On the way of learning Japanese, are you still going smoothly? I recently summarized 10 facts that might be your obstacles to learn Japanese. This week I will introduce the first 5. Let’s see if they can help you.
1. 100%-accurate-pronunciation “obsessive-compulsive disorder”.
Learning is a process of accumulating the knowledge. You don’t have to strive for perfection of pronunciation at every step. Time or say the experience can solve and consolidate the defect, especially the pronunciation problem.
2. Progress disorder
The study might be very likely to fail if you don’t have an ordered learning plan. I suggest you make a long-term plan and a short-term plan. The short-term plan could be based on the actual situation of yourself with flexible adjustments. For example, how many vocabularies should be memorized in three days, how many pages of the textbook should be read in a week, and so on. By doing so, the long-term plan could be completed through every “small target”.
3. Cannot memorize the vocabularies no matter how hard you’ve tried
A tip for this problem is to memorize vocabularies by those phrases of fixed combination together. You can also try to memorize new words with the context in the textbook.
4. Unbalanced time allocation for listening, speaking, reading and writing
If you have failed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test for many times, I believe the reason is the unbalanced time allocation for listening, speaking, reading and writing. You might be wondering there is no test for speaking and writing, why do I need to take the trouble to practice it. Now I’m telling you a fact: good speaking would result in good listening, and good writing would result in good reading. No doubt, indeed.
5. Poor knowledge absorption
You might have wondered for a long while that why are you still not able to “handle” Japanese very well after memorizing a quite number of vocabularies and finishing many textbooks. “Handling” a language is like using a tool. You have to practice all the way through until it becomes a part of your body. Though, the process is absolutely tedious.