The next study days

From here on out, your path is clear:

Step 1: Log into NativShark.

Step 2: Press the “Study Now” button.

On your journey, you’ll reach a few significant markers. When you reach them will depend on how fast you progress through the system, but let’s talk about what they are and how to approach them here.

First things first

You’ll might come across some things that you feel like you’ll never be able to remember.

The most important action you can take about this is not worrying about it.

There will come a day where you don’t even remember that you remembered something, and then it will show up and you’ll be able to understand it no problem and you’re going to feel amazing.

These are the joys of studying.

Just keep showing up, do what you can, and then show up the next day.

We introduce some words in the travel section (the first 18 Units) that might be a little bit harder, so don’t worry about having them down perfectly, or being able to produce them without any thinking. Especially names of stations and such.

That will simply happen with time and consistency.

You got this.

If you ever feel lost or hopeless, know that you aren’t on the study journey alone. Join the NativShark community and please ask us for advice and share your victories with us as well.

Units 19, 20, and 21 (Learning the kanji)

On Unit 19 and 20, we’ll get a lesson explaining the kanji and then kanji flashcards will start coming into our Units and reviews when we hit Unit 21.

The lessons will explain the details, but here’s some of the most important things to remember as far as mindset goes:

You do not need to memorize kanji perfectly, especially the kanji flashcards and the English equivalent found on them.

If you have the general idea of the meaning, you’re perfect.

If you don’t, then you’re still going to be okay.

Seeing them once in your flashcards and hitting the smiley face will help majorly in having a stress-free study experience.

Kanji flashcards are in the system to make you feel slightly more comfortable around kanji.

If you can recognize the kanji in a word, but you can’t recognize it by itself on a kanji flashcard, then you have majorly succeeded. Our NativShark team members who have passed the JLPT N1 years ago are also the same, because knowing most kanji in isolation with an English word is a generally unhelpful skill.

Kanji are just building blocks for words and ideas. You’ll learn these words and ideas in the rest of the NativShark system.

Do I need to write kanji?

No.

You do not need to be able to write them from memory (or even at all, for 99.999% of learners) and writing them can often lead to frustration because it offers us very little return on our effort.

And oh boy is writing them a lot of effort.

But what if I want to?

If writing is something you are indeed interested in (cuz it looks fun or such), then I would suggest starting a journal and only writing kanji that are relevant to your life.

It’s much more relaxing and you’re actually practicing the language in context, and more importantly, training your production abilities while doing so.

If you’re new to Japanese, starting out with a short sentence a day can help make it manageable.

But if you write them 20 times each while going through kanji flashcards every day, you’re probably going to hate studying within a week or two. Or even like 2 days.

Always remember: take it easy going through the system and you will learn them in context.

Just show up, go through your reviews and your Unit, and go easy on yourself. Especially with kanji flashcards.

Learning Japanese is a marathon. Not a sprint. Show up and you’re succeeding.

Unit 22 (Vocabulary flashcards)

Starting in Unit 22, we’ll be seeing vocab flashcards in our Units.

Early vocab flashcards sadly don’t have context on them. But once we get into Phase Two and beyond, every single vocab flashcard has a situation in which the sentence is said right at the top when they are introduced.

While we don’t have the situation on the early cards, the translation and literal of the sentence will be very helpful in getting us the idea of our vocab shown here.

Keep an eye out for any notes shown in the i at the top right corner (labeled 1) which you can click on for more information, and our formality marker (labeled 2) in the top left.

Also note how there is an undo button (labeled 3) at the bottom, and an archive button (labeled 4) as well if you feel comfortable and don’t want to see this word in your reviews.

Once you run out of free trial, you’ll have to subscribe to continue your studies.

Here’s some information of the different subscriptions and what you can do with them.