I’ve always been disgusted with myself for being mono-lingual. It’s especially noticeable in Singapore where nearly everyone speaks a second (or third) language to some degree. It’s especially frustrating when I’m in Japan, because I could get more out of my trips if I could communicate better at restaurants, stores, and on the street.
I have new responsibilities in my job that justify frequent trips to Tokyo.
These factors precipitated in me deciding to learn Japanese. It sounds plausible. I have the motivation to learn it as well as the means. Now the trick is to avoid mistakes of my past.
Spanish in high school. Well, this was simple, I didn’t have any motivation to learn it, except to meet absolute minimum foreign language requirements for university admittance. No loss anyway, I had no interest in Latin America and I am sure the quality of the instruction was lamentable.
Russian in university. I took a year’s Russian in university and by the end of the second semester had lost interest in it. It became increasingly clear I wasn’t going to Russia, the hot young teacher from the first semester was replaced with an old hag in the second, and the classes were quite rote, from a textbook. Most of the class was written.
Chinese with tutor and language programs. This soon went nowhere. My wooden ear and iron tongue do very poorly with the tones. I did have a (flaky) tutor but it wasn’t a very engaging education. Boring repetitive dialogues from old textbooks. I also tried some of these expensive Pimsleur-style cassette-based programs. They’re even more useless — boring as hell and with no one giving any feedback to what you’re saying.
Remembering these lessons, my approach to learning Japanese is:
- Hetergenuous study material. Not sticking with a single course, book, or program, otherwise it gets stale and frustrating.
- Speaking practice. Speaking practice seems essential to internalizing this
- Daily practice. Need to do something every day.
- Observable progress. I need to be able to see results.
So my current training regime is:
- Signed up for the popular Singapore Japanese Cultural Society beginner Japanese program. I took the ‘intensive’ course, which is two hours twice a week and finishes in six months rather than one year. It will prepare me to take the Japanese Language Proficiency level four exam (the lowest level. Levels 2 and 1 reflect good fluency in Japanese).
- Bootstrapping myself in learning the kana (hiragana, katakana) characters so that I can read the texts. I originally thought I could get away without bothering to learn how to read and write Japanese, but I soon realized that was folly. Anyway, learning the characters does give a nice feeling of progress. In just a week or so I’ve learned all the hiragana (あいえおう 。。。 らりろるれ） so that has been a rewarding program
- Bought a couple different textbooks with audio practice to mix up the normally boring introductory lessons. I bought the AJALT “Japanese For Busy People” program, as I saw that the Singapore Japanese Association uses that as their textbook.
- Bought some unusual books for when I’m tired of the standard texts, including “Japanese in MangaLand” which is a pratical guide for people trying to learn Japanese to read Manga comics. I’m not especially interested in Manga, but the material comes in from a different angle and mixes things up a bit. It’s also got some practical elements the other books are missing.
- Subscribed to JapanesePod101.com. RogerWarez pointed me to this site. It’s absolutely phenomenal. They have dozens of short 8-15minute long mp3 podcasts I can listen to on my PC or iPod that give short lessons in beginner Japanese. Lots of good word practice. Their program is marvelous because the material and examples they use are actually alive, contemporary, and interesting. The site is free, but I bought a subscription to have access to their ‘Learning Center’ which has supplementary texts and support information, as well as some flash-based flashcard systems. I used that extensively in learning the hiragana.
- Then of course, I go to Tokyo as frequently as possible.
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