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Should You Use Japanese Study Forums? — 7 Comments

  1. I agree. I don’t spend much time on forums any more because I’ve come to the same conclusion – they eat up more time than they’re worth. But when I started my Japanese-learning journey, back when I hadn’t figured anything out yet and I was still googling “learn Japanese online free”, I found them to be quite helpful. If you can find some good Japanese-learning forums, they can be a good way to get on your feet when you’re just starting. I started Anki, Reviewing the Kanji and all the other fun things (mostly) because of posts I read on forums. But, like you said, use them with caution. Good post.

  2. One of the values that forums offer is that you can find recommendations of good shows or manga there. The downside is that you often have to wade through a lot of either distracting or discouraging posts to get them. So, for me at least, Naguyen is a great start toward a perfect Japanese forum world. It has everything I like in forums and doesn’t have all the stuff that I don’t.

  3. The only forum I’m on is plus.ajatt.com and FWIW I think it avoids most of the traps. It’s low volume, so not a huge time sync. There’s exactly zero negativity, flaming or anything else of the sort. I’ve never seen a thread drift off topic. And the in/about ratio is helped by requiring that all posts contain a link to some native target-language material (web page, youtube video, etc). Which means that the author has to go find something, entailing some degree of immersion, and readers get something new they can check out quickly and easily.

    The catch is that it’s not free (although membership also includes access to premium material). And when I say “low volume” I mean low, sometimes only a couple of posts a week, though with bursts of more activity.

  4. Agreed! I started reading some tips on koohi, the RTK forum, and it was very helpful when you don’t know anything. Then I made my first post there and a member with hundreds of posts came just to write something to provoke the newbies.

    Staying away after you get your tips is for the best, especially if you’re the kind of person who gets sucked into arguments online.

  5. What If I go to Japanese forums as in writing and answering in japanese type of forum?
    I guess that would be ok, wouldn’t it?

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