The 10,000 Sentence Method
By Jndger
2 minutes read
While there's no official study that says, "learn X sentences to become fluent in Japanese," the language learning community has powerful advice based on real-world success. The general idea isn't to hit a magic number, but to learn vocabulary and grammar through whole sentences.
A popular benchmark you'll hear about is the 10,000 sentences method. Many learners who've reached fluency swear by it. The theory is that creating and reviewing a personal collection of 10,000 sentences gives you a deep understanding of the language. For example, some learners on Reddit have credited this method for their success in achieving fluency. One YouTuber documented his journey of making 20 new sentence cards daily for years, eventually reaching 20,000 cards and what he described as "fantastic fluency."
This approach is built on "sentence mining"—the practice of pulling sentences from native materials like anime, books, or news. The most effective way to do this is by finding "i+1 sentences," which are sentences where you understand everything except for one new word or grammar point. Learning that single new piece of information in a familiar context is a much more natural and efficient way to learn than just memorizing lists of isolated words.