Recently I have faced some criticism on my attempt to learn Japanese through self-study.

About me: I started RTK in September 2009 and I finished it sometime in November of the same year. Since then I've been going through Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar, and reading Tae Kim on the side. I'm almost finished UBJG and plan to start 2001KO in the next few weeks. I've noticed big gains in my vocabulary and understanding and up to this point have been quite satisfied with my progress. I also have been living in Tokyo for just over a year now, and my wife is Japanese. My speaking is still horrid, but a few weeks ago I made a rule of "no English for 1 hour during dinner", and that has been helping my output a bit.

So what I'm wondering is if I'm being stubborn at not wanting to go to a language school. It just doesn't seem like I can learn any faster than I already am. I use almost all of my free time studying, and I have quite a lot of spare time. Lots of language schools seem to be quite expensive, and they seem like I would be paying someone to read Genki to me. Though, I think that a language school would possibly increase my conversation skills quicker, and would drill my knowledge more. To counter this I plan to increase my conversation time at home, and pick up some drill books eventually.

If other people were in my situation would you still go to a language class, or just continue dedicated self study?

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

The quality of classes depends on the type of class. School classes usually divide and organize classes for credit so they may not be the best choice.

I heard of some really good classes.
http://www.mlcjapanese.co.jp/index.html
I have never been to Japan but I have taken several types of classes. Non-credit school offer more time for conversing it seems.

頑張ってくださいね。

To be honest, it all depends on the individual. Some people learn better by themselves while some people have to take classes in order to "learn" Japanese better. What do you think about learning by self-study? Do you think it will achieve you're goals faster? Or will taking classes really work? It all depends.

Since you can get to practice speaking with you're wife then I'd say you can practice speaking majority of the time and SRS things from a variety of sources. Like you're doing now, grammer, UBJG, and the kanji Odyssey which is a good starter. Since you have alot of time. Then i'd recommended SRSing for 1 hour each day or so. As long as you can maintain that and immersion(no problem for you as you're in japan). You can get alot of output practice at home, so this will help you in the output department. So i think you only need to focus on input portion. So i'd definitely recommend focusing on input-related activities

You can have your wife teach you. That saves you money

Given how far you are, you don't need to go to language school.

Find some kind of social club or recreation class and use that as a way
to motivate yourself.

For example, I now go to Japanese cooking classes. I'm the only
non-Japanese in my class and no one speaks ANY english. The teacher
writes all the recipes down and passes out print outs. So when I go
home, I study all the technical cooking vocab and by the next class
I can understand more of what the teacher is saying.

After we finish the recipes, we sit down and eat for the
next 1-2 hours. It's daily conversation about whatever
interests people at the time.

I find that this motivates me so much. Because I always tell
myself, "the next class I want to be able to speak more".

It's working so well for me.

Also, for learning daily conversation, you can download Japanese TV dramas
at http://www.d-addicts.com and also download the japanese subtitles. The Japanese
subtitles are exact copies of what the actors are saying. And it's all 100% conversational japanese, since the characters are actually saying the words to each other. You don't have to worry about if it's grammar that is only used in writing. It's incredible how many times words from drama have appeared in real conversation at my cooking class.

In my experience, watching Japanese drama with Japanese subtitles is the best way to learn conversational japanese. It's so much easier to remember things if you have a scene from a TV show in your mind. Drama also full of jokes that only Japanese people can understand, which makes it even more fun. I've surprised some of my Japanese friends with some of the words I've used. And it's all thanks to Japanese drama.


The only 2 books that I would recommend at this point are:

All About Particles (the whole book is ONLY about particles)
Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication (JSPEC)

JSPEC teaches all of the basic grammar patterns for effective communication.
JSPEC is probably the book you need. Pretty much anything you want to say in Japanese can be done using the grammar patterns in this book.

Before jumping to more complicated (and sometimes rarely used) patterns, JSPEC should be your foundation. And at $15 it's one of the best bargains ever.

For All About Particles, I do the following:
Anytime I see a particle and don't understand its usage, I reference All About Particles and go through all the usages for that particle until I find the right one. It works wonders for me.

I have a history of success with self-study. I did a large portion of my post-secondary education through self-study and had no trouble passing exams, etc.

Personally I think self-study is working great and my situation provides me with a lot of the benefits of a class room. Of course my wife is not a professional teacher, and cannot explain things all the time. She can tell me when I'm wrong though and I can look it up in a dictionary to get a grammar explanation.

I just want to make sure I'm not being delusional. And usually advice or criticism from people unaware of the methods used by many members here don't carry as much weight with me.

