work hard

One small thing you can do to further expose yourself to your target language is to change the language of your social media account! It’s a small change that forces you to get accustomed to the alphabet and new vocabulary.

Below is everything I think is necessary to navigate through Twitter in Japanese. To set your language to Japanese, simply go to Settings and Privacy > Account > Language, and set the language to “日本語 ー Japanese”!

Some of these translations are not direct!

TOP BAR

ホーム　Dashboard

モーメント　Moments

通知（つうち）Notifications

メッセージ　Direction Messages

キーワード検索（けんさく）Search Twitter

ツイート　Tweet

DROP DOWN MENU

プロフィール　Profile

リスト　Lists

モーメント　Moments

オートプロモート　Subscriptions

Twitter広告（こうこく）Twitter Advertisements

アナリティクス　Analytics

設定とプライバシー（せってい）Settings & Privacy

ヘルプセンター　Help center

キーボードショートカット　Keyboard shortcuts

ログアウト　Logout

COMPOSING A TWEET

いまどうしてる？　What’s happening?

別のツイートを追加（べつのツイートをついか）Add another tweet (start a thread)

キャンセル　Cancel

TWEET OPTIONS

ツイートへのリンクをコピー　Copy link to this tweet

ツイートをサイトに埋め込む（うめこむ）Embed this tweet

○○さんをミュート　Mute [person]

○○さんをブロックする　Block [person]

ツイートを報告する（ほうこくする）Report tweet

モーメントに追加（ついか）Add to moment

PROFILE

プロフィールを編集（へんしゅう）Edit profile

フォロー　Following

フォロワー　Followers

いいね　Likes

ツイートと返信（へんしん）Tweets and replies

メディア　Media

画像と動画（がぞうとどうが）Pictures and videos

固定されたツイート（こてい）Pinned tweet

おすすめのユーザー　Who to follow

○○○○年○月に登録（とうろく）Registration date

誕生日（たんじょうび）Birthday

MESSAGES

メッセージを作成（さくせい）Send direct message

すべてを既読にする（きどくにする）Mark all as read

TWITTER INFORMATION

Twitterについて　About

ヘルプセンター　Help Center

規約（きやく）Terms

プライバシーポリシー　Privacy Policy

クッキー　Cookies

広告について（こうこく）Advertisements

ブランド　Brand

アプリ連携（れんけい）Applications

採用情報（さいようじょうほう）Jobs

マーケティング　Marketing

広告掲載方法（こうこくけいさいほうほう）Advertise

開発者（かいはつしゃ）Developer

SETTINGS

ユーザー名（めい）Username

メールアドレス　Email

言語設定（げんごせってい）Language settings

タイムゾーン　Timezone

国（くに）Country

動画ツイート（どうが）Video tweets

動画の自動再生（どうがのじどうさいせい）Video automatic start

タイムライン　Timeline

重要な新着ツイートをトップに表示（じゅうようなしんちゃくツィートをトップにひょうじ）Show important tweets at the top

全ツイート履歴（ぜんついーとりれき）Your twitter archive

アカウントを削除する（さくじょ）Deactivate your account

OTHER SETTINGS

現在のパスワード（げんざい）Current password

新しいパスワード（あたらしい）New password

Hey there! There are actually quite a few recommended sites for Japanese learners, so I’ll link them right now :)

Japanese IO – I’ve used this site quite a few times and I love the interface! The design is really sleek and “to the point,” so there’s no distractions from what you’re trying to do, which is practice reading Japanese. It also has a great library and look-up feature.

朝日学生新聞社 – This is the “kid’s version” of the more adult 朝日新聞社. If you don’t feel that you’re quite up for the adult version, test out the version geared towards kids. They have fewer articles, but there’s plenty for a learner to pick through.

NHK NEWS EASY – I’m almost positive this is one of the most famous ones for learners. It’s similar to Asahi’s kid newspaper – articles are condensed with easier kanji and vocabulary, and it’s geared towards children, so learners can spend some time combing through updated articles and testing their skills.

