These 2 Magical Ingredients Will Get You Fluent in Japanese
At the most basic level, there are just two essential ingredients you need to bake a deliciously fluent Japanese cake:
- Exposure ("input")
- Practice ("output")
First, you need to flood your brain with gallons and gallons of interesting, meaningful exposure throughout your day.
Second, you must then apply the words and structures you hear and read by practicing with real Japanese humans. Or sometimes robots 🤖...
The good news is that you can get all the exposure and practice you need wherever you are using an approach I call the Anywhere Immersion Method™️ (or "A.I.M." for short).
This powerful system gives your brain all the input it needs to make sense of Japanese in the natural way we evolved to learn languages. And it leverages modern technology to let you practice speaking Japanese even if there aren't any native Japanese speakers within thousands of miles.
Most language learning approaches are either frustratingly archaic or naively modernist. Laborious repetition, rote memory, and textbook learning have been the norm for centuries, but these methods are extremely boring and rather ineffective for most people. Modern language-learning apps, on the other hand, can be fun and addictive, but offer little reward for all the hours spent tapping away on a screen.
To get fluent in Japanese, you need to simultaneously 1) honor your innate language acquisition instincts, and 2) leverage the latest technology and learning science. It's not an either-or choice between the two, but a wise combination of the old and new.
Anywhere Immersion gives your brain the wholesome ingredients it needs to learn, but spices up the recipe with useful modern technology, time-saving techniques, and tons of fun.
The method isn't magic, but it certainly feels magical once you experience its fruits firsthand. You do inherently enjoyable things you would do anyway like reading manga, watching anime, and having conversations with friends, and your brain uses these activities to automatically and effortlessly internalize the words and patterns that make up Japanese. No boring textbooks, expensive classes, or conjugation tables required!
For specific tips on how to get the exposure and practice you need to bake your magical Japanese fluency cake, read my blog post How to Immerse Yourself in Japanese Anywhere in the World and check out my book Master Japanese: How to Learn Japanese Anywhere in the World. The detailed guide shows you exactly how to learn Japanese using my Anywhere Immersion Method, and includes hundreds of John-tested, John-approved Japanese learning resources.
