Will Japanesepod101 get people fluent?

[rupenpatel702727]

Fluency is a very subjective term-i know that. But what I mean is can Japanesepod101 get people fluent, provided they study all the material given to them.

Here is my opinion. I believe Japanesepod101 can get someone speaking Japanese fluently (and have a blast while learning!), but the writing seems a lot more problematic, especially the kanji. I got the remembering the Kanji book by James, and to be honest it doesn't seem as hard as people make it out to be (still extremely difficult, but nevertheless overhyped if studied using a decent method.) The problem seems attaining "written fluency" from an audio course seems unreasonable, especially what seems to me the horrific problem of reading kanji (seems to me far worse than remembering the meaning)

I have only been learning Japanese for around 2 weeks, so if anyone with more experience can help me with this I'll be grateful. Should I also invest in something like Textfugu which seems really good.

ps. I am a Premium plus subscriber (don't know if that makes a difference to kanji, but it is SO much better than basic that its a joke)

[mmmason8967]

I have only been learning Japanese for around 2 weeks, so if anyone with more experience can help me with this I'll be grateful. Should I also invest in something like Textfugu which seems really good.

Personally I'd hold off investing more money until you've got a bit more experience, because if you wait a bit, you will have clearer idea of what additional learning tools you need.

Learning the kanji is difficult. If you have only been learning for two weeks, I don't think you should worry about kanji too much yet. Can you read/write hiragana and katakana? You need to be fairly confident with them before you tackle kanji, simply because anything that explains kanji is very likely to assume you can read hiragana and katakana.

Until you can read kanji at a fairly high level, most real Japanese (i.e Japanese written for Japanese people) is going to be just about impossible to read. Luckily there's an add-on for Firefox that let's you cheat: it's called Rikaichan, and it pops up the pronunciation and meaning of kanji when you hover your mouse pointer over a web page. Without Rikaichan a beginner is pretty much limited to reading the Japanese in textbooks. It doesn't do grammar, so you don't get a completely free ride by any means! I find that being able to tackle blogs and suchlike really helps to keep my interest going.

Finally, have you got Japanese Input set up on your computer? If not, it's a real must-have, and if you're not sure how to do it, just ask.

マイケル

[community.japanese]

rupenpatel702727-san, マイケルsan,
kon'nichiwa!
I think マイケルsan has a very good point! (Thank you very much for a great advice as always!!)
Getting too much information and/or many materials can get overwhelming, so it's a great idea to
take time with what you have right now and see if there's specific need and want for further materials.
I can assure you that his suggestion totally makes sense because I myself is doing a rubbish job at my own
language study right now I need to "reset" everything and start fresh, because there're just
too many books, but I'm simply "lost" and just feeling that I'm not absorbing anything...

Like マイケルsan asked and suggested, learning hiragana and katakana before kanji is the basic rule too.
If already know those two, I recommend you to try, for example, kanji video lessons on our site

rupenpatel702727-san, thank you very much for the lovely feedback about our subscription options!
We're all glad to know that you actually found premium plus "worth"
Since you have full access to the features, I hope you can actually enjoy those materials.
For studying kanji, many learners establish their own way/method, but I think your opinion about "writing seems
to be a lot more problematic" applies to almost everyone (even including me, a native Japanese ).
This might sound old fashioned, but repeating a writing practice will give you more confidence and allow you
to feel more comfortable. We have kanji close-up sheets on almost every lessons (we don't have them for Absolute
Beginner lessons), and also kanji flashcards. You can of course creat your own practice sheets by your self, or just
write kanjis many times on any paper.

I admire your enthusiasm and passion for learning Japanese and targeting real fluency!
Hope we can all back you up and help you

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[Zelg]

Just to add a "noob" perspective on this. I'm about 4 or 5 weeks into learning Japanese. I first started with Rosetta Stone and found that while its great for getting hooked on the language, it was horrible at explaining things and telling you what new words meant. Horrible as in they dont explain a damn thing. So I quickly got to a point where I was just simply guessing at what words meant and it got confusing pretty quick. But, it got me hooked on learning...so yay!

That said I dont suggest it cause its not worth the price. My next step was that I found www.realkana.com which is a very helpful flashcard like tool for learning hiragana and katakana. I had both of them learned within a week. I still struggle slightly with katakana but for the most part is just have to take it slow. Hiragana is not an issue for me anymore and for me was really easy to pick up. I really suggest realkana.com. It was very useful and as stated above both of the "alphabets" are essential do learning IMO. Just to comment on romaji, I kind of hate it. I try to avoid using it as best I can and really only use it when I'm doing the audio lessons here on Jpod101 when I come across a word or phrase that is initially difficult to understand. The romaji then gives me a good idea on how to pronounce it but of course is only truly useful if you know your hiragana and katakana.

I too have gotten to a few points in time over these short weeks of attempting to learn kanji and trying to research the best ways to study them and I often came across conflicting advice. Some people claimed Remember the Kanji was perfect and others hated it. Me personally, I kind of decided (for the time being) that I dont want to practice writing (mostly due to it being boring and me being lazy ) and I finally settled on just doing flash cards. I just finished the absolute beginner season 1 lessons and after listening to each lesson (about twice each, sometimes more) I would just click the vocabulary link and it automatically adds the vocab words used in the lesson into a flashcard deck. So by the end of Absolute Beginner Season 1 I had 25 flash card decks that contained approx. 5 words or so in each and I could study each deck individually which really helps to not mix them up with other words and you can focus on a few rather than a bunch.

The great thing about the flash cards is that it kinda beats into your brain the pronunciation, the hiragana/katakana, and the kanji if kanji is used for the words. I feel like in a way, without directly worrying about reading kanji and not rushing into it and feeling like I need to go read japanese websites fluently within a month, I'm actually learning more since I'm not stressed out about it. I'm also learning the vocabulary which of course makes reading more fun when you know some words

Again, just a bit of perspective from someone who hasnt been learning for very long but has kind of found their own way. JPod101 has been very useful but I think you'll end up searching out other sources as well but I think JPod (at least for me) has been all I needed apart from maybe a few different ways of explaining how things work.

/end rambling thoughts.

[community.japanese]

Zelg-san,
thank you very much for sharing your thoughts!!
We're always happy when we receive positive feedbacks, but we also know that J-Pod cannot cover ALL
for mastering Japanese. So, it's really nice when learners share information on study, and exchange
opinions too! We're glad you actually found J-Pod helpful and useful

We're all wishing you the best for your study!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com