First Month of Japanese

I chose to take Japanese because I am able to speak and read some Japanese, but I have never had any experience writing. I speak in Japanese to my parents, and I have always known that my speech has not been very smooth or grammatically correct, and that is something that I want to improve on so that I can accurately articulate myself.

What was difficult for me in the past few weeks was that because I only knew how to speak, but not to write, there were parts of the language that I was never sure of. I am still having some trouble recognizing where there are long vowels and double consonants. Also, because my speech has always been very casual, I have had to relearn how to speak in a more polite manner.

In the future, I am looking forward to being able to learn to read and write Kanji. I think it will allow me to use the language much more efficiently than now, as it is much easier to see one character and know the meaning and alphabetization, than to read several Hiragana, and then understand the meaning. Also, I am looking forward to learning more complex sentence forms and overall, relearning Japanese properly.