How Children Learn (part 2)

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• At first she had some help from a tutor, and one girl in the neighboring classroom was bilingual.
  • "Neighboring classroom" is important; the bilingual friend did not become a crutch. If you want to learn to communicate in a language, you need to use it.
• When I first studied Japanese, although I bought both ei-wa and wa-ei dictionaries, my kanji dictionary of choice was a standard high school pocket dictionary. This strongly encouraged me to look up kanji I didn't know in the same dictionary, thus learning Japanese in Japanese.
  • You should use ei-wa only in desperation; always use a standard English dictionary. Wa-ei is necessary, of course, but you can substitute the English dictionary for many uses of wa-ei jiten.
  • Best ei-wa: Kenkyusha's "Furigana Dictionary", also for Japanese because it has the most idiomatic translations.
  • My kan-wa: Sanseido's Shin Kan-wa Jiten.

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