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Guide to Self-Studying Japanese

A large proportion of Japanese learners self-study. Finding places to learn Japanese in a classroom environment can be difficult and expensive. Here’s a guide on how you can learn Japanese for free and from the comfort of your sofa.

When learning Japanese, the most important step is to learn Hiragana and Katakana, the writing alphabets of Japanese.

The best way I’ve found to do that is to make flashcards. Make sure you practice writing as well as recognizing them, this will not only be a great skill to have but will also reinforce the shapes in your mind.

Resources:

[Hiragana 42], the best guide I’ve found to learn the Hiragana (in a day!) [Hiranana and Katakana Quiz Site] [Kana Invaders Game] [Anki] An amazing program that will make sure you never forget any Kana….

The next step is to start learning vocabulary. Where can you find what to learn? Use a site like Memrise to find word lists (for example, there is a word list for all the vocabulary in starter textbooks like Genki), and use the amazing interface to learn them and keep them in your long term memory.

Resources:

[Memrise] as mentioned above to find and learn vocabulary lists. [Most Common Words List] [Anki] An amazing program that will make sure you never forget any Vocabulary….

While encountering vocabulary, you’re likely to be coming across super-complicated-looking Kanji. You can learn Kanji through Memrise as above, but there are some other websites that may be of interest.

Resources:

[Kanji Damage] A great site where you can learn Kanji through mnemonics. [WaniKani] by the same people who make TextFugu can help you learn Kanji from scratch. [Anki] An amazing program that will make sure you never forget any Kanji….

The next step is to apply that new vocabulary to grammar points and start making sentences.

If you can’t get your hands on textbooks like Genki, don’t fear! There are a lot of great online grammar resources.

Resources:

[TextFugu] a highly rated ‘online textbook’ which will guide you right from the beginning of learning Japanese. [Guide to Japanese] another online textbook with a lot of grammar points and excellent explanations.

The Fun Parts: Using Japanese Online Media

So you probably started to learn Japanese because you have some interest in Japanese media. Time to start using it to your advantage!

Aside from the obvious watching Anime, J-dramas and films, why not try Reading Japanese News? Watching Japanese TV? Just make sure you are making these activities productive - note down new vocabulary, add them to Anki, and keep learning! It’s much easier to learn things you’re interested in.

The most important but difficult part of self-studying Japanese is getting your own compositions checked. Utilize all that grammar and vocabulary and write a short piece, it could be a diary entry or a short essay. Get it recorded for you by a native on RhinoSpike, and checked for grammar and consistencies on Lang-8.These sites also give you the chance to connect with Japanese natives, and perhaps start up some language exchanges!

For more resources, take a look at my Ultimate Resources List

Any more tips? Comment below!

Every few hours we all meet up in the kitchen. It's never planned...we just sort of end up there at the same time. We make hot tea and coffee, and talk, mostly about interesting and bizarre things we've just read online, and we laugh....a LOT. Then we go back to our computers for a while.

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For those of you who think that radical feminists exaggerate or cherry-pick the worst of the porn industry, I have an experiment for you. Type ‘porn’ into Google and click around the most well-travelled websites that appear. With mind-numbing repetition you will see gagging, slapping, verbal abuse, hair-pulling, pounding anal sex, women smeared in semen, sore anuses and vaginas, distended mouths, and more exhausted, depleted and shell-shocked women than you can count. You will not see two people having sex; you will see images depicting a level of physical cruelty that would not be out of place in an Amnesty International campaign. One of the only studies of contemporary pornographic content found that the majority of scenes from fifty of the top-rented porn movies contained both physical and verbal abuse targeted against the female performers. Physical aggression – including spanking, open-hand slapping and gagging – occurred in over 88% of scenes, while expressions of verbal aggression – calling the woman names such as ‘bitch’ or ‘slut’ – were found in 48%. The researchers concluded that ‘if we combine both physical and verbal aggression, our findings indicate that nearly 90 per cent of scenes contained at least one aggressive act, with an average of nearly twelve acts of aggression per scene’. [x] That this is the major form of sex education for men should be taken very seriously by the women’s movement. The same men who get off from women being brutalised and called cunts, sluts and cum-dumpsters are the ones who go on to become politicians, corporate executives, judges, media professionals, policy makers and bankers. In other words, they become the economic and cultural elite that shape the material and ideological world that determines how women – and their children – will live. Most of them will become partners and fathers. To assume that porn is mere fantasy and does not impact on the way men think and feel is to ignore decades of research on how images frame our social construction of reality.

"Porn and the Misogyny Emergency" — Gail Dines (via bemyonlyflame)