J1 Students

Japanese is difficult, and if your exposure to the language before J1A was as nonexistent as was mine, consistent and committed study habits are extremely important. Everybody learns differently, but these are a few tips based on the study system I have worked out.

• Hopefully, you have already made flashcards for, and completely memorized both hiragana and katakana. If not, do so immediately. Some people come into class with previous knowledge about the Japanese alphabet, and for them the first part of the course is a breeze. For the rest of us, we have to learn the characters as quickly as possible so as to not fall behind. Once this is done, flip through to the end of the book and start practicing reading words out loud; don't worry about what they mean, just practice to shorten your recognition time. Practice from the vocabulary lists. If you try to do reading passages or grammar sentences, you will probably have trouble telling where words begin and end.
• Doing well on the vocabulary quizzes is crucial; not only are they a relatively large part of the final grade, but not knowing words in exercises, reading passages, and conversations means that you will get a lot less out of class time. Unfortunately, the only effective way I have found to learn vocabulary is to make flashcards. I write the English on one side, and hiragana on the other; usually, when studying I break the stack of words for the week into about four smaller sections. I go through a small stack hiragana → English until I can do it quickly without missing any, and then switch to English → hiragana (the hard direction). If I haven't mastered all the words after going through all the small stacks, and then the whole stack at the end, I will start going through English → hiragana, but writing down the answers this time. The whole process usually takes me about three solid hours for one week's worth of words; breaking the time up over several days may be good for retention, but for me, I am too busy to do so, and doing the whole list the night before the quiz maximizes my score. I also try to run through the whole stack right before class just to make sure they are fresh in my mind.
• Studying for kanji is very difficult, and is pretty easy to ignore at the beginning when they are easy; I fell behind first semester, and I am still trying to catch up. Don't make the same mistake! Now, I make flashcards with hiragana on one side, kanji on the other (hopefully, you will already know the hiragana words; if not, it is a good review to solidify them in your mind. I have never had any luck trying to learn both kanji and hiragana at the same time.) I go through the flashcards kanji → hiragana first; this should be really easy, and will usually take about 30 minutes to master. The difficult direction is hiragana → kanji. Don't bother doing this in your head. Kanji is all about detail, and the only way to effectively study is to write down the characters as you go through the cards. The first few weeks are super easy, because every character you see is new and interesting. The rest of the semester will be very difficult, because then they get much more complicated, but all start to look alike. Don't despair, though. After a while (probably not until J1B, though) you will start to recognize radicals, and the conceptual meaning of compound words will start to make a lot more sense.
• The written quizzes can be hard, but staying on top of vocabulary and kanji helps a lot; there have been plenty of times when I would have gotten an "A" on the test, but I missed a lot of points on the kanji section, or didn't know important words in the reading passages. As far as the grammar goes, class time is the best way to master that. Otherwise, the homework exercises are very similar to the test questions. I always look through the homework first (if I have time to even do that...) and then make flashcards for translating homework example answers from English → Japanese. Even though this isn't a perfect way to study, it will help you remember the general structure to which your answers to the test questions will definitely need to conform. Doing a homework problem even if you have done it three times still will probably help you on the test, so if you have time to review them exhaustively, do so. Later on in the course, making flashcards for the various verb forms (i.e. dictionary form, nai- form, te- form, etc.) will help immeasurably.
• Speak up in class. This is intimidating, especially when you know for sure that your answer is wrong, or that you don't know all the kanji in a passage, but it will help you learn, and the teachers will appreciate it.
• If you can, go to office hours with questions, or to just generally review. Unfortunately, I work all day after class, so I can testify to the fact that you can do okay in the course even if you can't ever make office hours or conversation tables. However, based on the few times I have gone, it is a big help to have the grammatical concepts reviewed outside of the normal class environment.
• Eat as much sushi, and drink as much sake as possible. It helps with your pronunciation.

In the interest of full disclosure, even all this stuff has not given me perfect grades in Japanese; I have gotten "A-" both semesters so far, and will probably get the same this semester. However, compared to the beginning of my Japanese experience, I now spend my time much more effectively (leaving more time for lab research and studying for MCB classes ... YES!). I hope it helps. Ganbatte kudasai!

