While I’m by no means an authority on studying Japanese, I thought it could be beneficial to share some of what I learnt when I first started my language journey.
Please take everything I say here with a grain of salt: while this all has worked well for me, that doesn’t mean that they’ll necessarily work for you. I do recommend you at least try out everything I include on this list, as you never know what works until you try!
Tip #1: Figure out your goals – WHY do you want to study Japanese?
I think that having a goal in mind is absolutely necessary in order to be able to study long-term. In my opinion, the stronger your will / goal, the more likely you are to continue studying. If you only want to study Japanese for fun, just to understand a few of the words in your favourite anime, that’s fine, of course! But how you should go about studying varies greatly depending on your goals. Wanting to one day live in rural Japan, verses wanting to read Japanese novels with no difficulties, verses wanting to be able to speak with Japanese natives… all are obtainable! You just need to have your general goal in mind when you start studying.
Of course it’s okay to change goals mid-way through – I did! The important thing is having a goal. For example: if your goal is to work as a translator, you may choose to focus more on written Japanese right from the get-go. Likewise, if your goal is to be able to read Japanese fashion magazines, you may focus on learning fashion-related vocabulary faster!
Tip #2: Written language is important!
No matter what your goal is, I think that learning hiragana and katakana should be one of the very first things you do when you start studying Japanese.
If you didn’t know, Japanese constantly utilizes three alphabets… and you need to be able to read all three to be proficient. Two of these alphabets are phonetic, and are much easier to learn than the third. In order to be able to study grammar and vocabulary, you need to be able to read said grammar and vocabulary! And while some entry-level textbooks do write everything out in romaji (English lettering), they typically begin using only Japanese characters a few chapters in.
Learning how to read kanji, the third alphabet, is also incredibly important if you’re looking to attain fluency.. but I believe the battle to learn kanji is a marathon, not a sprint. Starting to learn kanji from scratch is incredibly time consuming, and can be very overwhelming. I think it’s important to understand that if English is your first language, you’re most likely not going to be able to read every kanji character you encounter even after a full year of studying.
Tip #3: Set obtainable goals for yourself
Keeping up your motivation is incredibly important when it comes to doing just about anything. One way I like to keep myself engaged is to set weekly goals for myself. This is something I still do to this day, the only thing that has changed is the magnitude of my goals.
Your goal can be just about anything! From learning one kanji every day, to remembering 10 new words every day, it’s not all that important what your goal is, so long as you have one.
Having goals also keeps you consistent! If you want to learn one new kanji every day, you’re more likely to force yourself to study on days you’re feeling lazy. Even if you come up short some days, this can be a great motivational tool to help you try a little harder then next day.
It’s important to be kind to yourself when setting goals: set goals that you think you can achieve and that will challenge you.
Tip #4: Find a media you love to engage with
While textbooks are a fantastic resource when it comes to studying Japanese grammar, I don’t think they should be the only resource you use. While they certainly are educational, they oftentimes tend to be rather unengaging.
As I love reading manga, I used kid-friendly manga to help me increase my vocabulary from the very beginning. This wasn’t glamorous by any means, as I had to check every single word in the dictionary one by one. It would take me a good 10~20 minutes just to clear one page, but it ended up helping me immensely in the long run!
I’m not telling you that you must be reading manga all the time in order to improve your Japanese, that’s just the specific media that has worked best for me!
- If you have always had an interest in fashion, why not check out a Japanese fashion magazine?
- If you enjoy playing Nintendo games, did you know that you can choose to set the language to Japanese in most North American games? I highly recommend trying out Pokemon in Japanese, as there is no Kanji (at least in the earlier games)!
- If you’re an avid movie watcher, I recommend checking out the Language Reactor Chrome extension! It provides subtitles in both English and Japanese, and also gives definitions to new-to-you words when you hover over them!
Tip #5: Learning grammar is important, but so is vocabulary!
I delved into this a little bit in my previous tip, however it’s important enough that I want to talk about it a little bit more here: increasing your vocabulary is very important. While understanding grammar is also an absolute must if you want to be able to form a coherent sentence… You won’t be able to form a sentence if you don’t know any words.
Personally, I think it’s a good idea to study both grammar and vocabulary at the same time, but to put just a little bit more effort into the vocabulary side. As you learn learn new grammar you will automatically learn new vocabulary as well, but if you don’t try and dive a little bit deeper you may not actually know what you’re saying.
That is to say, many people remember new grammar sayings as set phrases. While of course this can help you memorise how to say a full sentence / phrase, you may not understand what each word in the phrase means. For example, the phrase “sureba suru hodo” is a grammar point that can be translated as “the more you do, the more…”. When I first learnt this phrase I still didn’t know the “~ba” conjugation, and I also didn’t really know what “hodo” meant either. Because of this, while I kind of knew what I was saying, I wouldn’t have been able to break it down, or tweak my phrasing, at all.
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