The entire first year that I studied Japanese I didn’t really learn much. As I mentioned in the free E-book 5 Tips to Learn Japanese Faster, a big part of this was due to the use of bad materials. Another big reason was that I didn’t really have a strong reason or goal for studying Japanese. I had an interest in Japan, martial arts, and the samurai. And I needed to take a foreign language. Unfortunately, these were not strong enough goals to to push me to focus on Japanese. It was only enough to keep me enjoying it and moving along at the slow pace of the class.

It wasn’t until I decided that I would study abroad in Japan and may want to work there someday that I really took studying Japanese seriously. Realizing I would be moving to Japan also helped me set goals to work towards. I wanted to learn to converse in basic conversation and learn at least a certain amount of kanji. Once I decided to work in Japan, I set new goals. Learning more Japanese words, more phrases, and more kanji.

These goals were attainable because they were very clear and also important to me. To gain a level of fluency in Japanese takes a lot of hours of study. That doesn’t mean it has to be difficult, just that you have to be dedicated.

The stronger your reasons are for learning Japanese the more likely you will be to succeed. Setting clear goals will also help you know exactly how much you have to study to get to the point you want to reach.

I suggest that you take some time to think about your reasons for studying Japanese. Try to paint as clear a picture as possible to why you are learning and what you want to achieve. Write down all the reasons you are studying Japanese and what level you expect to get to. During the times you are struggling you can look at it again to keep yourself inspired.

Saturday  I received all 4 of the “Remember the Kanji” books. Three of the books are designed to help a Japanese learner master kanji and one is focused on learning hiragana and katakana. I will be posting reviews on all of these books once I have had a little more time to evaluate them. I started reviewing the book on learning kana and it reminded me of something I think is important in learning Japanese; reviewing the basics.

The Japanese language, or any language for that matter, is kind of like building a house. In order to have a strong house you need a good solid foundation. To learn the more advanced grammar rules of Japanese you need to have a good understanding of the basic ones. I first realized how important this was as a study abroad student in Japan. To decide what Japanese classes students should be put in, we were required to take a test that included various grammar patterns, kanji, as well as writing an essay. Since I hadn’t studied nearly at all during the summer, my Japanese ability wasn’t at it’s best. In turn, I ended up in a Japanese class was covering material I had already learned.

At first I was a bit annoyed. I felt I was wasting my time in Japan relearning things I had already studied. Luckily, the class progressed at a pretty fast rate and we eventually got into some material. The thing that surprised me though was how much my Japanese had improved by gaining a stronger grasp of the the basics I had already studied. The review helped set them more firmly in my mind and I didn’t have to “think” about how to use them.

I think there are two very simple methods to making sure you understand the basics. The first is to make sure you study them well and repeatedly until you have a very strong grasp. Practicing them in conversation is a very key part of this.The second part is to occasionally review material you feel very confident with. I am always surprised the things I realized I have forgotten when I do this. I also find that I can usually “re-learn” a structure or word much better after I have been using it it for a while. When I first learn something it is foreign and I struggle to grasp it. When I review it I am learning about the details of something that is familiar to me.

I encourage you to make sure you have a firm understanding of the basics and occasionally review them. You may feel that you are wasting your time, but you may be surprised what you will learn. The better understanding you have the better your Japanese will be.

When I was studying Japanese in Japan, people used to ask me what did I think the most important part of learning Japanese was? If I could only study one thing what would it be? My answer, vocabulary. The more Japanese words you know the better you will be able to understand the conversation. Even if you don’t understand the grammar, you can convey your general meaning if you know the right Japanese words. However, the way that you study Japanese words are just as important. There are two important methods to gaining fluency with Japanese words. The first is the way you study the words. The second is the way you practice them.

Now I mentioned above that a large vocabulary is probably the most important aspect to speaking the Japanese language. It is even better if you can study them in a way that allows you to learn grammatical structures at the same time. The way to do this is to study words in context. Doing so will help you learn how the word is used and also give you practice learning related words and different types of sentence structures. I also find that learning words in context help me remember them quicker because I am creating a small story in my head rather than just trying to memorize.

The second part of learning words is to use them again and again. In college I would spend a night cramming to learn all the words before a test to get a high score. Once the test was over and so the practice also stopped, then the words were forgotten. In order to fully lock Japanese words into your memory, you need to use them over and over again. This means that you will need to continuously review new material until you know it very well. A program like Mnemosyne, a flash card program that tracks how well you remember words can be very helpful for this. Of course the best way to do review words is to use them in conversation. This will allow you to put them into context and to make sure you can both hear them and speak them.