LEARN JAPANESE – STUDY TIPS
If you’ve decided to give it a go then…how often you study has the greatest impact on your fluency. In other words you’ll be able to remember more from studying 10 minutes everyday for a week than 70 minutes in one shot once a week. Frequency of review is critical to learn Japanese quickly. It also helps you keep track of how fast you’re learning Japanese. You won’t have to wait a week to find out you can’t remember, if you study everyday you’ll know the next day.
Another way to learn Japanese fast has to do with what time of the day or night you study. Studies indicate that students who study upon waking and before they go to sleep at night remember more! So burn a little midnight oil!
GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK!
Another way to learn Japanese faster is to rest your brain every 30 minutes or so. Don’t grind at it too long. Why? Your retention will drop and you may find yourself just “putting in the time” instead of studying with enthusiasm. Attention to what you’re studying creates the memory of it! When you take a break do something physical and don’t think about your studies. Wash the dishes, vacuum or shoot some hoops!
SAVE YOUR BRAIN SPACE!
Considering that you can only learn Japanese so fast, it makes sense not to memorize words that have roughly the same meaning- at least initially. So for example if you know that “I” means “watakushi”, why memorize the other equivalents of I (watashi, boku and ore?) Use your time to learn different Japanese. You can come back to the other forms later.
TIPS ON FLASH CARD USE
Flash cards. The key to rapid memorization. Cheap. Versatile. Write down vocabulary words on flash cards. It’s best if you write 1 word per card. Why? So you can change the order of the words. The mind has a tendency to remember order so if you’ve written say 5 words on 1 card you may remember “enpitsu” (pencil) simply because it comes after hon (book) on your flash card.
Then when you try to remember enpitsu without your cards you won’t be able to without seeing “hon” (book) first. You memorized the order and not the word. If you write a single phrase or word on a card you can randomize the order by shuffling your cards. If you can tear through your word targets in any order, rest assured you know the target.
DRILL FROM ENGLISH INTO JAPANESE
You probably think in English right? So it’s safe to say when you go to say something (in the beginning stages of learning Japanese), your brain is taking what you’re thinking in English and trying to convert it into Japanese- right? You’ll benefit more from reading the English word and then translate into Japanese and not the other way around. Why? Because you’re thinking in English and this is the situation you will be in when you begin speaking Japanese.
LEARN JAPANESE FASTER WITH FLASH CARD REVIEW
The second most important factor in your success will be how much you review. (The first is daily study.) Always begin your vocabulary drilling by reviewing past targets. Remember the bigger your vocabulary gets the tougher it is to keep tabs on what you remember.
So, separate your flash cards into weekly or monthly stacks of say 20 cards. Don’t mix the stacks. Each time you make a new stack, make sure to review past stacks first. If you can’t recall the target quickly, STOP learning new Japanese and tighten up your past targets. When you can tear through any given stack with greasy, greasy,greasy fast speed, you can “retire” the stack
TIPS ON USING A TEXT BOOK
Don’t read to yourself! When you begin to learn Japanese you’ll benefit a lot more from actually pronouncing the target sentences rather than just reading them to yourself. When you just read a target, the mind lets you skip parts of the drill target you selected even if you don’t know it by heart. But if you always enunciate your language target you can’t skip over the part you don’t know without noticing it. Also, words you have trouble pronouncing becomes glaringly obvious.
CLOSE YOUR BOOK! If you think you really know your language target. Close your book and practice the target. It’s easy to “cheat” when you have your book open.
THE NEED FOR SPEED
How do you know you’ve mastered a Japanese word or phrase? Speed. That’s how. When you can recite from memory your target words with greasy fast speed, you know the target. If your hesitating and stumbling, rest assured you don’t know it. Do yourself a favor and go back and review before moving ahead.
OTHER TIPS
Forget Japanese street slang books. First off, the bulk of the language is offensive to most Japanese. Second, slang and cuss words sound funny when said with an accent which is what you have unless you were raised speaking Japanese. If you want to speak with more color and flair, master basic patterns first, then beef it up with more complex patterns and then incorporate “kotowaza” or proverbs into your vocabulary.
FREE JAPANESE LESSONS and piles of information on teaching in japan is available at www.all-about-teaching-english-in-japan.com/learnjapanese.html
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