Easy Japanese Stories - older

SEE DESCRIPTION FOR LINK TO UPDATED VERSION OF APP

(NEW APP AVAILABLE @ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wEasyJapaneseStories_14288394 ) Please feel free to continue using this app if you'd like, but the new app should be a smoother experience)

Put down the boring and ineffective grammar textbooks!

Learn Japanese through a collection of short stories specifically designed to be interesting, yet understandable. The stories in this app use start out with limited vocab, so even beginners can start to enjoy the stories quickly. Level 1 and Level 2 stories at the moment only have about 30 unique words per story! These stories include hiragana, katakana, and kanji, just like real Japanese sources would. However, furigana(small hiragana above other characters) is provided above all the kanji and katakana characters. This means you will gradually learn katakana and kanji just by seeing them repeatedly, but you will never be stuck because you don't know a certain character.

Keep reading, or check out the website:

https://sites.google.com/outlook.com/easyjapanesestories-tprs/about

Methology:

This was started as an effort to provide Japanese materials to those teaching and/or studying using TPRS/CI.

TPRS(Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling), and CI (Comprehensible Input) are by far the most effective second language teaching method I've found. While there is a lot of information online that you can look up(and I encourage you to do this), I will attempt to boil it down to the key idea. To progress in a language, students only need a few things

Lots of input (hearing or reading the languages)

To understand all the input they are being given.

Understanding is made easier by limiting the amount of vocab used, NOT by sheltering them from grammar

For the input to be interesting enough to keep them motivated to continue

While I only recently discovered this method, I immediately noticed the difference in my Japanese classes. Students that had been really struggling suddenly lit up, overjoyed that they were actually understanding. My more advanced students are no longer bored, because the stories keep them interested and learning, even if they are a little easy.

About the stories:

The stories on this site are created for and/or with my students. Included is a vocab list including all the words in the story. For all of my stories, I include all the kanji that would regularly be used in Japanese. I find kanji can really help the students recognize words through all the different conjugations. As kanji generally takes time to master, I include furigana above all the kanji and katakana that appears in my stories. The stories are checked by myself and my wonderful Japanese wife before being uploaded here. I hope that soon we will get some variety by having other teachers volunteer to share some of their successful stories.