Yahoo! Kids – More short news articles geared towards easier-to-understand Japanese.

MATCHA – A fun magazine similar in style to NHK EZ.

Watanoc – Another magazine-type site with a variety of articles.

Traditional Japanese Stories – Get your hands on some easily printed Japanese stories that are told to children. Great for language skills and culture! Similar to English pop culture stories (like Cinderella and so on), Japan has its own fairytales that are occasionally referenced.

Fuku Musume’s Fairy Tale Collection – More stories!

World of チョコチョコ – These are beginner stories, but as you progress you can read other stories on this website.

EhonNavi – Read hundreds of Japanese picture books for free!

If you’re looking for more advanced content…

NHK – Japan’s national broadcaster. You can read articles as well as stream audio and video (may be blocked depending on location).

毎日新聞 – Moderate/left-leaning national newspaper

朝日新聞 – Left-leaning national newspaper

読売新聞 – Conservative national newspaper

東洋経済オンライン – A well-known business and finance magazine.

Project Gutenberg (Japanese) – Get access to a ton of out-of-print and classical books for free.

小説家になろう – A site where authors can publish their works online in exchange for reviews.

青空文庫 – Another site where you can get older and out-of-print novels.

University of Virginia Japanese Text Initiative – Another place to access novels in Japanese for free (with the option to read them with furigana).

ComicWalker – Free manga from the publisher Kadokawa. There’s an app too!

最前線 – You can read some manga online for free.

コミコ – More free Japanese manga available here!

キナリノ – A woman’s lifestyle blog which covers fashion, cooking, decor, and more!

Magazine Lib – You can read PDFs of Japanese magazines.

1000文字小説 – A place where users can submit 1000 characters or less stories. 

I also highly recommend starting a Twitter (if you don’t already have one) and following Japanese accounts. I follow a lot of feminist and political accounts so that I’m learning words relevant to my interests, as well as interacting with people that are discussing topics of interest to me (i.e. women and their place in Japanese society).

If you’re curious, you can find me on Twitter at @sydney0313 :)

I hope this list proves useful to you! (And others.)

I have restructured the folders to make them easier to use and managed to add almost all languages requested and then some

Repost of my notion template because tumblr really hates links huh

Aww man you’re just too sweet. I’m still in the process of learning too. 💗

That intermediate plateau is the hardest thing to overcome. It’s something that was talked a lot about in some of the second language acquisition courses I took back in uni. Let’s delve further into it, because this is something that all language learners will struggle with, regardless of what language you’re learning.

What is the Intermediate Plateau?

👆 a visual representation of the plateau lol

When you first start learning a new language, most learners experience quick and satisfying progress. “Oh man, learning the “te” form was way easier than I thought it’d be!” or “Okay, I got this list of verbs down right away!” “Alright, I got this hiragana down!” 

But then you move on to the kanji. The whole kudasaru, yaru, kureru, ageru, sashiageru, morau, itadaku mess, and you start to struggle a bit. But you can still do it! You’re still learning the words and the grammar and it’s challenging, but you can feel your progress and success. 

But then you finish your textbooks (Probably Genki I, Genki II, and An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese), and suddenly those bursts of success become less and less, until you can no longer feel any progress. 

You read manga and you see lots of words you know, but lots more words that you don’t know. You watch anime and you can catch some sentences, but there are still a lot that you wouldn’t have understood without the English subtitles to help you out. 

This feeling of a lack of progress, of a stagnation, is called the “intermediate plateau.”

My Experiences with the Intermediate Plateau

I tackled the Intermediate Plateau twice: with spoken Japanese and written Japanese. 

I’ve been lucky to have very good listening comprehension and an ability to “fill in the gaps.” After finishing Genki I, II, and An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, I could basically follow most spoken conversations. There were words I didn’t know, but through context I was able to make educated guesses at what they meant. However, I was stuck using simpler words when I spoke, and it was so frustrating to be able to understand the words, yet be unable to recall them and use them when I wanted to. 

