Efficient and effective learning tip!
  • Sakura May 2012
    I want to share my efficient and effective language learning tip with you today!! Drum roll please... (^-^)

    Listen to the audio all the time like crazy! I'm not actually talking about you sitting there with your book and listening to the audio while reading vocabulary lists or sentence examples. Of course that's an important thing to do, and you should do it, but what I'm suggesting today is to listen to the audio whenever and wherever, without the book. 

    Don't even pay attention to what is being said; this is actually the key. If you think you have to pay close attention to it all the time and you have to memorize the words and sentences, then you are being too hard on yourself and it gets stressful. Instead, just let it play while you're cooking, cleaning your room, writing emails, surfing the internet, on your way to work.... etc. Treat it like a background noise!

    Rather than playing one whole CD repeatedly, I recommend playing just one or two lessons repeatedly at a time for at least a week. The length of audio for one or two lessons should be pretty short. So even if you don't pay any attention to it at all, if you let it play even for an hour, you get to hear the same things over and over again, and magically they will eventually stick in your head! Later when you open up your book, you'll be surprised how much you can actually recall hearing them. It helps your pronunciation skills greatly, too.  

    You can also set a sleep timer and play the audio when you go to bed. If you listen as you fall asleep, things may stick in your head even better. (^-^)

    So give it a try! You'll be surprised at the results. (^o^)/

  • Sakura May 2012
    p.s. just to clarify - I recommend adopting this method on top of your regular studying routine. In other words, listening to the audio like the above will not replace your studying vocabulary and grammar on the book or the online course or the app. However, it will definitely speed up your learning process!  
  • Christopher May 2012
    This is such great advice. It's almost like listening to a song over and over. Suddenly, you find that you know the lyrics. (But this kind of passive learning, as you recommend, is best used as a supplement!)
  • Sakura May 2012
    Thank you, Christopher. You're right that it's just like listening to your favorite song over and over again. Think about how accurately you can "play" the song in your head! 

    Just like being able to play your favorite song in your head doesn't mean that you can sing it well, listening to a lot of Japanese doesn't automatically make you a fluent speaker. What's a good tip for fluency? Sign up for an eTutor session with me, and you'll get to practice speaking (^-^) 
  • Christopher May 2012
    That's the best tip.
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