In 2015, I made an attempt to teach myself Japanese with an app called Duolingo. It was extremely hard to teach myself as I did not know where to begin. It wasn’t until 2022 when I transferred to Old Dominion University that I would have the opportunity to learn Japanese with a native Japanese speaker.
When I first started learning Japanese during my first semester at ODU, it was a difficult but fun experience. I was able to practice pronunciation and communication skills with fellow classmates while learning to introduce ourselves. However, pronunciation was a bit of a challenge for me that required quite a bit of extra practice. To practice pronunciation outside of class, we were assigned two Language Exchanges and six VoiceThreads. These two types of homework assignments helped to improve both pronunciation and communication skills.
Over the course of the semester, I also learned how to read and write two of the three writing systems: Hiragana and Katakana. One of the first few assignments that we were required to complete was a packet where we had to rewrite each character. When I first saw the packet, I felt overwhelmed by how many pages there were and having to write each character so many times. In the end, the feedback I received was very helpful in learning how to properly write each character. I learned that trying to write each character quickly did not work out well. The characters that I wrote slower looked closer to the original printed character that was on the packet. This taught me that sometimes slow and steady can be more helpful with getting more consistent results. As I continue to practice writing, my speed will gradually get better with more consistent characters.