Introduction:

If you live in Japan, enjoy travelling here, or want to visit Japan, you should convince yourself to certainly develop an interest in the Japanese language. And you must do it!!! It’s a wonderful language and learning to speak Japanese allows you to meet some truly unbelievable people and immerse yourself better in a fascinating culture. It can also open numerous doors and employment opportunities, as the demand for bilinguals is high in the world.

Japanese is a relatively simple language once you get past a couple of initial stumbling blocks, but many people struggle with it for years, frustrated by their lack of development and left out the initial learning which is necessary for a learner.

1. Study less and practice more

The strongest way to develop your language skills is to communicate in that language you are practicing. Studying has its advantages and is necessary to help you learn new expressions and understand essential concepts, but you cannot completely recognise and understand any new word or sentence pattern until you have encountered it many times in public and have used it yourself. Exposing yourself in front of a mirror or any public gathering will boost your confidence to practise speaking Japanese.

2. Learn actively, not passively

It’s a common idea that you should learn a second language in the same way you learned your first and that by immersing yourself in it, you’ll pick it up naturally over time. Some language systems are designed around the concept itself, and difficult to follow the same process and if you can follow it you will ultimately lose key concepts.

Explore different patterns of learning Japanese involving its structure, alphabets, grammar and phrases and vocabulary. It gives you a way to proceed in a certain direction and there will be a very small chance of confusion between your study.

3. Prioritize grammar over vocabulary

One of the biggest lessons you must know before you study the Japanese language is that vocabulary is worthless if you don’t know how to use it.

Grammar is the key to improving every basic thing of any language and without a proper understanding of grammar, you may not adopt a new language efficiently and will only be able to gain the Japanese language without knowing the basics.

Put more effort into grammar than vocabulary while learning Japanese, and your knowledge will expand and become more widely applicable.

4. Japanese Speaking Practice: Recording Yourself

I believe that 99.9% of people dislike hearing their voices, but it is the most reliable representation of how you pronounce things. If you’re worried that people aren’t giving you honest feedback on your speech, the recording will be a wake-up call. 

Try listening to a podcast and repeat the sentences. Then, make a recording of the ones you find helpful and compare them to the Japanese speaker on the podcast. If it doesn’t sound the same, don’t worry about it. The more work you put in, the more you’ll sound like a native speaker!

5. Make time instead of trying to find it

While I highly encourage people to learn Japanese through self-study, the lack of a structured programme can cause your progress to remain stagnant if you’re not organised. If you say you’ll practice and learn Japanese when you have time, you’ll never have the time. There’s always some distraction or something else that seems to be more important to do.

You have to spend time if you are genuinely committed to improving your Japanese skills. Put it on your schedule and don’t let anything else get in the way.

You should spread your effort equally during the week by taking better online courses in the Japanese language to make the process even more successful.