Small Thing Number Six: Take a Japanese Class!

I know I know this is pretty big but hear me out on this one.

In my three years of high school, I only took one year of language. Most colleges have a language requirement of two years of high school language or two terms of college language. The other language I was taking was Greek, which I wasn't particularly motivated to take another year of. Anyway, I became a full time community college student and in order to transfer I need two terms of foreign language. Japanese is really hard but I knew I wanted to go there someday so I signed up for a Japanese 101 class and have been taking that. Close to half my class has dropped it, but if you are going to go to Japan you might as well be confused now when you are in a place that speaks your own language.

Now I'm no overachiever but I have stayed in the class and my midterm grade was an A, so I must be doing something right. Anyhow, here are my tips for doing well in a Japanese class.

Tip #1: SHOW UP!!!
This is probably the most important part of doing well in any language class. Something like 93% of communication is nonverbal and language teachers use that to help you get the language faster. There is a lot of doing stuff and drawing pictures and following whoever actually knows what is going on.

Tip #2: DO THE HOMEWORK!!!
Do it fairly soon after it is assigned, too. I have seen people doing homework the day it is due and they usually have no idea what they are supposed to do because they forgot what we had covered in class.

Tip #3: STUDY BUDDY!!!
 I have only studied with a study buddy outside of class once but we do it constantly in class and let me tell you it's really helpful. You have to actually say the words and usually only one of you understands what you need to do so someone has to explain it and you can struggle together.

Tip #4: WRITE!!!
So there are 2 phonetic alphabets with 46 letters each and kanji which is scary to even think about. Anyway, writing anything and everything is helpful. What I did to help learn hiragana and katakana (definitely don't know them yet, by the way) is write it down on a whiteboard repetitively, using different colors of marker to keep things interesting.

Tip #5: TYPE!!!
Install a Japanese keyboard on your computer and phone. Have fun messing with typing things and send yourself random texts in Japanese, or confuse your friends by typing some random nonsense and they will think you are really smart. For example, くるま　を　ちゅしゃ　する　こと、きらい　です　looks pretty complicated and fancy but what I said is "I hate having to park my car."

Tip #6: DO SOMETHING EVERY DAY!!!
I don't necessarily follow my own advice on this but I at least try. Do a little bit of reading or writing or homework every day and it will help keep what you learned in class from falling out of your head.

Tip #7: WHEN YOU COUNT IN YOUR HEAD, COUNT IN JAPANESE!!!
It's in your head so nobody can look at you funny and you can get plenty of practice with numbers.

Tip #8: FIND THINGS TO TRY TO READ!!!
Go to the Asian grocery store and try to read the packaging or get a Japanese magazine and attempt to read it. You don't have to understand any of it, just practice reading stuff.