The road so far (2022年8月16日)
I started learning japanese around this time last year and, honestly, I haven't made a huge amount of progress. This was partially because of a lot of backtracking and trying different resources to figure out what was and wasn't working for me. These are the resources I found particularly helpful:
- Flashcards:They were a blazingly fast way of learning hiragana and katakana, and I'm still using them for kanji. The downside of flashcards is that you don't actually have to write the characters, so be sure to get some handwriting practice in as well if you can! Making physical flashcards can help with that, but if you're like me and prefer an electronic version, I can't recommend Anki enough. It's completely free and open source software that will let you make pretty much any kind of flashcard you want. I have it on my phone so I can do my daily kanji reviews while commuting.
- Wanikani:This is a kanji learning system using mnemonics, which may not be for everyone, but it has definitely made things easier for me. You have to buy a subscription to use their flashcard system, but all the information, kanji order, mnemonics, etc... is available for free. What I'm doing is studying all that on my own time, without subscribing, and I'm making good progress. Their website is here.
- Genki I:This is the textbook I'm following right now for grammar and vocabulary. Finishing it should put me close to N5 level, so we'll see how that goes. I'm currently on chapter 4.
- Graded Readers:These didn't really become useful for me until very recently (when I finally learned a good amount of basic kanji and grammar points) but I'm having so much fun with them now. It feels great to finally be able to read something in the language you're learning, even if it's super simple texts! I'm currently going through the level 1 readers from Tadoku and I'm surprised by just how much I actually understand.
またね～ ☆ﾐ(o*･ω･)ﾉ
