Self-study Japanese using a University class structure

Hey, all. I thought I’d make a post specifically for all the self-studiers out there who get bored super quickly from not having a good routine and are looking for some sort of guideline to help structure their studies better.

I’d been attempting to self-study for a couple years to no effect because I needed a routine, but having a same-thing-everyday structure immediately bored me and in no time I was back to not studying at all. I googled “Japanese class syllabus” to see how college classes might be set up, but syllabi, as you may know, are really just overviews of the concepts that will be learned and don’t offer information on class specifics. Youtubers making “how I study Japanese” videos just have a ton of B-roll of them flipping through Genki I and pouring strawberry milk and then they tell you things like “watch anime <3” but, again, offer no specifics about the routines they use to study.

To make a long story short, I’ve gone back to school for my graduate degree and I’m using this opportunity to take Japanese classes at my university, fulfilling the information that I was looking for for years. And now I want to offer it to anyone else who finds it impossible to study without some sort of guideline to build a daily routine from.

My recommendation: Check out how my classes are structured – we don’t learn new things every day, we actually spend more time practicing than introducing new things – and sit down with the resources you are using to figure out how you can space your content similarly.

# Basics

**Textbook**: The way my university structures language levels is Year 1-4. Year 1 uses Genki I, Year 2 is Genki II, Year 3 is Tobira, and Year 4 is purely native texts. We also have a “year 5” which isn’t actually called year 5, it’s just the next step to take if you pass Year 4 level, and it includes classical Japanese texts and translation training.

Having a textbook is essential to creating a structured study plan if you’re anywhere lower than Advanced/High-Intermediate level. You might be able to argue that you can set things up better on your own, but it can be very hard to learn without a textbook at hand that has paired grammar and exercises in an order that makes sense for the level being studied.

# Daily Schedule

So classes are one hour per day, five days a week. Three are labs and two are lectures; labs are exclusively conducted in Japanese, lectures are a mix of Japanese and English.

* **Monday** \- **Lab**: Speaking practice using last week’s grammar, 10 new kanji
* **Tuesday** \- **Lecture**: New grammar introduced, answer easy questions using new grammar
* **Wednesday** \- **Lab**: Speaking practice using new grammar with harder questions, 10 more kanji
* **Thursday** \- **Lecture**: Practice previous grammar, introduce next new grammar with easy questions
* **Friday** \- **Lab**: Speaking practice using all grammar from the week, hard questions, videos/songs

“Easy questions” would be something like a question that requires just a few words to answer, and “hard questions” would be those that require complex compound parts, maybe with an explanation for the answer in the sentence itself.

This schedule repeats itself, beginning each week with the previous week’s grammar and ending it with two new points having been taught. When doing speaking practice, we are not allowed to write any scripts for ourselves or jot our answers down before talking; it’s specifically to get our brain to put sentences together more quickly, and then answers or notes can be written afterward. At home, you can try to practice answering textbook exercise questions aloud, recording yourself, and continually answering with different things to stretch your vocabulary memory.

We have vocabulary and kanji quizzes every other lab day, so if there is one on Monday then the next one will (most likely) be on Friday. The quizzes will be all-verb or all-noun or all-adjective depending on the vocab section of the chapter we’re on. If you’re using Genki too, the kanji that we’re tested on are from the back sections of the book. For a self-studying example, you can try listing every verb in both English and Japanese on paper from memory, time yourself if you want more of a challenge, and then afterward check to see if you forgot any or got any incorrect.

# Homework

We have homework every other night, including weekends, which will each take about an hour. Because we use the Genki textbook, our homework is usually directly associated with chapter dialogue or activities. Here are some examples of what my homework looks like:

* **Workbook**: The workbook pages that coincide with the grammar points of the week – these will include translation of sentences, questions that you must answer, dialogue that you fill in the blanks for, and multi-sentence writing prompts. Two grammar points per week will usually mean about 4 workbook pages to coincide with them. There are also kanji practice worksheets in the Genki workbooks, which are included in homework as well.
* **Conjugation**: I dread these but they are necessary – we will conjugate every single verb AND adjective in the current chapter. They will be conjugated into casual past, volitional, conditional, potential, and そう and て forms. If there is a new form in the chapter, such as ばよかった in my current chapter, we will do those conjugations as well. These take me forever to do but I always learn a ton.
* **Particles**: Along the same lines as the Conjugation homework, we read sentences using the new verbs from our chapter – each of which usually has a specific particle, or particles, that are used with them – and fill in the blanks where the particles go. For you, this could just mean writing 3 sentences per new verb without using the textbook and then checking afterward to make sure you used the correct particles.
* **Listening Comprehension**: As I stated, we use the Genki series in class, which starts every chapter with a dialogue scene. Our homework is to listen to the official audio on the OTO Navi app (this is free and has audio for every single Genki chapter) and answer questions to test our listening comprehension, such as “What was Sora’s reason for quitting his job?” and things of that nature.
* **Reading Comprehension**: Genki books have a lengthy passage in the back section (where the kanji is) which includes grammar and vocab from the chapter, and also has 5-10 comprehension questions to be answered afterward. I’m a fast reader but I struggle with understanding what a question trying to ask, so it’s really a mixed bag on whether or not I get the questions right.
* **Writing Projects**: After every two chapters we write one full page on a given topic (favorite childhood moment, your hometown, future plans, family history, etc.) and use as much of the grammar in as complex of sentences as possible. A page full of first-year 私はすしが好きです-type sentences is fully unacceptable if we’ve spent the last two chapters learning complex modifications and conjugations. We write drafts and exchange them for feedback before writing the finished versions, so this would be a good chance to connect with a proofreading buddy.