The decision whether or not to take a class depends on a lot of factors; there are things you can get from a class that you can't get any other way, but given the potential cost and time, and the wildly differing qualities of the classes out there, it's impossible to make any sort of flat recommendation as to what you should or should not do.

I think it's likely that if you took a class, you would get something out of it that you aren't getting now. But it's hard to say much more than that.

chamcham Wrote:In my experience, watching Japanese drama with Japanese subtitles is the best way to learn conversational japanese. It's all chock full of jokes that only Japanese people can understand, which makes it even more fun. I've surprised some of my Japanese friends with some of the words I've used. And it's all thanks to Japanese drama.


The only 2 books that I would recommend at this point are:

All About Particles (the whole book is ONLY about particles and all of their uses)
Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication (JSPEC)

JSPEC teaches all about of the basic grammar patterns for effective communication.
JSPEC is probably the book you need. Pretty much anything you want to say in Japanese can be done using the grammar patterns in this book.

Before jumping to more complicated (and sometimes rarely used) patterns, JSPEC should be your foundation. And at $15 it's one of the best bargains ever.

@Chamcham I just recently started watching zettai kareshi because I heard that it was easy and it had a premade subs2srs deck (I have a mac and can't make them). I'll admit I need to watch it a lot more though, and I have yet to start the srs deck. Normally I have the TV on with regular Japanese programming.

I also have All About Particles, and it is an amazing book. I'll check out the JSPEC book you mentioned, it sounds useful.

@yudantaiteki I don't doubt that I would gain something from taking a language class. I just don't think it would be ground breaking given the amount of effort I already put in. I'm thinking right now I should just continue on my self-study path and if I find my learning gets stunted some how, then I'll look into classes.

絶対彼氏？I'm guessing the audience consists mainly of women.
(ドラマをあまり見てしまいます。)

gyuujuice Wrote:絶対彼氏？I'm guessing the audience consists mainly of women.
(ドラマをあまり見てしまいます。)

You are probably right. I would prefer to watch a drama that has a subs2srs deck though. I have a deck for ごくせん３ but I haven't found the drama online yet. (I haven't looked very hard though.) I still need to check out the d-addicts link too. I'm new to the whole drama business.

@RisuMiso
I'm on a Mac too, and I can use subs2srs.
If you need help setting it up or something, just let me know.

edit: if it's a drama that I'm interested in, then maybe I'll even make the lists for you....

Asriel Wrote:@RisuMiso
I'm on a Mac too, and I can use subs2srs.
If you need help setting it up or something, just let me know.

Oh really! I was under the impression that it was still only available for pc. This changes things. Thanks for letting me know! I should be able to figure it out with the current thread on it's use.

The thread is really long...so here's what you do:

EDIT:
Instructions by blackmacros, who, through trial and error, got it working properly:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...8#pid91178

(my previous post was my recollection of what he posted there...turns out I forgot stuff)
And then for some more technical things, troubleshooting, etc, there's this:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...7#pid92567

Thanks a lot! I'll probably attempt to install it later today or tomorrow. I'll let you know if I have any problems.

Edit: Removed quote with previous instructions.

shihoro Wrote:I have posted elsewhere that I am a huge fan of Jorden's Spoken Language books with the audio. They are expensive, she uses romaji and does not even us the Hepburn systems which can be annoying.

All the JSL audio is available legally and free on the Ohio State University Digital Language Lab website.

http://languagelab.it.ohio-state.edu/index.php?id=1673

However, some of it you can actually download, and some of it you can only stream. That'll save anyone who wants to do it a lot of money. You should be able to find each of the books used for less than 30 bucks a piece.

shihoro Wrote:Eventually, if one is to learn good Japanese one cannot avoid Kanji and complex grammar whatever your study method. But speaking quite well first (even if this means using a romaji text or dictionary) gives quick immediate returns and keep one motivated. I cannot think of how many people gave up Japanese because they started with Kanji etc first and just got demotivated. Speaking Japanese is not harder than learning to speak French or Spanish.

You wrote a well thought out post, but I had to ask about this passage. Could you be a bit more specific here? I know of very few students that would start out with Kanji. Even on this forum, most it seems had more than a bit of Japanese under their belt prior to doing RTK (if at all). Do you have solid examples of any that started with Kanji, met difficulties and gave up Japanese altogether?

On your point, speaking practice gives immediate gratification for those that live or will live in Japan. I think training reading and listening gives immediate benefits for those that are enjoying the Japanese media. For the former, you don't need kanji. For the later, Kanji not only helps but becomes essential.

