What Is The Most Important Aspect Of Learning Japanese

I get a lot of people asking me about what I think is the most important aspect of learning Japanese, which is basically asking me where they should spend the most energy.

This question makes sense, but is also not ideal. The reality is that there are many aspects that are important and it will depend on you, and your level in the language. You will also find that your focus will probably shift as you develop, so it’s not easy to pinpoint one aspect as being the most important.

I will go through as many aspects as I can, giving you my opinion on why they may be important to you along your way.

Listening To Japanese Is Important

It doesn’t matter what your level of Japanese is, listening is going to be important, and you should always be doing a lot of it.

I might even argue that this is one of the most important aspects of the language, especially in the early stages.

Listening is going to unlock so much and it will really help you understand what is going on and really help you build a foundation.

Of course blindly listening on its own is not enough, but in conjunction with other techniques, it becomes an extremely important part of the process of learning Japanese to a high level.

Reading In Japanese Is Important

Reading has a very similar importance to listening. Reading is also a form on input and is also going to give you so much of the language. The more you read, the more you can unlock.   

I would still say listening is the superior form of input, if you had to pick one. I would rather be good at listening and totally illiterate, but this would also be kind of a stupid way to approach things as being able to read is important.

While reading doesn’t need to be your main source of input, it is an important skill and putting effort into it will yield results and you will benefit more from reading than avoiding it, so in that sense I would say it is pretty important for your Japanese progress.

As you progress past the basics this is going to become more and more important and usually a lot of reading is what separates the average learner from a high achiever.

Immersion Is Key To Learning Japanese

As I have just mentioned, reading and listening are both forms of input and are both needed, but how you go about doing these two things is important..

It is easy to focus on reading text books and listen to explanations of things, and while this will get you pretty far, it’s not enough.

If you want to actually make progress in Japanese then you need to do “immersion”, which is when you interact with native level content. You need to actually watch Japanese Tv shows or read books designed for natives.

This slight difference is hugely important and really is the key to seeing success. You need to step away from the learning materials and start getting your input from actual natural Japanese materials.

You will probably find this feels like a big jump as you are leaving the safety of the simple learning materials, but this will make your long term progress far superior.

This type of listening and reading immersion really is how you learn Japanese to a high level.

(You can read more about – The Benefits of Japanese Language Immersion For Acquiring The Language)

Speaking Japanese Will Be Important …Eventually

When we think about learning Japanese, we will usually see our ability to speak the language as an indicator of how much progress we have made. I think that this is fair, but also not something we should worry about right away.

Being able to speak is very important, but not immediately. Being able to speak implies you are able to comprehend what you are hearing, so you can form a verbal response. The problem is that when we are starting out …we don’t comprehend what is going on.

I would say speaking is important …but not until you can get to grips with just understanding what you are hearing. Of course you might understand little bits here and there and feel comfortable speaking around that.  If I say こんにちは (hello) to you, and you say that back to me, that’s okay, learning little phrases like this doesn’t take much energy and is actually expected.

However, actually trying to master your speech is something I wouldn’t worry about for a while. At some point it should become your priority, but not from day one.

What About Writing In Japanese?

Writing in Japanese is an interesting one, and while I usually say all aspects of any language are important …writing in Japanese is something you can completely ignore.

The reality is that you are not going to write much and it will take a lot of time and effort to get good at this skill and the truth is you can bypass it and put your effort elsewhere.

Of course there will be some of you reading this who may need to do a lot of writing or just really want to, and in that case, it will then be an important aspect for your studies. For most us, we can get away with ignoring it.

Typing in Japanese is not the same, as you can use an English keyboard. Your ability to type well actually centres around your ability to listen to how a word is pronounced in Japanese, and your ability to read that what you have typed, to check is what you want to say.  

We live in a modern world, so sadly the keyboard is mightier than the pen, but this does mean hand writing in Japanese is not too important.

Grammar Is Going To Be Important Too Really Understand Japanese

I think we all secretly know the importance of grammar, even if we don’t want to admit it.

If we want to have a decent knowledge of Japanese, then a good grip of the basic grammar is going to be hugely important.

There is no reason why we cannot just sit down and go through this and then start looking out for what we have learned in our immersion. Doing this is really going to benefit you and while some people will say “you can avoid grammar” I think this is foolish. You are going to make much faster progress putting some effort into the simple stuff.

Once you get past this basic stage, you can kind of figure things out more “naturally”, but even here, it is going to make sense to just read about a particular grammar point and get the concept to click a little quicker.

Grammar is tough and boring at times, but it really is the glue that ties everything together and is going to therefore massively important throughout your Japanese studies.

Learning Japanese Vocabulary Is Going To Important  

Another area of Japanese that we all secretly know is massively important is vocabulary. If you don’t know any words …you don’t know the language.  It really is that simple and the more you learn, the more you improve.

Vocabulary really is the building blocks of the language, and its importance cannot be underestimated. If you did nothing but learn a lot of words, everything else would probably fall into place and you would make progress in the language by complete accident …that is how important vocabulary is.

(You can read more about – How Do We Acquire More Vocabulary?)

Being Consistent With Your Japanese Study Is Important

A very important aspect that is often overlooked, as it is not directly the language …is consistency.

When it comes to studying anything, especially something complex like Japanese, then consistency is critical for your progress.

You need to be consistent with your studies, it really is that simple. Doing little bits here and there is just not good enough, you need a plan and you need to stick it, and I would argue you need to do this daily.

If you can consistently stick to putting effort into Japanese, you will see results, it really is the secret sauce.

Having Comprehensible Input Is Going To be Very Important for Learning Japanese

Everything I have mentioned so far is important in one way or another, but to really make any of this successful, you need one over arching principle to be present and this really might be the most important part of learning Japanese …and that is that everything needs to be comprehensible.

This really means that no matter what level you are at, or what you are doing with the language, you need to have some rough understanding of what is going on.

It makes sense, if you can’t understand something, you are not learning anything, you will just be lost and confused.

This means that whatever you are studying, you need to make it understandable and this is how you will make progress.

Of course you are going to come across plenty of new information daily, languages are huge and complex, so you are not going to understand it all.

However, whatever you are focusing on, it is important that you can make this small piece understandable. If you can do this consistently, more and more of the language will become clearer to you over time.

If you don’t understand something, go out of your way to make it understandable, this is how you learn.   

(You can read more about – What Is Comprehensible Input In Language Learning?)

Conclusion

Hopefully you can see that pretty much every aspect of Japanese is going to be “important” at some point.

Learning a language like Japanese takes time and effort and your strategy and priorities will change as you progress. Certain aspects will become more important and others will not matter as much, but they all will help you reach that overall goal of being good at the language.

Just keep working hard and focusing on your current objectives and you will slowly get there in the end.