Then I graduated and moved to Japan. Oh man, I thought I was such hot stuff. “I studied Japanese for 5 years, and I even studied Classical Japanese. I’m gonna have such an easy time of it here.”

…It took me about three days of living in Japan to realize that I was absolutely illiterate. I couldn’t understand any of the visa application forms or what they were telling me I needed to provide. Misunderstood the times I had to have the garbage put outside because I had never seen the kanji 迄（まで, “until, by”) before. Couldn’t read most billboards. 

Especially with that kanji for “made” 迄. That was what really made me realize that I was at the plateau kanji-wise. You learn the particle まで in your first year. It was something I could use perfectly. But I hadn’t even known that there was a kanji for it until I tried to take out my trash out and found out that I was supposed to have it in the bin BY 9:30, not AFTER 9:30, like I had guessed it meant. :(

To pour salt into the wound, I have been able to read in English since I was 3 years old. I literally cannot remember a time I could not read. It is one of my favorite pastimes and I also do creative writing. This made the fact that I couldn’t read all-the-more frustrating.

How I Overcame the Plateau

I took that frustration and I turned it into fuel. I vowed to learn ALL THE KANJI. I started using the website and app WaniKani obsessively. I’m here to tell you, that app is what made me literate. It is worth every single penny if you already have a good grasp on the language but your kanji is weak, like me. 

Basically, it teaches you 2,000 kanji and 6,000 reinforcing vocabulary across 60 levels. It doesn’t group the kanji necessarily by JLPT level. Rather, it groups them by radicals and frequency more or less. Each level will introduce 3-4 radicals, and then 10-15 kanji that use those radicals. It quizzes you on their on-yomi and kun-yomi, gives you mnemonics to remember them, and then once you’ve answered them all correctly enough times, it introduces vocabulary that uses those kanji, further reinforcing the readings and increasing your vocabulary. As a former language teacher and studier of second language acquisition, I am here to tell you that this method works. And it’s fun. It doesn’t feel like studying. 

I also started reading Rurouni Kenshin. Even today, it is a challenging read for me. Back then, it would take me days to read just one chapter. But I wrote down every new word in a notebook, and also saved them to my dictionary app, Akebi. 

To this day, this dictionary is my lifeline. You can make vocabulary lists in there, so I have a list for each book or series I’m reading, along with a list of words I find just everyday in conversation or news or something. It’s got a simple flashcard quiz feature for each list too! Seriously, if you’re an Android user, I highly recommend this app. It’s free!

Those were my two main study methods. The more kanji I learned how to read, obviously I was able to read better.

The really fascinating thing about kanji is that they’re like Legos. You can stick them together to make any word you want, really. So if you understand each kanji and remember its pronunciation, even if you see/hear a word for the first time, you can put together the meaning piece by piece.

Because I understood more kanji and could recall their readings, I could hear a new word in a conversation and think to myself, “Okay, we’re talking about how Hokkaido doesn’t get as much snow as it used to. This word ‘ondanka’ must be…温 (おん, heat) 暖 (だん, heat) 化 (か, change). Oh! ‘global warming!’” 

So when I overcame the kanji plateau, I simultaneously overcame the spoken plateau. Knowing the kanji gave me the power to hear a new word in a certain context and infer what kanji must be used for that word, and therefore what that word meant. 

My Advice to You

For me, the key to overcoming the plateau in Japanese was studying more kanji. So I recommend that you keep studying kanji and keep reading. But make sure that they are reading materials that you love!! If you’re not interested in what you’re reading, you’ll run out of steam. 

Another really important thing is to be cognizant of the progress you’ve made. For example, maybe you have a Japanese song you’ve been listening to for years, and for the first time today you picked out a new word–one that you just studied the other day. Pat yourself on the back at every victory, no matter how small it may seem! There’s proof of your progress.

Since I ALWAYS struggled with learning vocabulary, I went to the library and borrowed every book about language learning that I could find! I will list different methods down below. I hope they‘re as helpful for you as they are for me! Also, this will be kind of a long post, so I apologize.

Firstly, it‘s important to acknowledge that there are different learning-types, and we all learn differently, so there‘s no guarantee that these will work for you!

