{"id":3808,"date":"2018-08-24T11:56:35","date_gmt":"2018-08-24T15:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/?p=3808"},"modified":"2018-08-24T11:56:35","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T15:56:35","slug":"methods-for-studying-japanese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/2018\/08\/24\/methods-for-studying-japanese\/","title":{"rendered":"Methods for Studying Japanese"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Conversation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The most effective way I&#8217;ve found to improve my conversational skills is by finding native language partners. I think conversation practice is often the hardest for people beginning to learn a language. When you are just starting out, you realize how bad your language skills are; and thus it&#8217;s embarrassing to try to use them in actual conversation. There are also many moments of misunderstanding and frustration when you&#8217;re unable to understand your partner and express your own insights. Nevertheless, I have found that many Japanese university students have been eager to help me in my language study. If real-time conversation is too daunting, I have also found text conversation to be helpful in learning conversational phrases. In the case that study abroad is impossible, I know many people who have found language partners online and through apps. The resources are there as long as you are willing to look.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Vocabulary<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In my opinion, vocabulary needs separate practice from conversation. There are many words that, while important and useful, just aren&#8217;t used that often in everyday conversation. I usually do practical vocabulary study by reading a book (with furigana provided for kanji) with my phone dictionary on the ready and a memo pad to record words that I consider important. I am rather selective in what words I choose to record. For example, I usually only record words that I think would be useful for me in conversation and essays. If a word seems to be too rare or irrelevant, then I will just look up the meaning without recording it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kanji<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Kanji practice is the most difficult for me. I have yet to find a fun or interesting means of studying the characters. Thus far, I have only found a few ways to expedite the process. Many kanji characters contain other, simpler kanji within them. Thus, if you can get a grasp over the basic building blocks, then it becomes much easier to learn new kanji. In the past, I used to try to remember kanji based on individual strokes. This process is very difficult and error-prone. Nowadays, I pay special attention to the building blocks since they sometimes even are helpful for figuring out the meaning of new words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conversation The most effective way I&#8217;ve found to improve my conversational skills is by finding native language partners. I think conversation practice is often the hardest for people beginning to learn a language. When you are just starting out, you realize how bad your language skills are; and thus it&#8217;s embarrassing to try to use &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/2018\/08\/24\/methods-for-studying-japanese\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Methods for Studying Japanese<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3051,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115493],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3051"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3808"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3811,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3808\/revisions\/3811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}