| Author | Message | ||
     chotto |
hey everyone i was wondering if anyone had taught themselves japanese or one like it , and if you could tell me what you did to learn it by yourself doumo arigatou gozaimasu!! | ||
| mizer |
Hi there! I've recently started teaching myself Japanese - there aren't any classes in the city where I live (in England). I'm using an 'Oxford' book for beginner to intermediate level, together with a starter level dictionary (essential for people like me, always trying to run before I can walk, lol). The book is in romaji, but I've also learnt the hiragana as a start. This is essential to use a dictionary! I'm also going to learn the katakana - I found hiragana quite quick to learn (although maybe that's just the way my brain works...). How best to learn it by yourself... well, that's a difficult one... I work full time and do lots of other stuff, so I don't have as much time as I'd like, but I guess doing a little bit as often as you can is one of the best ways (i.e. most days, if possible). I also found that translating the romaji from the study book into hiragana and writing it down, helped me to learn both the hiragana and the phrases/vocab/grammer that was the point. I have a slight edge over the total self-learning, though - I have a Japanese friend who, although currently living in Australia (!), chats with me over the phone and/or msn most weekends. Most of our conversations take place in English, lol (his English is much better than my Japanese!), but it's still handy. I haven't done the obvious thing and got a cassette-study - I'd recommend you do that; I should probably do it myself, hehe. Although my friend says my pronunciation is OK :-) I hope you have good luck! What's the particular reason you are learning Japanese? Keep me posted! :-) | ||
| J5 Student hint~1337 |
Well, I started teaching myself in about February/March of 2004 because my mom wouldn't let me take Japanese in school. I just took my friend's J1/2 binder and looked at the stuff, learned the kana, (both) and just journaled random stupid stuff to myself all the time using every new kanji I could remember. I used the Random House Japanese to English Dictionary to learn all the verbs I wanted to know and nouns and such, and just implemented common sense from the 1/2 binder stuff. I went to the J teacher at TWHS (the woodlands high school, texas) and said, "Maw." So she let me take the Japanese 1 final exam. I aced it with flying colors and she was like "Maw!? You should go to three!" But I said to go to 2 because I was a bit nervous about jumping to three. So I went to 2 for two days and she THEN bumped me to three. I was top of my class that semester and studied four from her packets through winter and this semester, the end of my senior year, I've been in Japanese 5 learning high level Keigo and grammar and such. WHOO! So basically, learn what you want to learn first, get the basics, and do as a math problem: find something and plug it in. |