Its hard to believe that I have officially been studying Japanese now for just a little over 11 years now. I’m not fluent but I’m very happy at the progress I’ve made and continue to make everyday. Japanese is certainly a challenge, but I’ve always found the challenge to not be as nearly as difficult as many people make it out to be. For some people the massive memorization of kanji alone is a big turn off, but I found once I laid the groundwork in my study routine, I was able to really grasp the language in ways I couldn’t for French when I studied that in high school.
For me I started studying Japanese at UT, taking the basic Japanese courses. One hour a day, Monday to Friday. These were done in the typical language course style, but with obvious additions to make Kanji a part of the curriculum. We would have our usual lessons with some silly situation, a conversation with new vocabulary to learn, an important grammar point, some role plays to try out, etc. The main focus was on grammar and vocabulary. It was about learning everyday Japanese, and of course the very basic kanji. The kanji we learned was the most simplistic at first, as well as leaning the most necessary kanji for our needs. We would learn the radicals early on too, but the most important thing was to learn how to write it, the vocabulary with it, and their readings. But the big problem was that since time was short, we would have a limited amount of kanji to study each week. I never fully grasped the importance of the radicals or their meanings, because it was always about learning the vocabulary. This is a major hinderance in learning Japanese I feel as gaining a quick understanding of it will help out greatly later on. And yet years later I would admit that I didn’t fully grasp a lot of the concepts of some parts of the language at that time, kanji particularly. However for college level classes, I thought they were good, and thankfully avoid of romanji, which I simply can’t read at all. For basic Japanese speaking skills, this type of class is OK I think. You learn what you need to survive, and get by to get that “あなたの日本語は上手ですね！” However this was not what I wanted, I wanted to really speak and understand the language. After talking with my teachers and other people, I was told that really the only thing that could do that was total immersion. It’s something I agree with as well. Sure you can learn the language on your own even, but without the immersion or the chance to practice the language in a real environment, you can never really achieve full fluency I feel. At UT I had very limited chances to use my Japanese. In class it was hard with so many people crammed in there, each trying to get a chance to speak. And our vocal tests were more script memorization than anything. In fact I probably used it more at anime club than outside it. I realized that it was time to take a chance and go learn the language in Japan.
So in 2001 I went to Sophia University in Tokyo. In reality I had no idea what classes I would be taking when I got there, but I knew that being immersed in the language would help me a lot. When I spoke to the counselor there, she asked me if I had planned on taking the JLI courses. I, not knowing what JLI was, inquired about it. Sophia had developed a program that taught Japanese at a very intensive level, called the Japanese Language Institute (JLI). It was a two year program that, if you passed and completed it, you would be at the 1 kyuu level of the JLPT test. Even though I would only be at Sophia a year, I could take the program and truly improve my Japanese they told me, and they highly recommended it to me since I had recently switched my major to Japanese and it was the focus of my coming to Japan. It was a difficult program, but they were proud of their successes and they felt I could do it. It would involve taking 18 hours of Japanese classes a week. 1 and a half hours of grammar a day, 1 and a half hours of kanji a day, and two days with a hour and a half of conversation practice. The classes would be taught in Japanese only, and would require a heavy commitment from me both in class and outside it. I decided this was the challenge I was looking for, and I felt that with 4 years of study, including some intermediate Japanese classes under my belt from UT, I could eaisly test out of the first semester of JLI and move into the second.
I was wrong. But what ended up happening did more to improve my Japanese than anything before or since.
Next time, I will talk about how I truly started to fully understand Japanese and really learn the language by discussing my time at Sophia.
sneaky
Your speaking is a lot better than mine…I’ll talk about speaking more in a later post…but I’m sure there are several things that account for this:
1) Time – You’ve been studying for 11 years whereas I’m only at 3.5 years, which I’m sure helps. Nothing is better than getting the chance to use grammar or vocab in conversation that you learned a long time ago, but haven’t really used, and getting it right on the fly. I think successfully pulling stuff from precariously stored long-term memory is great for cementing into your brain and working Japanese arsenal. Regardless of other studying methods, time definately helps with this.
2) Immersion with pressure – I’m immersed in Japanese, but under very little pressure to use it. Of course there are times that using Japanese helps me greatly, and that motivates me, but your courses at Sophia sound like an even more helpful immersion environment.
3) consumption of Japanese media – You are a much, much bigger fan of anime, manga, Japanese TV etc than I am, and that undoubtedly helps. One thing I do now is keep the radio in my car tuned to a Japanese station at all times. Even this small thing has greatly helped my listening ability…only 20 minutes of car time a day on average commuting to work, but it seems very effective.
As for kanji, yeah…radicals (or in Heisig, primatives) are key. Any way of learning kanji that doesn’t break down the characters is a waste of time.
Yeah you’re right that those three areas have helped boost my conversation skills. I’ll be talking about all of them in my part two post. Time has been good and bad for me in some ways. Remember I studied for four years before Sophia, but had difficulties cause of the times I had to leave UT due to unforeseen circumstances. But it has helped me grasp things too. Immersion and consumption do help, but its also the right type of immersion and consumption that is the key, which I will talk about. You can watch all the anime in the world in Japanese only and still not learn anything. Finding the right balance helped me a lot.
For me also its the small things I’ve done that have gone a long way. Ill talk about those in more detail too, like how I was able to really improve my pronunciation and intonation thanks to my interest in Japanese music.
But yeah just using it is the key. And doing things where you will need to use it is most important.