Studying The Experts
“Never become so much of an expert that you stop gaining expertise. View life as a continuous learning experience.” – Denis Waitley
The “experts” of Japanese could be people who have learned Japanese and are good at it… then again, you have a much bigger pool of native Japanese speakers you could call experts as well. There are, however, benefits to both.
Non-Native Speaker “Experts”
- These experts often have innovative ways to learn Japanese.
- You can study how they learned Japanese, and apply it to your own methods to make them better.
- They’re not stuck with “traditional” learning methods, which aren’t necessarily better.
Native Speaker “Experts”
- These experts know Japanese better than anyone else.
- They know slang / new things before everyone else.
- Even when they make mistakes, it’s probably still “correct” because these are the people who shape and change how languages grow and evolve.
Depending on what you’re looking for, you can focus on either. For innovative ways to learn Japanese, there are blogs (like, *ahem* Tofugu and TextFugu) that can teach you a lot about this side.
On the other hand, if you’re looking to learn from native speaker “experts,” you have access to TV shows, blogs, newspapers, etc., all through the internet. If you focus in on different things, find grammar you’ve already learned, then analyze why they used the grammar a particular way, you’ll learn a ton. Look, listen, read, etc., then ask why. That’s the most important part (besides figuring out the answer).
Whenever you get a chance, try to learn from the experts and see what they do. If you can get in their head and figure out why they’re doing what they’re doing, then that’s even better. I’m always trying to tell you why here on TextFugu, already, but that shouldn’t stop you from asking why a lot anyways!
[image]