Hey guys, awhile ago I bought the Japanese for Everyone textbook, and while it’s been good for learning some basic sentence structures, I’m feeling that it’s not very effective for me when it comes to actually learning and retaining written/spoken Japanese. I really like the way WaniKani works, because I have the pressure of knowing that if I don’t do my reviews, the backlog will only get worse. I have trouble motivating myself to work through a textbook without that sort of pressure.
The best solution would be to find an in-person class, as that’s how I learn best, but unfortunately there’s none where I live. Do you know of any online classes or software that teaches Japanese and works like WaniKani – as in, there’s pressure to do your lessons, lest you lose progress or create a pile-up?
Italki. You can find actual teachers there. They can build a study program with you (whether it’s reading a chapter of a grammar book per session, give you homework, etc).
Once you find a teacher that you enjoy, try getting a 30mins class with them. If you enjoyed that you saw, schedule classes in advance (not just the next one). This will force you to keep up with it.
In terms of prices, you can find teachers for $15/hour, but most go around $20/hour. Not sure if that’s too much for you… but even if you can only have like 2 classes/month, I’d say it’s totally worth it. Doing this thing called Japanese alone is hard.
Here are my suggestions Bunpro.com (very cheap, only about $30 a year. It’s basically Wanikani but for grammar)
You can use Hinative.com to practice writing and get corrected by natives from Japan. (It’s free unless you want premium, but that’s not needed) Kaniwani.com (Wanikani except it review the vocab you’ve learned. You get the English word and type in the Japanese one) Duolingo.com might be good for beginners, and it has a scoring system that might motivate you to keep up with it. It’s only for beginners though, so you won’t learn much more than essential grammar.
I have a checklist/To-do list that I use to write down all I need to do for Japanese that day. Usually that’s enough stress to remind me that I have to learn some Japanese. If I don’t learn one day, I have to push that to the next day, so it motives me to work everyday so I don’t build up things to do.
Anki might work too. You make your own sets (For vocab or kanji, etc.) And it will use SRS for you. it lets you know when your reviews are ready so that might help.
One last thing! I noticed you said it’s sometimes hard to get through a textbook. I had that same problem at first I used Tae Kim’s guide to grammar (And his website http://www.guidetojapanese.org) Which were pretty fun to use. There’s also Maggiesensei.com Which is useful and has some pretty entertaining example sentences.
LingoDeer is similar to DuoLingo, but better developed for Japanese. I tried DuoLingo’s Japanese module, but didn’t enjoy it very much. I found LingoDeer far superior.
Human Japanese is a good app/computer based textbook with built in audio. I really like the way they introduce new points, and it’s completely designed for self-study, unlike something like “Japanese for Everyone” which works best in a classroom situation.
I used Tae Kim’s guide to grammar (And his website