The formal education system kills creativity, one of the things I found when I was in high school was that I studied French for 5 years, every week almost everyday and after 5 years I couldn’t speak French.

We were put in a classroom and the teacher stood infront of us and wrote sentences in French on the board and we had to write down the French sentence quickly followed by writing down the English sentence. After that none us could speak French.

Learning in your own way is a much better way to learn anything not just languages. We have been programmed by the education system to think that the teacher stands at the front and delivers the lesson without any input from the learners.

To learn a language in your own way, or any other subject is the key to learning anything to a high level, enjoying it at the same time and remaining motivated.

If you learn from something you are passionate about you will find that you will learn like when you are a kid and not directly trying to learn something in school, when the education has been prescribed to you. When I was a kid, I new everything about computers and computer games because I was totally into it and nobody was ‘teaching me’ directly, I found my own way. I also learned how to draw by finding my own way.

It’s not to say that you don’t need any direct instruction but if you are seeking specific direct instruction out rather than getting it pushed on you in a formal eduction system you will learn in an internally motivated way and you will learn better.

If you learn from your own internal motivation and desire for personal growth you will find yourself having a completely different experience.

If you create and design your own lessons, and then also ask for help from a teacher, you will find a new way of learning and your language skills will improve tremendously.

Follow your own path with language learning, learn in ways that suit you and which you love, join up with different people who share your passion of anime and of the country that you wish to visit or live in. Learn through your passions.

This also applies to learning from anything you are passionate about, learning from Kpop, learning from science, learning from art or history or anthropology, or novels, or cooking or travelling or any other subject that you are passionate about.

Here are some tips on learning Japanese with anime

Stephen Krashen the linguist and activist has a theory on language learning called Comprehensible Input, he explains that he and his team tried to get people to learn languages in all different kinds of ways, every kind of way you can imagine but the only thing that worked was giving people messages that they could understand. The good thing about watching anime to learn Japanese is that there is a context, the context comes from the images on the screen you can guess from the context what someone might be saying and from this the language will be acquired. To help you when you begin you can try slowing down the video a little bit on your computer this will help you to understand what is being said. Also another thing you can do is first watch the anime episode with subtitles so you can get an idea of what is going on and also pick up a little bit of the language and then when you’ve finished watching the episode rewind it and watch it again without the subtitles.

Don’t learn new vocabulary in isolation, when you hear a new word, look it up in a dictionary or google translate and then try using the knowledge you have so far to make your own sentence up with the new word, this will help you to remember it.

Also you can do the same but with speaking out loud the new word in a sentence that you have made up.

Learn Katakana and Hiragana to help you write out the new sentences and also this will help you to pronounce the words better than using Romaji. You can learn Hiragana and Katakana in a few days and with practice it will stick in your mind and you will be able to use it quite fluently quickly.

Find people who are also passionate about anime to talk with and practice talking in Japanese with your new found language skills.

Learning a language takes time and patience so don’t be discouraged if you find it hard at first, keep going and don’t quit, help others to learn languages too, teaching something helps you to become skilled in the thing you are learning.