So Are These Useful Or No? [ASK THE COMMUNITY]

[koichiMember]

I really don’t mind if they’re not useful… Just asking so I know where to spend my time. Started out with a lot more activity but then dwindled down to just one or two responses to each one. A few questions:

1. Are mini-lessons useful to you or no (please be honest!)?

2. Do you read the mini-lesson posts (please be honest!)?

3. Are they too hard? Too easy to be useful?

4. Should I do these less frequently?

5. Is certain content better for mini lessons in your opinion? What’s the best kind of mini-lesson content? What’s the worst?

6. Are you just waiting for others to respond to see the answers? Are you answering on your own but not posting up?

7. Anything else that might be helpful? :D

Anyhoo, just want to make sure time’s being spent well – more than happy to do not as many of these (as I have been the last two weeks) if there needs to be more time between them (definitely have plenty of other things to do!), but would love to hear your thoughts on it too! Thanks thanks!

[KiaiFighterMember]

1. Are mini-lessons useful to you or no (please be honest!)?
Somewhat, depends on the difficulty. Usually there might be atleast a vocab or two I could pick up.

2. Do you read the mini-lesson posts (please be honest!)?
Yes, always

3. Are they too hard? Too easy to be useful?
Sometimes too easy.

4. Should I do these less frequently?
Whatever your workload can handle. (or have people to support you and help you out)

5. Is certain content better for mini lessons in your opinion? What’s the best kind of mini-lesson content? What’s the worst?
What is sometimes difficult is understanding without context. In Japanese, context is usually crucial to understanding what is being said. I think a lot of Japanese is understanding what is not said too.

6. Are you just waiting for others to respond to see the answers? Are you answering on your own but not posting up?
I always try to understand them on my own at the very least. Occasionally I will post.

7. Anything else that might be helpful? :D
hmmmmm

[ReidenMember]

1. Are mini-lessons useful to you or no (please be honest!)?
Well yes…but it’s only a sentence, I can find and read a lot of them

2. Do you read the mini-lesson posts (please be honest!)?
I do.

3. Are they too hard? Too easy to be useful?
They are perfect for my level, I know parts of them but not everything, everytime.

4. Should I do these less frequently?
Maybe you should make a bigger sentence (multiple sentence) and make it a Weekly thing Monday to Monday

5. Is certain content better for mini lessons in your opinion? What’s the best kind of mini-lesson content? What’s the worst?
I’ll go with the last poster, since context is important, lot of the sentence are thougher because of that. Maybe what I said for 4. would help that?

6. Are you just waiting for others to respond to see the answers? Are you answering on your own but not posting up?
I’m answering(trying) without posting and without reading others.

7. Anything else that might be helpful? :D
Don’t know, an anki sentence practice deck after each season? Like multiple sentence that incorporate the kanji and grammar rules that we saw in the season. You make( or anybody really) like 50-100 sentences to review…you could even just take the sentence you use for the practice sheet or chapter example. The good thing in this deck is that you could mix the sentence grammar point. When you pratice and it’s all the same point one after the other, it’s kind of obvious and easy to see the pattern without thinking.
In fact I’ll probably do this when I’m done with the ultimate lists and focussing or grammar and sentences, but it won’t be before like 2 months

• This reply was modified 13 years, 3 months ago by  Reiden.
• This reply was modified 13 years, 3 months ago by  Reiden.

[ElenkisMember]

1. Yes, I find them useful even if I don’t always respond to them.

2. I always read them.

3. A few have been too easy for me. I wouldn’t really class anything as “too hard”, even though there was one tricky one that I got completely wrong, hard is good because I will learn more. We have a lot of people of different levels here and I think it’s important to cover a range of difficulty that can satisfy everyone. Even the easier ones make for good practice, so I’ve been happy with the mix.

4. As frequently as you can manage without it interfering with work on the core lessons. I enjoyed seeing new ones every day, but if that’s too much for you then it would be better to slow down.

5. Dialogue taken from real Japanese media is definitely my preference. This is something that a lot of other textbooks don’t cover much, and it can be a big jump from textbook Japanese to ‘real’ Japanese. I’d love content that contains colloquial and casual Japanese especially, it could even come from manga perhaps.