I took one year of Japanese in high school, but got nothing much from it but hiragana and katakana, so I started over with J1A at Berkeley. Three years and a semester abroad later, I'm in J101. Certainly I am determined to become good at Japanese, and even someday fluent. If you're taking J1 to get a very simple conversational ability, of the "get around in Japan" kind, you might be frustrated. I feel our Japanese program is aimed towards a relatively long-term study of the language, with a steady development of the fundamentals. A different course of study, perhaps with your own books or tapes, might be better if you just want to quickly learn how to say "Where is the train station?" But if you want to seriously develop your knowledge of Japanese, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better program. However, I can't say it's easy, or won't take much work. I don't want to scare you, but it's good to know what you're getting into. As you'll probably be told over and over, it's true that studying a little bit here and a little bit there,like going home every day and going over what you did in class, is so much more effective and easier than setting aside one big block of time a week to sit and study for hours on end.

Pronunciation

Pronunciation is not something that gets a lot of attention in class, because it might make you feel more self-conscious, and self-consciousness is your biggest enemy in speaking a foreign language. Besides, everyone gets pronunciation down sooner or later. But here are a few tips to make it sooner rather than later.

• The sooner you get hiragana down pat, the sooner you can start writing down -- and thinking of -- Japanese words using it, and there's nothing more important to pronunciation than seeing Japanese words as "made of" kana, not romaji. Kinen and kinen look the same in romaji, and even if you make one of them kin'en like some romanization systems do, the difference is not obvious. But look at きんえん and きねん and it's obvious. Likewise with きいて and きて.
• Focus on the sounds in Japanese that don't exist in English.　ら is romanized as "ra," but that's not what it is. Neither is it "da" or "la." Someone just decided to write is as "ra" because we have no better letter for it, but it's really something in between all three, with a single click of the tongue, like the Spanish single "r." If you don't feel confident that you have it, ask someone for help, because they might not correct you of their own accord if you're just starting Japanese. Two other sounds to watch out for: ふ, which is somewhat between "fu" and "hu," and　ん, which is its own syllable and sounds differently to our ears depending on what comes after it. Followed by a ぷ, for example, it sounds to us like an "m," which is why　てんぷら is often romanized as "tempura."
• Also focus on the exceptions: the sounds that don't always sound like they do when you're learning kana. These are mainly -u syllables, like す and し in です and した respectively. The "u" part of the syllable is deemphasized, and not pronounced very clearly. This is called "elision" by linguists.

Grammar

Though it's completely different from English, Japanese grammar isn't hard once you learn the patterns, like the way a sentence consists more or less of "noun phrase, particle, noun phrase, particle, . . ., verb," and the way you get the pre-ます form of an う-verb from the dictionary form by changing the last syllable from the う-column to the い-column of the same row. The more you speak, the more easily these things will flow off your tongue (don't be shy!) and the more you listen, the more you'll intuitively understand subtle differences like that between は and が.

Kanji

Here's a big one. Some tips and comments in no particular order:

• The more you learn, the easier it is to learn more. You can learn to write individual kanji more easily because you'll recognize some of the pieces, and you can learn the meanings and readings of new compounds more easily because you'll already know the individual kanji that form them. So starting to learn kanji is hard, because you have no base of kanji and kanji parts, but don't give up and it'll get easier.
• Take the S classes (J1AS, J1BS, etc.) if you can. They help (the more trouble you're having, the more they help), take just an hour a week, and they're fun.
• Know correct stroke order. It seems silly at first, and it's also hard at first. But if you start out learning correct stroke order, it'll become so easy you rarely have to think about it, and it actually helps. If you learn some simple patterns (like usually horizontal then vertical, usually outside then inside, etc.), and some set Kanji pieces (called bushu or “radicals”), you'll be able to figure out a new Kanji's stroke order. The reason it's important is that the "correct" stroke order is the one that makes it easier and faster to write and remember kanji, and it can even make your Kanji more distinguishable. This applies to kana too, like シ and ツ, ン and ソ.
• Understand the on and kun readings; most kanji have at least those two readings, and in general (though there are exceptions), the on reading is used when the kanji is used in combination with other kanji, and the kun reading is used when it's by itself. So if you see a combo you've never seen before, try to think if you've seen the individual kanji in combination before, and how they were pronounced.
• Bushu (“radicals”) are very useful in learning kanji. Some bushu carry meaning -- kanji that they appear in tend to have meanings related to one thing, like 泣, 流, and 洗, which are all related to water because they have the "water" bushu. Some bushu, on the other hand, carry sound -- many Kanji with that bushu have the same on reading, like 観, 歓, and 勧, which all can be pronounced kan. Bushu are also useful in learning how to write kanji. If you've never seen 暗 before, it could be scary -- 13 strokes! But if you just think of it as two 日s and a 立, it's not that bad.
• When writing a kanji, imagine the square it should fit into. If it's got lots of stuff stacked vertically, you'll have to write each part as short as you can, and if it's stacked horizontally, keep each piece narrow.
• When practicing writing kanji, I used to find that I'd write each one ten times without thinking and not remember in the slightest. Repetition is important, but more important is trying to hold in your mind everything about the kanji each time you write it: the meaning, the reading, the bushu, and how it looks overall. Write over and over as fast as you can, and you'll end up needing more total time to learn it, I think.
• For kanji that you get mixed up or have trouble with, try to think of mnemonics. When I was learning 困, which means something like "to be in trouble," I thought to myself, it's like a tree (the middle part, 木, means tree) trapped inside a box! When it tries to grow, it'll certainly be in trouble. Silly, isn't it? But it sure helped me. Mnemonics are something you can't really get from other people; you have to come up with them yourself, because the process of coming up with it helps you a lot.
• If you're reading something with kanji that you don't know, and you have to write the readings above the kanji (called furigana), keep trying, every single time you read it, to look only at the kanji, not at the furigana. Even without really working at it, you might eventually absorb the reading.

