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How I Learned Japanese From Scratch: My Full Timeline (Year 2)
Everything that I learned and experienced during my second year of learning a new language
This is a continuation of part 1, where I share everything I learned during my first year as a complete beginner. If you’re learning a language and wondering what the journey is like, I hope my story will help you!
Fall 2011 (September to December)
Just one year ago, I was a nervous but excited kid stepping into my first class of Japanese 101. Now it was time for Japanese 201, and things felt a bit different.
I had significantly fewer classmates than I did a year ago. Things were starting to get more intense — Grammar points and sentence structures were complex and had more nuances to watch out for. Kanji was getting bigger and more scary-looking.
Thankfully, none of this fazed me. I knew I was in the language learning game for the long run, and everything I learned in this class would pay off later on.
Like in the previous semesters, I attended every class, did every homework assignment, and studied for every test. But I started to realize that it wasn’t enough.