The best way to learn Japanese

The best way to learn Japanese is to study a single, comprehensive resource with curated, natural language presented in specific contexts, fill your study time efficiently, and then go out and use your Japanese.

The little details will differ a bit from person to person. But this is not an excuse to go designing your own study method from scratch.

Most people think that they are being productive by spending lots of time designing their own personal study system, or switching to a new one after they've made a bit of progress in the language.

Usually, this is just procrastination in disguise. Be sure you're being productive, not just active. (More on that idea here)

If it all seems like too much to think about, you could always just use NativShark, and we'll carry this mental load on your behalf.

What's the best way to learn Japanese?

Especially as a beginner, this is quite the question to consider. Nobody wants to spend years just finding the answer to this question so their studies can truly begin.

But the more research you do, the more study methods, resources, and differing opinions you come across.

What's the most effective? What will truly help me? What won't?

What can get me from not knowing how to even say "good morning" to being able to read and carry on conversations like a native speaker?

Many of our team members, including myself (Niko), have spent years searching for the answer to this question.

Throughout all of our journeys, we've all done things that were terribly inefficient in addition to things that really got our Japanese to the next level.

Let's take a look at some things we can do to improve our study methods.

Study natural language

Textbook, stiff Japanese is definitely an important thing to learn. Obviously, we want to know the proper way to build sentences, so strapping down and learning the rules is an important step to take.

But it's not the only step we should take. In everyday spoken Japanese, saying things in a 100% textbook way will often make you sound very unnatural.

Not only that, a lack of preparation for this type of language is likely to leave you lost when you leave the learning environment. Everything is just so different.

As students, we need to learn both textbook Japanese and the types of Japanese people use when speaking. Be sure that your study materials differentiate between the two (like NativShark does with formality markers).

If you don't see these distinctions being made, it's safe to assume that you're not being taught the way people speak and write in everyday life and media.

Use natural-sounding audio

A lot of resources, especially those aimed at beginners, have a tendency to slow down and overpronounce sentences to ensure that us learners can catch everything. Which maybe doesn't sound like a big deal at first.

Thing is, native speakers don't slow down their speech in normal conversations.

Even when you ask them to slow down and repeat what they just said, they may very well just say it at the same speed again without realizing it. That speed causes some sounds to be dropped completely, which is something that slow and over-pronounced audio does not prepare you for.

This applies to media too.

Imagine watching a show in your native language where everybody talked at a slower-than-normal speed, and pronounced everything absolutely perfectly. I don't know about you, but I would go nuts trying to watch that. It just isn't how people speak.

So we shouldn't train ourselves to listen to this unnatural speech.

In order to improve our study time, we'll want a resource that has audio recorded by native speakers who are talking at a normal speed, and therefore giving us normal intonation and pronunciation.

Otherwise, we won't be ready for the real world when we venture outside of these resources.

Choose a path that reaches advanced levels

Finding a resource that takes you from no knowledge all the way to advanced, let alone beyond advanced, is pretty difficult.

And sadly, it's pretty inefficient to have to switch resources, especially at the intermediate level and up.

Switching methods and resources again and again can put a hold on your progress.

You're likely to burn a lot of precious study time just trying to find where you need to start in the new resource.

On the other end, you might find a resource that is too far above your level, and you feel like you're drowning in the amount of new unexplained information that it assumes you know.

For efficiency and minimizing frustration caused by resource switching, it's generally best to find and stick with a resource that can take you all the way to the top.

Not a resource that drops you off before you can reach your goals.

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This article explains how far you can go with NativShark on your study journey.

Reinforce and review what you've learned

Learning a lot is great. Forgetting what you've learned, not so much. We'll want to use a system that lets you review what you've learned efficiently.

One effective way is to use a spaced repetition system, which shows you material that you've learned just before you become in danger of forgetting it. You don't have to think about when to review what. The system handles that for you.

A system that builds upon itself is extremely useful for this, too.

It will get chaotic in a hurry if the resource you're using sections off vocab to individual, separate lessons, and rarely uses it again outside of that lesson. Even more so if it teaches you grammar and uses example sentences with grammar that has not been brought up to you yet, without giving even a quick explanation of what is going on.

A system that only introduces one new piece of information at a time will keep things calm so you can focus solely on the information that the lesson wants you to focus on.

