Having Trouble Learning? Don't Stress Out! You Can Do It!

OK! If you are reading this, you should have finished the previous 14 lessons. If not, just go back to the Lesson Index. Don't worry about falling behind, these lessons will all be here later, so just learn at your own pace.
Here's what you should know at this point, if you don't know any of these areas, or think you could use a refresher, go back and review them again. And at the end of this review, I'll share some tips to help you study.

You should know about the way Japanese is written. You don't need to know how to write Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji yet, but if you want to start learning that, great! It will help. What you do need to know is how the different kana/letters are pronounced. You have the first 5 vowels: A,I,U,E,O (Go back to Lesson 1 and review if you forgot the Japanese way to pronounce them), the consonant + vowel combinations, like Ka, Ki, Ku, Ke, Ko, and finally N, which can be used by itself. Knowing the correct pronunciation is important, otherwise you might pronounce a word like "Usagi" as "You-say-gai" instead of "oo-sah-gee".

You should know the basic Greetings and Goodbye words. These are fairly easy, and you probably already know a couple even if you never studied any Japanese. If you need to review, visit Lesson 2.

You should know the words you need to use to be polite, like Do'zo, Sumimasen, and Arigato. Manners are very important to Japanese. You should also know basic words "Yes" and "No" words; Hai, and Iie. These were covered in Lesson 3.

You need to understand how to use "desu" and the question particle "ka". These are covered in Lesson 4, along with words you can use to make a question, like "Nani".

Do you remember what the difference between "Dore, Kore, Sore, and Are"? How about "Doko, Koko, Soko, and Asoko"? If not, you need to review Lesson 5.

The Subject marker particles, "wa" and "ga", are a bit confusing. You can review it in Lesson 6. But if you still don't get it, just keep moving on, and pay attention to how you see/hear them used. You should also see how other web pages, books, and classes teach these particles, so you can maybe see things in a way that might be clearer to you.

You should know about "no". The possessive particle "no" that is. It's pretty easy to learn how to use this particle, but go ahead and do a quick review of Lesson 7 if you aren't 100% sure.

Are you able to remember the difference between verbs ending with "-mas'", "-masen", "-masho", "-mashita" and "-masen deshita"? These are important, so if you aren't sure, review Lesson 8.

"Yo", "to", and "ne" are some commonly used particles. Do you remember them? If so, you are ready to move on, yo! If not, maybe you had better review Lesson 9, ne?

Lesson 10 covered some common expressions heard in anime a lot. If you don't remember all of them, you can review it, but you're still ready to keep moving on, because you'll pick these up as you go along with your studies anyway.

Can you count to 100 in Japanese? If you can, you are ready to move on, but unless you can count all the way to Hyaku-man, I recommend you review Lesson 11.

Lesson 12 was all about counting, and there was a lot to remember. If you can't remember all of those different ways to count different things, well, I'm not surprised, neither can I (yet). But, I am still learning, and you should keep on practicing these too while you move along with the other lessons. The best way to learn these is to practice them.

Telling time is covered in Lesson 13, and dates are in Lesson 14. If you haven't mastered these, once again the best way to learn is to practice. When ever you look at a clock or a calendar, try to figure out how to say that time and date in Japanese, then check with this web page or a book and see if you got it right. You can make a card with the different hours, minutes, days months, etc and keep it with you to check yourself until you know them.

In my own studies, I've learned a few things about learning that have helped me in my studies, some of these can be useful with studying other things besides Japanese:

The human brain can only take in a few new bits of information at a time. Sure, you can read 20 new Japanese words and their meanings all at once, but you're probably not going to remember them all an hour later. Dr. Zev bar-Lev has determined the optimim number of new bits of information the brain can take in and remember at a time is 5. So, try to learn 5 new words/ideas/facts when you study, practice them, then take a break, and do something else for a little while. Then come back later, after you've had your brain working on other things (watching TV, playing a game, spending time with your pet, or even studying some other topic), and see if you still remember those 5 things.

You need to use what you've learned. In the review above, I mentioned how you can practice telling time and dates in Japanese. You can do that with the other Japanese words you've learned too. When you say something in English that you know the Japanese words for, think about how you would have said that in Japanese. When you see something you've learned the Japanese word for, try and think of that word. Watch shows and movies in Japanese. Many video rental places will have a least some anime or Japanese movies. And with DVDs, there is almost always an option to watch these in Japanese with subtitles. What could be a more fun way to learn?

You need to really speak these new words. Just saying them in your head isn't enough, you need to get used to how they sound and how to say them. Sure, you don't want to be walking around in public talking to yourself in Japanese, but you can find some time when you're alone, or, better yet, if you have a friend who knows Japanese or is also trying to learn, practice with each other. If you have the option to take a class, go for it, this will give you a chance to speak and listen to Japanese with someone who knows it well, as well as learn new things.

I've mentioned before that you don't need to know how to write Japanese to be able to speak it, but, it does help. Learning to write Japanese might look impossible to a lot of people, but it's not as difficult as it looks, at least Hiragana and Katakana aren't. If you start with Katakana, you'll find that a lot of English words have been adopted into Japanese with some change in pronunciation. If you ever go to Japan, you'll find this is something you'll really be able to use, you can read a lot of a Japanese menu with katakana. Hiragana isn't any harder to learn than Katakana, and now that you know some Japanese, you'll start to be able to recognize words you know when you see them written in hiragana. After you've learned those 2, you'll be trying to read every bit of Japanese writing you see, and as you do, you still won't know those Kanji, but, you'll start seeing certain ones over and over, and remembering what they look like. From there, the next step will be learning what these more common kanji mean, and just keep going from there!