Make your own sentences

After all that we talked about, you should be ready to start working on grammar and vocabulary.

But how can you do it only by yourself?

Good question. The best way is to make your own sentences. One reason that textbook is boring is that all those example sentences have nothing to do with your life. Nobody cares about Jessica who is a lawyer or David who is British. The actual danger is that after looking at those sentence, you feel like you understand whatever it is that you’re reading about. You’ll never learn anything until you relate it to yourself. If you’re learning by reading, you will understand what it is when you’re reading it. 2-3 days later you won’t remember much.

It’s because it’s only stored in your short-term memory.

In order to make the most of your self-study, you need to put it into your long-term memory. For example, if you’re learning the ◯ は ☆ です sentence structure, write about your friends or family. This way, you can process the new information with something or someone that matters to you.

The same goes to vocabulary. You talk about your life with the new words you want to learn. If it’s hard to do it, use the examples from your textbook as a template, and start replacing their words with yours.

To do today:
Start keeping a diary. It doesn't need to be long, just a few sentences in Japanese and use the words and sentence formats you know. It will allow you to practice, and if you want to learn some new words to describe what you're doing.