What techniques do you use to improve your Japanese?

10 comments

1. This is the wrong sub.

2. Lots of reading

3. I watch Japanese TV shows and movies that interest me. It helps my listening ability. I also watch non-English shows with Japanese subtitles because that helps my reading. If I see kanji I don’t know I pause the video and draw into the dictionary app I have on my iPad.

4. Start with textbooks, do all the exercises, get out and talk to people, do iTalki lessons, ignore people on the internet and their magical osmosis methods, talk to people, read, watch stuff, talk to people, and talk to people.

5. Don’t rely only on textbooks and flash cards. You are gonna end up using words that Japanese don’t even use. You’d better go with movies with subtitles, go out and talk to locals so that you can practice and improve a lot more.

6. No anime or manga – except for maybe some slice of life series – unless you want people to call you *chuuni* or some new slang meaning similar that I don’t know of. Anime / manga characters – especially shonen, usually have a speech patterns that nobody use in real life (ex: dattebayo etc). New learners usually end up mimicking those speech patterns and talk weird. I mean Japanese won’t mind it so much as long as they understand what you’re saying, but do we really wants to be known as the weebs who dream of Japan? I didn’t even watch anime that much but my former coworker introduced me to her teenage daughter as アニメオタクなんだって！I hated that.

   Anyway, I watched a lots of (pirated) dramas, movies and variety tv shows. It was like 10yrs ago so Netflix, Prime or Tver weren’t a thing. Not all shows on these sites have subtitles but there have been more Japanese contents in the last few years. If you live in JP and own a TV then all dramas / animes would have subtitles, TV shows subtitle get delayed a bit but most shows should have them too. My fav are / were: Unnatural (starring Ishihara Satomi) – lots of difficult medical and forensic vocab but I love it so much I’ve watched it 5 times, Getsuyo no Yoru fukashi – really entertaining and I love it, anything with Matsuko Deluxe, lately our household watch lots of quiz shows too even though I can’t answer anything.

   Maybe when your Japanese is good enough for you not to take on weird speaking patterns, you can def watch anime of any genre to increase your vocabulary (remember, vocab only), verb conjugation and of course, entertainment.

7. For kanji study, I suggest Wanikani. It costs money, but in my opinion it’s worth it.

8. Use the language and learn anything you feel you’re missing.

   In the beginning when there’s a lot, use some structured learning materials to supplement your routine of just living your life in Japanese in Japan.

9. This is hard to answer because language learning, especially later, is an issue of emotional leverage or personal resonance rather than technique. Basically, you need to find what fuels your desire to learn, which differs by person. For me it’s reading visual novels and watching movies with Japanese subs, and that’s all I ever did to pass N1 other than just talking to people and memorizing things I liked. I know a practical answer must exist for this but I think “read more of what you like” or “talk more about what you like” while taking notes and reviewing it is about all there is to say. I have always liked having my own Google doc or notebook with absolutely everything in Japanese I like or care about, organized exactly how I want to organize it. This way for example, there isn’t a single adjective I don’t know that ends in いい。Or at least none that a Japanese person would ever know. But this comes down to just drive or personal need. Have your list and have fun organizing it, then read/consume whatever you like and enjoy it.

10. Don’t learn Japanese from anime or manga (unless it’s only general vocab and not the patterns). No one speaks like that in real life.

    Don’t learn Japanese from songs, it will mess up your understanding about intonation or pronunciation.