I’ve been trying (and failing) to learn off-and-on for a few years now. Obviously my methods have not succeeded. I tried the “memorize the first 1,000 common words” route, except my memory is awful. So I fall into the trap of starting strong, feeling some success in my sails, um…..ack what is that word….oh no I’m forgetting, and stumble might as well put it away for a few months.
So I’m hoping for a good discussion on the various ways people have learned, maybe this approach might work for me, how did it work for you?
5 comments
I started like you. Tried the 1000 words thing, tried to read grammar books and just absorb and memorize the info… it didn’t work out.
I had a lot more luck with apps as they started to pop up. Started with My Japanese Coach for DS, then Anki, then iKnow, then Memrise, then Duolingo.
Honestly, out of all of those, Duolingo worked for me the best because it focuses on sentences, and builds up gradually in difficulty. That gives it a more i+1 functionality. However it’s pretty easy to cheat if you let yourself.
I did that and app hopped until apps in general were too easy. That doesn’t mean I knew all the words, but I knew the majority of what each learning app out there tries to teach you, then I moved to media.
For me that meant going through games and TV shows with TL subs and looking up every word I didn’t know. Sometimes I took notes, sometimes I didn’t.
I like to read books. Before I could read books I did some textbook called “Genki”
I took a picture of the books I read so far, let’s see: [photo](https://imgur.com/a/y3ZA7DK)
As you can see, not the most complicated books ever, but paperback is harder because no popup dictionary.
I also have a tutor on iTalki. It’s more of a “sanity check” then anything else. I wanted to make sure I could be understood at least a little bit, since I don’t live in Japan.
I didn’t start retaining anything in a meaningful way until I started finding ways to use it in a practical fashion.
use things in context, not just rote memorization
use more senses during practice, it forms more and stronger neuronal connections
reading, writing, speaking, listening
learn things *in* japanese. download a recipe and make cookies from japanese instructions, download some origami instructions and follow them; make it an *active* process of usage
of course, finding a language partner will help with listening and speaking, and it might with reading and writing if they’ll work with you on this; taking classes, in person or over zoom, will also do so
flip your internal dialogue to japanese and *think* in japanese as much as you can. when you get stuck, write down what you wanted to think and look it up or ask someone later. then return to the thought and see where it goes. this will naturally produce sentences that you need to know how to process, for your own brain
The approach is simple. As you said You’ve been learning off-and-on. Get rid of ‘off’ time and you will see results.