Should I take japanese classes?

7 comments

1. Learning Japanese is a massive time commitment. I personally love doing it, but if I was “not sure” then I would not do it. And if you think of it as “worth the money” then the answer is definitely no. There are many much more marketable skills than Japanese that you can learn in less time.

2. It could be a nice supplement to your Japanese learning. But use it as a supplement.

   I’ve seen a lot of people in classes move at a very very slow pace (not that language learning is a race) and some places teach no kanji.

   I would use it as a supplement. Use plenty of other things but don’t solely rely on the class.

   Unless you’re getting some certificate or something out of the class, I don’t think it would be worth the college tuition. But that’s just me

3. One day, I decided that Japanese doesn’t need to be useful or beneficial for my future for me to pursue it as a hobby. After all, I’m not judging any of my other hobbies by how useful they are, right?

   So, I started learning Japanese for fun and I will keep doing it as long as it’s fun. Because it’s fun and that’s all that a hobby needs to be.

4. Personally, only learn Japanese if you love Japanese or language learning in general. Only then will decisions like self study vs classes vs personal tutors be trivial.

   If you love something, it’s worth the money. If you don’t, then don’t even bother.

5. Classes give academic credit and some people find them fun. The fun factor is much higher with an immersive, comprehensible, interactive teaching method like TPRS. If you can get that, I’m legitimately jealous and I’d say to go for it.

   A class that just guides you through Genki, I’d say that’s a waste of time because:

   – you can just do Genki on your own
   – or you could literally watch anime and YouTube instead and build a much broader foundation

   *Tutoring* to practice your speaking is where the “spending money may be worth it” thing usually comes into play, particularly once you’re able to comfortably understand spoken Japanese.

   Japanese is shockingly different from English, so no matter what method you follow it’s going to take an enormous number of hours. So much so that it’s probably never worth it economically (time is valuable), and for those of us learning it as a hobby, it tends to be our biggest or only hobby, at least for the first several years.

6. Japanese is not as universally useful as nearly any other major world language, but if you are interested in it and can see yourself frequenting Japan on holiday, I say why not!

7. Maybe it depends on how motivated you are and your level of interest in Japanese. I am a full-time English teacher in senior high school. When I started studying Japanese four years ago as a hobby after finishing grad school, I never thought I’d use it for my career so I opted to self-study and aim for the JLPT just so I can have a sort of a study goal.

   Three years later, I passed N5, N4 and N3. Then I got a part-time job offer as a foreign language (Japanese) teacher at the university, teaching three classes while still being full-time HS teacher. Then I got an opportunity to teach English in Japan and applied for that job, and now those years of studying Japanese won’t be for naught.

   So, you’ll never know.

   As for the money, I actually thought of taking Japanese classes at a language school in my city but decided against it because it wasn’t worth my money. I invested on JLPT textbooks and novels instead.