Hello everyone!
I am learning Japanese on my own and I am getting fairly good at recognizing words, Kanji, and sentences I recognize as I read them. Where I am still having a lot of trouble is being able to write those same words and Kanji from memory.
For example, I can recognize and read the Kanji 青 but if asked to write it from memory I can not for the life of me remember how to write it. The same thing goes for reading sentences and phrases. I can read something like I am a university student in Japanese but I have a hard time writing it from memory.
Any tips on how to improve writing in Japanese from memory?
4 comments
Write sentences using your new vocabulary and grammar points.
It’ll eventually stick in.
Basically speaking, there are two kinds of vocabulary in your head:
* Passive Vocabulary
* These are words you recognize and understand, but can’t produce on your own.
* Active Vocabulary
* These are words that you can produce yourself when speaking / writing.
This holds true for your mother tongue, as well as for any other languages you learn. And your passive vocabulary will _always_ be bigger than your active vocabulary. That’s just the way our brains work.
The more you read and listen, the more you’ll encounter words, both ones you know already and new ones. This increases the words you understand, expands the contexts and sense nuances, and reinforces your learning.
The more you speak and write, the more you build up your ability to actively use the words you’ve learned on a passive level.
To get better at **producing** the language, you’ve simply got to practice it. There’s no way around that. 😄
Practice. Get a notebook and write. Then do it again and again.
In fairness, writing kanji isn’t as much of a dealbreaker as it used to be since any writing you’ll do professionally will likely be done on a computer. But you definitely need to know how to structure a sentence. And you get there via practice.
if you want to be better at writing it, write it more. i’m not being sarcastic, this is just practice, it’s not not special. write out words and sentences more and then writing out words and sentences will become easier.