Hi everyone!
Together with my two roommates, we were thinking to start learning Japanese. We will all start from zero, and as full-time workers, we will only have a limited time per week to learn to language. However, we are motivated to learn as much as we can!
Originally, we were thinking about taking an online course twice a week (1h30 each time). However, following a fixed dates course would be impossible for one of us. So I started roaming the subreddit to find resources for self-studying.
According to what I read, I was thinking of something like this:
Hiragana + katakana = Dr. Moku or Tofugu
Kanji + vocab.= Anki
Grammar + “structured” progress = Genki
So, first question: do you think these resources are enough/appropriate?
Second, the risk that I see is that, with these resources, we will end up studying “separately”, losing part of the enthusiasm that we now share for this new hobby. What would you suggest us to do to study “together”? Maybe following a YouTube channel based on Genki? Reconsider the online course option?
Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated!
3 comments
Seperate the work and present it to each other.
at first you could learn one row of hiragana each and show what you learned to the others.
when you start learning phrases, use them daily.
you still have to learn vocabs in your own pase. i dont think youre able to do that efficiently in a group unless you test each other
Here’s the [advice and resources](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/s5mtva/comment/ht1lo0x/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) I recommend for self study beginners – at least I offer it for consideration; there are many alternatives. It’s also primarily aimed at reading and listening. Writing and speaking are harder hills to climb as, unless you live in Japan, your opportunities for these will be more limited.
I think you need to increase the amount of time you are willing to spend on learning Japanese as well. If you use Anki you’ll need to do something (reviews) every day. Spending several days between each study session will also decrease the learning rate as you’ll forget stuff before you get to use it.
FYI: [Estimates to ‘fluency’](https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/) are around 2200 hours of class time (for native English speakers). So at 3 hours per week you are looking at about 733 weeks, or about 14 years (assuming everything goes perfectly). So yeah – spend more time learning per week.
Sometimes just saying outloud what you’ve learned is enough to solidify it. I remember a quote from a TV show where a tutor says that tutoring his classmate got him from a B to an A and the student from a D to a C.
Can you have off/online sessions where you can say what you’ve encountered and starting to memorise? 🙂 Mix it choosing a “Japanese song of the week” “Japanese quote of the week” etc. and a little alcohol and have a great study session!!