Comments

Read in Japanese – Not about Japanese — 15 Comments

  1. great post man! I never thought about the about-ratio’s but I definitely know what you’re talking about. You’re helping out a lot of people in the J-study world, please keep up the awesome posts / insights / advice!

  2. Your idea for watching English lessons for Japanese people is really ingenious! I would never have thought of that. Sounds like fun. Thank you.

  3. This is so true! It is so fun to read ABOUT Japan, and I’m sure it helps a little bit in the building-vocabulary department, but probably not the best way to learn Japanese, especially for a beginner. I just found your website today, will check it out more later.

    • Thanks, hope you enjoy it. I checked out your blog and find it to be useful so I’m adding it to my links page.

  4. Big time-killer for me is discussing study methods, especially with people who are evangelical about one particular method or guru, eg Heisig, Ajatt, Anki. All of which have their merits and drawbacks

    • I feel a little bad about including Anki there, especially as I’ve started to use it recently. I should have said “evangelical about a particular way of using Anki”.

  5. I like the reverse ratio method also. Before I left Japan, I bought lots of books that Japanese people use to study for TOEIC which is great because it uses that 90:10 ratio. So most of it is in japanese, and usually with few translatons. :)

  6. My questions about this is simple: what about JPOD101?
    I’ve got the complete audiobook from there, started listening to it, I’m currently at lesson 5 of level 2 (the real newbie level – level 1 is all about cultural things), but I stopped using it since I’ve first read this post. The lessons there are in English, and the Japanese parts are with translations. Should I keep using them, or should I quit them?

    I’m really worried of the immersion aspect, but it’s not an immersion when you’re doing lessons in English.

      • I really liked the idea of editing the sounds. Instead of keep up with their conversations (that really annoys me), I’ll edit the audios.

        Also, I know it was subject of another post, but I prefer to watch the dramas/animes with subtitles first, and then I load it to my mobile phone, and listen to it several times. That’s why the first audios I put into it were The Lion King and the first episode of Pokémon, ’cause I know them by heart. I’m doing it with GTO, I’ve listened to the first episode 30 times more or less, and every time I understand a bit more than the time before.

        Thank you for your attention.

  7. You can watch YesJapan’s EigoEgg videos on youtube for some audio/video teaching Japanese people English…

    • I have seen EigoEgg before and agree that is great for Japanese learners, even though intended for the opposite.

      The host (George Trombley) is charismatic and you can tell he is really having a lot of fun.

  8. I feel like every learner (beginner or intermediate) should watch this motivational video. Its for Japanese learning English, but it can be applied to other way around too!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atNykP0-0P0
    (From 00:43 to 1:30)
    The gist is: You should learn one thing each day. That way, without any problems, one day you will say “Hell! I have accomplished so much!”. But, once in a while a thought might pop up in your head that “Dude, although I have did 833 sentences, I can’t remember them all”. It doesn’t matter whether or not you do remember it all, what matters is that you DID something. If you continue doing something, you WILL do it.
    PS: My translation skills are not that great.

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