My Journey with Japanese

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

                                 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

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