Repetition of Vocabulary

1. after a couple of hours

2. after a day

3. after a week

4. after one month

5. after 3-4 months

It‘s also important to remember that you should only study a word/phrase until you know it. Everything else will be a waste of time. You should still repeat the words like I said above.

Different methods:

-Mind mapping

-Arrange the words into groups

-Structure things (e.g. vegetables: beans, carrots, tomatoes)

-Order things after similarities/differences

-Gradations (e.g. temperatures, months, time etc)

-Learn with pictures

-Step by step (e.g. ordering food in a restaurant)

It is important that you change things up and not study everything the same way every time! Your brain needs changes to understand things or you won’t be able to use the words in an actual conversation.

Other things you can do:

-Watch Videos in your target language

-Listen to music

-Record yourself saying the vocabulary and listen to it while you study

-Read read read, honestly just try to read as much in your target language as possible

-Try to think in your target language. Describe your surroundings to yourself, count things

-learn about the things you‘re interested in. If you’re interested in fantasy, learn those fantasy words fam

- never learn more than 30-40 words a day. Recommend would be 8-10 so you actually remember them -> Quality not Quantity!

-consistency is key

-some days it just won’t work and that‘s okay. Just try again tomorrow

-put random words/sheets with words on places where you will see them, e.g the bathroom mirror or the fridge or the inside of the door. You will read them all the time and will probably remember them way easier because of this.

I hope this was at least kind of helpful. I think the most important part for me to realize was that your brain needs changes in order to learn new things. If you just read one word 10 times you won’t remember it.

Say it, write it down, listen to it and write it down in a different context again. Read the words to your Axolotl.

Context is so so so important and will help you to remember words way easier.

Hi loves! I don’t know if anyone actually wants this but here’s another writing challenge. Let me know if there are repeats from last month!

Also, I would like to give shoutouts to the following lovely people for consistently keeping up with last month’s challenge. I’m proud of you guys and thanks for playing (and sorry if I forgot anyone)! @kulmvihm @slightly-weird-book-worm @tari-elenion @sourjen @almostapolyglot @doitforthek-s 

If you don’t know about this challenge: Want to maintain or improve your writing skills in your target language this summer? Try this 30-day writing challenge for June: Every day, answer the following prompts in your target language (in a personal journal or in a tumblr post). Good luck!

What traits make someone attractive to you?

What is your zodiac sign? Do you think it is accurate? Why?

Name a weird habit and a common habit of yours. 

Describe your favorite scent and why.

How is your life better than it was a year ago?

Name some of your favorite blogs and why you love them! (Be sure to translate them into their language if they don’t know your target language).

What is one tradition you have with your family or friends?

What is your ideal date, or an ideal day with a friend?

Do you ever plan on having kids? Why?

3 strange facts about you.

Write a letter to future self 10 years from now.

What is something you did recently that made you proud of yourself?

What did you eat today (or if you haven’t eaten, what do you plan on eating)?

Something that made you cry recently (or not so recently).

Something you’re proud of.

Put your music on shuffle. Translate some lyrics of the first song that comes on.

Name a place you would seriously move to.

Describe a weird dream that you’ve had.

Name a fictional character who you identify with.

Write whatever’s on your mind :) (can you tell I’m running out of ideas?)

What does self love mean to you?

What’s in your bag/backpack/purse/etc?

What are you looking forward to next month?

Again, write your to-do list in your target language.

Why did you create your blog?

What was the best year for music? Translate some song titles from that year. 

What do you do when you’re home alone?

How do you express your creativity?

Describe your childhood room.

What are some healthy choices you have made this week, and what are some decisions you are going to make to be healthier? (diet, mental health, productivity…)

Goals for next month?

Hi everyone, I’m back with another writing challenge for you! I tried my best, but please let me know if I had any repeats from last month. 

If you don’t know about this challenge: Want to maintain or improve your writing skills in your target language this summer? Try this 30-day writing challenge for June: Every day, answer the following prompts in your target language (in a personal journal or in a tumblr post). Good luck!

