Language Study - French

Japanese Language Study

Most of the Language Learning tools on evisa.com are for learning vocabulary. Needless to say, learning a language consists of more than studying vocabulary. In fact, a focus on learning isolated items like vocabulary can be an impediment to learning. The most important tools for learning a language are first, a good text which explains the basic grammar and sound system and which has sample dialogs and writing, and secondly, constant practice reading, writing, speaking and listening.

Nevertheless, a concentrated study of vocabulary items can be very useful as part of a well rounded study plan. As you practice with the language, you'll find that you come across lots of new words. You'll often look these words up in a dictionary. Then, rather than just forget them, it is often a good idea to write them down. Even better, writing them on flashcards makes it easy to practice them, and then later to sort them into groups for different types of practice. The vocabulary applications at evisa.com.com are intended to help with this process.

The applications on the site at present only allow you to practice with premade lists of useful words. You can, however, make your own flashcard sets by selecting words from the premade lists and putting them in My Flashcards. Also, in the near future, a new application will allow you to extract lists of vocabulary items from any web page and then put them into My Flashcards.

This is a set of drills and activities for memorizing new vocabulary. Choose from one of dozens of useful vocabulary categories and then view the vocabulary items, practice with them as flashcards, play concentration, and finally, when you feel you've mastered the items, take a test.

For registered users (free) test scores are saved to the evisa.com.com database. Individual items can also be saved to My Flashcards (see below) for additional practice. My Flashcards has four flashcard "boxes" for sorting your cards by degree of difficulty or other strategy.

Also for registered users, lists for which you've gotten a test score of 100% are marked on the initial wordlist menu, so that you can see immediately which wordlists you have studied and which you have not.

Once you have familiarized yourself with some word groups, you can select one or more groups for random practice. Select several groups and then choose the number of cards to randomly select from these groups for flashcard practice.

Japanese language exercises on evisa.com.com use only the Japanese writing system, and never use the Roman alphabet. Using the Roman alphabet to spell Japanese can be useful for tourist phrasebooks, but it is completely inadequate for serious students. All Japanese words in the language learning exercises at evisa.com.com have pronunciation indicated by the Japanese Hiragana script. Since learning Hiragana takes a maximum of three hours with James W. Heisig's innovative book, there really is no reason for serious students to ever use "romaji". In fact, there isn't much reason for anyone to use our Hiragana quick reference chart if they've studied Dr. Heisig's book, but we've included it anyway in case you've forgotten a character or two.

This activity requires first choosing items from Word Study above. Please do this activity after first saving flashcards via the Word Study Flashcard activity. My Flashcards is only available for registered users.

When practicing with new vocabulary items, you'll find that some are very easy to remember, and others require more practice. The Flashcards activity in the Word Study group above allows you to save individual items to the My Flashcards page. Access My Flashcards to view and practice with the flashcard items you have saved previously.

My Flashcards has four flashcard "boxes" for sorting your cards by degree of difficulty or other strategy. You can move flashcards from box to box or remove them entirely once you've mastered them.

Warning: these "words" are NOT Japanese vocabulary, and the items in this section are of no use without Remembering the Kanji.

Japanese is considered a difficult language mostly due to two factors. First, the writing system is complicated. Second, Japanese is not closely related to another language, so, except for "loanwords", students will find that there are few words that are similar to native language words.

In 1977, James W. Heisig published "Remembering the Kanji" a book which makes it possible to master remembering the writing and meaning of the Japanese kanji in one to two months of full-time serious study. It will take longer if you can't work on it full time, but it will still take far less time than any other method.

This book is one of the most innovative and effective learning aids ever created, but is probably not for everybody. The book's approach is unusual in a number of ways. One is that it is recommended that the student learn the meaning and writing of each kanji before ever learning any Japanese words which correspond to the kanji. Another is that the "meaning" ascribed to each kanji is not necessarily the actual meaning in Japanese, but rather is a mnemonic device.

Another aspect of Dr. Heisig's technique that is unappealing to some people is that while it requires perhaps 1/10 to 1/100 the time required by more traditional rote approaches, it probably requires more actual intellectual effort, since imagination and concentration are required. Still, for those who need to learn the language, and can meet the requirements of Dr. Heisig's method, what was once a difficult barrier is suddenly transformed into a facilitator. Once you have remembered how to write the kanji and a basic meaning for each one, learning new words while reading becomes far easier.

Some of the activities in this section don't have the same value as in the other sections. Dr. Heisig recommends that you practice by looking at the English keyword, and then drawing the kanji. Look at the flashcard kanji only to check what you've written. Therefore, the "Flashcard" activity is probably the only really useful one for these keywords. However, the other activities may be useful in some contexts, so they have been included as usual.

This is a separate set of flashcard boxes for saving items from the Heisig keywords lists.

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