If you’ve decided to give learning Japanese a go then here are some language learning tips and reference materials to get you going.
Fluency is greatest impacted by how often you study. 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.
Reviewing frequently is really important to learn Japanese quickly. It also really aids you in keeping track of how quickly you’re learning the language. You won’t have to wait a week to find out you can’t remember, if you study and review everyday you’ll know the next day.
Take a Break - An important Learning Tip!
It’s a great idea to take a short break every 30 minutes to avoid mental fatigue. Don’t keep grinding at the target or sentence to long. Why? What will happen is that your retention will drop and you’ll catch yourself simply “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!
Tips For Studying Japanese - Save Your Brain Space
Really folks you can only learn Japanese so fast, so memorizing words with roughly the same meaning is a waste of time in the beginning. Therefore, for example if you know that “you” means “anata” , why memorize the other equivelants of “you” like (Anta and kimi)?Use your study time to acquire different or totally new words and phrases. You can come back to the other forms later.
Language Learning Tips - Flash Card Use
Flash cards or word cards. The best way to radically accelerate memorization. Cheap. Versatile. Write vocabulary words or phrases on flash cards. It’s best if you write 1 word per card. Why? So you can really randomize the flash card order quickly. 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 recall for example the word “enpitsu” (pencil) withoug your cards, you’ll have trouble doing it without seeing the previous word target “hon” (book) first. You didn’t memorize the word - you memorized the order. 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.