# Supplemental Input

I’m not an anime person, a J-drama person, a gaming person – I went from four years of my career taking up all of my time to suddenly being back in school and realizing that I had absolutely no hobbies other than trying to learn Japanese every now and then. I started school last September and was immediately falling behind every single one of my peers, totally unable to understand why they were picking up every new concept so quickly and I was struggling so hard. So in December, I finally caved and went to my professor’s office hours to ask what I could do to improve. She was incredibly nice, didn’t speak detrimentally about my (lack of) supplemental input at all, but mentioned quite slyly that she can always tell when her students watch anime or play Japanese games or anything of that sort because their vocabularies are so strong. I thanked her and left.

**Comprehensible Input** \- r/LearnJapanese loves to use this phrase, but it really is a truth bomb. The input you get (listening, reading) must be at a comprehensible level for you or else you’re just nodding along to gibberish that your brain can’t parse. Sitting a baby down in front of A Brief History Of Time won’t help them any more than it will help me to watch someone on Terrace House have an emotional breakdown and rapidly word-vomit their life story when I don’t have subtitles on. It just won’t make sense at that stage.

If you’re at a mid-Genki II level like me (this is N4 area), here is what I’m using as my comprehensible input:

* **Anime**: Cardcaptor Sakura, Doraemon, Inuyasha (this one is a bit of a struggle but quite fun)
* **Games**: Ni no Kuni I (has furigana, really loving this game), Toho Mystia’s Izakaya (tough but fun)
* **Manga**: Yotsuba& (I know this is everyone’s rec but it’s so cute), Sailor Moon (tough but FAVE)
* **Books**: Anything from the 小学生なら366 series (like [this](https://united-states.kinokuniya.com/bw/9784092272101)), Detective Conan’s 1026 Kanji Practice ([here](https://united-states.kinokuniya.com/bw/9784092272422))

# Outside Learning

My professor didn’t mention extending lessons beyond class, homework, and casual input because that’s already MANY hours being dedicated to Japanese for a full-time student. However, if you’ve been on r/LearnJapanese for a while, you’ve assuredly heard of both of these websites. And once I started using them, they became the secret weapons that took me from last place in the class to, like, third place. Which is a huge jump, thank you very much, I’m very proud.

**WaniKani** \- I was frustrated with this at first, being that I’m working on N4 and starting WaniKani means beginning at pre-N5 kanji. However, once you work on it for about a week, you will immediately begin learning additional kanji information, and the SRS has made me an incredibly fast reader. I went from being embarrassed about reading aloud in class to being able to read quickly without stumbling over any kanji. Genuinely not trying to gloat, though I am proud of my progress, I’m just literally amazed at how quickly this website made a huge change in my reading ability.

**Bunpro** \- Bun and Wani are a match made in heaven. I don’t use Bunpro every day like I do with WaniKani, but it is invaluable extra practice for my Genki grammar whenever I have chapter tests on the horizon. I went from trembling with anxiety over my tests for DAYS beforehand to showing up casually 5 mins early with boba, not a care in the world because I knew I would pass. If I didn’t have a lecture class teaching me new grammar points, Bunpro would be my daily lesson spot. Super highly recommended for all learners.

# Let’s Summarize

So, in total, here is what we’re looking at for each of the four categories of language learning using only university class time and assigned homework as our guide (this does not include anime or WK or anything extra):

* **Reading**: 4 hr/wk (Class, Workbook, Reading Comp)
* **Listening**: 5 hr/wk (Class, Conversation, Listening Comp)
* **Speaking**: 3 hr/wk (Class, Conversation)
* **Writing**: 4 hr/wk (Class, Workbook, Conjugations, Particles, Writing Projects)

These all have a bit of overlap with each other since classes are a mix of all four. If you add in an hour of additional input and learning per day, you’re looking at about 17 hours per week being exclusively spent on Japanese. If you keep it up, that’s nearly 900 hours of Japanese learning in a year.

“University classes teach slowly!!!1” Yes, we’re not gonna reach N2 in 60 days, because students (and people with full-time jobs) must also split their time with other vital tasks. This is not a fast enough pace for someone trying to hit N1 by the end of their first year of learning – if you are a self-studier with other things going on in your life, I feel like this can still be considered an ambitious pace.

Thank you for reading this far, also. If you think this post sucks, that’s totally fine. But I searched far and wide for this information when I was studying at home and couldn’t find anything similar, so I hope this at least helps at least one other self-studier who isn’t trying to go back to school just to have a regimented learning routine lol

Good luck, self-studiers. 頑張ろう!