Need some advice

[firstaidspray9895]

Hello all. Over the last few years I've been trying to learn Japanese of course, and though at times it's gone well, recently I've found myself at a bit of a dead end. I've tried a great many different ways of learning, some agreeing with me, and some not. This site has been great and thanks to the resources here, I'm comfortable up until the Upper Beginner level. However...

I generally have a lot of free time, time which I WOULD put into learning more, but I'm just not sure where to go. With Upper Beginner being an as of yet incomplete series, my only other option is to try the Lower Intermediate series, and although I can understand parts of it, some episodes more than others, my brain has this annoying habit of completely switching off when I hear something I don't understand. So it's not easy when there's a conversation going on between the hosts during the lesson and I can't follow it because I'm just bombarded with vocab that I don't know. With that in mind, I think it's best for me not to try and punch above my weight and look for something else closer to my level.

Which brings me to my point. Initially when I first started I thought I wouldn't bother with kanji as I was more interested in just listening rather than writing. Now, I've had a change of heart and I think kanji is something I need to look at.I tried RTK, but lost motivation at around 800 chars or so, I felt I wasn't really learning any actual japanese with it, just associating shapes with english words. With this in mind, I'd like some suggestions as to how to go about this, with regards to the level I'm currently at. Tae Kim's grammar is also an excellent resource, but naturally it can only cover so many things, and I'd like something a little more focused on the kanji themselves. Preferably in context - I just find it that much easier if I can at least guess, and using rikaichan can correct me if I'm wrong. Lastly, I can read hiragana and katakana decently, since I'm not sure I mentioned that.

I think that's all, many thanks for your input and uh... my apologies for the long-windedness of my post.

[choneb9359]

Hi
Since I'm online right now and still procrastinating from doing my uni work, I might share with you something aspects about learning. I would say that I am currently at a beginner level in Japanese, so I am just a fellow traveler on this journey; this will be more of a discussion than giving any advice.

First, the thing about listening. If you encounter something that you don't yet know, the key is to go through it slowly (repeatedly listening to the slow recording of the conversation). Let me use a music metaphor, since I play the saxophone. When I encounter a section of the music that I can't play at the designated tempo, it is helpful to practice it a few times at a slow pace then once your body becomes accustomed to the patter, you can execute it flawlessly. I would assume that the same principles apply in listening and speaking a language.

Hmm, with the thing about getting stuck at the level you are at... in my opinion, learning kanji is a must. I duscussed a bit about my experience of this here http://www.japanesepod101.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5888. Most languages, with the exception of latin and other dialects, use alphabets to unite pronunciations and meanings. Like English and its 26 characters, Japanese just happens to have 2000+ characters. As I discussed in the link, I don't that the keywords in RTK matters so much, it is just there to aid you in your learning of the characters, so you can associate the meaning to them later on. Plus, it has been sceintifically proven that the more senses you engage in the learning process, the more likely you are going to remember the facts (the characters will engage you visually, aiding the sound from the recording).

Like I said, I'm also a beginner at learning Japanese (its my 3rd language, English is my second). I take somewhat of an engineering approach in deciding on my learning method.

Hope that was of some value to you.

[anomalous58]

You're very right in saying that you need to learn in context. A great site for learning kanji in context is https://www.readthekanji.com/. You'll also build your vocab at the same time. The difficulty levels are divided by JLPT levels. If you're an upper beginner your vocab is most likely around N4, but since you don't have much much Kanji experience you should start at N5 first. I'm currently using this site to build up my N2 kanji and vocab skills, and it's working quite well. It's not the only thing I use, but it's really helpful. from N5 to N3 I learned all my vocab and kanji strictly "old fashion style" through textbooks by just memorizing the kanji and the words associated with them. A good starter kanji textbook is Kanji Look and Learn. You can probably just find a torrent or something though. After finishing the Genki series, I bought this book to improve my kanji a little bit, but it can be used from scratch and covers all the Kanji the standard textbooks cover.

You might not be in any situation to do this, depending on where you live, but for your listening, meeting Japanese people will really help get past this hump. You're at the upper beginner level, so you can definitely speak in a lot of everyday situations. A great place to look around is at special language schools. Japanese who go to these kinds of schools really want to meet native English speaking people, so it's really easy to meet and talk with them. They always love people who can speak Japanese, no matter what level My Japanese listening and speaking never really started to improve until I began making Japanese friends. If you already have Japanese friends, just make more of an effort to meet with them and speak to them in Japanese

Hope this helps a bit
Good luck!

[natsukoy9313]

Hi, everyone!
Thank you for helping your colleague Such a helpful and correct advice!

> firstaidspray9895-san,
Have you been using our PDF to learn kanji? We have scrips written in all kanji & kana, hiragana, and roma-ji,
so it might be usuful to learn kanji from there. Once you find the good point of learning kanji, you'll find it very
usuful and convenient!
Good luck!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[firstaidspray9895]

At first glance, read the kanji seems to be exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for that.

I try to use the PDF files when there's a lot of material I don't understand, but for learning kanji it just hasn't ever worked for me. It's probably because of the way I started to learn, ignoring the writing - even if I can work out what is going on in the speech for a lesson appropriate for my level, my lack of attention to the written side leaves most of the kanj at least well beyond my grasp at this point.

I realise now I may have shot myself in the foot by studying in the way I have, but it's a problem I'm hoping to rectify. Thanks for your input everyone.

[natsukoy9313]

Good luck!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com