こんにちは、
Hello, I am looking for resources such as textbooks, language learning programs e.g Rosetta Stone (preferably not Duolingo), podcasts etc to polish my Japanese.
To clarify I can mostly only read at N5, N4 and some N3. But I can speak fairly well with my problem being that I sometimes forget to speak in 敬語 (keigo/formal) since I am a heritage speaker. I also occasionally struggle to recall technical (単語)terms that may relate to science or health for example.
Any help is appreciated sorry if this is all formatted oddly. ありがとうございます。
3 comments
Also resources for understanding when to best apply音読み(onyomi) and 訓読み(kunyomi)! Sorry!
By “speak fairly well” but “mostly only read at N5, N4”, is it a kanji issue or general language skill(s) (i.e. including grammar points) issue?
If it’s the latter, there’s still a lot to cover than what the word “polish” implies – although this highly depends on your goals.
As I’m on a bit of a budget, I personally use Renshuu.
There are premade study schedules, but you can also easily create your own or add terms to the ones you already have. You can also customize how much you want to study per day, which vectors you want to study (e.g. kunyomi and onyomi, writing, Kanji meanings), and can freeze schedules when you feel like you need a break (or just take it slow).
You don’t have to study from 0 either, because you can mark terms as “don’t study”, “known / unknown” etc.
It has grammar lessons from basic up to N4 (as of now), and each lesson is only a couple minutes long. You can also take a quiz right after (or skip the intro and just do the quiz, if you’re already familiar).
There are also motivators like your own Kao-chan (the site’s mascot that evolves as you study and level up), hanko achievements and Kao garden (basically a decoration minigame; currency is earned by studying). If that isn’t for you, you can just ignore them, too.
Renshuu also has a lot of bonus stuff, like minigames (counting practice, writing, shiritori), word gardens, weekly questions and a text analyzer (you can enter any text and it’ll be converted to a reader that works like Yomichan).
There’s a pro version that adds many more quizzes, listening practice and and also lets you convert anything submitted to the text analyzer to custom lessons, so you can study everything in that text. It’s about $110 (there’s a sale until December), but you can pay in monthly rates too (via Paypal anyway).
There’s a Discord server as well, and there are regular study sessions and other events.