Sorry if I’m asking on a wrong subreddit, but how can I explain to my students how Japanese particles are important but not something you should devote their time and efforts so much?
So I’m Japanese and occasionally teach some forefingers Japanese online, and there are some English speaking students who have troubles with particles, which slows down their leaning progress so much. What those students have in common is that they’re detail oriented, and focus and fixate on the particles excessively to the point where they’re not at all willing to speak/write Japanese untill they fully understand the concepts. I believe particles are something you acquire gradually through an actual use of the language, so I don’t want them to spend so much time on a knowledge driven study. Explicit knowledge is important too though.
I thought giving some examples of grammar points of English such “a vs the” would help, like even if you mix up those two, people will still understand you, and when you read or listen to English, those words don’t really make a huge difference. But feels like something is off so I’m looking for other examples that might be helpful to explain my point
Here are some example question my students had before
– 日本に vs 日本には
– 私が vs 私は
– に vs で as a location indicator
– the usage of で and は in それでは
– the usage of を in 公園を歩く
Thanks!!
11 comments
As someone detail oriented, I would simplify the details/contexts for when to use which particle and leave it at that. It gives an easy flowchart to refer to. You’d notice even with that, they’d still mix it up occasionally, and that’s okay. They’d as you say, get more and more used to which particles to use and most importantly start speaking. Beyond that, it is up to their willingness to make mistakes.
I think hearing Teppei from Nihongo Con Teppei say “If you don’t make mistakes, you won’t improve” made me be okay with my mistakes. I think hearing from somebody who has learned a foreign language, and how they improved made me want to listen to that advice.
Your a vs the comparison is spot on. I actually use the exact same comparison, but in reverse when explaining a vs the to my Japanese students.
It sounds like your students may have some issues with perfectionism and fear of failure to me. They’re too scared of making mistakes to even try. This is actually something that I encounter a lot with my Japanese students. The way I’ve delt with it is by trying to create an atmosphere where it’s ok to make mistakes.
The way that I do this will be different from the way you do since I teach kids in Japanese public schools, and I’m assuming you teach private lessons to adults, but I’ll tell you what I do and maybe some of it will be useful.
From the first day of class, I explicitly tell students that it’s ok to make mistakes. I actually want them to make mistakes. Mistakes aren’t something to be embarrassed by, but something to learn from. When a student makes a mistake, I never cut them off to correct them (some students like being abruptly corrected, but most don’t). I always give them encouragement after they try to answer a question, no matter how wrong their answer was. “Ok nice idea! Does anyone else have another idea?” For beginners (and my kids are all beginners), I don’t really give them any corrections during free conversation practice. I save corrections for writing practice or focused speaking drills. We’ll even do exercises where students are told to not worry at all about grammar, and just talk for 60 seconds. Their goal is just to say as many words as possible I’m 60 seconds. They record this number and track it over time. This helps them get over the urge to panic or freeze up when they speak.
In terms of particle specific stuff, I share your philosophy. What helped me with particles was actually just doing a bunch of multiple choice particle drills (I used the ones from Minna no Nihongo). When I got the answers back I would repeat the sentences over and over again to myself, trying to form associations in my head. Over time I noticed the percentage I got right increasing.
>I thought giving some examples of grammar points of English such “a vs the” would help, like even if you mix up those two, people will still understand you, and when you read or listen to English, those words don’t really make a huge difference.
They won’t though, because make a huge difference in English, just as the specific case you are talking about (WA vs GA) a huge difference in Japanese
They will have a vague idea about the topic or action, but sentences are not about rough outlines; they are specific statements.
As you say, the only way to get somewhere is take the first step. But for some reason people teaching Japanese think the first step in teaching Japanese is to have students produce original content in Japanese, long before they can read or hear native content. Eventually people have to produce content, but the content will be bad boring Japanese until they have a sense of what Japanese sounds like. Or hilariously off-topic unintentionally. Someone who hears that afternoon showers in Japan are called 夕立 when making original content might talk about how it rains in the morning where they live, so they will say they have 朝立ち where they live.
Don’t push students to create original content. Expose them to good content, and let them develop the ability to mimic that content.
People who have to learn languages fast learn to find natives saying the things they need to ask or say, and slavishly mimic it. Understanding is not crucial; performance is.
