In a few days I am going to begin my first experience of being a Japanese tutor My student hasn't studied the language before, just has had experience watching anime, listening to Japanese music, etc.

So my question is: If it was your very first time learning the language, how would you do it? Knowing now what techniques work best, what is the most enjoyable, etc, what would be a perfect instruction?

It'll basically be two and half hour lessons once a week. I was thinking of just using Genki, with powerpoints for the vocab, grammar, etc, then anki reviews every session of the material she knows. But you guys have a lot more experience with what is best for learning Japanese as a native English speaker, so help me out!
What fun activities do you know of, cool techniques, or anything else for beginners?

Should the first few weeks focus heavily on the student learning hiragana/katakana?

Suggestions would be very appreciated Thanks, guys!

Sounds exciting... and frightening.

I think the most important thing to find out is what his/her goals are. This will making planning and progression a lot easier.

As for what a beginner wants to know, what would be cool or fun: (madness aside) these thing escape me due to the unorthodoxy of "The Heisig Method" and "The Church of AJATT."

Learning katanana and hiragana sounds like a plan. You could also introduce kanji in a slow manner, providing mnemonics. That way the student learns "The Heisig Method," without actually calling it "The Heisig Method." Or if the student is a self sufficient one you could just recommend the book, or drop a link to the Movie Method page.

Seeing now, all the options in front of you... I do not envy @_@

I just recently was asked by my Mom to teach her Japanese, so I have been thinking about this too, as I will be designing something from the ground up for her....

I think getting the hiragana/katakana going early on is super important and a major boost because it gives you a key reading component and most importantly a frame work for hearing/pronouncing things well. Maybe start there and sprinkle in some fun vocab and grammar basics so it's not pure syllabic boot-camp. I think it's a mistake to be too heavy handed and rigid in one area at the start- KANA-GRAMMAR-VOCAB -....mix it up a little so it's fun, but practical, and as it progresses then concentrate things a bit more if it seems timely.

Her interest in anime/J-culture etc. is an important thing to keep in mind - you are really awesomely qualified to make it fun with regards to content. Give her the inside scoop! Ask her about what she's most interested in and cater the lessons to that a bit too (if it's practical). And what are her goals with it? I personally took the "learn to read it write it, speak it, hear it" approach for each word (hence RTK near the start), but like many here, I want to really master this thing, so my commitment level/daily Japanese work load/ approach reflects that. I think a more casual learner (like my Mom) wouldn't enjoy doing it the way I'm doing it - too much work! Definitely take that into account.

There's no formula, but that's my 2 cents. I'm sure you will make it fun.

I agree with seeing where her goals lie. If she's working for fluency, I would recommend that after you help her work through the very basics that she start to get more immersed in the target language. I would tell her to try to study on her own (as far as learning new words) as much as she can outside of the meetings and write down anything she doesn't understand or wants to learn that way you readily have something to work with each week during tutor time. This would allow her to not waste her time with stuff she knows and always "gain" knowledge as to what she needs or wants to know. You could devote the time in the beginning to answer all of her questions, and the rest of the time practicing basic conversation. Yes, the SRS is a great idea; she doesn't even have to go hardcore like us doing sentences (just vocab cards should work fine in the beginning, but then again, context is extremely useful in the beginning) but I guess this all depends on how far your student is willing to go in the language.

I'd briefly explain how to learn kana with RTKana, and tell them to come back next time knowing either one set or both (depending on how long between lessons). Other than that, I'd give the first lesson as just a get-excited-and-informed about Japanese language. Tell them the basics of the Japanese language, the different writing systems, levels of politeness, how they can learn the kanji before others have learned their first 300 (if they are interested in the RTK method), SRSing etc. Of course, they might actually be expecting some material straight away, but I'm saying what I'd rather have. I'd much rather have a kind of fun discussion to get you pumped for Japanese, instead of "Welcome to Japanese. Ok, konichiwa means...".

Then again, 2 and a half hours is a long time. That's actually enough to learn the hiragana and then some. That would certainly encourage me to keep going, learning a whole writing system in the first lesson.

Anyway, that's just a few ideas from me. I hope it goes well!

It will depend on your student's level of motivation and goals. However, a cool way to start class would be entirely in Japanese. You can switch into English later on (or not), but if you can speak clearly, repeat words, use body language, keep sentence structure simple and repetitive, etc., monolingual instruction can be plenty effective and motivating. Then again, it doesn't work with everybody, especially when they're not immersed 7 days a week, and chances are that she will want you to explain the basics of grammar during class so she can start forming basic sentences.

