My Japanese learning mistakes
I’ve made many mistakes in the past four years of studying Japanese, in 2 months time it will have been five years since I officially started. I never thought I would continue to study Japanese for this long, but hey, here I am still going … somewhat strong …? It has been quite a journey and I’m not really ashamed to talk about all my mistakes and downs which I had whilst studying this beautiful but complicated language.
Self evaluation
This is my self evaluation of my progress so far. You probably remember your score cards when going to school showing how well, or how bad you did for all your classes. When you are self studying, you don’t get this kind of score card so you aren’t really certain if you are actually improving or not. I enjoy self evaluating myself every now and then as it can be quite enjoyable and a good excercise.
Biggest mistakes
The 2 biggest mistakes which I’ve been making are not speaking enough and focusing too much on Kanji specifically. Because of that, my progress was kind of slow and it’s something I really need to start working on./
Kanji
I have been practicing Kanji and their stroke orders since day one and have yet to complete the whole list of Kanji until Junior high school grade. Every time when I get close to completing this list, I take a break and forgot most of them, making me feel like I better re-learn them so I really won’t forget them. This has been taking so much time away from me which I could have spend on studying Grammar or Vocab.
Solution
For every problem there is a solution. There are 2 things I could do, one being to stop focusing on Kanji all together and start focusing on the other aspects of the Japanese language.
The other option is to just force myself to finally finish that list and review regularly so they stay inside my head. This may look counter productive, but at least studying Kanji has a clear end goal. Studying Vocab and Grammar does not really have a clear end goal as there are no lists of every single grammar point of vocab word.
Speaking
My speaking could have improved a lot in the past year of living in Japan, however I kept avoiding all moments that I could have had to talk in Japanese. I can blame this on being an English teacher and the fact that we are forced to talk only in English at work, but I have to stop making excuses so I can fix this.
Solution
The solution to this is quite simple, become more confident to speak Japanese towards my wife and my colleagues. The main reason is me being too comfortable to talk in English with everybody around me, I need to go more out of my comfort zone so I become more confident talking in Japanese to people.
Evaluate yourself
The best piece of advice that I could give you is to self evaluate yourself regularly so you notice when you are getting side tracked. Self studying is something powerful and you can go as fast or as slow as you want to go because there is no teachers which decides the pace. This can be a good or a bad thing. Nobody to see if you actually do your work, nobody to rate you to see on what parts you can improve, nobody to keep you motivated or disciplined.
