Home Forums TextFugu Diminishing Returns?

This topic contains 3 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by  Joel 10 years, 5 months ago.

Viewing 4 posts - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #45237

    Kai.
    Member

    Hi everyone. I’ve been going through TextFugu and loving how everything is presented so far. The structure of the book gave me a huge push in the right direction for what I needed to keep myself motivated to learn. That being said, I’ve read that there are a lot of mistakes in the book or even that it isn’t worth it in its current state. Most of the criticism I’ve heard was on the kanji section, but I haven’t had a problem going through the kanji that has been presented. I don’t know if that’s due to my past experience of trying to go through RTK but getting frustrated in the end due to a lack of application, or if I’m just grasping it better as its presented in TextFugu.

    To get to the question I wanted to ask: At what point would you say it’s better to not rely entirely on TextFugu? Where does it cease to be useful compared to other resources such as Tae Kim and the like? Should I go through all the way to season 8? If the kanji section isn’t useful in TextFugu, what can you recommend to someone who wants to be able to apply learned kanji into actual sentences?

    I know these are probably a lot of questions, but I feel these key points are crucial to getting the most efficient experience with TextFugu based on what I’ve learned about, well, how I learn. Am I alone on this, or is there anyone else out there like me who retains more information when they learn AND apply?

    Thanks in advance,
    Kai.

    • This topic was modified 10 years, 5 months ago by  Kai..
    #45240

    Strangeluv
    Member

    I myself am not advanced by any means but just my 2 cents…

    TBH TF is really only great near the beginning, and steadily goes downhill. I’d say up till about season 5 it’s still ok. Starting season 6 it becomes kind of noticeable and 7 is really sketchy. Incomplete chapters, no exercises and such. Also, a lot of ‘exercises’ are just ‘make a few sentences out of the grammar points we just learned and stick em in lang-8′.

    I only got TF to get the member discount for Wanikani. Wanikani costs 80 $/yr and takes about 2 years to complete. So I figured 50% off – that makes it 80$ saving in total. 100 – 80 that makes it 20$ for TF alone. It must be worth that no matter what. Well turns out its only 30$ off for a total 60$ saving. At 40$, Im not really sure it’s worth it..

    Wanikani on the other hand I can recommend. Its quite good for learning kanji, though it doesnt teach writing – just reading. It’s essentially Textfugu’s Kanji section 2.0 or so I hear. I havent touched TF’s kanji section but from what Ive gathered, it doesnt go that far so you would have to find another way to learn the rest of joyou kanji.

    The first 2 levels are free so just try it out. In fact, it’s quite slow in the beginning due to the way the SRS is set up, so don’t pay up until you’re done with both levels and ready to move onto level 3.
    There should be a link on the main page on when you’re logged into Textfugu.

    #45241

    Kai.
    Member

    Thanks. I suppose I’ll keep chugging along with textfugu until I feel I’ve hit that point. At the very least I can say TF gave me the jump start I really needed to motivate myself with the language. Doing RTK before grammar/vocab/anything was just absolutely frustrating. I’ll take a look at WaniKani and see if it’s what works for me.

    #45242

    Joel
    Member

    Honestly, I never relied entirely on TextFugu alone. Actually, I started using it to supplement Nakama, which we were studying with my uni degree, and I also bought Japanese for Busy People at the same time. Also, I read the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar from cover to cover. =P

Viewing 4 posts - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic.