Self-Studying Japanese ( ﾉ◕‿◕)ﾉ❇

2015年1 月 13日 (火)

If you plan on going to Japan it's best that you try to learn Japanese before going there. If you can't really afford Japanese classes, like myself, the best alternative is self-studying.

Getting Started


The first thing I actually did to start my self-study process was make an account on Habitrpg.com. HabitRPG is a website designed to keep track of things you need to do in the form of role-playing (kinda).
This is my currentHabitRPG tasks page:

This website is super fun and helps keep me motivated.You create your own Habits that can either help gain or lose coins, which are later used for rewards. For Dailies, you add tasks you want to do on a daily basis, but you also get to choose what day of the week you want to do certain tasks. All the rewards that you receive will be determined by you. You choose what reward you want for whatever amount of coins. As you see in my picture, I have 39 coins, so I'm probably going to use most of them to binge on my favorite anime shows. This is not required, but it is definitely useful and it's also an app!


Plan it

This is where HabitRPG comes handy, but if you don't use it, it's still easy to come up with a goal and a plan. Of course your main goal is to be fluent, but there's a lot you have to learn to even come close to being fluent in speaking, as well as reading and writing.

Break it Down

• Hiragana
• Katakana
• Kanji

These are Japanese syllabic scripts known as Kana. Hiragana and Kanji are the most commonly used, since they make up most Japanese words, but Katakana is used for writing loan words and the names of plants, animals, and often Japanese companies, so yes, you do need to learn that as well. I would suggest learning Hiragana first and then learn Katakana. There are many Kanji that you definitely want to know, so I found it best to learn Kanji while I was learning the other scripts. Learning at least 1 or 2 Kanji a day will definitely benefit you a lot.

• Vocabulary
• Grammar
• Phrases

While I was still mastering Hiragana, I was also studying these as well. It is important to learn the grammar of a new language because, in most cases, it's definitely going to be more different than the grammar of your origin language. If you want to make your life a little easier, you can also take the time learn common phrases (even though a lot of people consider it to be cheating). PuniPuni is a super cute website where you can learn all of these.

Pace Yourself
There are 46 Hiragana characters, 46 Katakana characters and about 50,000 Kanji h̷o̷l̷y̷ ̷s̷h̷i̷t̷. How I paced myself was creating a realistic plan. 5 Hiragana characters a day, so 35 a week. That's not too hard, but remember, it's not all about finishing fast, it's about being able to remember all of that over time. If you find yourself forgetting a certain character, just keeping studying it until you think you have it all down.

Test Yourself
Everyday when I was learning a new set of characters, I was also testing myself on the previous ones I had learned. A great website/ app to use is Quizlet. When I first joined Quizlet I couldn't find too many sets that went along with my plan, so I made my own, which is really easy by the way.

This is one of the sets I made. You can makes as many sets as you want for any subject. I've already made several sets for Hiragana, Katakana, and other useful things as well. Here's a link.


Find Resources
Finally we are at the end where I will stop nagging and just post a bunch of links. Certain websites and books will help you along your journey to learning Japanese. These are some of the things that have helped me and I hope that they can help me too.

Websites
PuniPuni
JapanesePod101
Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese
Choko Choko
JLPT Sample Questions
Real Kana
The Japanese Page
(I'll post more)

Social Media
You can use almost any social media site to do a language exchange,but I found these to be the best
Twitter (Find Japanese friends and do a language exchange)
Japan-Guide (Another website that is absolutely great for doing language exchanges)

Books to Buy
A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar by The Japan Times
Essential Kanji by P.G O'Neil
Genki
(I'll post more)