Specific to the case you are talking about here about particles is that students have problems with creating original content, before they have any idea of how native content should look or sound. New learners should not be given assignments to create new content. They should be given lots of content to develop patterns they can follow.
The analogy for the consistent failure to learn Japanese is this: People teaching Japanese continuously point a direction for new students to go, and make the students have to hack their way through a jungle of misunderstanding, all because Kanji fear makes every teacher avoid actual native content.
Instead of making students try and hack their way through a jungle, let the use paths already made (native content). They read enough native content, they will have no problems emulating it to make original content down the road.
One tip I always give people is to be more comfortable with “chunking”. Languages are not 1:1 at their most basic component level, and sometimes words / phrases cannot be directly translated until they hit the “chunk” level.
Some people here are talking about fear of making mistakes, and that’s definitely part of it, but I think the biggest problem is people feeling like if they fully understand それ, で, and は, they will be able to start in their mind from those building blocks and build up this それでは construct. But that is *not* what happens for native speakers – それでは is it’s *own chunk* that works just like choosing a noun for the sentence.
I do think particles are important to learn early on. But I would neglect exceptions and comparable uses. And I wouldn’t do too much drilling.
For example there is a comparable use for the particles へ and に。just learn the に . I know there are some cases when へ is much preferred. In that case you use へ。and when asked just shortly say it’s the direction and go on with the lesson. if you go on without drilling the detail oriented people in your classes will pick it up anyway.
I think this difference is picked up automatically after time.
I would come up with a simple rule for when using は after another particle. It doesn’t have to be right all the time, but most of the time. Like I said skip the exceptions. Mention there are exceptions but don’t go into details yourself. Explain it as short as you can.
Imo the particles are not tougher than learning hiragana.
The goal for most people should be to have a conversation in Japanese or being able to consume japanese media.
For those that have a goal of the Jlpt things might be different. And those will have specific questions regarding particles and all sorts of stuff related to that current level. To be honest I prefer teachers that can answer my questions. If you can’t convince them and they want to be drilled give them homework but don’t spend too much time in class on it.
I would teach all particles regarding a level in one of the first lessons, maybe 2 lessons. Since they come in contact with the particles all the time .
I don’t think there is a need to drill them though.
If someone is having trouble with the use of a specific particle. Deal with it by giving homework.
homework could be use the particle in 10 sentences. This shouldn’t take too much of your time correcting it.
Good luck
The first Japanese class i ever took, my teacher taught us to always circle the particles in our textbooks and worksheets so we would be more aware of them and learn how to use them by noticing how they are used. Maybe this strategy can help your students as well.
I think you might underestimate a bit how important particles are. More than half of average sentence are particles. の particle alone usually has 4% coverage. Think about this, we usually use ~30k individual words, and a single の out of these 30k already cover 1/25, while most common 20 are around 40%.
Rather than ignoring it, I would advice to look at some explanations that would work for language learners. For a native speaker it might be a bit complex, because even simple particles like で and に can depend a lot on some rarer cases like poetry, letting alone something versatile as の. But give them some rule of thumb that would work in 90-95% cases and it’s already decent enough. Remain cases people can learn later with practice.
Not sure if you like that format, but I found this explanation simple and effective:
https://youtu.be/dwcTI9qvO-U
Fellow tutor and teacher here. Firstly, I’d like to ask if you have any formalized training when it comes to teaching Japanese. There should be resources in Japanese which explain Japanese grammar and so on. You can also look for other resources in English, etc. to get an idea of what it’s like for non-Japanese.
For the most part, if the sentence is understandable, don’t sweat the small stuff. A missed/wrong particle is probably going to be understood. One thing I DO enforce is に行きます and not で行きます in a sentence like 学校で行きます. One is traveling there, the other is committing a crime.
I’m a very detail oriented person and fear of making mistakes definitely holds me back in foreign languages when it comes to speaking. With Japanese I have a lot of extra fear that if I get it wrong I’ll accidentally offend someone. I’ve also been given the impression that sometimes the smallest change (like using the wrong particle) can change the meaning of a sentence. Maybe your students are like me and some more generally reassurance that people will be understanding and not offended if they make mistakes would help?