DATA-WORLD-BLOG

One month has passed since the start of JAPANglish (*^^*)

We learned a lot from each other and would like to record it here to encourage us in the future.

The Japanese language study support project was first discussed in August.

2022/08/25

We began by researching the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT).

‘ What is the test ? ‘

‘ What kind of content is the curriculum to master ? ‘

‘ Are there any other similar study curricula ? ‘

We investigated anyway.

Whenever we found something interesting during my research,

we bought a book to get an overview of the subject.

’ What kind of content do we actually want to create? ’

‘ What's our strategy? ’

We could not make a clear decision just by researching,

so we had to actually communicate with people overseas who were learning Japanese.

Tera(the planner of JAPANglish) introduced me to Cloude and I would exchange messages with him.

He is someone who is studying to pass the N4.

At the time, my English skills were limited to grammar from textbooks,

and this was the first time I had actually interacted with someone.

Of course,

I had no idea of the state of foreign people learning Japanese.

‘ What is the Japanese language he can understand? ’

‘ Can he read ひらがな ? ’

‘ Can he read カタカナ ? ’

I used deepL, an AI automated translation service,

because I am not at a high enough level to be able to translate my questions into English.

I introduced him to free content, and vice versa, and he told me about free content,

and we exchanged information with each other.

I never taught N4 the content,

but the more we exchanged messages, the more he started sending messages in Japanese.

Sometimes he would ask me funny questions, which often made me laugh.

Sometimes I forgot that he was not Japanese.

That is how native Japanese he had come to use.

I even asked him to teach me English.

Somewhere along the way, we became each other's learners and teachers.

And he taught me the charm of writing by hand.

Handwriting shows the writer's personality in the words.

And it is very heartwarming.

I wanted to incorporate those elements into our content,

so I started a diary exchange on Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cjvm41gv797/

He showed me areas that I could not have noticed on my own.
It helped me to make a clear decision about the direction of our content.

Thanks Cloude for continuing to exchange messages with me.

We created our page using Notion, an application that allows you to create web pages for free.

https://coordinated-climb-c79.notion.site/Let-s-have-fun-learning-Japanese-5e97c13bb60748d0924532487442e82e

The functionality is still limited on smartphones, but if you are interested in using it, please try it.

https://www.notion.so/product

Our passion for JAPANglish can't be contained without a blog. So we decided to prepare a blog.

I was particular about the design and placement of the modifications.

https://data.herohoro.com/world

The process of working on the project is left on Twitter.

If you are interested in what it was like back then, please access it.

2022/09/25

It was not until September 25 that we were able to create a satisfactory design.

At this point, one month has passed since the JAPANglish project began. 🤣

The general framework of the JAPANglish was in place,

but we needed a tool that would appeal to the actual learners.

At first, I considered focusing on Twitter,

but then I learned that unlike in Japan, many people overseas use Instagram. Therefore, we decided to focus our activities on Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/herohoro_terobi/

So far I have used Instagram for private content.

I have never minded visitors.

Therefore,

I am biased in my contributions and have discovered that there are many features that I have never used.

Cloude always showed me a delicious cafe STORY.

As a viewer, I enjoyed it so much that I decided that I would like to post stories frequently as well.

So I decided to look up and use STORY.

Photo of my desk while studying：

Photos from outings：

Photos of Japanese food：

I posted ordinary, casual scenes in my STORY.

I want you to get to know me as we study together,

and I also want you to get to know Japan.

I has tried to limit the post to content that you can try yourself if you refer to one post as much as possible.

The reason is that I thought that specific test preparation was unnecessary since substantial content has already been posted by people other than myself.

I wanted to provide information that would make studying more enjoyable and efficient for self-study by successfully combining the content of those who have contributed substantial content.

https://www.instagram.com/herohoro_terobi/

However,

this is not enough to understand how people are studying Japanese.

So,

I decided to write a diary using kanji learned in N5 in STORY.

Perhaps

the vocabulary should also be adapted to what is learned in N5.

However,

I use a range of vocabulary without limitation

because I want people studying Japanese to learn the kanji learned in N5 in the process of reading natural Japanese.

Individual messages on Instagram would sometimes send me diaries written by people studying Japanese.

I was able to learn which parts are difficult when writing Japanese.

I used what I learned and reflected it in my diary the next day.

Writing a daily diary is very time consuming, but it is also a learning experience.

After working on it for about a week, I realized something.

That is, no one can keep a diary every day.

To begin with, "continuity" is the most important thing when studying.

I have come to believe that if a person studying Japanese cannot find the time to keep a diary, there is no point.

I decided to use Twitter as a place to practice writing simple Japanese and to interact with others.

Tera, who is an expert in bot development, has created a bot that regularly tweets Japanese kanji and sentence patterns.

It occurred to me to create an atmosphere where people can interact with each other starting with the bot's postings.

It is actually more enjoyable than expected when I try it.

It makes me very happy every time I see participants who are studying Japanese enjoying themselves as much as we do.

https://twitter.com/kahwull/status/1584929952188682240

It has been two months if you include the preparation period, but it has been one month since we started recruiting participants in earnest.

Looking back on our activities, what we realized is that we just made it.

It is how we treat it as part of our daily life in order to continue to study and learn.

In November, our second month,

we will be working on the theme of habit formation.

It is exciting just to imagine what kind of encounters we will have in the future.

We want to create an environment where everyone can enjoy studying together!

Thank you for reading this article to the end.