struggling student

Hello everyone
I'm nearing the end of the Japanese 101 course at my local college, and I missed over a month of classes because of health issues. The oral portion of my final exam is in exactly 13 hours from now (1900 EST), and I am not even close to being ready. I'm sure I failed the written portion as well.

I understand the rudiments of grammar, basic sentence structure, etc., but for some reason I'm not able to commit katakana and vocabulary in general to memory (I especially have trouble with nouns and appropriate application of the 'no' particle). I have drilled endless hours with handmade flashcards, done all the exercises in the assigned workbook (Nakama 1A), but with little result.

Even though I will clearly fail this class, I'd still like to continue to study Japanese, and even if by the grace of god I pass with a D, I still would not even dare to enroll in a 102 class, as of right now. So my question is what workbooks or other resources would you all recommend for someone of my level so that I can study through the winter break? Since time is limited, I don't want to have to start extracurricular study from the beginning, but rather reinforce what I'm struggling with, and maybe get a little ahead if I'm able.

I appreciate any answer thanks.

A different textbook/workbook won't help you with remembering vocabulary better, will it? Whatever you use, it'll always be a list of words and some sample dialogue/exercises.

If you can't remember the words as-is, try creating phonetic mnemonics for them (like you would create visual mnemonics for learning kanji). Assign dummy meanings to common syllables based on short Japanese words that you do know, or similar-sounding words in English or your native language. For example: ko = child (as in kodomo), kou = coal (similarly sounding), gai = outside (as in gaijin), shi = death (as in shinu) etc. Then make up a story that connects the meanings of the syllables to the meaning of the complete word.

Practical example: kougeki = attack. In my native language Dutch, kou sounds like "kool" (coal) and "geki" is written similar to "gek" (crazy). So imagine hundreds of coal miners storming the headquarters in rage after one of their buddies died in an accident, demanding better safety measures.

As an extra step, you can then later try to integrate that same story with the matching kanji: 攻 = steel beam (factory, manufacturing) + director's chair (movie) = an epic movie about the historical revolt at the coal mines.

You could look at Erin's Challenge: WEB版「エリンが挑戦！にほんごできます。」サイト閉鎖と新サイトのご案内 | WEB版 エリンが挑戦！にほんごできます。
Hopefully your teachers understand your situation and can maybe give you some additional materials, too

If you are finding plain flashcards are not helping, try mixing in some things other than text:
TPR = total physical response. Normally done in groups in class, it's the thing where you (or someone else) says something and then you do it.
Drawing or labelling images - sometimes having an image to link the word to helps a lot.
Vocalising - this is one that was big for me - don't just look at the words, read out the sentence (always have a sentence to go with vocab).

You have to figure out what works for you. I found reading out loud was the big thing for me.

Also, exaggerating/ridiculous example sentences sometimes make stuff stick. This is something my study group used to do when we got bored of drill sentences. "I go to work by elephant." "I eat cake and ramen for breakfast." "For summer holidays, I am going to the moon."

Don't over-drill - that is, don't try and make yourself do many, many flashcards in a day, and particular don't do a lot in one sitting, if you can try and find ways to do smaller sessions during the day. Do make sure you do something every day, even if you only make it a half hour or so - slow and steady wins the race.

For katakana, again, find some interesting vocab words to practice on. You might find it useful to look up things like the town you were born, place where you live, names of your family members, favourite holiday destination/sport(s team name)/food (if in katakana), etc.

Good on you for not giving up despite setbacks. がんばって！

The thing to do with vocabulary is to switch them from being foreign language words stored separately in your brain to just being synonyms of English words.

In the internal dialogue that goes on in your head all day anyway, swap Japanese words in to replace English words. It doesn't have to be every word, and you don't have to make Japanese sentences for this to work. Through repetition your brain will learn to associate the Japanese word with the idea and when you want to create a Japanese sentence, you won't have to struggle to recall the word.

So ashita when you okiru in the asa, kiru your fuku, taberu your asagohan, and sugosu the hi renshuu-ing nihongo vocabulary kou iu fuu ni.

It sounds silly as hell...especially if you do it out loud, but if you stick with it...it works.

I failed the first Japanese class I ever took, so don't feel like the Lone Ranger.

