How To Make A Japanese Study Plan

If you want to study Japanese properly, then you will need a plan. This doesn’t need to be the most complex thing, but you do need something as you will need some general direction for what you are doing.

Japanese can be a tough language for English speakers and it can take a long time to see results. Having some sort of plan is going to make sure you actually make progress and don’t give up long before this, so let’s look at how you can make your own plan.

Decide What You Want To Focus On

Part of the plan is going to have to involve a goal …so you can plan where you are going to, if you don’t have a destination, you will get no where.

Again this doesn’t need to be very complex, but you need to decide what you want to actually focus on and make some goals around that.

This can also change throughout your journey, but today you need to commit to something and aim towards that. This can be something like “I want to focus on listening, so I get an understanding of the language” and then you would create your plan in a way that is going to allow this to happen.  

Make Sure You Focus On The Basics First

I will be the first to admit that languages are huge and knowing where to start or what to focus on can be extremely overwhelming.

However as a beginner you know nothing and a pretty good place to start is going to be with the basics, which I will quickly cover here.

When it comes to Japanese the real basics are of course going to be vocabulary and simple grammar, these two things are going to pretty essential no matter what you do.

You then have the whole world of reading and pronunciation of the language, and this of course leads into Kanji, which is maybe more of an advanced form of reading, but is still often needed for very basic things. 

How exactly you about getting good at these things is probably going to involve a lot of listening and reading, and just general “immersion” which is going to help you master the basics.

There is speaking and writing, although I would argue that these are not the “basics”  and can wait until later, although you may see this differently and want to focus on these right from the start. 

Look At My Japanese Plan For Inspiration

I think it would be pretty foolish of me not to mention that I have a short Japanese course that you can use to get you started – which is here – Learn Japanese – The Plan For A Complete Beginner

I guess you could call this a type of “plan” it is certainly the first steps you need to get started. I have simply lined out 34 days worth of “lessons” where I basically cover the core N5 grammar. You can do this at whatever pace you feel like, but if you can get to grips with everything I have laid out, you will be in a really strong position as a beginner and you can go from there.

I have also included a lot of daily vocab and even compiled a list of immersion videos you can watch.

I created this for the total beginner, but even if you have already started studying you will find some use to this little course useful. Then when you complete this, you can decide what to do next from there and build on from this foundation. 

I also did not include any speaking or writing and to be honest there is very little reading in Japanese too, I do still think these are important, but I feel the other areas are more important to focus on first.

Find Free Lessons and Courses Online

While I think you will get a lot from my course, it’s certainly not the only one and I would actually encourage you to look elsewhere and try different things.

You might get all you need from me, but it can be helpful to have the same concepts and ideas explained again by someone else. If you didn’t fully understand something I explain, someone else’s perspective may make it click for you, or at the very least it will just confirm that you did actually understand it in the first place.

Language learning is all about repeating things, so it’s a good idea to try all these different lessons and courses that are online, it is only going to help your progress

Youtube

If you are not sure where to look …start on youtube. There are loads of people giving Japanese lessons on here and personally I think the quality is super high. I might actually have to make a list of some of the best ones, as these guys are putting a lot of effort in, and they are extremely helpful.

You could honestly just watch some of these channels and get a really good grasp of the basics, everything is kind of all laid out for you in playlists and the like, so this can a really vital resource if for your self study.

(You can read more about – How To Use YouTube To Learn A Language)

Consider Your Studying Pace

Part of your plan should be around the pace at which you study, which really means how much are you going to study in a session, and how often are you going to have these study sessions.

Personally I would suggest you aim for daily sessions, and then what exactly you do each day is what you need to work out.

In the early days I would just take things slowly and focus on one small thing each day, but as you progress and get more comfortable with things there is no reason why you can’t do more.

Just watch out for burn out. It is easy to go over the top and drain yourself, especially if you are not used to studying. It really can exhaust you, and you may find you need to be a little flexible with things until you can work out what pacing is right for you.

Just don’t be scared to play around with things until you work out what is a good level that you can sustain over many months.

(You can read more about – How Often Should You Study Japanese?)

Don’t Ignore Your Immersion

You should also make sure you are doing immersion. Some people include this within their study time, while others see it a separate thing. Either way, just make sure you are doing it.

This is again something you should be aiming to do daily and you will also need to slowly introduce yourself to this. Even watching anime for 30 minutes can be quite draining if you are not used to it, so don’t burn yourself out.

I would also suggest you include Anki into your immersion process, you are going to be coming across plenty of new words every time you immerse and it can be very sensible to add these new words to Anki, so you can learn them and remember them.

(You can read more about – How To Create An Immersive Japanese Language Environment At Home)

Conclusion

Hopefully this all gives you a bit of direction when it comes to creating your own plan for studying Japanese.

I honestly believe there more than enough information out there for you to learn the language to a really high level, you just need to pull a few resources together and have some sort of structured plan to go through it all.

(You can read more about – What Is The Most Important Aspect Of Learning Japanese)