First Post!
Hey guys, this is my first post on this account. To get started as a brand new blog, I'd like to talk about how I am currently learning the language.
Currently, I am using visual novels (VNs) to learn new things. The reason for this is the exposure to new grammar and vocabulary isn't brutal because there isn't much exposition to be had when you compare it to the likes of a short story or novel. You also get to understand the nuances of speech, as well as the pronunciation of words since VNs are typically voice-acted.
However, just reading the visual novel doesn't fill in all the gaps of knowledge you constantly encounter due to all the words and meanings you haven't learned yet. For this, I use a couple of tools that takes the text in the visual novel, and pastes it into a tab on my Google Chrome. This tool is called Textractor.
The above is the textractor app before I boot up the VN.
Below is the Chrome tab with the pasted text.
Why do I do this? Because it'd be insanely difficult to figure out how a word is read if I can't search it up due to it being locked behind a game. However, why google individual words up when you can use something as amazing as a Google Extension?
Yomi-chan is an add-on that can show you the meanings of words on your browser. It uses a variety of dictionaries to tell you the meanings of words, Kanji, phrases, and grammar! Below, is an image of me hovering over a word that maybe I'm not sure of.
Now I know what a word means, and how to read it too. I can even listen to what it sounds like, as Japanese does have vocal intonations that you might need to be aware of for maximum fluency.
Okay, so we now know what that word says. What's the chance of me actually knowing what it means the next time the word comes up? Aside from it being a pretty easy word, let's say it was super difficult! I'd have a tough time constantly searching EVERY word over and over again to understand them. And this is where repetition is great (in a more fun and productive way).
Anki cards! Anki cards are essentially flashcards where you can store your newly found vocabulary for repetition learning later. Make your own Anki deck is likely excruciatingly time-consuming. Imagine for every word you don't know, you have to write the word in Kanji, the pronunciation, the meaning, etc...
The cool thing is, you can actually connect Yomi-chan to your Anki deck, making it easy to just hit a button to add not just that word and it's meaning, but also the sound files for pronunciation, the sentence it originated from for contextual help, and even images!
This way you can just click the button, and move on with reading. It takes literally 1 second.
I then study my Anki cards every morning (or at least I try to)!
I'd love to learn more about how other people learn, and I think my method works pretty well for me.












