How well does this website work?
Hello. I have been studying Japanese with online resources for about a year now, and I have learned nothing (most of them sucked or got extreamly confusing/boring. I recently got a Japanese tutor who is teaching me for free, but she is moving away in a few months. My question is, does this website actually work? And if it does, who here has learned japanese (enough to read/speak it) just from this website and not from other resources (like college classes or textbooks, etc.) Reason being, is in 2 years im heading off to Japan for college, and I would like to be able to understand and read enough Japanese to be able to make it through however long I decide to stay.
posted by raymyn
Comments 4
This site is good for learning and reviewing (mostly) isolated vocabulary and kanji/compound readings. The EXP and combo system make the brute force memorization of such things less boring. However, you aren't going to become proficient with just this website. It's like that for any resource though; you need a mixture of resources to reach proficiency.
I'm currently working through Tae Kim and Genki I for grammar, and I think this site is a good supplement to normal study and immersion.
I agree you are not going to become fluent using any one resource. This site is in my opinion better than most because it is a fun way to learn vocabulary, the basic kanji, and hiragana and katakana. It is also nice because you can chat in forums with other people learning the language. Its a fun site. As more is added it will get even better.
You can't expect to learn everything from this or any other site. Use all possible resources you have and "surround" yourself with Japanese language. Also using just one site to learn anything will eventually get boring. I personally use this site+my japanese textbooks+anki+taekims grammar guide+jdoramas+music+podcasts+japanese youtube videos and so on...the list is almost endless :P
So my point is that try to find as much as possible ways to get yourself into the language.. not just one site =)
This site works really well at giving you vocabularies and reinforcing you to remember. Also gives you the multiple meanings of each vocabulary and kanji.
The key point in this website is memorization, nothing that other sites usually do. If you practice enough, you'll eventually remember the pronunciation of that word and later hearing it in Japanese shows if you are actually listening to it.
I use this site to learn new vocabularies and I'm loving it, but I hate studying, hence I have long absences.
P.S. As others have said, you're not going to be fluent enough from using just one source. You need to find many resources as possible. I use this site to learn vocabularies and kanji, but I don't use this to build my sentence structure. I also use a resource tool such as Denshi Jisho (stay away from translators like google/yahoo; they don't give you all the necessary meanings to a word) to quickly look up a word I just can't seem to understand. As such, each site for same language but different parts of learning the language (hell, I even use Wikipedia to learn Japanese xD).
