Recently I came across three websites that are brilliant for anyone learning Japanese. In fact, the last one is brilliant for anyone learning ANY language. Interested? Read on.
Funnily I found this site by clicking on a Facebook ad - something I don't do very often. A great thing about this site is that it has a free 14-day trial, which has plenty of study options available to keep you busy during those 2 weeks. If you follow their advice and study 30 mins a day during that time, you could learn a lot just from the free trial.
Their features include an e-textbook (admittedly I haven't looked at this much yet), vocab learning lab (I use this a lot!), kanji learning 'academy', and worksheets and cheat sheets, and my favourite - games!!
The vocab lab is divided into categories. You either go from start to finish or pick and choose from the categories. The vocab learning sessions are broken up into little bite sizes of a few minutes so you don't get brain overload. You can choose to keep going or move on to something else.
When you're ready to take a break, choose from one of two games. The one shown above is a fun space-themed game where you get to shoot the incoming words by typing them on the keyboard. Not as easy as it sounds, my friends! Somehow reading the hiragana, converting it to roman characters and then associating that with which keys to press is a little difficult. I'm a pretty fast and accurate typer in English, but in Japanese I somehow forget where my fingers should be going! Plus my brain works much slower. So I have a lot of fun getting better by playing this. Plus, it has super-serious intense music, so you kind of feel like you are saving the world!
Unfortunately after the 2 week trial it does cost to use this site, but I'm seriously considering buying a years subscription, as there is plenty of helpful stuff there. But there is some generosity going too - the next two (free) sites I am going to introduce were actually suggested to me by LinguaLift. Gee, thanks!
One of these is NHK Easy News.
This is a website designed specifically for foreigners and children, presenting simplified news stories with furigana, easy definitions and also the option to listen and read along. A great way to learn new vocabulary in context and familiarise yourself with kanji, whilst keeping up-to-date with current affairs.
And lastly, and possibly my favourite, Lang-8.com.
This site is great for anyone learning almost ANY language. It's basically an international language exchange site. Recently I had been practising my Japanese writing skills, and wanted people to check and correct them, but wasn't always successful in that endeavour. Well on this website you can post "journals" or basically write a post about anything, either several paragraphs or even one sentence, and native speakers will correct it for you. In my experience, I have always received corrections the same day I post, which is awesome. Several people can correct the same post, so given that there is often no "one right answer", you can get several opinions or ways of saying things. You can see each correction clearly and compare at your leisure.
As well as having your posts corrected, you can also correct journals written in your native language, thus returning the favour. You can even add friends and send messages to other users, another chance for that language exchange. I've got a new Japanese friend now who moved to Perth a couple of months ago to study English, and it's fun hearing about his experiences and impressions about Australia. We usually write to each other in English and Japanese, so both of us can practise our foreign language each time.
What can I say, this website has filled a void in my language learning journey! It's great to know I can always get quick answers to questions I have by writing a posts and having it corrected. I highly recommend this FREE site! All you've gotta do is sign up (you can even use your Facebook account to sign in if you like) and start posting.
So there you have it: 3 Brilliant Websites.
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