Beginner

• Find Japanese learning materials in your native language.


• Learn the alphabets! Start with katakana, as that’s the alphabet foreign words are written in. Then learn Hiragana and Kanji.


• Determine where you need the most help: reading, writing, speaking, listening, or all of the above.


• Create a study plan that you can do consistently each week.  A little each week is better than trying to do a whole lot every day, and then failing and giving up.


• Visit our 'resources' section for Japanese and review each of the 'beginner' resources.

Intermediate

• At the intermediate stage, you need to start mastering grammar, and mastering pronunciation.   


• Get ahold of a bunch of grammar workbooks, and get honest feedback from native speakers (with Japanese teaching experience) on your pronunciation.  Make it perfect.  If no one can understand you, who cares about your perfect grammar, right?


• If you haven't already, start reading novels, newspapers, magazines, mange etc. in Japanese, and same for watching lots of Japanese speaking television and dramas, and listening to lots of Japanese speaking radio.  Listen and read weekly.


• It's arduous, but you have to start writing regularly, and on complicated topics.  Most importantly, get them corrected!


• Find a bunch of YouTube channels you enjoy watching with lots of speaking in Japanese and subscribe.


• Find practice groups where you can speak with others.  


• If you can, go visit Japan, and ideally, go live there for a while.


• Visit our 'resources' section for Japanese and review each of the 'intermediate' resources.

Advanced

• At this advanced stage, you should by now be a master of the grammar and pronunciation.


• At this stage, you MUST go and live in Japan, even for just a few months.


• Your main focus needs to be increasing your vocabulary.  100% guaranteed you do not have the vocabulary of a fluent native speaker, and that is your mission: to remedy that.  You need to put together a weekly vocabulary growth program.  


• Make sure you are writing regularly and forcing yourself to use new vocabulary.  Note: do not 'guess' in how a word is used.  Only use a word if you know for certain that you are using it in the correct way--otherwise, you are just guessing, and probably reinforcing incorrect usage.


• Whatever reading and/or listening and/or watching you were doing from the intermediate level, amplify it.  You have to now do three times as much work.


• It's time to start teaching and leading classes and groups in Japanese.  You have to find opportunities to speak, debate, and discuss very complicated topics, e.g. economics, space travel, religion, history, mathematics, etc.  You must force yourself to expand your horizons in Japanese.


• Be sure to start using Break Diving's Fluency Book.  You can find it on the Break Diving Blog.


• Visit our 'resources' section for Japanese and review each of the 'advanced' resources.