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Studying Language on Jo Dennis (Kumamoto)
Ever found yourself staring at the trending topics on Twitter and not knowing what’s going on at all? (What could #としまえん even be about?)* Have you ever thought there’s no use using Facebook while you’re in Japan? (Nobody in the country uses it, right?) With a few tweaks to how you absorb information on the SNS you frequent, you can keep up with the Joneses and pick up a few words on the way.
Follow accounts in your target language
My best advice is to follow accounts related to things you already like doing, in the language you want to learn. The information that you seek is usually hidden behind a few minutes of looking up translations. Or, if you want to dedicate yourself to some more serious study, set up a block of time for reviewing grammar forms that appear in the post. I’ll lay out my recommendations for how to do this on Twitter and Facebook below, but this can apply to any social media you use. Similarly, this works for any language you’re planning on studying, not just Japanese!
With posts that are short and sweet, Twitter is one of the best places for learning a little bit every day. Twitter is also one of the most popular apps in Japan, so there will be no lack of content to sift through. Follow any account that posts about your hobbies or interests in Japanese. Search for keywords such as サッカー (soccer), 編み物 (knitting), etc. and follow the accounts that pop up in the results. Follow any and every account at first. If it ends up being too much, feel free to sparse it down later on. I personally started my Japanese language learning quest by following Japanese Twitter accounts that covered video game news (shoutout to @famitsu). You’ll be able to read about things you want to know about, but in small enough chunks that you don't get demotivated. But as the English language posts and Japanese language posts jumble up in your feed, it becomes easy to skip the tweets that you can't read. It's your precious relaxation time—you opened Twitter to decompress, not study! To counteract this, I recommend dedicating the first five minutes on Twitter to reading the Japanese tweets you come across. Or, instead of a time limit, read and study the first ten tweets in Japanese that show up in your feed. Afterwards, you’re free to ignore any tweet you want. If, like me, your Twitter usage has fried your attention span, I recommend making a point to economize on the tweets you read. For example, follow bots that repeat the same or similar phrases, or viral accounts
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