Translate the first few sentences of your favorite book into your language (make sure to include the author and title!!).

If you could live in any era (i.e. the roaring ‘20s), what would it be and why?

Write a summary of your favorite TV show or movie.

List 3-5 facts about your country (or your family’s country of origin).

What are 5-8 songs that would be on your summer playlist? Translate their titles into your target language.

Look up and list 3-5 slang terms in your language.

Describe your favorite summer outfit.

Name 3 things that have made you smile this week.

Write today’s to-do list in your target language.

How will you improve as a student next year?

What is one goal you hope to achieve by the end of this month?

Name a funny childhood memory.

Where is your favorite study space? Why?

Translate a few lines from a favorite song.

Give a basic physical description of yourself (if you are posting online, protect your own privacy - don’t list anything super specific!!).

Briefly describe some of your personality traits.

What’s one nice thing that you’ve done for someone else recently?

Why do you want to learn the language you are studying?

List 3 useful phrases in your language (such as “Where is the bathroom?” or “There is an emergency.” I feel like we never learn these things in class lol)

Name some terms and phrases that are specific to the career you are pursuing.

Describe your favorite scene from a book, show, or movie.

What would you do with $100? Why?

What’s one good thing about the world in this day and age? What’s one bad thing?

What are some things on your bucket list and why?

What is one thing (food, a scent, a stuffed animal, etc.) that is nostalgic/brings back memories? Why?

What is one thing that stresses you out, and what do you do to de-stress/avoid stress when you have to deal with that thing?

Write a short letter to your past self (maybe 5 years ago?).

What is your Myers-Briggs personality type? Describe it? Is it accurate?

What is one worry/problem you have right now, and what are you doing/going to do to fix it?

What is the nicest thing someone has said to you/about you?

Favorite memory from this month?

disclaimer: this post is about rap music/ hiphop which is currently trending & not about older classics. 

so this is basically a post about dutch music that is popular in the netherlands atm & to which native speakers actually listen themselves. i think you can find most of the songs on spotify - you can search for them or check out the dutch top 50. you can also find most of them on youtube.

>Lil kleine he just released a new album and it’s trending. it’s called ‘alleen’ & it’s mostly rap. some of his songs: ‘alleen’  ‘krantenwijk’ ‘loterij’ ‘kleine jongen’ ‘zeg dat niet’ ‘1, 2, 3′ ‘dom dom dom’| ‘vakantie’

>Ronnie flex same kind of music as lil kleine. ronnie is very popular & just released a new album as well. i’ll list some songs of his, not necessarily new ones tho: ‘come again’ ‘energie’ ‘drank & drugs’  i personally don’t really like this song but oh well ‘plek als dit’ ‘is dit over’ >More; SFB, Broederliefde, SBMG, Bokoesam, Boef, Sevn Alias not all these songs are exactly rap i think? but they all have the same vibe. sort of.  ‘nu sta je hier’ ‘habiba’ ‘slapend rijk’ ‘tempo’ ‘gass’  ‘jungle’ ‘mi no lob’ ‘my love’ ‘ik was al binnen’ ‘way it goes

Hi! Yeah, Japanese can be really daunting at first because it feels like there’s so much to learn and many places to start. I’m not sure whether or not you know hiragana already, but I’m going to list the way I started with Japanese kana (hiragana + katana) and then moved on to kanji. ლ(╹◡╹ლ)

Anything in bold is something I use/used/highly recommend!

1. LEARNING THE KANA ALPHABETS (HIRAGANA + KATAKANA)

I personally recommend learning the alphabets separately. Master one alphabet (I recommend hiragana first because it’s what you’ll use the most), and then move on to the next. I spent 2 days learning and mastering hiragana, and then slowly mastered katakana over a period of a few weeks because hiragana is everywhere, but katakana wasn’t an immediate concern for me. Obviously you need to learn both, but if you know hiragana you can jump into grammar, kanji, and other lessons while slowly mastering your katakana skills and becoming familiar with that alphabet through katakana vocabulary.