You can't go wrong with working through an introductory textbook, but you could always make an ordinary class interesting by assigning as homework for her to write down 10 sentences from an anime she's watching and in class next time, you help her translate. Basically, it's sentence mining in disguise.

Here's my experience. It might help you know what NOT to do!

Last year I decided to start learning Japanese, and after faffing about for a few weeks with Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone (romaji mode naturally), I decided to get a personal tutor. Luckily I managed to find one who was new so was offering a free 1hr trial lesson for beginners.

Turned up at the lesson. First up, learn some basic words and phrases - 「ありがとう」, 「こんにちは」, 「おやすみ。。」 - problem is, she went through about 20 (all the ones in the first page of the book), and I couldn't remember *anything* - even if I'd just heard it 2 seconds ago, I'd instantly forget it. To me it wasn't words, it was just a mess of sounds. This just left me confused and frustrated.

Next up we chatted about the Japanese writing systems, then an introduction to Hiragana! あ　い　う　え　お - easy right? Well no way; I went though those 5 cards about twenty times, and each time she tested me I couldn't remember any of them - even when I'd just seen it a second ago! Again, they just looked like a mass of random squiggles; my brain couldn't process it! Once more I was left extremely frustrated, then lesson over.

I left with the feeling that Japanese is insanely hard, and if I wasn't so determined I would have quit then (Instead I checked in a nearby bookshop, found 'Remembering the Kana', returned the next week knowing all the Hiragana. She thought it was a miracle!).

Anyway my tops tips:
1) Never forget how hard Japanese is for a beginner English speaker. Do not underestimate it. Vocab is tough in the beginner, so introduce it *slowly*.
2) You need to have her leave with a feeling of accomplishment each week. Instead of learning boring set phrases, introduce は quickly and get her saying 私は。。。です。 Stuff about herself that she can take out of the lesson and tell to her friends! Don't give her an opportunity to "fail", because that's the reason most people quit language learning after a few weeks..
3) Make her buy 'Remembering the Kana', and have her learning it all ASAP (by next lesson?). May as well get it all out of the way as quickly as possible!

You must keep us updated on how it all goes. Good luck!

Definitely ask her, why is she learning Japanese. What are her goals for the language. I'd assume the person would want to become fluent in the language. But yea in the beginning phase of learning a language, especially Japanese. Can be so intimidating. All those characters, strange way of speaking(it happens, in the beginning where you can't really distinguish what they are saying and it's just a bunch of jibberish, at the beginning it's always like that). Definitely i'd agree with kana being taught immediately and how to write/read. And definitely give examples of good books to use and sites that can aid her as well. Good to start with basics, but don't go overboard. Because alot of ppl when you mention to them, how much kanji characters there are, ppl do get frightened about it and could possible leave. Definitely kana, example books+sites,methods,basic grammer, basic speech. Introduction of SRS and it's effectiveness. All these little things, you want to get her to be accustomed to the language and what effective methods there are to acquiring it. I remember when i took a level 1 Japanese course. It felt weird abit, i didn't know all that much about Japanese, even though i did decent, the language itself was cool, and sounded interesting was the initial reason. Then it become anime interest,drama,magazine,dvd's,games. All the fun stuff. In the beginning it may seem hard, but i'd definitely say given the right gears of learning and tutoring you can get her off to a great start. So for my rambling here but lol in the beginning it can seem like a difficult language.

I'd probably ask her what the student's experience is with Japanese and then go from there.

I was exposed to kana beforehand, so I remember I was thrilled to finally learn kana, because all those squiggles became real words, and I'd go around and read anything and everything that had kana and be thrilled with it, even if I didn't know what it meant (which was 99.9% of the time).

My "a-ha!" moments have always involved me taking something from the book and seeing an implementation of it in real life. It might be simple, but I always get a kick out of it. For example, I learned the kanji for 中学、小学、and 高校. Then I read a comic in Azumanga where a 10-year-old prodigy buys a movie ticket as a high school student and her old school friends buy tickets as grade school students (and confusing the ticket vendor), it was a real cool feeling.

So even if you use a textbook approach, if you can find interesting real life examples for them in something they enjoy, they should be able to learn more and be more thrilled with it.

