I’ve always wanted to learn Japanese, but I’ve never been able to get past learning my kana. I want to make an actual effort to really learn the language now, though, so I’m wondering what you guys did or currently do as beginners to the language. I have a pdf of Genki that I plan to work through, but I was just curious what a good daily routine would be to learn Japanese efficiently and effectively.
Thanks!
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I do a genki chapter a week (just finished volume 1) and I do the Moe Way N5 anki daily. It’s worked really well for me. I also do the genki app vocab thing to get a little sentence structure reading in.
I’m mostly trying to learn how to read though, not focusing on speaking so I don’t know if that would work for you
After learning Kana, I started studying basic particles, basic grammar rules, and after getting a hold of them two, I went on my journey to study about 3 kanji daily, as well as some ocasional pauses to study vocabulary and try to recap previously studied kanji. This way I learn little by little about everything and never get bored or worn out by a certain annoying topic.
My routine early on was to break each chapter of Genki into two weeks of study so I could do every exercise in the book and workbook while doing 2-4 hours a day of study. It has been a while, but I think my schedule was something like this
* 2-3 days of learning the chapter’s vocab through putting the cards into my anki vocab deck and reviewing them
* 2-3 days of going through the grammar and putting every example sentence in my anki grammar deck
* 2-3 days of doing every problem at the end of the chapter
* 2 days doing the reading and exercises at the back of the book
* 4 days doing the workbook exercises for the chapter
In addition to repeating the listening section from the chapter every single day and then paying a lot of attention to the listening exercises in the workbook too once I got there. I didn’t do any of the kanji sections in Genki since I studied kanji through Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji, Volume 1 in parallel with Genki. Genki I & II will give you a really nice foundation though if you take the time and effort to genuinely complete them, and it’s nice to have rigid structure when you’re first starting out and don’t know enough about the language to get a whole lot out of just reading and watching anime, playing games, etc.
You do this pace and you’ll have Genki I + II done in a year and know a lot of very important Japanese that will give you enough of a base to move into more advanced stuff like sentence mining from anime, manga, novels, games, etc. I also found anki reviews a great way to keep the grammar fresh in your head.
In the morning I watch a beginner’s grammar video. Throughout the day I use the app Renshuu to study vocab for the Minna No Nihongo textbook (great alternative to Anki if you don’t like Anki). In the evening, I study Minna No Nihonogo for an hour with a studybuddy on Discord. I recently added Bunpro to the mix as well (spaced repetition for grammar).