With my knowledge of what Japanese tend to think of when it comes to 英会話, I'd be pretty hesitant to bother with Japanese language schools. I would seriously look around online and look for reviews on said schools, possibly even ask the school for their curriculum as well. If they really are just reading from a book, it might just be best to skip on it.

What I don't understand is why you don't use your wife more, as spleenlol said (half jokingly), it's free and always accessible lol. Assuming she's not trying to learn English as well, just switch to trying to use Japanese all the time. Something I would suggest though is make sure you tell her to correct you of even the smallest mistakes and to make your sentences sound 'natural'/Japanese if they don't. I find a lot of people (I myself guilty w/ ESL) will sometimes let mistakes go if the sentence is understandable and some won't re-correct for naturalness.

You don't need classes if you have a native Japanese speaker; trust me. I'm studying in Japan and we have a guy that came over who had a JP g/f before coming over and he ended up living with her. He was a total beginner when he came over and now 6 months later he's pretty fluent. But he speaks Japanese all the time and avoided even having contact with the exchange students. But it seems like it payed, even if none of the exchange students really like him now haha.

I have a question as well, in regards to classes. I might go to DePaul here in Chicago, once I'm done with community college. That being said, I am looking into Japanese Studies as a possible career, or 3D Animation. For either, especially Japanese Studies, I would take some Japanese classes. Why? Because they offer to link you up with a local native Japanese to speak with, and also because I think classes are sometimes the best place to cement grammar. No way am I going to let my entire development in Japanese be based on a class.

So my question: is it okay to take classes in this case? I mean, the college I'm going to is also the one that oversees the JLPT in Chicago (I believe). And regardless of yes/no, I should take it because I do want to use their study abroad program.

On a side-note: Is Japanese Studies a good career to think about? I'm hesitant about animation because of how experience-based it is, and because frankly I want to live in Japan. I'll be competing against a large amount of people in animation. However I think if I go into Japanese Studies it will give me leeway into working at an embassy or other types of businesses, and maybe even in the video game industry which is what I'm interested in.

What kind of job do you aim for in the game industry?
If animation is truly where your heart is at, then defiantly go for the animation course. You can learn Japanese on the side just fine (I'm doing so now too ). As for the experience, be proactive throughout your schooling period, take part of contests, model stuff in your free time, etc. (At least here in The Netherlands) lots of companies look for employees that don't just follow the school course, but are actively carrying out their passion outside the standard school assignments. Side-jobs as an animator somewhere of course would also be great.

ごくせん is awesome but a bit hard to understand--at least for a nube like me :2
I'm still in the transition phase anyhow so I am right there with you.

It's nice to see such glowing praise of JSL.

@Shihoro Yeah, I did read your post before it got deleted, I just hadn't had time to respond. Thanks for posting most of it again though.

I will continue to self-study and not bother with classes. I'm really happy with all of the input on how to improve my self-study though. I think your advice on increasing my Japanese conversation with my wife is a good idea, even though it will be difficult at first. I was thinking last night that even if I spoke a mixture of English and Japanese, it would be better than just speaking English. I'll look into joining a club in a couple of months once my work schedule gets stabilized.

I'll check out JSL. It really seems that people either absolutely love it or they hate it. I've never been a particularly good auditory learner, which is one reason I liked heisig and the sentence method. But as this is a language, there is no way around not learning how to listen.

@Chamcham I picked up JSPEC, it seems like a really good book so far. Did you SRS it? I was thinking of just using it and not SRSing it, as I already have enough SRSing in my day.

I also got subs2srs up and running on my computer (in the /bin, couldn't get it to work with the other method). So I'll start watching drama's more as well.

I appreciate all of the input from all of you!

There is already a google docs spreadsheet with all of the sentences from JSPEC (including the practice exercises). Just search these forums.

chamcham Wrote:There is already a google docs spreadsheet with all of the sentences from JSPEC (including the practice exercises). Just search these forums.

Okay, thanks!

RisuMiso Wrote:Recently I have faced some criticism on my attempt to learn Japanese through self-study.

My situation has some similarities to yours. I’m living in Japan with my Japanese wife. I did try several language classes which were subsidised and run by volunteers. I wasn’t convinced they were helping me much, although I don’t want to knock them as the fees were nominal. I felt the time spent attending the classes and commuting to and fro could be better spent on self study. A more formal (and no doubt expensive!) course may be different though, but I suspect not by that much.

My decision to drop the classes and only self study also met with skepticism especially from my wife’s family. In September 2009 I discovered RTK and this website and embarked on learning the kanji. I’m now working through RTK3. I decided to more or less put conversation and input on the back burner while blitzing the kanji.