Dictionaries

Jim Breen's internet Japanese dictionary WWWJDIC is invaluable. Google the word "WWWJDIC" and you'll find a dozen mirrors. It lets you search Japanese to English using Japanese text or romaji, and English to Japanese. It has kanji lookup methods, stroke order diagrams, and example sentences. But you'll also probably eventually want a real dictionary, and when the time comes, I think you'll find an electronic dictionary much faster than a paper one. Dedicated electronic Japanese dictionaries like the Canon WordTank can be extremely expensive, up to $400, so I recommend getting a cheap Palm OS PDA of any kind (you can get a used one on Ebay for less than $40), and then downloading a free Japanese dictionary; the two main ones are called Dokusha (looks nice, has more kanji lookup methods and a kanji compound search) and PADict (has fast English to Japanese lookup, stroke order diagrams, and you can draw kanji to look them up.) The tricky thing about Japanese dictionaries of any kind is looking up kanji you don't know the reading for. There are a variety of ways to look up kanji by looking at them and turning them into some numbers; I've found the easiest to be the “SKIP” (System of kanji Indexing by Pattern) system, which WWWJDIC and Dokusha support.

Getting more practice

Of course practice is the most important thing for a foreign language, and it's not always easy to find ways to practice speaking, hearing, reading and writing Japanese in America. Here are some things I've done.

• If you like reading fiction for fun, what better way to practice reading Japanese than that? Start with children's books, and don't let yourself feel silly. Eventually you'll be able to read young adult fiction, either originally Japanese or translations from English.
• Japanese anime and music are great for listening practice, especially if you work at it by watching an anime episode twice, once for the story, and then once without looking at the subtitles. Listening to a lot of Japanese in many different situations is the best way to get an intuition for the differences between similar words.
• Keep a journal in Japanese.
• Find penpals. There are lots of penpal-matching internet services, and your teachers might have connections too. A major point of learning a foreign language is to be able to communicate in it; it's easy to lose sight of that by studying in isolation.
• Talk to yourself in Japanese. In your head. Or when no one's around.
• Don't be shy. Seriously think about what will happen if people hear you make a mistake ?- nothing!
• There's nothing better than an exchange program, but only after you've built up some base of knowledge. The more you know already when you go to Japan, the more you'll learn there.

There are only a few basic principles to go by.

• First, though the going may seem rough, it's actually always a good idea to read the text of the lesson yet to be taught the next day. Just get a cursory view of the material without getting too worried about understanding how everything works right away. All you're doing is getting first impressions. Then in class you'll be able to draw on those vague impressions to understand the point of what's taught in class.
• Secondly, make sure you do the drills, Homework, listening exercises, and kanji exercises. Whole bit. Yes, it's a well-greased machine and you're being ground in the mill. But the more routine it is, the more things are seeping into your unconscious mind. So, since it's a chore to remember all the details, having your syllabus at your fingertips is the key to help you navigate through the maze of assignments effortlessly. It'll be a breeze after your first few weeks of school.
• Thirdly, ask, ask, and ask more questions. You're learning a foreign language, and your mind is probably more active than the course is able to handle. So anything you wonder about, or just doesn't seem to fall into the logical patterns taught you, are things that have fallen between the cracks. Asking the tutor questions has been, in my experience, the most rewarding of all. You're less likely to be intimidated in front of tutors rather than sensei's. And oftentimes, the tutor can offer you fresher perspectives and approaches. You'll be surprised at how a question over a tiny point can turn out to be a much larger way to understand the system of language.
• Lastly, good luck! You'll be fine, once your first few weeks of frustration are over and you realize you've built yourself a foundation that'll never go away.