What is the difference between 勉強する, 習う, 学ぶ, and 学習する?

I've read some explanations in another question but it's still not clear
enough to me how they are different.
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2014-09-11T05:05:09.223
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question
word-choice nuances
Differences between 勉強する、習う、学ぶ and 学習する?
習う means to be taught something that requires some technical skills or
knowledge like how to drive a car or school subjects by a teacher. It's
synonymous with 教わる.

勉強する is to learn school subjects or to practice drilling exercises about
school subjects.

学ぶ・学習する are to learn school subjects or something new that can be a lesson to
you.
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answer
I will try to explain the expressions in the order that most native speakers
would learn them, hoping that that alone might tell the learner something.

The first one is definitely 「[習]{なら}う」. Any 4-year-old would know what it
means and would be able to use it correctly.

**In order to 習う something, you need a teacher**. Simply put, if you learn
something mostly by **imitating** your teacher, parent, sibling, etc., that
would be called 習う. The object of the activity 習う can be anything from
origami, drawing, writing hiragana, swimming --- anything. It does not need to
be an academic subject. If a small kid is learning something under a teacher
figure, the kid will say 「～～を習って（い）る」. He will NOT use any of the three other
expressions.

(If you feel like you have already "learned" something today, that is good
news for me, but would that "learned" be 習った? I am not your teacher nor did I
have you "imitate" me. You will find out later on.)

The next word (actually, an expression because it consists of two words) a kid
would learn would be 「[勉強]{べんきょう}する」. **This is THE word out of the four that
is by far the most often used from elementary school to college**.

勉強する places much emphasis on the time and effort put into learning. The
subject of the action would most often be, but not restricted to, school
subjects. When your mom tells you to stop playing the game and go study, she
will say 「勉強しなさい！」. She will not use any of the other three words. When saying
something like "How many hours do you study everyday?", most people would use
勉強する nearly 100% of the time.

The next one could be either 「[学]{まな}ぶ」 or 「[学習]{がくしゅう}する」. It could not be
stressed enough that those are actually bigger words than many J-learners
often appear to think or to be even taught.

学ぶ places more emphasis on the good result of learning -- mastery, discovery,
etc. -- than 習う or 勉強する. One could 習う or 勉強する for hours and days without
making much progress in quite a few cases. If someone said 「～～を学んだ」, that
would usually mean that he actually gained knowledge in the process. 学ぶ is
used more often in writing than in speaking (unless you are in education and
you talk about studying and learning all day everyday).

Finally, 「[学習]{がくしゅう}する」. As I stated above, it is a fairly big word. In
schools, teachers use it way more often than students do. 学習 sounds more
"systematic" and/or "carefully planned" than 勉強.

学習 can be used in both academic and non-academic context. If a baseball player
keeps chasing bad sliders from the same pitcher, then he is a
「学習できない[選手]{せんしゅ}」. 選手 = player.

It is not only humans who can 学習する. Other animals, too, 学習する different things
from life experiences. We all need to keep 学習する-ing to survive.
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answer
Even though it's not in your question, I'm going to throw in another important
contextual word. [研究]{けんきゅう}する.

If you are in graduate school (at least at the doctoral level) or a
researcher, you should generally speaking not refer to what you do as
[勉強]{べんきょう}する, i.e. "study." Instead, you 研究する, i.e. "do research."

The same basic rule exists in America with the same risks of sounding
pretentious if you 研究する as an undergraduate or 勉強する as a [名誉教授]{めいよきょうじゅ}
"Professor emeritus".
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answer