There might be no “right way” to learn Japanese, but there are definitely wrong ways to learn Japanese. Not every path will lead you to fluency, and there many, many, many ways that, despite what they promise, will lead you to something less than fluency. I’m talking about structured learning here: whether it’s in a classroom, with a self-paced course, or an app like WaniKani, these programs will never get you to actual Japanese fluency. Fluency requires navigating the wilderness of Japanese made by and created for native speakers, but these structured programs cultivate your language experience in a way that cannot prepare you for the native Japanese wilderness.
Structured language programs are to language learning what training wheels are to riding a bike. Sure, they get you going through some motions that help you learn how to do the real thing. But these artificial training environments are not the real thing. Once you get the basic foundation, you need to ditch the structure to keep progressing. If not, you will literally be spinning your wheels without getting any closer to your goal.
The problem is that most programs want you to keep the training wheels on way too long. Some even tell you that you can leave the training wheels on and learn to become fluent. Don’t be fooled: this is a lie. The content in structured programs is not created for native Japanese speakers, but instead for participants in an artificial learning environment. If you only engage with this content, you will realize you’re not fluent when the training wheels come off.
This is dangerous for your Japanese study because you’ll believe you are fluent when you are far from it. And when that belief makes contact with reality, you will be disappointed: touching the real thing, the 本物, you’ll realize you haven’t learned enough in your structured program to be able to fully read or understand it. For many, the common reaction to this disappointment is to go back to the structured program and try to get more prepared for your next foray into the Japanese wilderness. Surely, this will make your next attempt successful, right? Wrong.
Going back to structured learning because you couldn’t fully understand your encounter with native Japanese is like putting the training wheels back on after you fall off your bike. Sure, falling off your bike is painful and sucks, but the training wheels are not going to help you learn to ride faster. Instead, they will prevent you from learning at all by preventing your contact with the real thing. And this sets off a vicious cycle: do more textbook sentences, study more grammar, get more vocab, then touch Japanese in the wild, find that it’s “too difficult,” and then repeat the structured learning all over again. That’s a lot of time not getting results, a lot of disappointment, a lot of boring and unhelpful reps, and a surefire way to kill your desire to learn Japanese.
Don’t let artificial language learning programs stop you from achieving your goal. You don’t need anyone’s permission to start making real progress with real Japanese. Take the training wheels off, open your manga app, and start engaging with the 本物 Japanese content that motivates you to learn.