A somewhat non-climatic but productive weekend. I was able to clean out a portion of my garage and subsequently the room for my home office. I am really enjoying my Friday Japanese lessons. The time flies by and I feel like I’m hanging out with a friend.
On that note, last week, I had a ton (abnormal) amount of Japanese lessons. I guess it could be normal, as it was initial eval lessons for my future tutors/teachers/sensees for the most part. After the completion of my third week – I’ve narrowed it down and found my 2 Japanese sensees and likely my B list teacher for bi-weekly lessons. There’s also a B list and C list. I’ll likely contact B list when I need to focus on something specific through my interactions with the A list.
Most of the teachers I interacted with were great, there were a couple that seemed like it was their first time or they are just starting out and they don’t really have a plan or syllabus except to go through the basic greetings which is ground zero for learning Japanese. It’s pretty much how most of the beginner books start out. There were a couple that were very critical and some that were very patient.
When I first set out on looking for a Japanese tutor I didn’t exactly know what I was looking for. While conversation, reading, and writing are pillars of learning a new language they are each different and unique in their own ways. They each present their own challenges. For instance I really wanted to be great at all 3. Now, I would like to focus on conversation and reading. While learning how to write all the kanji characters would definitely help in learning it is difficult and there are a number of characters to memorize.
Here are a few sites that I’ve tried for tutors:
- Verbling
- Wyzant
- Italki
My next blog post I’ll mention some apps that I’ve tried out.
A place for my head 