I’ve been wanting to learn Japanese properly. I bought both the textbook and workbook of GENKI a long time ago but have not started yet. I checked the resources on this subreddit and learnt about learning through immersion. I haven’t learnt any Kana whatsoever and have no clue how to maneuver through GENKI, and now I’m not even sure if I should be learning through GENKI or something like TheMoeWay/Refold.
Are these immersion methods superior to standard textbook learning? How can I approach GENKI? It doesn’t seem like GENKI provides much for learning Kana so I’m really clueless on what I should do to start.
4 comments
If you have Genki already, definitely use it. It is great for the beginner level if you can sit down and study.
I used to workbook as well and enjoyed that.
Genki doesn’t focus much on teaching the Kana because it’s not something a textbook does well and while extremely important it’s not something that’s difficult to learn. Just use some flash cards to grind them out for a few hours. If writing is important to you then also spend some time writing them.
As for textbooks vs. immersion that’s something you’ll need to figure out on your own. It’s more of a preference than a set in stone rule, but even if you do want to go the immersion route you need to build a foundation first. Completely Genki will help you do it and you’ve already paid for it, why not try it?
If you are just starting, learn the hiragana and katakana. I recommend the free resources tofugus guide and realkana for learning them.
Then start learning grammar with genki.
Read at least the first half of the book so you can formulate basic sentences. You might supplement with an anki deck for the book if you want.
TL;DR — don’t think too hard. Pick a single textbook to work through and make consistent progress through it. (fast or slow, just be consistent.) At the same time, make sure you’re devoting regular time to actually doing things in Japanese. Eventually those two ends will meet and you’ll find a balance that works/feels productive for you.
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Many language learners suffer from a sort of perfectionism — *I can’t do that yet because there are 2,300 flashcards left in my Anki deck* or *because there are still 7 chapters left in my textbook, and then 3 textbooks after that I could follow! And when I finish all that, I’ll be ready!*
But the reality is that you won’t be ready: language is such a vast thing, and a lot of it is best/easiest/most enjoyably learned by doing. When you read a book or have a conversation, you’re also discovering, learning, and reinforcing the specific skills you need to do those things.
Immersion approaches help deal with that problem. People are encouraged to jump in and try doing the things they want to do in Japanese — and a lot of people find that it’s not quite as difficult as they thought, so they end up spending more time doing things in Japanese, which ultimately leads to them becoming better at doing those things (and probably spending more time in Japanese than they did with their textbook alone.)
A disadvantage of the immersion approach is that, by nature of being self-guided, you’re sort of limited by what you can notice. If you don’t have a solid Japanese foundation under you and/or you lack a background in linguistics, you may feel like you’re drinking from a firehose instead of a straw. It’s a balance.
I don’t know where the link would be on the current Refold website, but on it’s previous iteration (Mass Immersion Approach), Matt specifically recommended people to skim/quickly work through a beginner’s grammar book *before* really focusing on immersion. It’s easier to consume content when you’ve got a bit of a foundation, and how much of one you need comes down to your personal patience/tolerance for ambiguity.
Personally, I think these things are helpful:
* [Drawabox’s 50% rule](https://drawabox.com/lesson/0/2/50percent) — it doesn’t have to be 50/50, but dedicate regular time to textbook study and regular time to immersion. This helps ensure that you’re spending time actually doing something important to you in Japanese on the one hand… but also that you’re making some concrete/visible progress with a textbook. They’re not mutually exclusive. The better you understand the grammar points, the smoother your immersion will go / the more you get out of it.
* [The Swiss Cheese Model of Risk Aversion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model) — whatever you do, however seriously you take this, however smart you are, there are going to be holes in your knowledge. That’s OK. Swiss cheese is holey by nature, but when you stack a bunch of slices on top of each other, you eventually cover most/all of the gaps. I think learning is similar. Finish Genki — if you really did miss a foundational grammar point or something, you’ll quickly stumble into it while you’re consuming content. As you work through textbooks, review grammar points and generally consume content, you’ll eventually cover most of your holes.