Notes

Effective methods for self-studying Japanese
Japanese learner wondering if it is possible to self-study Japanese?, dont worry, you're not alone. I thought it was absurd to believe that any man or woman could learn one of the world's hardest languages without the help of a teacher.

This tough goal was my first challenge after I graduated from college, and I actually achieved it (in some way). My full-time self-study of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level N2 took one year, but I realized that it wasn't the accomplishment I had thought it would be. My next post will be about how I learned Japanese all by myself and passed the JLPT N2 with a score of 97/180 (the passing score is 90).


I think remembering the hiragana and katakana charts is the easy part, but learning 2000 Kanji characters is the harder part. As part of my 1-year journal, I decided to temporarily skip learning Kanji for a month since it just gave me headaches. Why don't Japanese people use only hiragana for their writing system, just as Koreans use hangul? Everyone would be much happier if we did that. In the beginning, I hated the Kanji, yet I became totally smitten with it.

Remembering the Kanji by Heisig might be familiar to you. It is an indispensable book for anyone learning Japanese who wants to save time and effort. By creating a story or image for each Kanji, you learn how not to forget them. There is no guarantee that this book will work for everyone, but it is undoubtedly the best book about Chinese characters out there among thousands.

This book has the downside of not providing you with the on and kun readings for the characters. Since we can learn each character somewhere else, I believe that the author is trying to teach us the best way to remember them. Google the on and kun readings of each character if you're a serious learner.

You can learn how to write Kanji by writing as many sentences and short essays as you can. Repetition is key to remembering a word so that it appears in a variety of sentences. If you are not confident in your ability to write properly, you should type your sentences to a computer and ask someone to fix your grammatical mistakes.

You can download audio, video, and pdf lessons from this site. zing that you'll find a site that offers more Japanese lessons than this one. There are four main categories of lessons: Absolute beginner, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. Seasons within each category contain 20+ lessons each. To learn offline, you can download the pdf and mp3 files from the website.
Homepage: https://zing.me