One option for the kana - I never tried the Heisig version, but smart.fm worked well for me. For my Mom I'm having her use that, and a deck of "real" flash cards I have. If you/she likes smart.fm way, she could have it as "homework" and be learning it on her own on their site. Maybe the Heisig way is faster, but smartfm. is nice and free (unless you can get the book at the library - I did with RTK).

In a perfect world most of your contact time would be TPRS or a similar method.

Notice how the teacher establishes a situation with a combination of acting, simple French, student input, and a little bit of English. Then, a little past the 9:00 mark, he summarizes the whole situation in natural and near-native-speed sentence using subordinate clauses and everything. These are day-5 students.

TPRS takes a while for the teacher to learn. You have to be both a improv. actor and a language teacher, so maybe it's not practical advice for your situation now.

The other thing I would hope for from the ideal tutor is help, encouragement, and the occasional swift kick to the butt about my self-study habits.

For self study, I currently recommend:

Fun immersion environment

Kanjidamage (writing and 音読み only)
Kana+pronunciation

Tae Kim
Core2000 sentences

Sub2Srs 10-15 hours
Monolingual dictionary
<my current stage>

Core6000?
Kanzen?

As far as I know she just loves the Japanese language due to her exposure to anime, pop culture, etc. I don't think she has long-term goals of fluency, at the moment it's more of a "Japanese is cool, I'll give it a shot!" sort of thing. Since she'll be busy with her own major, I don't really think she'll be able to spend an hour+ everyday studying Japanese, so I want to have her learn as much as possible in the lessons.

How possible do you guys think hiragana in a week or two really is? With two lessons, that'll be about 5 hours...I am not sure a complete beginner can learn all the hiragana decently in that time. I'd try to have her make up her own mnemonics for each one, lots of drills, practices, etc. But even then...

So maybe it'd be best to start with romaji, and learn like 10 hiragana a week? I've seen that style used in a lot of Japanese 1 classes. The only problem is, I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate romaji. It's a pet-peeve. I am not sure if I could teach in romaji for two months

I've never taught a complete beginner, so I am kinda freaking out about how to start. All the students I've helped already knew kana, hundreds of kanji, basic grammar, and all that jazz. Things like smart.fm aren't really geared towards someone who has no experience.

But the only two beginning textbooks I know of are: Genki, and Elementary Course to Japanese, or whatever it's called. Genki starts off with hiragana from lesson 1, so I think it might be too hard for her at first. But the other textbook is just plain awful...

Anyone with experience learning from Genki 1? How did your professor teach the class the first few weeks?

Aijin Wrote:How possible do you guys think hiragana in a week or two really is? With two lessons, that'll be about 5 hours...I am not sure a complete beginner can learn all the hiragana decently in that time. I'd try to have her make up her own mnemonics for each one, lots of drills, practices, etc. But even then...

... ..

First thing I did when I started, before I found this site or knew about SRSing, was learn the kana over 1-2 weeks with Heisig's Remembering the Kana. Spent perhaps 20-60 minutes/day and knew all the hiragana and katakana pretty well. If I knew then what I know now (I didn't even review in context or with an SRS then), I could have done it in a few days, and mixed it up with other things as my knowledge matured (for a long-winded example of what I mean by mixing it up for beginners, see the tangents I went on here: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...6#pid81476).

I picked up romaji in an incidental way. I find it subliminally useful for typing (mostly as muscle memory) and the occasional grammar text that uses it (such as Japanese the Manga Way), but that's pretty much it. I don't think beginners need it at all.

Oh, and I won't outright advocate it here, but it's easy enough to find 'RTKana' online at prices ranging from free to cheap, depending on how you feel about piracy vs. buying used. ;p

Here's a preview... the pages are arranged kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure book... pretty simple stuff: http://books.google.com/books?id=18afrUK...q=&f=false

I personally don't think there's much point in making mnemonics and whatever for kana. Kana is used every day, all the time by anyone who studies or knows Japanese. It's not like I have a mnemonic for how to write "a". Kana can be learned really quickly by just brute forcing it, the exposure is insane. Just tell your student to play around with the kana every day with flashcards, simple texts (where the point is simply to read, not understand) for an hour or so. Tell said student that it doesn't matter much if he/she forgets some, writes them incorrectly or it takes a while to come up with the right one. No one who spends time with the kana every day is going to have any trouble at all for long. Rote memorization and muscle memory is the way to go for such basic systems.

