Expanding Your Vocabulary

Hi David.

1) books

In Japan there are many English vocabulary books for learners.

Thankfully, such books contents depend on the learner's goal or ability.

As you know, there are several kinds of exam for English, for example for TOEIC,

TOEFL, IELTS, EIKEN or university entrance exam.

Many of them are published for some kinds of levels or classes.

So I have chosed which level's textbook to learn accoding to my English level.

I hope those who learn Japanese language have the same circumstance.

2)online dictionary

Do you use Eijiro?

http://eow.alc.co.jp/search?q=how+to+study

When I learn a new word, I check it here how to use it with example sentence.

You can look in the dictionary in both of Japanese and English.

You can set Japanese words or sentenses with hiragana, probably.

I often realize I can expand my vocablary in this dictionary.

I'm sorry those ways I introduced to you are not so special to learn.

For me Japanese musics and J-dramas/movies worked like a charm!

1. I always try to listen to songs and memorize the lyrics and the ones that I like the most, I play them on guitar and sing out loud. (Most of the nice songs are of J-pop genre...;D)

2. Also, I have watched countless numbers of Japanese movies and dramas (by the way, J-dramas are super addictive once you start watching them!!!). This helped me to understand Japanese vocabularies and recognize Japanese words and phrases faster than before.

I hope my suggestions were somewhat helpful to you. At least the first idea about listening and singing J-musics is a good one (I think!)...

Talk to you soon...^_^

Thanks for the suggestions you two! I'll defnitely look into trying both! :D Since I've learned how to read in Japanese it's been frustrating to be able to sound out what I'm reading but not understand it.

Ankidroid has helped me a lot! I always do it on my way to work or when going back to my home. There are some decks ("Core Decks") and they are pretty amazing. In the first cards I didn't understand any japanese and now after 1000 cards I see a huge difference!

Thanks for the extra suggestions I'll make sure to check out both!! :D

To play RPG on NES or SNES. 

Pros:

-No Kanji on NES and only basic Kanjis on SNES.

Cons:

-The fonts are less readable.

-You have to face with useless words on everyday life.

I bought the Random House JPN-ENG/ENG-JPN dictionary (http://www.amazon.com/Random-House-Japanese-English-English-Japanese-Dictionary/dp/034540548X) and went through it looking for words/phrases that were similar and work on them as a group.  Japanese is really good for this, especially with words of Chinese origin.

For example: 

Daigaku - College

Daigakude - College Graduate

Daigakuin - Graduate School

Daigakukyouju - College Professor

Daigakunyuushi - College Entrance Exam

Also, the Power Japanese series has a number of useful books for improving vocabulary. I like Instant Vocabulary Through Prefixes and Suffixes (http://www.amazon.com/Instant-Vocabulary-Prefixes-Suffixes-Japanese/dp/0870119532/)

Good luck!