Learning Japanese ?

[1gn1t0r]

I have started learning Japanese at the start of the year. Since then I have made considerable progress in learning Japanese. My only problem is, motivation. I have difficulty to stay motivated to learn Japanese. I always seem to delay learning Japanese. So then I started my own blog about learning Japanese where I post my progress http://nihongogakushu.blogspot.com/ Learning Japanese.
This helped me quite well. But has anyone else have such a motivation problem ?
The other thing that I am trying right now is to learn Japanese the fun way, through a game. More specifically, a Nintendo DS game "My Japanese Coach" This game is rather fun and has helped me a lot. It has lessons and makes sure you remember enough with the aid of games.
Are there better games than this, I especially want to find such a game for the PC

[jazzbeans]

I think most people get demotivated at some point. Particularly during times when you feel like you've made absolutely no progress whatsoever despite any efforts made. I'm afraid I am not very aware of Japanese language games. However, as a means of motivating myself I go through periods of ONLY watching Japanese TV shows (and I never watch these with subtitles). Something fun though, variety shows.. kid's shows (which I prefer 'cause they're easier for me, personally).. etc.

I often want to look up words whilst I'm watching them, you see. When I am watching something, I am usually able to pause and so I can spend a LOT of time researching words (probably more time than I spend watching it, ha ha). Some days, I don't even want to do that.. evenso, I feel I still learn even if it was slowly at least it's something, right?

Not just that but, I try to translate simplish text. A lot of people hate that I translate text, ha ha, they think it's a super-bad idea and discourage it.. so perhaps keep that in mind? Heh. But I use it mostly to gain vocab. and familiarise myself with grammar. I often translate my Lang-8 journal entries to understand WHY people made the correcions they made (in case you don't know what Lang-8 is, it's a language site where people write in the language they're learning and have natives correct it for them). Otherwise, I find I don't get much out of it.

An example:

日本語を一年半間勉強してきた後でも、まだ私は２歳児の語彙力があります。
>>>日本語を一年半勉強してきたけど、まだ私は２歳児の語彙力しかありません。
Even after a year and a half of studying Japanese, I've still got the vocabulary of a two-year-old.
>>> Although I've been studying Japanese for a year and a half, I've still only got the vocabulary of a two-year-old.
語彙力 (ごいりょく) = (the extent of) one's vocabulary

I mean, downside is, you've no idea how accurate your translation is however, I Google-search for hours upon end looking up even simple terms and looking for examples (in both English & Japanese) that may help me get an idea of what certain things mean.

Rikai-chan is also my love (a Firefox add-on). I try not to over-use it but, when my kanji knowlege was next to nothing, it really helped me when I just wanted to quickly work out what someone was saying to me, etc. I feel that motivated me more in itself as it's a little quicker. So, if you have Firefox, please use it! =)

I hope that helps in some way. Whether it helped directly or not.

Actually, I played an Anpanman game on the DS that taught hiragana and katakana, that was pretty good! And a kanji drill one. I'll look up the names, if you're interested. =)

OH another thing... penpals and Japanese blog sites. I socialised so~ much during my first month+ of studying Japanese and it was difficult but I felt I progressed pretty well and it was fun too, just speaking to these people as friends and thankfully, they could understand me even if I was speaking really weirdly. We'd share a laugh at my silly mistakes and if they could speak English at all, they'd even help me out! I find that a lot of people are willing to do that, actually. I think I'm rambling, so I'll end it here. x

[Myoga-]

Knuckles in China Land is a fun game, it teaches Katakana and Hiragana through battle stages where the user has to guess what the symbol is, eventually making them memorize it.

http://www.kicl.info/

It gets pretty hard pretty fast though, I find I need to write a lot of the symbols down.

[taikutsu]

I procrastinate all the time. I'd rather be talking and having fun, which is so much easier to do in English, you know? Yet I still manage to learn Japanese by experiencing the language as much as possible, reading or listening to the stuff I have (or find on the internet somewhere), which sparks my curiousity.

If you're feeling poorly motivated, maybe because the way you're doing it is boring to you. Google searching for hours on end (and I've done this) is just dreadful. Japanese shouldn't be a chore. That's what Latin is for.

[Javizy]

Check out smart.fm for a not particularly fun "game", but one that will teach you thousands of words in a relatively short period of time. There are lots of motivational stories on this forum as well http://forum.koohii.com/index.php Remembering the Kanji is actually the title of a book that will help you do just what it says (check it out). If you get into doing flashcards, and set yourself a daily quota of say 20 new cards, then it becomes some sort of motivation in itself.

Once you get past the basic grammar then you can start tackling some real Japanese in manga, TV shows, chatting with natives etc, which is a lot more fun. So maybe that should be one of your first goals to work towards. Nothing like setting yourself goals for motivation.[/i]

[winterpromise31]

I love Smart.fm. I treat it like a game and it's the highlight of my Japanese studies every day.