Personally, I learned Hangul in an hour without any mnemonics. Hangul is easier than kana, but the principle is the same.

I think the lesson time shouldn't be the "study" time. Keep memorization tasks... and SRS for homework. You could start with a guideline of 5~10 minutes per day. This can cover 50 new items per week without much pain. Later if she really gets into it, the use of SRS can be increased.

Things like learning the hiragana & katakana can be learned in 5 hours with the help of the Remembering the Kana book. That's really a solitary thing to do though... it's probably not so fun or helpful to do together with a tutor. You can test her on it during the class though, through reading & writing exercises.

The lesson time is her chance to be with you, so think about how to do activities that she can't do by herself. Things like describing grammar, practicing sound, practicing conversation, correcting her...

There is another way: Tutor them to become a self-studier. Set them up to study writing, grammar and vocabulary on their own. Each week, gauge their study method and progress then make suggestions for corrections on mistakes or modifications based on advancement. Methods here can be "Hey, as you learn Kana, write the vocabulary in both kana and romaji" to "Hey, you've gotten all the kana, let's show basic things that make up Kanji" to "Hey, for these words there are kanji for them, write them out with kana and kanji during reviews". Use similar tactics to connect grammar and vocabulary and kanji as they progress in each.

Also, with this, you can gauge their listening/reading environment then offer suggestions to improve as time goes on. With your student, it can be something like: "Hey, ever try watching without subtitles then write down words you understand just for fun?" or "Check out this YouTube video of (show) that's been dubbed into Japanese" or loan a movie or two to her. Suggest that she post some Japanese around her room, like some newspapers or lyrics to her favorite song.

Be the coach/tutor. Provide the material and the methods but put the actual learning back on the student. By altering material and methods over time, it gives the student a feeling that you're paying attention to them, so they're more likely to keep at it. Of course, that means you need to know how much self study time they're going to dedicate so you know what to gauge as you look at them each week. With that, push to get them to make the most out of it.

PS: If it helps, I had my ex-wife learn Kana and Kanji via RTKana and RTK Lite at the same time. Had her do a section a day for Kana then about 30 Kanji (either new or missed from review). She responded well to it. Seeing that you're doing 2.5 hours per "lesson" it's not a stretch to knock out Two Kana sections and 30 Kanji for an hour of that lesson time.

As you might want to introduce Kanji early on, don't do "RTK" but instead do "2001.K.O." using the primitive methods. This'll put a lot of work on your shoulders as you have to break down the kanji for them. On the bright side, it can get them into real Japanese faster. Plus, you can "sort" sentences ensuring they're not getting advanced kanji too early.

It is also worth it to do a little bit of one-on-one time which they could not get from self-studying. You could teach some simple words using gestures, etc (no English), and slowly working your way up to sentences with verbs and whatnot. I made my girlfriend do this in Chinese and the stuff she taught me stuck very well.

Aijin Wrote:Anyone with experience learning from Genki 1? How did your professor teach the class the first few weeks?

As far as kana goes, 10 characters a day from day 2, with a quiz after finishing hiragana and katakana respectively.
But the class I took was 4 days a week, 3 hours a day.

If you're gonna teach like that, just give her the workbook, make her do the sections in it for homework.

I didn't really get the hang of it until many sessions of karaoke, which I think is a great way to hammer home kana and get some kanji exposure...

I'd say greetings and basic sentences ("これは...です[か]" "どれが...ですか"), and how to write them in hiragana, and then.. the entire hiragana and katakana characters, so that in the event that your student suddenly cannot continue his or her lessons, at least he or she will have one of the most important things about learning beginner's Japanese under his belt!

During my university courses, all those years ago, we did hiragana during week one and katakana during week two. It pretty much stuck, for whatever reason, probably due to continued exposure.

From that point on they just wrote everything in the kana (then later kanji) and they got perpetually reinforced. It wasn't elegant, but it did get it stuck in my head well.

Classes, however, were 50 minutes a day.

Getting the kana straight out is pretty handy though, even years after I lost everything else I could still muddle through kana in various things and it was always somewhat reassuring to be able to read _something_ native, as opposed to just romaji.

