I don't know how much this will help, but if you're intrested in independent japanese study than check this thing I wrote a while ago for my friend – it's just copy pasted, but he was basically in the same situation.
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Soo, you want to learn Japanese huh? It's quite a difficult language and at times annoying, but with hard work it's also very rewarding! Judging from your avatar (clannad ftw ><) you watch anime, so it's really cool to start to understand more and more of what they're saying~
Currently I am taking classes @ a local Japanese school, but for the first year (in total I've been studying for ~3 years) it was self-study.
Here are some learning tools I suggest:
First things first, ya gotta learn the Japanese alphabet. There's 3: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji, but for now focus on the first two.
You can learn this by just looking at any Hiragana/Katakana chart (google it), and memorizing the letter with the sound that it makes.
This is kinda hard to do effectively for some, so alternatively, you can buy the "Let's learn Hiragana" by Mitamura which has a lot of worksheets to help you memorize them. It's $10 each, but it was pretty helpful for me.
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1568363893http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Learn-Kataka ... pd_sim_b_1Genki vol 1:
After you learn hiragana & katakana, ya gotta start learning the actual language. Genki is a really understandable and basic Japanese textbook that will teach you the foundations: grammar, basic vocab words, and basic sentence structures so you can speak it. It teaches really well and I would recommend it. You can get this on amazon for ~$50 or you can also download a pdf online for free if you know your way around the internet *ahem thepiratebay*
*I know this is kinda expensive, so msg me back if help w/ this
http://kanjidamage.com/ :
Now after you learn basic grammar from a textbook like Genki, it's probably time to learn KANJI, the third alphabet found in Japanese which is basically a pain in the ass at first. However, kanjidamage.com is a free website that helps you learn kanji and makes it less painful by using mnemonics and jokes that help you remember the definition of Kanji.
http://ankisrs.net/ :
Anki is a free flashcard program that can help you memorize words and kanji in an organized and effective way. I use this in conjunction w/ genki and kanjidamage.
Some tips:
- watching anime helps, but be sure to also pay attention to the words they're saying!
- I use physical flash cards in addition to anki to memorize words/kanji in japanese, and imo it's a great way to learn the vocab stuff.
- have a japanese dictionary handy; personally I use
http://jisho.org/- For the 3 alphabets, practice /writing/ them as well as reading them.
- slow and steady wins the race (at least for me). For the way I learn, it's better to learn a few new words or perhaps a chapter in the textbook a day than to do 50 words a day, and then take a week break, and then learn another 50. If you do it this way, you could forget a lot of the things you learned.
Good luck! Learning languages by yourself for free is totally doable (most of it is memorization anyways), but requires quite a bit of self discipline. If you have any questions message me back and I'd be glad to help~ ^^