Learning Japanese

[Slache]

How are you doing it?

[Slache]

For context we have done:

• Japanese pronunciation trainer from Fluent Forever
• Hiragana & Katakana For Beginners
• Rapid Japanese 1
• Several Children's books
• 1/6 of Remembering The Kanji 1
• 1/6 of Duolingo

What we're doing:

• Japanese in 10 Minutes a Day
• Rapid Japanese 2
• Remembering The Kanji 1
• Duolingo
• Yotsuba
• Random translation exercises

What else I have:

• Japanese From Zero (he was too young when I introduced it)
• Hacking Japanese Supercourse (this is my spine)
• Tai Kim
• Tobira (this is college level but it was $5 at a used books sale and a $130 book so I nabbed it)

Considering:

• Pimsleur
• A better grammar workbook
• A game

[JenneinCA]

I would add italki or some other way of talking to native speakers.  Other than that I don’t know.  My kids went to Saturday school with the kids of second and third generation Japanese Americans.

-Jennefer

[Not_a_Number]

I dunno, but I'll follow, since DD8 is fairly gifted with languages and has expressed interest before. 

I would add in some immersion experiences, like maybe watching anime? We do Russian cartoons for Russian, and it's fun and doesn't require much of one. 

[Slache]

46 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I dunno, but I'll follow, since DD8 is fairly gifted with languages and has expressed interest before. 

I speak Spanish and I'm teaching them all to read Greek. Japanese is different! I'm trying to address reading, writing, listening and speaking all at their own pace. I'm using a combination of the Fluent Forever method and Nihongoshark (now gone).

For reading we've done this very expensive set which our library had and are now doing Yotsuba! with the English available for reference.

For writing I did Hiragana & Katakana for Beginners, a few free workbooks for games as extra practice, and now we're doing Japanese in 10 Minutes a Day. This is really all about practice and I'm not expecting him to learn anything. I'm stuck in between him knowing too much and not being ready for a formal grammar. Eta: He's currently going Remember the Kanji.

For listening I did the FF trainer, listened to the hiragana song over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and then progressed to Rapid Japanese. Next I'll probably use Pimsleur.

This is my speaking plan. It was written by a hive member who is extremely good at what she does. Eta: He's currently going Duolingo.

Edited October 23, 2020 by Slache

[MakerMom]

Mine are very young, but we are using TalkBox.Mom which has been great (we use Japanese every day!) For myself I used Tofugu's mnemonics to learn hiragana and katakana in a matter of days, and plan to use Genki for self study. I also listen to native speaker audio daily in the form of podcasts, music, television, etc. After I have a more solid foundation I plan to use iTalki for conversation practice.

[egao_gakari]

I know this is a very old thread, but @Slache and anybody else who might be interested--there is now a massive collection of totally free ebooks by the same group that published the very expensive ones. They are releasing new ones all the time and as long as the kiddos can read hiragana, they are good. (Most of the Level 0 books have furigana over the katakana, so they don't even have to be solid on katakana.) It's a lot of fun and a great vocabulary builder. Some of them even have audio recordings so you can hear a native read them aloud for you.

[Slache]

On 2/8/2021 at 9:45 AM, egao_gakari said:

I know this is a very old thread, but @Slache and anybody else who might be interested--there is now a massive collection of totally free ebooks by the same group that published the very expensive ones. They are releasing new ones all the time and as long as the kiddos can read hiragana, they are good. (Most of the Level 0 books have furigana over the katakana, so they don't even have to be solid on katakana.) It's a lot of fun and a great vocabulary builder. Some of them even have audio recordings so you can hear a native read them aloud for you.

This is awesome! Thank you!

[Condessa]

My little guy is doing a weekly tutoring session on LanguageConvo.com and practicing on duolinguo.  It looks like you have lots of great resources here.  

 

eta: Whoops, I didn't realize this was an old thread.

Edited February 12, 2021 by Condessa