This is a list of Japanese words related to school and educational institutions. I’ve always enjoyed school and If you are staring to use these terms either for yourself, or for a loved one, I wish you the best luck! While I haven’t attended a school in Japan personally, I hear that they are much more difficult… Read More »
When studying a foreign language, learning to write holds a special place because one can attain a fairly high level of competency without actually living in a country where that language is spoken. This is because both reading, an important related skill, and writing itself can be learned and practiced with just a computer and an internet connection. Strictly speaking,… Read More »
Recently I posted a review of the book “Teaching methods based on student native language, English edition” by Kazuko Nakagawa, which provided some important insights on mistakes English-speakers typically make when learning Japanese. I wanted to translate at least a short portion of this book to give a feel what the content is like, and also… Read More »
Me and my wife stumbled on this book in a Kinokuniya bookstore (either New York or San Jose, I forget which), and decided to purchase it to read to our son who we are raising bilingual Japanese/English. This book is based on a simple premise – imaging up various possibilities for a apple which the narrator,… Read More »
In a recent post I discussed how I had seen a phrase “Advilがありますか?” (“Advil ga arimasus ka?”) in a book, and upon further research confirmed it was not a natural usage of the particle “ga”. I had posted to Oshiete Goo and received an excellent response which discussed why it was unnatural. Since then, I’ve… Read More »
The central theme of this blog is self-studying Japanese, which means not only learning a difficult language, but doing it without much (if any) formal classes. Come to think of it, since I graduated over a decade ago I have had very few opportunities to learn in a formal class setting with a professional teacher, not… Read More »
It’s been some time since I’ve written an article about bilingual education, so I thought I would review “The Gifted”, a book published last year. This book is about the Japanese boy genius Sho Okawa, who moved to Canada when he was 5 and was declared as “Gifted” at age 9. Only five years later, Sho… Read More »
In the age of the internet, anyone studying a foreign language can access nearly limitless content in the language of their choice if they search hard enough (though I have read that know some languages are more represented than others online). Having said that, I feel there is something special about using magazines for foreign language study.… Read More »
For quite a while I was listening to a science-related Japanese podcast (here), and then after getting a bit tired of that I decided to take a break from podcasts for a few weeks. For my next podcast to use as Japanese listening practice, I went to the NHK podcast site, which generally has episodes… Read More »
Sometime back, I wrote a post about Benesse’s distance program learning for children, in particular their Shimajiro series of books. In my household we have been reading these books fairly often to our young son, and he has really grown to love them in a way that surprised me. On several occasions he will run… Read More »