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The best way to learn Japanese?
Topic Started: Dec 29 2013, 08:11 PM (51 Views)
Connie
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So I was surfing the internet looking at Japan related things like what it's like to live there and stuff, when I came across some really cool articles on a site called Gaijin Pot. There's this one writer that I really like, Ken Seeroi, and I recommend that you have a little surf around his articles.

Anyway, he wrote this one article exploring what the best way to learn Japanese is, from his own experiences.

-------> Go read it ~here~

He goes over a whole stack of different methods, classes, online sites, the good stuff and the crud stuff. In the end, here were his six recommendations;

Six Recommendations

Although I no longer believe in the myth of a “best” method for learning Japanese, there are still some things that I believe are vitally important for success.

1. Ensure you receive a large volume of comprehensible input. What that input is isn’t as important as making sure you get a steady stream of it. Do whatever suits you—read books, watch movies, talk to people—but check that it satisfies two criteria: First, you have to be able to understand it on some level. Maybe not perfectly, but enough to follow what you’re seeing and hearing. Secondly, it should be valuable information. Repeating familiar, safe conversations about your hometown, family, and hobbies won’t do much to improve your Japanese. Nor will watching anime full of slang that nobody uses. Push yourself to learn things that are widely useful.

2. Learn kanji. This is absolutely essential for expanding your vocabulary. Because kanji are the building blocks of the language, learning them will increase your vocabulary exponentially. There’s a brilliantly written article by shameless self-promoter Ken Seeroi that explains this in greater detail.

3. Get an electronic dictionary, so that when you wake up at 4 a.m. wondering how to say “Oh God, why have I wasted my life learning Japanese?” you can look it up.

4. Read. Read easy stuff, but a lot of it. It’s a safe bet that much of what you’ve learned throughout your life has come from reading. It’s no different in Japanese. Reading with furigana (teenie tiny hiragana printed above the kanji, à la Hiragana Times) is a good stepping stone.

5. Take classes. In blogs and discussion boards, the mantra is that classes are old-fashioned and you can learn faster and more efficiently on your own. I seriously doubt that, particularly in the long-term. I’ve heard people complain, “But I took a full semester of Japanese and all I learned were 50 kanji,” like somehow it was the teacher’s fault they didn’t learn more. I hate to be the one to dish out the tough love, but if there’s something you want to learn, look it up and learn it. That part’s on you. What a class provides is a schedule, curriculum, and an opportunity to practice. Nobody’s stopping you from learning more.

6. Don’t quit. Learning Japanese can be fun, and even occasionally useful if you happen to live in Japan, but it’s not like someone’s going to lay the Hands of Knowledge on you and you’ll be like, Oh my God, I can see! I can see kanji!

Let me level with you. Nobody’s going to sell you a program that promises to teach you Japanese over the course of twenty years, because you wouldn’t buy it. It’s way easier to sell something that claims you can learn Japanese by sleeping with a copy of I am a Cat under your pillow. But it’s probably going to take you a lot longer than you’ve been lead to believe.

If I had to estimate the percentage of people who try and actually succeed at learning Japanese, I’d put it between one percent and Hell Freezing Over. But that isn’t because 99% of the people lack the right method. On the contrary, they don’t succeed because their expectations are skewed. Everyone’s gung-ho to study hard for about a year and a half. After that, they lose focus, skip studying for a couple of days, and then a couple of days becomes a week. Real life sets in, and a week turns into a month. And then you read about some fool who mastered Japanese in like nine months and you become convinced that you’re either not doing the right thing, or you just don’t have what it takes. But neither of those things is likely true. The fact is, it takes some time. And that’s okay. Just live long and prosper. I’m pretty sure that’s a Japanese saying. Anyway, you should do that.


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So what methods or way's have you tried, or are trying? What's working best for you, or worst? I'm not really sure where I'm at with all of that, I'm only just a beginner but I have to say that if I were to do something different about my studies, there is no way I would have chosen to do it by correspondence. Some people are really good at self study, but if you're not, it is super challenging unless you have a tutor or other resources.
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