STUDENT VOICE

I don’t reside in Japan.
I’m taking the course online from overseas.

VIP private lessons

I had used apps like Duolingo and websites like WaniKani to try to learn, but it was always a slow and painful process. Duolingo is not really rated for proficiency and uses very basic and unnatural sentences, plus its Japanese module isn’t great; WaniKani, meanwhile, has interesting mnemonic techniques but they simply don’t work for the way I tend to memorise things.

Plus, there are always small things you can only really ask a native to explain, with Western and Eastern cultures often being as surprising to each other as they are, and it was hard to find someone who could and would take the time to answer my questions.

It’s been a while, so I don’t remember the exact details, but the fact that it was a Japan-based school which offered individualised one-on-one lessons was a big sell for me.

I’ve never found the classroom setting agreed with me, and the VIP program allows me to go at my own pace and dig into my personal strengths and weaknesses so I can develop my skills in the ways that work best for me.

It’s hard to think of specific examples because it happens continuously all the time. Perhaps the clearest recent memory I have of feeling like that was during a recent end-of-chapter listening exercise from Minna no Nihongo Chukyuu II, which I understood very quickly and easily, and my teacher commented on it. It was remarkable because when we first started using that book, I was having a lot of trouble understanding the listening exercises, with the speakers speaking too fast for me.

I really like how willing and able my teacher is to answer my questions. In particular, I like the way that I often ask questions about the nuances and differences between similar words and expressions, and she stops and thinks through her usage of them in her own life and experience, to try to explain the intuition behind them from the perspective of a native, which is something dictionaries and translations often have trouble with. And sometimes, she doesn’t know the answer to a question I ask, but she makes sure to look it up and by the next class she has the answer for me. I really appreciate being able to chase down the intricacies of meaning and phrasing like that!

My time with TCJ has been excellent throughout. My teacher is amazing and the staff has always been extremely clear, helpful, and accommodating. I’m a native Portuguese speaker, and I’ve taken language classes for English, French, Spanish, and German (and I’ve studied up to proficiency level in English and French), so I have a lot of experience with language lessons, and TCJ has been by far the best I’ve had.