There are many ways to improve your Japanese and fluency. One way is through a good textbook another is from speaking to people in Japanese. My Japanese teacher always told us that beer makes you speak better Japanese and I took her up on her word. I found that my spoken Japanese improved dramatically when I found a local Yakitori restaurant that became my local. I found that meeting Japanese people there and striking up a conversation greatly improved my fluency. Getting a Japanese girlfriend also has great benefits in improving your Japanese. If you prefer the textbook method I highly recommend the following Japanese Textbooks.
• Shin Nihongo no Kiso I & II – The Shin Nihongo no Kiso series is great for studying grammar and the stuff that you will find on the Japanese Proficiency Exam.
• Shin Nihongo no Kiso Japanese Kanji Workbook – This is great for learning and practicing all the kanji that you will find at all levels of the Japanese Proficiency Exam.
• A Course in Modern Japanese by The University of Nagoya Press
• An Introduction to Modern Japanese by Osamu Mizutani & Nobuko Mizutani
The above books were really helpful in improving my grammatical Japanese and my reading/writing. I also recommend the following dictionaries.
• Kanji & Kana a Handbook and Dictionary of the Japanese writing system
• Kankyusha`s Japanese-English Dictionary
I hope this helps and inspires you to improve your Japanese like it did mine.
The Secrets Of Speaking Japanese Fluently
Ok, so getting drunk is the best way to learn Japanese? Sounds wonderful. What would you say your Japanese level is now? Are you "speaking fluently?" And if so, how long did it take you to get to that point?
ReplyDeleteDrinking definitely loosens the tongue and gives you more confidence in speaking. After spending more than 10 years in Japan and studying Japanese quite hard, I would say my fluency and speaking is pretty good, but there is always room for improvement.
ReplyDeletecan anyone tell me what would be my first step to learn japanese?
ReplyDeleteStart by learning the basics through grammar. You need to learn the basic Japanese sentence structure as well as the key grammatical patterns. Also start now and learn both Katakana and Hiragana which will come in use later for reading and writing.
ReplyDeletewhat point did you feel as though you were, perhaps, fluent in Japanese?
ReplyDeleteThe text books above gave me a great grounding in Japanese especially with grammatical structures and reading and writing. It took me a few years of living in Japan and using the language on a daily basis to call myself fluent. I felt like I was fluent when I could seriously converse in formal Business situations in Japanese.
ReplyDelete