Aijin Wrote:How possible do you guys think hiragana in a week or two really is? With two lessons, that'll be about 5 hours...I am not sure a complete beginner can learn all the hiragana decently in that time. I'd try to have her make up her own mnemonics for each one, lots of drills, practices, etc. But even then...

The sub-title of 'Remembering the Kana' is "A Guide to Reading and Writing the Japanese Syllabaries in 3 Hours Each".

I found that to be true; the book is divided into 6 lessons, 30 mins each for Hiragana, then same again for Katakana. I did one lesson a night for a week, but there are people on there that learnt of all them in one 3 hour session. The first lesson is available free online, maybe take that along for her to try and get her to the rest in her own time:
http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publ...sample.pdf

By the way, I do *not* recommend brute forcing the kana. Obviously it works for some, but also I know Japanese learning who are still not comfortable with reading and writing after 6 months study. One guy I met studying Japanese at SOAS (big London language uni) said it took him a year to learn to learn both ひらがな and カタカナ. When I said I learnt them in a week each, he just said it wasn't possible and totally dismissed what I was saying..

aphasiac Wrote:

Aijin Wrote:How possible do you guys think hiragana in a week or two really is? With two lessons, that'll be about 5 hours...I am not sure a complete beginner can learn all the hiragana decently in that time. I'd try to have her make up her own mnemonics for each one, lots of drills, practices, etc. But even then...

The sub-title of 'Remembering the Kana' is "A Guide to Reading and Writing the Japanese Syllabaries in 3 Hours Each".

I found that to be true; the book is divided into 6 lessons, 30 mins each for Hiragana, then same again for Katakana. I did one lesson a night for a week, but there are people on there that learnt of all them in one 3 hour session. The first lesson is available free online, maybe take that along for her to try and get her to the rest in her own time:
http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publ...sample.pdf

By the way, I do *not* recommend brute forcing the kana. Obviously it works for some, but also I know Japanese learning who are still not comfortable with reading and writing after 6 months study. One guy I met studying Japanese at SOAS (big London language uni) said it took him a year to learn to learn both ひらがな and カタカナ. When I said I learnt them in a week each, he just said it wasn't possible and totally dismissed what I was saying..

A year? That's ***** ridiculous. I did bruteforce the kana with a program called before you know it and I had hiragana perfected in 4 hours. Did it in one day and have never had a problem reading or writing it since.

I learned to read Katakana through exposure and it took me a long time at that. Only learned to write it all from doing kanken study funnily enough.

So I can believe that someone who really doesn't actually bother to engage in writing the kana or reading them much could take a year (moronically) to learn the simplest stuff. That said, no reason you can't knock it out in a day, it's just an alphabet after all.

aphasiac Wrote:One guy I met studying Japanese at SOAS (big London language uni) said it took him a year to learn to learn both ひらがな and カタカナ. When I said I learnt them in a week each, he just said it wasn't possible and totally dismissed what I was saying..

Maybe he learned Kana about half a minute each day. You never know what some people call "studying".

OMG! 2 1/2 hours for a beginner???
She is going to die from mental pain.

I have done four hours, 20 minute breaks each hour, with Japanese business men who were almost native fluent. It was just sitting and talking about current events in English while I made notes of small grammar errors with a pen and paper.

I agree with the advise about encouraging self-learning techniques and using her time with you to practice what she learns on her own.

How long it takes to learn the kana (and most everything else) depends on expectations, held already by the student and placed on the student by the teacher. Personally, I learned both sets in a couple days, because I didn't think it should take any longer than that. I'm trying to help someone else learn now, and she also learned all of the Hiragana in a day, because I made it very clear that it shouldn't take any longer than that, and that I was just having her learn the kana as a really quick task before getting to the actual 'learning Japanese' part. So she approached the task accordingly, mentally; I'm just supposed to get this done, then move on to the other stuff.

Especially because, it's not important to have them memorized perfectly. You can practice あいうえお and and get them rock solid before moving on to the next row, one day at a time, but that means it'll be two weeks before you can read absolutely anything. Or, you can get a really hazy understanding of all the characters in a few hours, print out a kana chart for reference, and read the next day, making your understanding of the characters more solid as you go. If you've got manga with furigana about, you can get right into the fun. FYI, I brute-forced, wouldn't have seen the point of mnemonics if I'd known about them, and didn't know about them anyway.


It should be clear I'm talking about recognition only. I learned to write them a little later, but while still fast, I did this leisurely, because I considered it fairly unimportant.