I was quite a lot less enthusiastic about the last mini lesson (the の particle) because it was mostly the kind of simple example sentences that are found in standard beginner textbooks.

6. I always answer on my own before reading any answers. However I do go through the other answers before I post my own and if the sentences are fairly basic and people have already given the same answers as me (and I know them to be correct), then I may not bother writing a response myself. I tend to respond if my answers differ from those already given, or if I feel that I can explain or clarify something that perhaps others reading may not have understood.

In other words, if I don’t feel that I can add anything further of value then I may not post. But I will still ALWAYS read the lessons and answer them in my head.

[CelestralMember]

I think this might actually be my first post.. I’m more of a lurker than a poster, but I thought I should fill this out, because I do read them every time.

1. Are mini-lessons useful to you or no (please be honest!)?
The mini-lessons are very useful to me, because they use good sentences with just the right grammar and questions. It’s difficult for me to do it on my own, because I wouldn’t know which sentences are good (daily Japanese) and which aren’t.

2. Do you read the mini-lesson posts (please be honest!)?
I check almost everyday to see if one has been [ANSWERED] or if there’s a new one :)

3. Are they too hard? Too easy to be useful?
Well with Rikaichan they’re doable for me. I don’t really mind the difficulty, because even if I don’t understand something I can learn from the answers of others.

4. Should I do these less frequently?
Well, if you’re having a hard time doing them, then I guess so :(
But please don’t stop doing them, because I (and I’m sure others too) like them a lot!
Once a week might be a bit slow unless you post a lot of sentences (A kind of mini story). Maybe 2 or 3 times a week if it’s too much to do everyday?

5. Is certain content better for mini lessons in your opinion? What’s the best kind of mini-lesson content? What’s the worst?
I wouldn’t really know..

6. Are you just waiting for others to respond to see the answers? Are you answering on your own but not posting up?
*ahem* Seeing as this is probably my first time posting on the forum… I do try to answer them on my own before reading the answers :) Even if I don’t understand the grammar, I will at least look up the vocab and see if I can make a construction with it in my head that would make sense.

7. Anything else that might be helpful? :D
Textfugu is awesome *heart*

[missingno15Member]

Let me ask a question.

Did you find mine too hard?

[マーク・ウェーバーMember]

1. Are mini-lessons useful to you or no (please be honest!)?
They are usefull to me if they are about something that I have already learned(eg. the recent　の one)

2. Do you read the mini-lesson posts (please be honest!)?
Yes I always check if I can answer them

3. Are they too hard? Too easy to be useful?
The questions difficulty depends on the subject, and if it is Q number 1 or 7. I think the level is fine, but I can rarely get the last Q right.

4. Should I do these less frequently?
1-2 per week seems fine to me, 1 per day might be a little too much.

5. Is certain content better for mini lessons in your opinion? What’s the best kind of mini-lesson content? What’s the worst?
I would prefer Japanese from newer movies/radio or w/e. As long as it is things where the grammar is correct, and there isn’t too much slang

6. Are you just waiting for others to respond to see the answers? Are you answering on your own but not posting up?
Posting when I get time/see the thread has gone up.

@Missing: For me your mini lesson was way too hard :/

• This reply was modified 13 years, 3 months ago by  マーク・ウェーバー.

[DavidMember]

I find these mini-lessons quite useful. The grammar difficulty and the questions asked to clarify the portions of the sentence add just the right amount of guidance to material that is at a level just outside what I learned from TextFugu.

Most of the kanji are beyond the ones that I learned with TextFugu or some of the more common one’s that I’ve learned on my own. I don’t really want it all converted to hiragana though, and I also don’t want to use rikaikun all the time, since it gives me nearly every possible definition when all I need is a little reminder about the reading. Perhaps the html tag could be used to include the reading, so that it will pop up if I hover over the kanji?

I read all of the posts and posted to the first few, but after missing one day, it was harder to start posting again. Perhaps the frequency should be reduced to 2-3 days to give more time to answer even if you don’t check every day. But more important is consistent updates, because after a few updates were delayed, I stopped checking as often, and was only checking to read the questions, think about the answers to myself, and compare to the answers at the end.