It is often because you are not surrounded by the words. They are not part of your everyday life. You only ever see them in a sterile and abstract study context, so have difficulty internalising the words. Try post-it-notes stuck on everything at home. Not only on the item themselves e.g. Cooker, Spoon, Plate etc. but add a vocabulary crib sheet for that area - e.g. Cooking and eating verbs and phrases in the Kitchen. Make it part of how you live, rather than just how you study. So everytime you go and make some food you see the items labelled, and not only put the words into context, but seeing them regularly helps with mentally reinforcing the word.
Also concentrate on related topics for a period - e.g. food one week, travel the next to give yourself time to internalise and reinforce a batch of words, rather than trying to memorise the entire list in one go.

Those are amazing suggestions, thank you all so much.

Lanthas, to answer your first question, that's more or less where my train of thought was going; i felt that if i kept filling out workbooks, it would help me to better understand the material, or at least make me more familiar with it.
Actually, with the language thing, I grew up around spanish and english, but I moved away from most of my family, so I don't really speak it much more; it's there, but it's 'passive' I guess? my spanish isnt really broken but i guess limited from lack of use? Like my grandmother is able to talk to me in spanish but i respond in (mostly) english, and we usually more or less understand each other. Anyway what I'm trying to say is that it never really occured to me too look for parallels like that, after I finish this post I'm going to recheck the textbooks glossary for things like that. Off the top of my head, I can't think of many examples, but one, and I think it's just a coincidence. みる sounds an awful lot like mirar, which coincidentally means 'to look' in spanish.

nekojita, that site looks absolutely fantastic! actually this will help me a lot for tonight, because the 'lessons' are so specific, and I can focus on what I'm not as confident in. Thank you!
And yeah, I try to read out loud as much as possible, but sometimes I'm not really sure if my inflection is correct, or if I'm even pronouncing words correctly at all. I will put to use everything you suggested. I'm the only person I know that is studying Japanese (I don't talk to people much and I don't really know any of my classmates names) but what I might be able to do is write up prompts in romanji so that i can have a friend or two come over? Like, would an example be just executing simple commands, or what else?

Mike Cash; sometimes, random japanese words do cross my mind, but often i won't remember the meaning; and for every word i write or speak, i have not yet been entirely confident on the meaning of each individual word. as i result my long pauses in speech are often mistaken for me giving up. I've never had this problem when studying vocabulary in other languages, I usually either knew the word, was familiar with it, or I didn't at all. I'll start making a deliberate effort to start thinking in japanese.

Stunty, I understand that immersion is crucial to understanding a language, but i got so wrapped up in grades and academics and other issues that I've neglected to realize it; this is the first 'true' foreign language i've studied in an academic environment, and a "sterile and abstract study concept" hits it right on the dot.

The sort of examples we did in class were things like one person calling out commands and the other people acting them out, or the reverse - describing what people were doing (or telling them to stop doing it) in Japanese. Other times just acting out a scenario - e.g. if doing describing how you're feeling not just a flat "I have a headache" but doing the whole over-acting thing.

Sometimes I think just getting up and jumping around a bit helps break things up. Similarly, I've always found it easier to pay attention to audio material if I put it on a portable device and go for a walk - maybe because I'm easily distracted if I'm sitting in front of a screen.

One more thing to keep in mind is that Japanese has a lot of homonyms and almost-homonyms compared to other languages. It helps to pay special attention to this while studying: bring together similarly sounding words in your mind and revise the resulting word chains from time to time. This helps to remember the words and prepares you for telling them apart while listening to spoken Japanese (and preventing some grave/hilarious mistakes while speaking).

Some examples of similarities:

• Swapped letters/syllables: konki-kinko; sansei-seisan; kaidan-dankai...
• Short/long vowels: ojisan-ojiisan; jugyou-juugyou...
• Adding/replacing single letters: kankou-kankyou; jikan-chikan-shikan; kisoku-kizoku-kinsoku-kinzoku; hokoru-okoru-okuru-okosu-otosu-odosu-orosu-korosu...

Maybe I should make a thread to see who can come up with the longest list

For refreshment of vocabulary and kanji I use japaneseclass.jp because of its RPG character (you gain experience points through practice and correctly answered questions) and it has short news complete with furigana to practice your reading.

For speaking and listening comprehension it really is important that you speak with others in Japanese. Maybe you can find a tandem partner in your vicinity, be it someone who is also learning Japanese or even better someone that is a native speaker and wants to polish up his English.

Watching movies and TV-series in Japanese also helps with listening comprehension