I’m self-learning Japanese and I’m looking for advice on how to organize a new notebook while learning the language. I have four sections of the notebook I can title. I was thinking something like “Workbook” (for completing exercises in the Genki Workbook/Textbook), “Kanji”, “Grammar”, and leaving a section open for miscellaneous notes.
I know everyone has a different organizational style for learning languages, but I’d love to hear from others how they organize their language learning notebooks – especially for Japanese!
4 comments
I hated using sections (for anything except maybe the workbook, actually hahah), so I would take the paper in the notebook and fold it vertically in half. One half I’d have a grammar point, then using an example sentence with the grammar, I’d underline words I didn’t know. Those words would go on the other side of the line. This helped me when I couldn’t remeber the word from the sentence and I could immediately look it up! When I started with kanji, it went under the vocab (skip a few lines), and again, I always tried to use th kanji I was using in my grammar or sentences. (I made some note cards as well, but it was hard for me to stuck to)
Not sure if that explication made sense!
But, The repetition helped me a lot, and I still write a lot of notes this ways for other language learning and even in my job during meetings.
Reddit is not the best place for this types of questions simply because they don’t allow inserting images or any proper formatting. And most people, myself included, don’t want to go through the hassle of uploading the image somewhere else, then come back and worry about how to organize all the external links and how to phrase our answers so it’s clear which one is which.
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I have two types of notebooks. This current notebook structure I have had from N2 to passing N1.
Type 1: words/phrases/Kanji on one side and sentences/paragraphs/ grammars on another. (Front and back side of one sheet) This notebook is to help me understand the meanings and mechanisms.
Type 2: I have a 1-inch vertical line drawn at the margin of the page. The main space is reserved for note-taking and the margin space is for me to jot down any words I need to look up the reading. If I don’t understand a word’s meaning it goes to the other notebook. This notebook is for pronunciation and context understanding.
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Before reaching the current stage, I just used the ample blank spaces of my textbook (Genki)
I’d like you to consider if meticulous sectioning (and the energy investment of maintaining it) is your thing. Be selective on what goes in your notebook and be realistic on how often you can review your notes. There’s little meaning reserving a section for things that are very pervasive and you’ll likely never review again (わたし means “I” and かわいい means “cute”)
Well done on the self-study. It’s a great idea to have structure in place, from the get-go.
I’d recommend having one notebook for vocab (and kanji), and one notebook for grammar. And, maybe another for any ‘answering Genki questions’/miscellaneous. You could possibly have these in sections of one notebook, but I liked having one for vocab/kanji and one for grammar. The reason for this is when I was in the vocab notebook, I was fully focussed on ‘vocab world’, and when I wanted to note down new grammar structures, I went into ‘grammar world’. In the vocab book, the start was literally that, vocab, and at the back was kanji. I used to literally go down one by one and hide the english vocab, and if I got one wrong, start from the top again, until I got the full page right.
I also used little flashcards for kanji – these worked brilliantly. They were on like a little keyring holder thing. Easy to carry around and, kawaii. 🙂
I also had a section in my grammar book for proverbs and sayings. I kept this at the back. It was minimal, but felt it added another dimension to my study.
Ganbatte!
Maybe you won’t really like my answer, but I’d say: It doesn’t matter. Enjoy your study, organize any way you feel good about it and change it up when you deem it necessary. Don’t waste your time on how you organize stuff when you can just spend it being constructive.
When it comes to my personal notes .. Well, maybe I still have some, but even rather decent materials from the time at University, once I have been through those, I did no longer care.
I believe strong materials are of utter importance when it comes to teaching – you need be well prepared and assist in every way possible. But for the one learning? The only thing that counts is that whatever you do, it should assist you in learning and for necessary reviews for exams maybe, but that’s pretty much it. Ah, though I still highly value all my books, dictionaries e.g.