RL kept me busy in May, so it wasn’t until this month that I got back to my studies on Smart.fm. I’ve settled into a schedule now of taking two lunches a week (that 1 1/2 hours a week) to continue my studies. Considering my RL schedule, this is the best that I can do at the moment, and it’s actually working out for me! I started with Smart.fm’s Master Hiragana program. I was still studying hiragana when I started, but as of last Friday, I had all 104 hiragana studied, and had mastered 84. The program takes you through the symbol pretty thoroughly, making sure you can recognize them both in Japanese, and romanized. It uses multiple choice, and times how long it takes you to choose the right character. It also does a spelling quiz by showing you the symbol and then you have to type the correct letters. Any mistakes takes you back to the study screen. And as you get closer to completing all the characters, it starts stretching out the amount of time before you can study again. After I hit 84 last Friday, it stopped letting me study and test, and told me to…
For the good part of 25 years, the thought of learning Japanese has flitted in and out of my mind. For most of that time, either inaccessibility of resources and/or time has kept me from putting any serious effort into it. In the last three years, I’ve made two abortive attempts, both ending after collecting resources, but never taking it anywhere. They say three’s a charm, so with this third attempt, I’m going to write about my experience, which I’m hoping will keep me on track. That’s the problem with self-study sometimes, motivation. I’ve set a goal of trying to reach an elementary level of reading that will allow me to read manga. Speaking is going to be secondary, but since it’s helpful to learning the letters, I will be working on it somewhat along side the reading and writing.