7)Constantly ask yourself, how would I say this and that in Japanese? Not just words or vocabulary but entire sentences. Immediately look up the answer while the idea is fresh. If you don’t have anyone to ask, write down expressions that you want to know how to say, so later you can ask your teacher or post in Italki. You may find that there are no equivalent expressions in Japanese because of cultural differences. Learning from sentences rather than just words will help you identify sentence patterns and get you used to the Japanese way of thinking. Eventually you will be able to think in Japanese when you speak without breaking a sweat. 8) Practice speaking. You must speak in order to be fluent. You can’t just learn from books. Practice speaking with friends or get lessons from Italki’s many wonderful teachers and community tutors.

4)Immerse yourself in the language. If you like music, drama, anime, listen and watch as much as you can. You can listen to it while doing other things like driving, cleaning, cooking etc. It will get you tuned to the Japanese intonation and sounds. 5)Pronunciation. For this you need to solicit the help of a native speaker. I think people underestimate the importance of basic pronunciation. For a month or so practice the basic 50 sounds in Japanese and put special attention to the pronunciation of words with small tsu and the long vowels. Have your Japanese friend or teacher correct your accent until it is near perfect or to the teacher’s satisfaction. 6)Improve listening: When you listen to dialogs in the textbook’s audio CD, listen first without reading the dialogs, and try to catch all the sounds and write them out in hiragana. Then compare your version with the correct version from the textbook. This changes your brain from being passive to active. After you finish with a chapter you can cover the Japanese text and rewrite it based on the English translations. This will also engage your brain and help you remember better and really makes sure you assimilate the newly introduced grammar points.

1)Be enamored by Japanese culture: The road of learning Japanese is hard and long, without passion for Japanese TV, drama, anime, manga, culture, etc, I think it would be hard to persevere. There will be days that you are just too tired to study, or the grammar bores you to tears, at those moments I always take a break and re watch a few episodes of my favorite anime and remind myself how fun it is to learn Japanese. 2)Memorize Katakana and Hiragana from day one. Don’t use Romaji as a crutch. Sooner or later you need to learn katakana and hiragana, so just suck it up and do it from the start. You will be glad you did. It will also aid your pronunciation. 3)Select a good text book: Not all textbooks are equal. I think a good one by popular consensus is Genki or Minano Nihongo. I learned with Genki, over all I think its a good introductory book. I’m not too fond of the student theme that prevails throughout the chapters. But that is because I was 36 when I started and it has no relevance to my life. But if you are young, it may not phase you. A good textbook, will introduce you grammar and vocabulary in a systematic way so they built on top of one another. It will also have a lot of sample sentences and practice questions with answers. Our brain unconsciously picks up similarities and patterns, so having a lot of examples is good. The textbook should be in hiragana, katakana and kanji. It should not shy away from showing Kanji for words that are usually written in Kanji. That way your brain will get used to the shape and form of the Kanji and help you with recognition and memorization.

^^ domou arigatouguzaimasu haruka-san!!

Wow, I can learn a lot from Wang.zapata's advice. By the way, one thing from a native speaker. When you speak, you should avoid picking up and imitating lines from anime or manga randomly. Characters usually speak in various ways to show their own characters, but some of them sound natural only in fiction. I think it is safer to pick up examples from good textbooks and their audio, or to ask native speakers what sounds natural or not in usual conversation.