Examples taken from some real source are best. Drama dialogue is good; Manga dialogue, Novel snippets, or anything else from a practical source. I like going through the sequence of lines like we did with Good Life, since it built the context which is so important to understanding Japanese.

[ElenkisMember]

@missingno15:

I found yours to be just right for my level. There were a couple of tricky places but most of it wasn’t a problem and it also taught me something new.

[Ryuuguu AzumaMember]

1. Are mini-lessons useful to you or no (please be honest!)?
If I’m able to do them they are. It’s nice to have things like this because it gives you a chance to actually translate something and prove you’re not just wasting your time. It’s more rewarding to translate some of the mini-lessons than to have a 2 pages of sentences of whatever a particular lesson covered

2. Do you read the mini-lesson posts (please be honest!)?
I read them up until they stopped being posted every other day. They got a bit too hard!

3. Are they too hard? Too easy to be useful?
The couple I answered I was able to do with a little bit of help from rikaikun. But they got a bit harder after that so i stopped posting.

4. Should I do these less frequently?
Perhaps instead of doing them less frequently, alternate difficulty levels so each level of learner gets a new one every couple of days.

5. Is certain content better for mini lessons in your opinion? What’s the best kind of mini-lesson content? What’s the worst?
Anything and everything is good really as long as its from a Japanese source. Real-world application and all that…

6. Are you just waiting for others to respond to see the answers? Are you answering on your own but not posting up?
I have answered and posted on most of the ones I felt confident about. There was only 1 I didn’t post on at the beginning because I thought everyone else had already done it and it was just another post of the same answers.

7. Anything else that might be helpful? :D
Different difficulty levels.
Grammar parts specific to chapters…stick ‘em IN the chapters with a little doodle or something.

I liked the idea of having the little dialogues to translate, made me think it might be nice to have something like that at the end of a chapter/season. Just a little badly drawn comic with some of the grammar points/kanji and what-have-you in there so at the end of a chapter and a series we have something we can read with what we’ve learned rather than making it up.

[Adam BuechlerMember]

Sorry for going off topic, but I just wanted to thank Celestral for mentioning Rikaichan, because it’s insanely useful! I installed Rikaikun, a port of Rikaichan to Google Chrome, and it’s the perfect match for my high level of both curiosity and laziness.

[DrewMember]

1. Are mini-lessons useful to you or no (please be honest!)?

As a semi-beginner, the mini-lessons are a really nice middle ground between textbook style example sentences and real Japanese readings. It really helps me to read “real” Japanese instead of simplified textbook-style grammar. I’m still working on my vocabulary, so I use a dictionary and stick words that I don’t know in an Anki deck. Thus, the mini-lessons are very useful to me.

2. Do you read the mini-lesson posts (please be honest!)?

All of them!

3. Are they too hard? Too easy to be useful?

Some are a little advanced for me (early Season 2) but with a little push in the right direction I generally can understand them.

4. Should I do these less frequently?

Once a week is cool, but please keep making new ones!

5. Is certain content better for mini lessons in your opinion? What’s the best kind of mini-lesson content? What’s the worst?

I like the “real life” Japanese content. It really helps me to learn certain nuances and weird tricks that are present in “real” Japanese.

6. Are you just waiting for others to respond to see the answers? Are you answering on your own but not posting up?

I write all my answers in a text file on my computer and retry them in a few days. I don’t know why I don’t post them.

7. Anything else that might be helpful? :D

Keep it up! These are really awesome learning tools!

[MarkMember]

1. Yes, for sure!
2. Yes, always!
3. I think that it would be cool to have the sentence (quite difficult) and then have hints for lower level students, maybe?
4. No, Never!
5. Real content based on useful things ftw!
6. I try to work it out, but I don’t really post up, don’t know why…
7. Like I said, having hints for lower level people perhaps?

[OdhrenMember]

I like the mini lessons.

[AndrewMember]

I love the mini lessons and read them all the time.

I’m not that advanced in Japanese so it’d be nice to have some easier ones as well as the difficult ones.

They’re definitely useful :)

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