I have been learning Japanese almost 1 year now with a few textbooks/guidebooks and apps like duolingo and YuSpeak. I haven’t been super involved with it because I have other classes I’ve been taking that are more important. I can basically speak like a baby or young toddler, not sure what level but probably N5 or less.
I have a trip to Japan in June to visit family and for tourism so I’m wondering what’s the best way to learn the most in this amount of time. I’m not opposed to paying for something but it can’t be expensive and it can’t be a tutor because of schedule complications.
I need the most help with vocabulary like nouns and verbs as well as kanji. I know hiragana and katakana and VERY FEW kanji.
Thank you to anyone with advice!
3 comments
Forgot to add that English is my only language so only English resources please.
There are lots of great resources and guides on the About tab of this sub, I’d suggest looking through those and seeing what works for you! I’m currently filling the gaps in my N5 knowledge after a long time of casual study, and can share a few resources that I’ve been using:
Grammar: The Cure Dolly youtube channel has been helping me see the grammar a lot more logically, and Bunpro has helped me practice.
Vocab: Wanikani is an efficient system for learning the kanji well. At near full speed you could learn the N5 kanji and half of N4 in 2 months. Also jpdb looks useful for making word lists to study, with premade lists for lots of content.
Listening: The Comprehensible Japanese youtube channel and Nihongo Con Teppei beginners podcast are good ways to get started. I’m also watching some of the anime without subtitles ranked easiest on jpdb.
Reading: Lock in your hiragana and katakana with the JapanesePod videos. Then check Natively for reading difficulty rankings. Yotsuba is a good beginner manga once you have enough exposure to the language, though there is easier content out there too.
I think it’s not best to put a time limit on language learning since it’s easy to get upset when you don’t meet your goals. If you’re at about a N5 level now, you could probably be at a N4 level in 2 months if you do a lot of listening and reading. Remember the JLPT scale doesn’t measure output ability. I’m not sure how much time you have a day, but if you only want to get better at speaking without focusing on your comprehension, then shadowing a lot would help.