My wife has been supportive since seeing the progress I’ve made with kanji. Even though I still don’t know many of the readings I can remember words I encounter much more easily and can understand many signs, food labels etc. I hope this will give a good foundation for the next phase of my study (input).

Being illiterate in Japanese while living in Japan is far from ideal. I have to rely on my wife in so many ways. Any paperwork I have to give to her to sort out. And job opportunities are severely limited. So while conversation skills are arguably more important, sooner or later literacy must be tackled. Before discovering RTK, it just seemed like a pipe dream to me but now it’s within my grasp!

While I’ve decided to tackle kanji first I’m not suggesting it is necessarily the best way forward. It’s just an approach that appeals to me. My parents-in-law know of an English man who moved to Japan around 6 months after me so unfortunately they have been comparing my Japanese conversation skills with him. He’s apparently much better than me. However, I’m hoping that a firm kanji grounding first will make my future language acquisition more efficient and faster. Maybe I’ll catch up!

RisuMiso Wrote:My speaking is still horrid, but a few weeks ago I made a rule of "no English for 1 hour during dinner", and that has been helping my output a bit.

Before coming to Japan I had studied Japanese in evening classes for a few years so I knew the kana, some kanji and had some basic conversation skills. However, my speaking wasn’t good. My Japanese conversation is riddled with errors. I find this actually puts Japanese people off having a conversation with me.

From my own experience and that of others in a similar situation, getting your spouse to teach you isn’t easy. Although having conversations in Japanese with your partner and getting her to point out mistakes should certainly be very helpful. If your wife’s English is good, be sure to not try to speak all the time in Japanese as I'm sure she wont want her own English language skills to go rusty.

I feel the only way my own horrid speaking will improve is to first get lots of correct input from real, native sources “in the wild”. From this I will have a good model for my own output. So to that end:

Phase 2 of my study will be lots of input:
Listening - to TV dramas, anime, documentaries, radio
Reading - books, internet

Phase 3 will be to continue phase 2 but attempt more and more output.

shihoro Wrote:@ RisuMiso.
6. Dramas are great especially with Japanese subtitles (English are ok as well). However, body language, mood music means you don't always concentrate on the language as much as you might think.
7. Even better is to listen to the radio. It is hard but so much better for improving skills. I used to listen to the weather and news for more formal stuff and a kind of agony aunt type show for more natural Japanese. Brilliant. I think I learnt more about Japan form that show than anything else.

I’ve found this too. Although radio lacks the visual context, it allows you to focus on the words without distractions and you can listen while doing other things. So I listen to a mixture of both TV and radio.

RisuMiso Wrote:If other people were in my situation would you still go to a language class, or just continue dedicated self study?

Before coming to Japan I did a CELTA course (Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults). I also taught English part-time after arriving in Japan. From this limited experience I think that grammar, being incredibly complex, is too difficult to teach effectively. It is something that must be acquired through immersion “in the wild”. By all means study grammar which is unclear but just don’t expect to be able to apply it “on the fly”. I found that my most proficient students were the ones who did a lot of private study including input in the form of watching English language TV dramas, news, surfing the net in English etc. Basically, the ones who did a lot of self study were impressive.

When attending Japanese classes in Japan, I couldn’t really follow the grammar points (all the explanations were in Japanese) and there was very little time for conversation practice. In any case, unless the conversation is with a Japanese native or someone at an equivalent level, the input may be very inaccurate anyway. Certainly, classes may be enjoyable and sociable; a chance to make friends and perhaps open up other avenues. For example, as a result of going to one class, I was invited to speak about my country (in bad Japanese) to classes of Japanese school kids (and even got paid for it!). Also, classes will throw you in with others in the same boat as you who, even if they may not provide an ideal source of input, might be able to offer advice or friendship.

PS: Finally, if you are thinking of doing RTK3, I would say go for it. Now you have the foundation provided by RTK1 you could do it in the background while continuing your other studies. After gaining the experience of RTK1, RTK3 is quite easy by comparison. Compared to RTK1, there are only half the number of kanji, most of the primitives have already been learned and you have a better feel for either creating or borrowing stories which will work for you. Some of the kanji in RTK3 are quite rare. Sometimes my wife will say something like, “I’ve never seen that one”. However, there are a lot of everyday kanji among them such as...
culinary use: 鍋, 煎, 餅
animals and plants: 鯛, 蛸, 柿
general use: 迄, 頃, 誰 and many others.
And if you do a lot of reading, I imagine even the rare ones will crop up from time to time. It all depends what kind of material you're reading.