Small story and Various questions about Japanese learning

[SleepyOne]

Unfortunately like jprspereira said, there’s no ultimate WK-equivalent for grammar yet, which means learning and reviewing it will require more effort.

Grammar practice can come in many forms. The workbook exercises for Genki often involve you composing your own sentences, and once you get a bit further along you’re asked to write journal entries. This ensures you know the grammar points, because you must know how to use them in order to construct sentences with them. You can post your journal entries on sites like italki for corrections.

When I say reading, I don’t mean reading actual native Japanese books yet since that’d be extremely arduous. I’m referring to things like 1. the content offered in textbooks (again, Genki offers some good practice reading, designed to quiz you on grammar you just learned), 2. NHK News Easy (the grammar they use is pretty simple to follow but great practice to refresh it nonetheless), 3. Graded readers (these also use more simple grammar and are designed with language learners in mind).

BTW, I don’t mean to imply that you should stay away from Bunpro. Since there is a free trial, you can always give it a whirl and see if it suits your reviewing needs. But I wanted to stress that there are additional forms of practice, and that reading is definitely a necessity because otherwise you have no knowledge of how to apply your new skills. Plus being able to read something is really encouraging.

[limao388]

Thank you sleepy. I totally agree with you and will follow your advices. Wk community is the best.

[jprspereira]

@limao388

O grande pereira, ja li tantos posts seus.

Ui, parceiro(a) da língua Portuguesa! Bem-vindo(a)! Espero que os meus posts tenham sido do seu agrado

@limao388

I dont feel safe just reading and not exercising

Have you checked the app HelloTalk? You can find natives of the Japanese language to do an language exchange That’s pretty much how I’ve been reinforcing my Japanese. I’d have to say that it’s the best way to do it. There they can correct you on your Japanese too while you help them both with English and Portuguese

[dunlewy]

I’m using Rocket language and it works on grammar, speaking, and writing. I absolutely love it. I have learned quickly, but have been putting more time with Kanji at the moment. Rocket Language is a paid program, but worth every penny, I think. www.RocketLanguages.com.

[ooooo]

@limao388

The internet was great at correcting my grammar and giving me practice.

Its great for Japanese, too. There is more native Japanese content then you could consume in a lifetime. I would suggest doing many of the things you did when learning English. The only trick is that Japanese is not nearly as “close” to you native language as English is. So you will have to do some textbook work to get started. But the same skills and activities you did to learn English (reading forums and websites, watching youtube videos and looking up words and grammar, listening to music and learning the lyrics, chatting with people, etc.) will also be your best Japanese teachers.

It hasn’t been mentioned here, but getting Rikichamp for your browser (hover J-J, J-E dictionary) is a great tool to allow you to start trying to read some Japanese web pages without the pain of looking every word up by hand.