Here are some kana resources to try out!

Learn Hiragana: Tofugu’s Ultimate Guide *

Learn Katana: Tofugu’s Ultimate Guide *

Hiragana Drag-n-Drop

Katakana Drag-n-Drop

StickyStudy (phone app; on-the-go flashcards for learning kana)

Real Kana (quizzes you in different fonts to help you get used to different styles)

Practice katakana with Pokémon

* I’m not personally a fan of mnemonics, but I know a lot of people swear by them so it’s worth trying them and seeing if they work for you!

Both kana alphabets will become easier with exposure, so just keep practicing them over and over! 

2. KANJI

Okay, so I’m going to be honest – everyone learns kanji differently. Some people benefit from just writing them 100 times, other people need flashcards, and some people can see them 2 or 3 times and remember them forever. You’re going to have to find the best way to learn for you, but the following resources will at least get you started. The rest is up to you ^^

Japanesetest4you – a good way to learn kanji is in vocabulary words, so once you’ve learned hiragana you can jump right in to learning new vocabulary and mastering kanji along the way! I love this websites way of splitting vocab into JLPT levels

StickyStudy (phone app) – this costs ~$9.99, but is unbelievably useful because it has kanji split into grade levels, allows you to decide how many you see everyday, and so on. I also like that I can use it on the go!

MindSnacks (phone app) – also lets you practice kana, but can expose you to kanji in a fun, game-like format

WaniKani – people have mixed feelings about this website because it works for some and not for others, but the first 3 levels are free so you can get your feet wet and decide if it’s right for you!

Memrise courses

This N5 verb list – a good start to basic, common kanji you should learn!

TEXTBOOKS + BOOKS

Genki – as far as I know, this is one of the most popular textbooks for learning Japanese and I can vouch they’re really good. They teach certain amounts of kanji each lesson and expose you to those kanji continuously, eventually removing the furigana to force your brain to remember the kanji reading + meaning alone!

Basic Kanji Book – I’ve personally never used this, but I see it everywhere on langblr and it seems like a popular way to start learning kanji

When it comes to kanji, I think it’s important to understand how to read them and understand how they work in Japanese. Almost every kanij has multiple readings. Kunyomi (訓読み) is the Japanese reading and is generally used when one kanji is by itself, while the onyomi (音読み) is the Chinese reading and appears in compounds.

For example: the kanji 話, when by itself, is read はなし (story), or はな (as in the verb ‘to speak’ - 話す, hanasu). However, when found in a compound such as telephone (電話 でんわ), the kanji is read as わ/wa. I recommend reading Tae Kim’s Guide on kanji to further understand them! Understanding how kanji operate in Japanese was really helpful for my own learning.

I think it’s also important to remember that even Japanese people didn’t learn kanji all at once! They learned them by grade, learning anywhere for 80-140 kanji per year until they were in high school. These are called The Jouyou Kanji (常用漢字) and are essentially the 2,000+ kanji Japanese people are expected to know by the government. You can learn more about them here and here.

Hi guys! Thank you for your patience as I get adjusted in China and try to find time to update my studyblr! Between studying my languages and teaching, it’s been a bit of a struggle. But I’ve finally got situated enough to get on Tumblr and get to work on a new post that I’m excited to finally share with you!

How many methods do you use to study languages? If you say one, you’re probably studying wrong. When you were in grade school studying the alphabet, did you just read a textbook and BAM you knew the alphabet? OF COURSE NOT! As much as our parents and instructors would wish we did learn that easily, no one ever does! No one. The best way to learn something is to experience it in different ways, situations and formats. You listened to the alphabet spoken in class by your teacher, then by an audio cd, then on tv when you watched Sesame Street, then in a song at a babysitters house, then read them in a textbook, then maybe played computer games to help you practice on top of all that. You heard the same alphabet over and over in different contexts. I used to be a big fan of Between the Lions back in the day because they would teach you a letter then a few words, then use those words and letters over and over again in different skits during the show. If the word of the day was dig, then in the cartoon Cliff Hanger, Cliff would need to spell dig to figure out how to come down from the cliff (of course it never worked, but that’s besides the point), there would be a song with dig in it, there would be activities where you’d have to insert the missing letters, and then the lions themselves would get into situation where they would need to dig something and you’d learn the word dig AGAIN. You get the point. This stuff isn’t just for children. This stuff is gold for language learning as adults, so how do you tap into this knowledge? By giving yourself multiple methods of language study just like a kid! By creating multiple methods of language studying, you are cementing everything you have learned into your memory. With this in mind, you must always have at least three methods of study to pull out when you study every week. Here are mine:

