Ever thought of taking Japanese lessons, but don't have the time to drive to a class? Or maybe there are no good Japanese teachers in your area... Why not study online?" I did a bit of research and found that these days more and more Japanese teachers and even established Japanese language schools are creating and strengthening their presence on the web. Some sites charge a subscription fee and others offer their "pre-fab" lessons free.
Of course, ideally, languages are taught face to face with a native speaker who also happens to be a skilled teacher. The student at some point has the opportunity to travel to Japan and interact with Japanese people.
But as I said before, sometimes we can't find a native Japanese speaker. Or sometimes we find the native speaker, but they have no idea how to teach. Or then, you can always imagine someone living in an isolated place, miles from any language school. Online learning would seem like the best choice in this case.
Online Japanese lessons have come a long way, actually. They no longer function just as online dictionaries, but rather come complete with pre-fabricated lessons, so to speak. Some sites have audio function and yet others even have video, along with text. Still others, are lesson centers offering Japanese lessons by individual teachers over the phone or on skype.
It's debatable also whether one can really and truly master a language over the internet. If the goal is simply to master a few phrases for your trip to Paris, the typical language site certainly has all you could ask for. If on the other hand, you need to be fluent in that language and depend on it for your livelihood, you'll need to be choosy about your style of internet-based learning. You'll need to supplement any learning you do on automated sites with other live learning experiences, such as online classrooms, which employ skype. If you use automated sites exclusively, where you're interacting only with the computer, you'll miss out on elements such as sarcasm, humor, and various subtleties.
Lia Suzuki |
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