SABU - dedicated App to learn from Anime/Drama

[sabu2014]

I am a self Japanese learner. After I finished N4 material, I am still far from the ability to read and hear Japanese. I tried really really hard to learn but I stopped a few times. I thought I learnt it in a wrong way. What's the right approach to do so? I want a systematic way to do so.

Finally, I built my own App to archive that.

You can regard my App as an MP4 player. But I would rather see it as a tool to meet several criteria so that I can really learn efficiently. My philosophy behind learning a language is :

1) Listening. A lot of listening. Learn it like a child. All navigation in my App is based on subtitle timing so that I can easily loop each sentence until I can each and every sound. To the point, where I can slow appreciate the difference of vowel and consonants in Japanese and my mother tongue. Listening help a lot in memorising new words.
2) Interesting. Pick the drama and anime I love. NO MORE TEXTBOOK. Ensure that I would not only love to learn each word, but also remember the scene and even mimic what the characters say. Record them down and compare. Memorise the sentence, not the word only.
3) Fun and relax. If I find the process is painful, it is really hard to sustain. The App should lookup the word for me, help me make flash cards, integrated card quiz, lookup special words in web...
4) Use it. The App should let me record my voice so that I can shadow what the character say. It should also let me Type to ensure that I get the hiragana correct.
5) Monitor Progress. I think this the golden rule. The more I listen the better. The more I speak the better. The more words I learnt the better. The more I type the better. So, I want the App to keep statistics of the above.

 

[sabu2014]

Basic functions

The 3 most important functions in SABU

1) Subtitle time based navigation ( forward / backward / sentence loop )
2) Dual subtitle ( understand the gist in your mother first, then you will learn the grammar and vocab naturally )
3) Dictionary lookup ( Swipe on the word or press and hold to find the longest match )

 

[lanthas]

"Discovering" grammar and vocabulary using anime, and in general using anime as a primary learning source, won't work - especially if you're a beginner. English subtitles are always slightly (and sometimes completely) different from what is being said in Japanese. In the end the general meaning is the same of course, but it's being expressed with different words to get a more natural result. If you're lucky you'll notice such differences, but if you're not you're wasting your own time by learning wrong things and accumulating misunderstandings that will need to be corrected later.

Additionally, I've found that it's difficult to even find good Japanese subtitles: they can contain subtle and sometimes egregious errors. They may contain wrong (but similar-sounding) words, or not even be grammatically valid. After all they're made by unpaid amateurs who are merely making a best effort with no guarantee for correctness.

Finally, both the topics and the language use in anime are completely unrepresentative of real life. Sure, it may be fun to know how to insult a giant enemy crab and then proceed to command your mech army to fire their particle cannons at it. But this won't be of any use if you want to read real-life websites/books/... or communicate with Japanese people. Worse, you may end up unintentionally insulting them.

You should "learn like a child" indeed: by going to school.

 

[WonkoTheSane]

What you're describing is an incredibly rudimentary (and poorly implemented) form of Comprehensible Input and TPRS, as described by Dr Steven Krashen. It won't work the way you're describing, though. You need an experienced, well prepared teacher who uses culturally and grammatically appropriate stories if you don't want to end up with incredibly messed up language.

Otherwise, get a textbook.

 

[sabu2014]

Appreciate your responses. I did study textbooks and went to courses before. But it does not work for me ( or not to the point I find satisfactory ). Yes, studying with anime may be confusing for beginners. But, new grammars in anime/drama that would trigger me to revise the grammar stuff again or figure it out in a lot of good web resources. In the end, the impression and understanding of the stuff would be stronger and better.

 

[sabu2014]

Conversations in Anime/Drama is super fast. My favourite learning mode is to set it to sentence-loop mode. Once I can hear all the words, I would move to the second sentence by pressing the remote control. In the first run, I would add all new words to the built-in flash cards. Then, I would play with the flash cards. And in the second run, I can start guessing the meaning from the sound.

Repeated Modes

 

[Mike Cash]

Just what the internet needed.....another Japanese learning app and somebody who hasn't had much success learning Japanese telling everybody how he has figured out the secret to learning Japanese....