Migaku Courses
Migaku Fundamentals courses provide the essential foundation you need to kick off your language learning journey.
They cover:
- How to read the phonetic symbols that make up your language's writing system
- The sounds that are tied to those symbols
- Any pronunciation rules that cause one sound to turn into another sound
- A very, very basic overview of how your language structures its sentences
This information is presented in an A:B format:
- A → You'll read through a lesson that introduces a specific symbol or sound
- B → You'll practice those things via spaced-repetition flashcards that contain the most important points from the lesson
It'll take about a month to finish one of our Fundamentals courses, assuming a learning pace of 10 items per day, and by the time you finish:
- Outcome → You will no longer feel intimidated upon seeing your target language: you'll be able to see words written in it and know how they should be pronounced.
- Next steps → Proceed to Migaku Academy I for the language you are learning, or begin learning the most common ~1,500 words in your language if an Academy course is not yet available.
Migaku Academy courses follow a data-driven approach and teach you specific things you need to learn to begin consuming media in another language.
They cover:
- The most common ~1,500 words
- A few hundred essential grammar points
As with our other courses, this information is presented in an A:B format:
- A → You'll read through a lesson that introduces a specific grammar point
- B → You'll commit those grammar points to memory by using spaced-repetition flashcards to learn sentences which feature those grammar points
We're super proud of these courses, and we think you'll quickly see why. What makes them so special is that:
- Each flashcard introduces only one new piece of information (a word or grammar point), meaning that you're always learning something new but never feeling overwhelmed
- Every single lesson was written by a human; every single sentence is accompanied by an audio recording from a native speaker
- They actually work!
It'll take about 6 months to finish one of our Academy courses, assuming a learning pace of 10 items per day, and by the time you finish:
- Outcome → You will be ready to begin consuming real media in the language you are learning. It won't be easy yet, but it will very obviously have become possible.
- Next steps → Watch the videos in the Migaku Bible, begin using Migaku to consume media you find interesting, and make flashcards from that media to guide your own learning.
Migaku Kanji / Hanzi (coming soon!) courses are a companion to the Japanese and Mandarin Academy courses. They teach the meaning of each character that appears in the Academy (~800 for Japanese, count pending for Mandarin), and also provide a variety of reference information about stroke order, readings, and vocabulary the character appears in.
As with our other courses, the Kanji/Hanzi courses follow an A/B format:
- A → The front of a flashcard shows a character or character component
- B → The back of a flashcard shows the character's meaning, a mnemonic story to help you remember it, and a variety of reference information
These courses are designed to be done in conjunction with their corresponding Academy course:
- Decide how many new items you wish to learn each day
- Start the Kanji/Hanzi course, and focus on it for two weeks
- Begin doing the Academy course, doing the same amount of items from the Kanji/Hanzi and Academy courses each day
Going through the course in this way ensures that you will have always learned a character before you see vocabulary words that include it.
At a pace of 10 items per day, the Kanji course will take about 5 months to finish (Hanzi course pending). Upon completion:
- You'll recognize the majority of characters you see in non-technical media
- You'll have mastered a system you can use to learn the rest of the characters as you encounter them
Migaku Vocabulary courses offer a focused approach to expanding your vocabulary, particularly of nouns, via flashcards.
Several different decks are available to learn words from different domains—such as places, objects, or animals—and words in each deck are organized by frequency. This means that, in the "body parts" deck, for example, you'll learn common words like "eyes" or "hands" before less common words like "cheeks" or "palm".
While we generally recommend that users start directly with our Academy courses, our vocabulary courses are a good option if (a) Academy courses are not yet available for your language or (b) you have a need to rapidly acquire vocabulary related to specific situations or topics.
Yes—we strongly recommend that you begin interacting with the language you are learning as soon as possible, even from day one.
- For a more intense activity, open the Comprehensible Input Wiki page for the language you are learning. Here you can find a list of YouTube channels that present information in a very specific way, ideally so as to enable people to follow along, even if they know none of the language. In this way, you can gradually and naturally acquire common vocabulary.
- For a less intense activity, simply watch whatever you find interesting on YouTube or Netflix. Migaku can display subtitles in two languages at once, and we also offer a variety of different "playback modes" which determine how and when subtitles are shown. For example, our "primed listening" mode will pause your show before each line of dialogue, show you the subtitles, let you read them, and then hide subtitles and play the show, offering an accessible way for beginners to practice listening comprehension.
As your ability improves, a wider variety of media and immersion activities will become available to you. For more specific instructions, refer to the Migaku Bible videos that discuss immersion.
"Should" is a strong word.
Generally speaking, we identify three broad stages of language acquisition:
- The "learning" stage, in which you are using an app, textbook, or flashcard deck because you don't have enough of a foundation under you to begin immersing
- The "input" stage, in which you are learning your language primarily by consuming massive amounts of media, making flashcards from it, and gradually expanding your vocabulary
- The "output" stage, in which you can generally understand what you read or hear, and are now interested in building the ability to not only receive messages in your language but also to produce them via speech or writing
Just as you must read a lot of books to learn to read well, you will need to have a lot of conversations to learn to speak well. You can begin speaking as soon as you want or need to, and we encourage you to take advantage of opportunities to engage in casual conversations if they are available and you wish to do so. It's fun, and won't hurt your development.
Having said that, after working with thousands of learners, we believe that your journey to fluency will be easier if you wait to seriously practice speaking or writing until after you have a firm foundation under you and can effortlessly understand virtually anything you read or hear in your language.