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Experimental techniques

Over the time I have spent learning Japanese, I have optimized some of the aspects of the learning process to suit my needs. The methods I am going to discuss in this post are very personalized and likely not the most efficient. However, they have helped me deal with knowledge gaps. The Kanji Problem: As discussed in the previous post, “Remembering the Kanji”, while providing a solid foundation, is by no means complete. Visualization and the Migaku Kanji add-on helped me expand my knowledge regarding kanji to some extent. The work that I had done so far was no doubt enough to get me to a decent level of reading comprehension. But I found that I was having trouble with remembering certain words. This was mainly because they used the Kunyomi of their component kanji instead of their Onyomi. Coupled with this was the fact that I would frequently mistake the readings of kanji that looked similar, such as, 縁 and 緑. It was quite obvious that I needed more practice outside of Anki.  The Peg S
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The Migaku Kanji addon

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                                 Remembering the Kanji in my opinion is an indispensable resource for getting started with Japanese. However it is by no means comprehensive. I have come across a fair number of kanji which RTK does not cover. In order to learn these characters I resorted to visualising the stroke order repeatedly. I would choose one or two kanji per day and continue to visualise their stroke order at regular intervals throughout the day. The Migaku Kanji add-on helped me to streamline this process. The Migaku Kanji add-on is a powerful kanji learning tool that pairs well with the Migaku-Japanese and Migaku dictionary add-ons. The following video explains how to set it up. The majority of the cards I create with this add-on are recognition cards.                                                                  Migaku Kanji front                                                           Migaku Kanji back  Upon seeing the front of a card, I visualise the stroke order and c
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Listening Immersion

Listening immersion refers to consuming content in your target language for the purpose of building listening comprehension. This may take the form of audio visual content such as movies or audio only content such as podcasts. Generally speaking audio visual content is easier because the visuals provide context that aids comprehension. Two Types of Listening Immersion: Active Listening: Active listening refers to consuming content in your target language with full attention. This means you actively try to understand what is being said without relying on textual aids, such as subtitles. Passive Immersion: Passive listening refers to having content playing in the background as you go about your day. Preferably you should have already listened to this content actively. For example, let's say you watch an episode of a T.V  show in your target language. You can then have that episode playing in the background as you do other things. The idea is that even though you are not paying full a
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Sentence Mining

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I discussed how I study Kanji in the previous post. Now I will describe how I go about sentence mining, another key activity in Immersion learning.  Sentence Mining Sentence mining is the meat and potatoes of immersion learning. I use anime with Japanese subtitles and text heavy video games as my main sources of sentence mining.   Sentence mining involves making flashcards out of sentences from your immersion. This is called 'mining.' The best kind of sentences to mine are those that contain only one unknown element (word or grammar point).  Of course this is not a hard and fast rule but, sentences with more than one unknown element can become tedious to review in the initial stages. Sentences with only one unknown element are generally called 'i+1' sentences in the immersion learning community, The Process There are many software tools and Anki add-ons that help streamline the process of sentence mining. Instead of explaining them individually, I am going to step throu
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Remembering the Kanji

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In this post I will explain how I learned kanji with Hesig's Remembering the Kanji and Anki. Since immersion focusses on acquiring your target language through reading and listening, it is necessary to master the writing system first and foremost in order to look up words . What this essentially means for Japanese is that the first few months are spent on learning only kanji.   The Hesig Method The amount of information one has to memorize with regard to a single kanji is quite overwhelming. A character's readings, meanings and stroke order are usually taught together. This makes the process of learning kanji very tedious. James Hesig, in his book, Remembering the Kanji (RTK), came up with a system which associates each kanji with an English Keyword, which eliminates the necessity to memorize a large amount of information from the outset. The general idea is that the keyword serves as a kind of 'bridge' between the kanji and its readings/meanings. The kanji are ordere
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The Beginning

Hello, and welcome to my blog. I'm going to document how I study Japanese on this blog.   My name is Kartik. I'm a third year student of BA Japanese at EFLU, Hyderabad. I have a physical disability known as cerebral palsy, which limits my mobility and restricts me to a wheelchair. As a result, I gravitated to hobbies such as anime and video games. I forget exactly how or when I discovered the term 'anime'  but I can safely say that I have been watching Japanese animation for as long as I can remember. Shows like Ghost in the Shell: SAC, Mushishi, Spice and Wolf, Black Lagoon, and Kino's Journey are some of my all time favorites. Eventually, I wanted to understand anime without subtitles. This became one of the motivating factors for me to start learning Japanese. My first attempt at learning Japanese was way back in 2009. I  enrolled for the certificate of proficiency in Japanese at EFLU. This was an introductory program  that lasted for about a year. While this cou
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