Learning Japanese For A GCSE?

Hello,

I am a 14 year old entering year 10 this coming year and i would like to know how i can learn japanese by myself to a A gcse grade.I am very interested in the language and will give lots of time towards learning it, an hour a day. The problem is I dont know how to study and for how long. Anyone who has done a japanese gcse please tell me how it went and how you found it and what I will need to study and learn to earn a high grade.If possiable i would like to take the gcse next year. Any tips or adivce is welcome!!! XD

Thanks!

Hello,

I am a 14 year old entering year 10 this coming year and i would like to know how i can learn japanese by myself to a A gcse grade.I am very interested in the language and will give lots of time towards learning it, an hour a day. The problem is I dont know how to study and for how long. Anyone who has done a japanese gcse please tell me how it went and how you found it and what I will need to study and learn to earn a high grade.If possiable i would like to take the gcse next year. Any tips or adivce is welcome!!! XD

Thanks!

Will you be starting from scratch or have you already learnt a bit of Japanese previously?

One of my friends made a YouTube video about taking a GCSE in Japanese independently, so if that's what you're planning you might want to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FcO8xyp5JE

But as with any languages GCSE, past papers will be very useful - I assume it'd be the same in Japanese, but in French and Spanish they always seemed to repeat the same vocab each year so if you had done the past papers, it wasn't too bad. And use online resources like Memrise and Quizlet, they're good if you want to go through vocab lists and memorise some new words

Hello,

I am a 14 year old entering year 10 this coming year and i would like to know how i can learn japanese by myself to a A gcse grade.I am very interested in the language and will give lots of time towards learning it, an hour a day. The problem is I dont know how to study and for how long. Anyone who has done a japanese gcse please tell me how it went and how you found it and what I will need to study and learn to earn a high grade.If possiable i would like to take the gcse next year. Any tips or adivce is welcome!!! XD

Thanks!

Starting from scratch will be quite tough. At my school I think we had maybe 2-3 1 hour lessons a week, so if you do an hour a day you'll be doing more - though we had done it since year 7, so had already learned the 2 main alphabets and got a lot of vocab and grammar out of the way.

Once you've got the alphabets down (hiragana, katakana, and a few kanji), it will get easier though. I think Edexcel are the only exam board to offer Japanese, so make sure you download the specification and stick to it religiously (see here).

GCSE Japanese isn't too challenging, especially if you're aiming just to pass - but even getting A/A* will probably be achieveable self-studying. Make sure you don't neglect the speaking and listening side of it too though - a good oral exam is a surefire way of getting halfway to an A*! I've done GCSE Japanese (though quite a few years ago now), so if you've got any specific questions, shoot them my way.

Starting from scratch will be quite tough. At my school I think we had maybe 2-3 1 hour lessons a week, so if you do an hour a day you'll be doing more - though we had done it since year 7, so had already learned the 2 main alphabets and got a lot of vocab and grammar out of the way.

Once you've got the alphabets down (hiragana, katakana, and a few kanji), it will get easier though. I think Edexcel are the only exam board to offer Japanese, so make sure you download the specification and stick to it religiously (see here).

GCSE Japanese isn't too challenging, especially if you're aiming just to pass - but even getting A/A* will probably be achieveable self-studying. Make sure you don't neglect the speaking and listening side of it too though - a good oral exam is a surefire way of getting halfway to an A*! I've done GCSE Japanese (though quite a few years ago now), so if you've got any specific questions, shoot them my way.

Hihi! I did the GCSE last year; got an A*. I spent a lot of time interacting with Japanese media (reading JLPT N5-aimed articles and listening to music etc) so listening/reading became pretty easy for me. I practised my presentation for the speaking exam (on the musical Hamilton) a lot, and had a bunch of mocks for that - so although I didn't know which questions would be asked, and indeed I got asked questions I'd never had to answer before on the day, I had a good idea about the kind of stuff that was likely to be asked. I did a bunch of practice papers for the writing too, and just made sure I knew all the kanji and I had the timing and structure down - I didn't try to prepare ahead or anything.

Hi there. My daughter is doing the Japanese GCSE this summer. Did you prepare 1 or 2 spoken presentations for the oral exam?
Thanks

Craig

Just the one - I basically gave my presentation, got asked a few questions on it, and then got asked some non-tangential questions.

Thanks for that. Did you do Edexcel and when did you take the exam?

Cheers

Craig

Hello,

I am a 14 year old entering year 10 this coming year and i would like to know how i can learn japanese by myself to a A gcse grade.I am very interested in the language and will give lots of time towards learning it, an hour a day. The problem is I dont know how to study and for how long. Anyone who has done a japanese gcse please tell me how it went and how you found it and what I will need to study and learn to earn a high grade.If possiable i would like to take the gcse next year. Any tips or adivce is welcome!!! XD

Thanks!