Postby mmmason8967 » August 20th, 2013 10:23 pm
I don't think Jpod101 has kana worksheets. However, they have something which I personally think is much, much better...
The Kantan Kana video course shows you how to write 5 kana in each lesson (I guess you'll already know why it's 5). The course covers hiragana first and then it covers katakana. Get a pen and a piece of paper and follow along with the lesson--don't just sit there watching it! At the end of each lesson, make sure you can write the kana you just learned plus all of the ones you learned in previous lessons. Once you finish the whole course, practice a couple of times every day to make sure you don't forget. You don't need to set aside much time--you can do it while you're stuck in a hold queue on the phone.
It took me one weekend to learn the kana. Hiragana on Saturday, Katakana on Sunday. Actually it was more like do a couple of lessons, walk the dog, do a couple of lessons, mow the grass, do a couple of lessons, go shopping ... etc, etc. Learning the kana is pretty dull work, to be honest, so you want to (a) only do it once and (b) get it over and done with as quickly as possible.
If you learn the correct way to write the kana, you'll find that all the ones that look the same start to look quite different, and you can read hiragana and katakana in all kinds of strange fonts because no matter how weird the font, they generally follow the rules for writing the characters. And if you decide to find some worksheets, make sure they're not the kind that have you trace over a standard printed font because the standard printed font is NOT how you write the characters!
Hope that helps.
マイケル