Even better if it builds upon those pieces of information while keeping them relevant and fresh in your mind moving into future lessons.

The same applies to vocab.

Lessons that use example sentences with only one new piece of vocab help you get more of it into your brain without overwhelming you and leaving you just trying to understand the meanings of the words, rather than how they work together to form a sentence.

Study curated content

A little too often, a word you use a lot in your native language ends up never being used in Japanese, or vice versa.

Sometimes, those words don't even exist or are expressed in a completely different way that you won't find in your average dictionary.

Us learners tend to have a pretty hard time differentiating what words are useful and which ones are plain old useless. We need a native speaker to key us in on that one.

So whatever vocab list you're using, you'll want it to be hand-picked by a native speaker.

There are plenty of vocab lists out there, with near-endless words that you can memorize to your heart's content. But!

We'll want to skip over the auto-generated ones that pull from as many sources as possible* because they end up catching a lot of weird words in the process.

*This is especially true due to the nature of written language online, even more so in Japanese. It tends to be extremely textbook, and people don't talk like that in real life. Imagine if someone only spoke in the same way newspaper headlines are written. You probably don't want to study that exclusively.

For similar reasons, you'll want to be cautious about making your own lists for yourself too.

As a non-native speaker, you'll have tendency to choose words that are useful in your native language, but not Japanese.

Similarly, you may find yourself skimming over some of the most useful words out there that Japanese natives use all the time, but are uncommon or don't exist in your native language.

Learn kanji and vocab in specific contexts

Language works in context.

Learning things in isolation means you'll have a harder time remembering a certain word or kanji. On top of that, you'll have no idea how to use and apply it thanks to the lack of context.

The most efficient way to learn kanji is with vocab examples.

Breaking kanji down so you can understand how they're made is valuable for helping us piece them together in our head, and mnemonics can be used to keep these parts all lined up in our memories.

But, if we have no vocab to help us remember all these characters, we didn't really learn how to use it, and therefore did not fully learn said kanji.

Similarly, the most efficient way to learn vocab is with example sentences.

Learning vocab out of context will do you no good. Due to the highly contextual nature of Japanese, you'll want to be looking at natural sentences made by native speakers so you can fully grasp the many meanings of a given piece of vocab.

You'll also want to learn these natural sentences alongside a situation in which this sentence can be said, as this can vastly change the meaning.

Otherwise, like with kanji, you will not have fully learned said piece of vocab.

Fill low-quality study time

Even if we'd like to, we can't be sitting in front of a screen or holding a book all the time.

Bummer, I know.

We have to go places, drive cars, cook meals, sit on trains, exercise, question our existence on this planet. All types of things that we do every day require portions of our attention, meaning that we can't be full-focus studying Japanese all the time.

But that doesn't mean we can't get in some low-focus study time.

During times like those listed above, we can have some earbuds in and we can be getting listening exposure to Japanese.

This could be done with Shadow Loops or things like podcasts and audiobooks. Then you can get passively more used to the flow and intonation of Japanese while you're busy doing other things.

Use your Japanese

The methods discussed above are great ways to make serious progress in your Japanese.

However, it's not the only step.

Think about the reason why you're learning Japanese, and go do that thing.

This will look a bit different for everyone.

If you like games, play them in Japanese. If you like anime, watch anime in Japanese. Reading? Read books in Japanese. You might also talk to friends in Japanese, or do any mix of these.

You might try something completely different as well. There are no wrong ideas here if it's something you enjoy.

Especially when you first start, you'll likely be spending a lot of time looking things up. If you're talking with a language partner, you might struggle to understand them and/or express yourself.

This is perfectly okay. Using your Japanese in real situations like this is just another way to continue your learning, it isn't a test.

It's also helpful to start small. If you're reading a book, even a sentence a day is a big step at first.

Just keep in mind that to improve at something, you have to go out and do that thing.

There is not a singular moment where we are suddenly able to understand Japanese perfectly. It comes with time, consistency, a learning-focused resource that fills the above points out, and practice with real Japanese in real situations.

It won't come if we never branch out from our learning-focused resources.

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More information on how to start using your Japanese in the wild here.

If you're interested in specifics and solving common troubles that Japanese learners encounter, than you may find the Learning Japanese Essentials Guide to be helpful