Applying vocabulary to your sentences?

So I’m at the point where I’m now slowly transitioning my kanji and vocabulary knowledge. I wanted to know what is the most efficient strategy to introducing newly learned kanji or kanji you have yet to put into practice? When I try to practice writing, I tend to blank out as I wouldn’t really know where and how to practice writing the stuff. That’s for reading!

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It sounds like you might need more of a background in grammar if the issue is that you don’t know where to place the vocab. I recommend trying out Lingodeer (paid, but free trial), Duolingo (free, but less useful as you progress), or Kanshudo (free, sentence builder part). Each of these has you practice with the general sentence structure and building it. There’s also BunPro (paid), which is like Wanikani, but for grammar. However, it doesn’t have you practice building sentences, just filling in a specific grammar point.

Once you have a better feel for the order of things (or at least are blanking out less), I recommend giving the Japanese Sentence a Day Challenge a try. As a starting point, I recommend using new vocab or grammar in your posts, but they can really be about anything and often people have conversations. Sometimes you can get feedback on your writing as well about what you can improve. You’ll find people of all levels and experiences in the thread.

For just some general word placement advice, the main verb is last. The time, topic, and subject are typically closer to the front. Any direct objects are usually closer to the verb.

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I like to download apps and text with native Japanese people/ Japanese speakers. It seems like words I use in conversation often stick with me. 必要 (hitsuyou) which means “necessary” is something I’m able to recall much easier now after using it.

Feel free to add me on LINE if you have one and want to practice, my ID is keepitmelo74. I really only use line when I make friends with Japanese speakers and talk back and forth.

Best of luck!

One of the things that helped me is writing something in English and the translating it into Japanese with an italki tutor.

This way you’ll learn the natural way to express an idea instead of just trying to string the words you know together.

Personally, I basically just view my output as a consequence of my input, so I don’t hold myself to being able to use every word I know how to read.

Eventually I just naturally become able to form at least simple and understandable (if not correct) sentences and then I start practicing just general writing/speaking on lang-8, hellotalk or italki.

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How did I never come across Kanshudo! It is like a Japanese Language Wonderland!

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I definitely second this. It probably also helps if the sentence is silly or funny as long you put that vocab and grammar into practice, because silly sentences evoke emotions and make it easier to make abstract connections between words :slight_smile: .

For practicing kanji in words, browse through jisho.org for words that sound nice or remind you of something and write them down. For instance, you know 葉, which is used in 葉虫 (leaf beetle), 千葉, etc.

But other than that, try to drill grammar and write as much as possible. If needed, force yourself to create scenarios with the grammar structures you just learned to practice. For instance, if you learn/ed the 〜りする structure for listing activities, think of stuff you can chain like that. It can be as silly as stuff like “A diet is basically getting slim and gaining weight”. The topic doesn’t matter as long as you get that practice in.

Lastly, when you get better at grammar, don’t translate things from language A to Japanese and back again, but rather try to think in terms of the language structures you have in Japanese. They’re actually very flexible and you can do all sorts of language gymnastics :smiley: .

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