I just started learning japanese, a week ago (7 days streak) most of my time has been spent trying to memorize hiragana, im about halfway their, with roughly 70% of up to Ho really known.
I also just do a few lessons of duolingo every night, and I really dont think im learning from it. I cant remember any of the vocabulary, but im somehow passing lessons
Im probably going to atleast do some of it no matter what. I have a friend whos learning it with me, and duolingo streaks serves as a form of accountability we share, and she’d see me break it
I just feel like im doing something wrong. Searching this sub all I see is “use it as a side tool” which im doing.
Note: my goal is to atleast learn a useful amount, ideally conversational, by the end of the school year for a 3 week trip to Japan
Ill likely continue studying past then and hopefully eventually reach fluency, but thats my shorter term goal. Hopefully that full immersion will give a boost to learning
Thanks
7 comments
When is your trip? It’s probably a good idea to just learn hiragana, katakana and watch a video on basic greetings and tourism Japanese because the road to fluency usually involves knowing a lot of grammar pretty well (couple textbooks) , a lot of vocab (couple Anki decks ) and a ton of immersion (couple Japanese books/anime completed and thoroughly understood)
>How is duolingo best used?
Use it to learn kana and then uninstall it.
I wouldn’t even bother using it to learn hiragana/katakana. It’s so excruciatingly slow at mastering each one, you’d be better off watching a youtube video on it and then using real kana to memorise them.
It’s best not used
I don’t recommend using Duolingo. It lacks proper explanations, it moves at a glacial pace, and it takes a very naive approach to sentence building, prioritizing easy to translate text to sentences that sound natural. It also doesn’t have vocabulary drills, and omits a ton of useful stuff.
You’re better off using something like Tae Kim’s grammar guide.
>Hopefully full immersion will give a boost to learning
Immersion is a vague world; it’s useful if done right, but just watching shows or reading a book won’t help you if you don’t look up stuff and make an effort to understand what’s being said. It also won’t help you grasp the intricacies behind grammar structures without studying them.
If it’s not working for you, then it’s not working. I personally find it to be one of the most useful learning resources. The repetition was what helped me. Also, the general user experience is so much better than anywhere else in terms of UI and making it effortless to study every day.
A lot of people don’t even know about some of the more useful features, like being able to type your answers, or the discussion boards for each question.
If you want to learn vocabulary, WaniKani is a great resource. Bunpro is good for grammar. Maybe these will work better for you.
If you’re struggling to remember hiragana and katakana etc I recommend looking for the tofugu visual pneumonics. Just Google it. And maybe try hand writing them a bunch.
By uninstalling it.