First time poster to this sub, so I’m sorry if this is a very redundant post (I promise I searched to see if the answer to my question was readily available). I am in the, probably not so uncommon, position of being a former student of Japanese (I took 4 semesters of language classes using Nakama 1 and 2 in college 10 years ago), but feel like I have only retained the most basic grammar and vocabulary (Kanji is all but lost to time). I have a trip to Japan planned for next year and I want to try and regain some of my Japanese Language skills.
My question is slightly multifaceted, the first of which being is there a decent online resource where I can test my knowledge to see where my skill level is at? Secondly I was wondering is there a Japanese Language book that is geared towards going to Japan not as a student (Genki and Nakama seem very college/high school focused)?
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I plan to do a few months of self study and early next year sign up for classes at my local Japanese Cultural Center.
Any help this community could give would be greatly appreciated, as I am hoping to be able to say more than “I would like a beer” when I visit Japan. Thanks in advance.
2 comments
I have experience with this. I took Japanese in high school from 2010 to 2012 and then didn’t bother with it until 2020. I picked up Genki and flipped through it, adding anything I didn’t remember/understand to Anki until I got to the parts where I didn’t know anything and continued from there. After finishing both Genki books I jumped straight into consuming native content, looking up every unknown word and adding them to Anki.
After finishing Genki you would definitely be in a better position than just being able to say, “I would like a beer.”
Edit to add: don’t bother learning to write kanji if you’re visiting Japan soon, just learn to read it otherwise you’ll never get anywhere before you travel.
i was also in this boat. i took it in college from 95-98 and then forgot about it until about 2017, almost 20 years later. my personal history was that i got a private tutor and we went over all of genki 1 in about 2 hours and determined that i remembered all of it except some vocab. then we spent a few 2-hour sessions redoing genki 2 and i also remembered most of that as well. then we went into new stuff after that in a different book.
so i’d say just pick up material as though you’re starting from scratch, but blow through it as fast as you feel comfortable doing. there’s bound to be a few things you forgot, so that will help sweep those up. and it can’t hurt to have the practice even if it’s simple. when you run into material that you don’t know any more, stop. that’s “where you’re at”.