List of Bad Ideas for Japanese Study

If you have been linked to this page, it’s probably because one of the following points applies to you. You may disagree with what is written here, and that’s normal, if not even expected. Things are rarely so black and white, and some things might feel like they work for you but don’t for other people.

Generally speaking, it’s good to follow whatever you find comfortable and enjoyable when it comes to language learning (see: Optimal Reading Immersion - Narrow Reading), however this needs to come from a position of informed reasoning.

In the following list, I explain why I believe these ideas about how to study Japanese are not good (or even bad). With the right amount of openmindedness and mental flexibility, try to think whether or not these apply to you.

• Learning Japanese by studying song lyrics#
• Looking for a study partner#
• Ignoring kana and studying with romaji instead#
• Trying to learn Japanese without learning to read#
• Trying to memorize each kanji reading without knowing the words#
• Using Duolingo#
• Using machine translators (Google, Deepl, etc)#
• Doing textbook exercises (Fill in the particles, etc)#
• Doing exercises that ask you to fix incorrect Japanese#
• Doing exercises that ask you to translate from English to Japanese (also the opposite)#
• Doing anki cards with English on the front and Japanese on the back#
• Reading children’s books or fairytales#
• Waiting to read until you have 100% language comprehension#