Hey everyone,

I signed up for a Reddit account just to ask questions since I couldn't find the answer anywhere online or Youtube or too daft to understand :S

I bought my first manual last month, a 2020 Civic LX 6 Speed. I was going to get the Civic Si but figured I should learn how to drive a manual on something more tame first. I've been driving the car intermittently since getting it and I think I'm getting the hang of it but not I still have some issues.

1) When I shift up to a higher gear, I feel the car lurching sometimes and the gear shift isn't as smooth as an auto. Is there supposed to be a certain rpm that I need to shift at or something I need to do to prevent the car from jerking a bit when upshifting?

2) Don't even talk about downshifting, lol. The lurch is really significant on this and I know that I'm killing the car doing this. I know I'm supposed to rev match to prevent jerking of the car but rev match to what rpm? Does the rpms needed to match to change at different speeds? I'm so confused about this and the online videos aren't really helping me that much.

3) There are so many answers to whether I need to learn how to downshift or not. For now, I've been pressing the clutch in, shifting to neutral, and braking when I come to a stoplight. But I hear people say that I should be downshifting as much as I can before I brake neutral gear, in case I need to accelerate quickly. Any opinions?

4) Launching from stop, I'm still finding this process fairly slow. What I do is: 1) Clutch in and shift from neutral to 1st 2) Slowly release the clutch until I hit bite point at which I release clutch slower 3) Once my car starts moving, then I press the accelerator and move the car forward faster. Is there a way to make launching the car faster? I feel like there's something with my Step 2 and Step 3 that I should be improving on.

5) In order to accelerate faster, are we supposed to downshift first and then press the accelerator? Sometimes when I press the accelerator in gear, acceleration happens really slowly

Thanks in advance from a total manual car noob.