I’ve taken a bit of a break from Japanese the last few years because of work. I’m trying to get back into a good routine but am finding a lot of the resources I used to rely on have changed or dissapeared and wanted to find out what other people used.
My routine used to consist of the below list. I know there’s gaps, but I have several other time-consuming hobbies and have always expected learning Japanese to take me a substantial amount of time.
Memrise. I used this daily to learn vocab. I mainly used the JLPT vocab community courses and a couple of others depending on what I found interesting. (Quit as community courses will be deleted by end of year)
Wanikani. I used this daily to learn Kanji.
Genki textbooks.I used this daily, a couple of pages a day. Used to learn grammar and I suppose a bit of listening.
Lang-8. I used this daily to practice the exercises and grammar points in the Genki textbooks and get feedback about any errors I’d made. (Site has been deleted)
Italki. I used this once a week, more when I could afford it, to practice speaking and listening. Part of my lesson would be dedicated to the Genki exercises I’d struggled with or any grammar questions I’d had, and the rest was for conversation practice.
Duolingo. Used daily. Quit due to AI and other recent changes, and tbh it never really worked for me that much so it didn’t take much for me to jump ship.
Now my routine consists of:
Anki daily for vocab
Wanikani daily for kanji. Recently reset to a lower level to recap kanji I’d forgotten.
Genki textbooks daily 1-3 pages for grammar
Italki will be once a week once I’ve finished moving house for speaking and listening
I’m doing the Genki exercises, but feel like I’m missing feedback that I used to get from lang-8 and I know I could do with more listening practice. I’m in the process of moving house and can’t afford atm to pay monthly subscriptions for anything, but I’ve tried a lot of the more obvious free resources and haven’t really found anything that I really liked.
If anyone has any suggestions I’d really appreciate it!
I have never used Lang-8, but I recently saw some posts on this forum that IIRC indicated that a possible ‘replacement site’ was in the works - if I find the post(s) I will add links to them here.
That’d be amazing, thank you! I’d had a google to see if there were any alternatives but didn’t think to check in the WK posts! I’ll have a look as well
You’ve just absolutely made my week, thank you very much! Been feeling a little dejected as so many of the resources I used to love had gone or changed and I’m feeling so much more positive now thank you
I will have to actually check that out, along with the Lang-8 alternative - but I do suffer big-time from the “kid in the candy shop syndrome”, because these days there is such a proliferation of (and richness of) Japanese language learning and practice resources that it’s easy to get lost in trying out the latest shiny new toy rather than building up a stable, practical, and effective routine.
Lang 8 only just ended its service for long-time users in February. The creator of the new Nyan-8 site is a longtime Lang 8 user. Feels & looks like the old Lang 8 & many of the old users have migrated across.
Totally agree. I have a similar kid-in-a-candyshoo problem with all the great language learning resources out there, but Lang 8’s real asset is the opportunity to make Japanese friends who you can communicate with in Japanese as well as in English.
Sorry it’s taken me a while to reply- I ended up in hospital
I looked into bunpro before and hadn’t realised that your access continues after the free trial runs out- for some reason I thought your account got locked if you didn’t pay for a subscription after the trial. But I’ve been using it and thanks so much for mentioning it, I’m loving it so far!
