understanding because of vocab that you don't know, and just focus on learning to hear what you already know.