楽しく学ぼう – The Method you are most Interested in is The best way to Learn Japanese on your own
The best way to learn Japanese on your own is the method you enjoy the most.
If you enjoy what you are learning then you will want to learn more. If you continue to input more and more Japanese into your brain over and over eventually you will know Japanese.
Learning is not about stuffing information into your brain though. That is the easy part. It is more about convincing your brain that what you are telling it is important enough not to forget it. If something is interesting to you then your brain will say, of this is probably important enough to remember.
INDEX
Find the Japanese Learning Method you are Interested in
Deciding on your Study Method
1. Try out different study methods, stick with what you enjoy
There are several ways to learn Japanese:
■ Read words from the dictionary
■ Focus on improving your listening comprehension
Try some of these or anything you enjoy.
What to Study First
In order to know Japanese, you will need to learn about all the topics below and more:■ Japanese intonation and pronunciation
■ Japanese particles
■ Verb and adjective conjugation
■ Honorific speech in Japanese
■ Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana
■ Listening Comprehension
■ Being able to create sentences to speak
■ Counting words, numbers
■ Pronouns, first-person and second-person equivalents in Japanese
■ Vocabulary
The good news is that you can just start learning whatever you want. If you just want to speak Japanese and don’t care about grammar rules that is fine. Start learning words and phrases. By doing that you will automatically learn grammar.
When your vocabulary grows you can then study grammar rules. It will make more sense now that you know several words you can play with.
You can also do the opposite. If grammar rules are fun for you, then you can learn all about the Japanese particles, verb, and adjective conjugations, word order, and so on. Then when you learn vocabulary it will all fall into place.
Starting with what you enjoy first is the path of least resistance. One of the first things I did was learn the most common Kanji in Japanese. It does not matter what you do first. If you start learning something that is new and interesting it will be easier. Once it gets old and dull, that means you know it and will want to learn something new.
All parts of the Japanese language are connected. So when you learn the vocabulary you learn grammar and visa versa.
In short, follow these two steps:
1. Learn what you are interested in first
2. Move on to something new when it gets dull
Not everyone is going to know exactly what they are most interested in. If that is you and you want a step-by-step approach to learning Japanese I wrote a whole article on what I believe is the most effective order to learn Japanese.
How to Keep going and Stay Interested
Set your Intention
The biggest motivation that kept me learning Japanese was my intentions. I decided that I wanted to study a year in Japan. I wanted to make sure that I could speak by the time I got there. The next two years I spent everyday studying. Eventually, when I got to Japan I had accomplished my goal.If you set a goal for your learning I promise you it will give you more motivation. It will still be hard at times but you will have a reason to push through the hard times.
Don’t Backtrack, Start-over or Over-review
Every time you switch learning methods it is easy to backtrack. What I mean is if start learning Japanese with Duolingo, get bored of it and move to memrise, don’t waste your time learning the same words you already know.Start in the middle somewhere.
When I learned Japanese I did little review. I just kept trying to learn more. I would naturally forget words but would then remember them after I saw them enough. When you read or listen to audio you will naturally be exposed to the same material over and over.
As long as you keep learning, the feeling of not advancing is a lie.
Don’t Fall into the Perfectionist Trap
When I stated I met my goal before I got to Japan, that did not mean I had a native level speaking ability. I actually could only understand maybe 70% of what people said at first. Regardless of knowing a lot of vocabulary. My goal was to be able to talk with people in Japanese. I was able to do that. It would just take more time to perfect what I knew.Also, I said I studied every day. There were definitely days I missed or other days that I did very little. The point was I believed I was doing well and I avoided beating myself up for feeling like I could be doing better. I did have those days but did not let them be the majority.
Just get started and see what happens
When I decided to start learning Japanese all I had was a book on kanji, pocket Japanese to English dictionary, and a beginner’s textbook with limited vocabulary and grammatical explanations.
I first read the entire textbook. I read every page, took notes, and did all lessons. I did not learn a lot of vocabulary but understood basic Japanese grammar well.
Next, I focused on learning Kanji. I had a book that covered all the Kanji taught in school in Japan. Every day I would pick 10 kanji and wrote those kanji over and over. The next day I moved on to another 10. After 6 or 7 months I was able to read Japanese fairly well. I did forget Kanji and was not able to understand a lot of vocabulary but that was ok. That would be my next step.
After that, I carried my dictionary around with me everywhere and just read it. That sounds pretty dull but I was just obsessed with wanting to learn more and actually enjoyed it.
I also got on the internet and read things in Japanese. News, websites anything that seemed interesting. I had some Japanese people around me which I sometimes talked to but that was minimal.
The point is I used the resources I had to start learning Japanese. They were not the best but it did not matter. I was interested in the Japanese language and kept it interesting in order to meet my goals.
You can do the same. Good luck!
If you are interested in learning Japanese I have reviewed what I consider the best resource for Japanese Grammar below:
Resources
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