[wiki] Recommended Japanese Courses

Post your favorite quality Japanese Memrise courses here!

Here some if my favourites:

JLPT N5 Readings. Great as it teaches you Kanji first and then the Hiragana reading.

Genki I. Great for beginners studying the Genki textbook. Full audio.

Human Japanese Intro Vocabulary. Great supplement to the Human Japanese app with full audio. Highly recommended.

Does anyone have any good courses for sentences or grammar?

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A little off-topic from memrise, but I suggest checking out WaniKani. They teach Japanese in very cool way. Even I, who learns JP only when the mood is right, started to come back to the site. Their mnemonics are wonderful and the system is quite clever.
And I recommend not using memrise for grammar. I reckon that it’s better to use grammar, when learning it. If you remember a ton of rules with memrise, most likely you won’t be able to use them all on spot :wink:

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I’ll try to import a number of my popular Anki decks/courses. Here’s the RTK/KO2k1 deck I’m creating at the moment that should be useful for those that like the Heisig method of kanji learning/memorization

As soon as I find a useful way to import audio in bulk and the best layout for sentenced based cards, I’ll try to import the Kore2k deck which is the iKnow/Cerego vocabulary list that’s optimized using the 2001.Kanji.Odyssey sorting order.

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JLPT 2 Vocab (Memrise Community Edited N2 Course) is my favorite:

As for grammar, Tae Kim’s Japanese Grammar Guide is the best for English speaking learners (note that they also have a free Android/iOS app):

But if you’re a Chinese speaker who wants the best Japanese grammar courses online for free, you have to try Ken Chiu’s Sonic Learning:

As a matter of fact, due to the borrowed ancient Chinese culture and language into the ancient Japan, you will find the Chinese explanation can mostly pinpoint the Japanese language’s nuances while the English attempt can’t get even close.

Just add a sample Core 2k Optimized and hope to get feedback if this is a format people would like to use. It has a steep learning curve and users are expected to know about all kana, basic Tae Kim grammar and 555 Kanji (via keyword)

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

Hey Charles, I like the look of that Core 2k deck. Lots of complex sentences that you don’t normally see in Memrise courses. Do you think it would be good with typing enabled?

I had intended to activate touch tabs unfortunately the Memrise system divides the sentence into individual kana and kanji. If you look at the first 20 sentences, I had added spaces so you’d get something like: “あの” “家には” “時計が” “八つ” “あります” and put those together into the proper order. However, that did not happen so I deactivated it. If you know a way to allow this to happen I’ll activate it again.

As for typing out the sentence, I don’t think that’s necessary. These are meant to help teach one specific word. Even the above if it had worked would be too much since these are for vocabulary and you should not be missing things due to other parts of the sentence messing you up. However, it will be good for the grammar course I’ll be adding (a mix of Tae Kim and A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar).

However, there’s nothing wrong with having a notepad and writing out the sentence once when you learn it. Or in your case typing out the sentence on a Word document when you learn it and when you get it wrong. It would be great typing practice and a visual reminder of how much you learned/practiced.

Just added Remembering the Hiragana in 3 Hours video course. Should prove effective and hopefully popular with new students to Japanese. Unlike most hiragana courses, this uses James Heisig’s method of teaching characters in an order based on what parts used to draw the character and visual story telling to help aid memorization. In addition, the example words have the benefit of using the iKnow/Cerego Core 2000/6000 series with professional pronunciation of vocabulary.

I’ll add audio to parts 3 through 6 tomorrow though parts 1 and 2 should demonstrate what is intended here.

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Nice thanks for adding those courses Charles.

It I guess makes sense to just have tapping if the sentences are just to learn the words in context. I think sometimes adding two spaces between the words can bring up the test where it asks you to rearrange the words, although not always.

@ daydaywong I really like that JLPT 2 Vocab course!

Good course for beginners (uses hiragana and kanji), makes you familiar with most basic words and sentences used in everyday conversation:

:relaxed: Please allow me recommend my Japanese courses for beginner/intermediate learners:

  1. Surviving the Japanese Bank
    Going to the bank here in Japan has always a pain for me. There wasn’t a course on Memrise targeting bank words, so I created one, listing many useful words that tellers use. I am planning to add sound to this course at some point.

  2. Remembering the Kaji
    There are several Remembering the Kanji courses on Memrise, however they do not contain the stories to remember each Kanji. So I have been creating (still a work in progress), a Remembering the Kanji study course that includes the stories. (๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)و

  3. Useful Japanese Words with sound!
    This course has 246 useful Japanese words broken up by category. Every word has at least one sound file with it to aid pronunciation and listening skills. (•̀ᴗ•́)و♡

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Thanks Matt for recommending my course!

I just added the the Human Japanese Intermediate course too. Sadly, it does not have audio. Brian at Brak Software does not have the audio files saved in a way he could send me and I have not found a way to get the audio files off the cd-rom. Here is a link if anyone is interested in the Intermediate one:

Tests on Kana: http://www.memrise.com/course/638023/hj-intermediate-vocabulary-tests-on-kana/

Tests on Kanji:

I also have a Remembering the Kanji course that I just fully updated to the 6th edition if anyone is used RTK.

I put together Part 1 for Basic Japanese Grammar that is based on lessons from Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese"Guide to Japanese" and The Tokyo Times A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. The Basic Japanese Grammar course is in four parts with each part taking about 20 to 30 hours each (study and Memrise review).

SGJL 04 - Basic Japanese Grammar Pt 01

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I’ve just added audio to a Katakana course. It teaches you Katakana through Hiragana, which is a great idea as it leaves out the English characters.

I agree with everyone that Tae Kim’s course on Japanese grammar is the best thing I’ve found. I’m putting up what would be the continuation of the course put up by @StrategyFocusSucess (this one) because I noticed it was discontinued. It’ll probably be until the 25th of June before I’m done though (this week is going to be crazy busy). I might make it start from ‘Essential Grammar’ so that it makes more sense. I’ll post here whenever it’s ready :slight_smile:

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Although I’ll still have to upload the audio and format the lesson texts, I should have the entire Tae Kim course uploaded soon in four parts. User ijkjp is going to help with the audio as well.

Apart from the Genki course mentioned above I also use or have just started using the below:

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Part two:

Textfugu

My anime vocabulary course might also be of interest:

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