Subtitles vs no subtitles

I’ve been studying Japanese for a bit more than a year now and I’ve run into a problem.

I can’t understand native content without Japanese subtitles, I’ve been grinding anki everyday and I have completed the 6k deck and I have a few thousand more from mining, however, all of my cards consist of reading the kanji, that’s what determines if I put good or bad.

Now I’ve been trying to immerse but I keep running into the same problem, I understand about 60% with subtitles but it drops to 20% without it (I pulled these numbers out of my ass)

So my question is, should I keep using subtitles to also train reading or is it hurting my growth and I should focus on just listening

Posted Aug 21, 2026, 2:21 AM UTC

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