Building Word Power: Student Guide to a Larger Japanese Vocabulary List

Constantly people are asking me what influenced me to learn Japanese as a third language. To the best of my knowledge, I always reply that it is the hardest language to learn. Being a person with a stubborn personality, I chose to learn Japanese while in college and while living abroad in Japan. After that answer has been given, the next question in line is asked, "Wasn't it hard though?" Well, to tell you the truth, yes it was hard because like most Asian languages, Japanese is very different from Latin based languages. This shouldn't discourage anyone from learning Japanese or any other Asian language though, it has its perks.

As a college student, I was one of those college geeks that liked to study. It was not my entire life though to sit around in the library and see how much I could cram into my head. Rather, I created games and tried to make the best out of what was needed to be learnt. It was an honor to be a foreign language student though, the students in these classes are much free-going and are a little more relaxed since most students in the beginning classes were there as an elective. Early on, I found out that I had a knack for power learning vocabulary - much to my classmates chagrin. Here are some tips that I found to help out throughout those multiple vocabulary quizzes each week.

1. Read over the list and group in similar categories. For instance, many times there are a few categories that are placed on each vocabulary list. For instance, one week a student might be asked to learn all the colors or numbers and et cetera. When doing this, group the categories together since it is easier to learn them as a group instead of individually.