Video/Audio lesson method (example: video based lessons, Youtube video lessons, TTMIK) 

1. Watch/listen to video/audio lesson once all the way through (just listen and repeat)

2.  Re-watch while writing down new vocabulary (listening writing)

3.  Study new vocabulary (reading)

Write out and use a joke or story to remember each word

Look for examples of uses for words using videos or songs or something (Listening) (speaking)

 (if learning Korean, use Naver. If learning Chinese or Japanese use Fluent U to search for videos, commercials, music videos, and episodes of shows containing your vocab word. For everything else just search Youtube)

Write out each word ten times (writing)

4. Re-watch video/audio (Listening)

5. Repeat after video/audio (Speaking)

6. Study vocab again at end of the week

 Textbook method 

Tip: If you buy a textbook for self study, definitely get one with audio

1. Read textbook lesson with audio if included (reading) (listening)

2. Read lesson without audio

2. Study vocabulary (reading)

Make and write a joke or saying or story to help you remember each word (Exam

4. Look for examples of uses for words using videos or songs or something (listening) (speaking)

5. Write character out ten times each (writing)

6. Repeat after audio if included (speaking)

Vocab lists (example: Tumblr, Pinterest, etc)

Say you find a list of interesting vocabulary on Tumblr or Pinterest. You can plan to use this during the week!

1. Read vocab list (reading)

2. Find corresponding audio and repeat. You can use a dictionary audio (listening) (speaking)

3. Study vocab words (reading)

Make jokes or some story to help you remember

5. Look for examples of uses for words using videos or songs or something (reading) (speaking)

6. Repeat after audio (speaking)

Shows, Movies, Youtube Videos

1. Watch video 10 minutes at a time (listening) (DO NOT watch the whole thing unless it is short)

2. Study vocab and grammar (reading) (writing)

3. Make inside jokes or story to help remember vocabulary

4. Look for examples of uses for words using videos or songs or something (listening) (speaking)

5. Write vocab out 10 times (writing)

6. Make  any relevant notes about culture and usage

7. Repeat after video sentences (speaking)

This method takes a long time over a course of weeks to finish a movie.

Music and Songs

1. Listen to entire song without looking at lyrics (listening)

2.  Go find lyrics and study vocabulary line by line (reading)

3. Make jokes or a story to remember vocabulary

4. No need to look for examples of word usage if you don’t want to

5. Write out vocabulary 10 times

6. Stop studying after one paragraph or verse

7. Read the lyrics

8. Listen to the song and try to follow along

9. Do this until you learn the whole song

8. Make any cultural notes

Okay, so let me explain some details in the post. In every method, one of the steps is to make a joke or some kind of phrase to help you memorize a new vocabulary word. Let me explain. Sometimes it is very hard to remember vocabulary words unless there is a story behind them! Say your words is 苹果 (apple) so you write the English translation and then below it you write, “Sarah refuses to eat her 苹果 and has now tossed it onto the floor. Sarah is 24.” Now you’ve written a short and memorable story about apples and are more likely to remember the word 苹果 . Got it? They teach this stuff in kindergarten and now you’re going to do it for you!

Note: If you are learning Chinese, you can use the radicals to make a story if you’d like. But that would require learning the radicals for every single word, which I encourage you to do anyway, but you don’t have to.

So how do you plan these into your weekly schedule? Easy! Pick a method and do that for one week and then change it to something else the next week. Or you can change it everyday or every few days. I will talk about it more in another post!