So after the onslaught of personal posts, we’re back to our regular content about Japan. This time around, I’m going to talk about seven bad habits to avoid while studying Japanese.
Now, I have been studying Japanese for almost three years (one and a half years in Malaysia, and almost a year in Japan), and in that time, I’ve made plenty of mistakes. Mistakes that slowed my progress, mistakes that cost me exams, mistakes that made communicating harder than it should have been, etc.
I still am making mistakes, actually–though I am improving, slowly but surely.
And I thought, rather than keeping such valuable experiences to myself, why not share it with fellow (and potential) Japanese learners? Many of these are stuff that I’ve done, while some I’ve observed from others. Try to bear these in mind as you make your journey towards proficiency in Japanese.
Learning Japanese from anime
I’m not entirely against learning Japanese from anime, but I am not for using it solely for your studies. This is because Japanese has different levels of politeness, and the one often used in anime is considered very, very, very rude. It’s not used in everyday conversation, and honestly shouldn’t be.
So if anime is the main source of your Japanese studies and you start speaking it based off what you’ve watched, you’re going to sound very crass.
Other than that, though, I think anime is a great and fun way to learn Japanese! Especially when you’re at a later stage of your learning where you can differentiate between polite and impolite speech. You get to learn lots of new words and phrases, and you’ll get used to the grammar and listening to Japanese speech. Definitely supplement your studies with anime, just don’t rely on it 100%.
Studying it on and off
We all have our off days where we just don’t feel like studying, myself included. But when it comes to Japanese, do your best to remain consistent. Because really, even missing one day of study is the equivalent of setting yourself back a couple of pages or even a chapter. It sounds ridiculous, but it really is true!
So try your best to study everyday and even if you don’t feel like studying it, at least do something that has to do with the language.
For instance, you could watch anime or a Japanese movie or drama; or you could listen to Japanese music; or you could listen to a Japanese podcast. Something, anything to do with the language. At least this way, you’re exposing yourself to the language without letting time go to waste.
Not doing enough research
One of the biggest mistakes I made while studying Japanese was not doing enough research. Specifically, not doing enough research on the amount of study I need to do in order to pass the JLPT. I mean, I had done a lot of research but apparently, not enough.
Why do I say this? Because I had thought that all I needed was one textbook to study for the JLPT N3, but as I soon found out, that is not the case at all. N5 and N4 are easy enough to study for (you can just rely on either “Minna no Nihongo” or “Genki” to get through them), but once you get to N3, that’s when things start to get a bit blurry. The list of grammar that each N3-level textbook provides is different, and thus, you’ll feel a bit lost in trying to prepare yourself for the exam. You’ll get frustrated and so will your Japanese teachers because they can’t predict what will come out in the exam either. You’re pretty much left on your own outside of class.
The solution to this problem? Study as much as you can for JLPT N3 (and I suppose for N2 and N1 as well) by using different textbooks.
And, well, do sufficient research on how much you need to study for each JLPT level.
Relying solely on school
Somewhat related to the first point, but definitely worth mentioning. Simply going to a Japanese school is not going to guarantee you proficiency in Japanese. There’s a lot more to it than that.
What they teach you in school won’t be enough to pass the JLPT, because what they teach won’t necessarily be at the JLPT level you’re at. Plus, going to school and doing homework just isn’t enough. What you need to do is make Japanese learning a part of your life, not just in school but outside of it as well. Study outside of school hours; listen to Japanese music; watch Japanese movies and dramas; get to know Japanese culture, etc.
Get into it as much as possible! Japanese is not an easy language, so you have to totally immerse yourself in it as much as you can.
Relying solely on textbooks
Alas, textbook Japanese doesn’t sound like proper Japanese. It sounds odd and stiff. It’s almost textbook English–it just doesn’t sound natural.
So what you want to do is to not rely on textbooks 100%. While they’re great for studying grammar, they’re not everything.
I find that the best way to study natural-sounding Japanese is, besides practicing with a native Japanese speaker, by watching Japanese dramas or movies. You can find plenty on Netflix to start off with. Now, not all of these are on Netflix, but for movies, I especially enjoyed “Let Me Eat Your Pancreas”, “Your Lie in April” and “ReLIFE”. As for dramas, I like “Erased” (love it!).
I’ve yet to watch it, but reality show “Terrace House” comes highly recommended as well for Japanese learning.
Not using the Japanese you’ve learned
This is one of the biggest mistakes that you can make, and one that I admittedly made often. I still do, but a lot less.
The reason why this is a big mistake is that it is so easy to forget what you’ve learned unless you use it. And honestly, for English speakers, the Japanese language takes a lot of getting used to. This is especially true in terms of grammar.
The grammar is so different from English that you need to speak it for quite a while in order to get used to it. So yeah, you can sound great on paper and all, but if you don’t speak it on a daily basis, you’re just going to lose everything you learned. That’s a lot of time, effort and money gone down the drain.
Treating Japanese as you would English
One of the first things that you need to remember is that Japanese is nothing like English. Save for a couple of English loan words, everything about the language is different. Most prominently, it has a different writing system (three, in fact!) and different grammar. In terms of grammar, Japanese has a SOV grammar structure, meaning that after the Subject (which usually isn’t even mentioned), everything else in the sentence comes before the verb. Which is the direct opposite of English.
For instance, the arrangement for the sentence “I eat pizza” in Japanese is “(I) pizza eat” ([Watashi wa] pizza wo taberu).
See what I mean?
Next, is that you should never directly translate English to Japanese. Many of us English speakers tend to think in English when we speak in Japanese, which results in us directly translating our sentences. And because Japanese grammar structure is the direct opposite of English, what you end up with is a horrid mess.
Another thing to remember is that there isn’t a Japanese equivalent for every English phrase out there. So yeah, rather than thinking in English from the get-go, start off remembering that Japanese is almost nothing like English
Familiarise yourself with the Japanese mindset and culture, and you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble.
