The Study Thread

[ArmandoMember]

@irmoony: How many words do you do per day? I just started and I’m almost done with step 1. Just want to know what others do :P

[irmoonyMember]

I started off doing 20 words per day, now I’m down to 15, because this number feels less intimidating XD

[マーク・ウェーバーMember]

Catching up with kanji and ultimate decks… I forgot to add 2 groups to all decks due to the text telling me to do it was placed in a pretty odd spot, so now I am doing 40 words every 3rd day.
By sunday I can go back to lessons!
I had 600 cards for review today -_- 1h spend on reviewing… Trying to cram a lot of words has it’s downsides.
Might get around to do a lang-8 entry, don’t know for sure yet.

[LukeMember]

Started the kanji/vocab from JLPT3 today and still slugging away at the ultimate verbs list.

[yaniMember]

Finished Season 3 a few days ago, finally feeling comfortable with most of the verbs. Moving on to Season 4 today :3

[irmoonyMember]

@Mark – it should be “its downsides”, since “it’s downsides” would be “it is downsides”. Doesn’t make sense, right? ;)

Sorry for being a grammar nazi, it’s just one common mistake that bugs me a lot, because almost everyone I see keeps getting it wrong :<

[マーク・ウェーバーMember]

Haha
Correct me all you want irmoony, I never look through what I have written, and even though I know that it shouldn’t be it’s but its, my fingers still decided to put it in there :P
Thanks for making me aware though

[マーク・ウェーバーMember]

completed the chapter about “if”
Did 10 more kanji
completed ultimate nouns
added 1 group to ultimate verbs & adjectives

[LukeMember]

Read around 20 pages of the book missingno recommended. It’s so good, I wanted to start working on more advanced sentences so the book is really grabbing me. Also did Anki reviews and still working towards finishing the kanji for jLPT4, nearly there now…nearly

[MisterM2402 [Michael]Member]

@Yggbert: Was that the sentence patterns book? Do you recommend it? It’s weird that I can’t find a pdf version of it anywhere… An Excel doc of the sentences was all I could find XD It’s still ok, but it doesn’t have the explanations that are in the book. Could be good to make into Anki cards however :D

I mean what? I never did any of that stuff… >.>

My library doesn’t seem to have it either, unfortunately :(

• This reply was modified 13 years ago by  MisterM2402 [Michael].

[LukeMember]

Indeed it is. It’s also compact, more like a handbook than a traditional A4 bulky textbook which is nice. It feels like I learnt a lot and I’m not even finished with the first part of the book yet!

The last textbook I bought was Japanese for Busy People…which soon turned into a doorstop, something about that book just really didn’t grab me. This one is definitely impressive, if you like grammar and want to really dive into sentence structure and learning how a bunch of different things work then I don’t think you can go wrong with it. A tip of the hat to missingno for this one.

[ElenkisMember]

I’d highly recommend the Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar books if you can afford them.

The usefulness of ‘Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication’ probably depends on how much you’ve already learned from other sources. From what I’ve seen it’s very basic and if you’ve already gone through a beginner textbook it probably doesn’t have much to offer you. The example sentences would be useful for practice, but A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar has a larger number of those, covers more grammar and gives more information about each.

‘Sentence Patterns’ seems like a useful tool for beginners to carry around though.

[LukeMember]

I wouldn’t say it’s that basic, it sets you up to start making more complex sentences such as:

Please ask [person] to translate this article into English.

That person who just got out of the car is our new department head.

It covers some pretty intermediate stuff once you get past the first or so chapters. I think basic is more along the lines of “It is a big red car”, so sentences that only have a single topic and don’t go into much detail.

• This reply was modified 13 years ago by  Luke.
• This reply was modified 13 years ago by  Luke.

[ElenkisMember]

By basic I just mean it doesn’t go beyond the grammar taught in a beginner textbook. Though admittedly the sentences are better than beginner textbook example sentences that are always kept as basic as possible (reading exercises are a different story though and perhaps the most valuable tool in a textbook).

A couple of typical sentences from early in the intermediate textbooks I’m reading would be:

また、勉強しても必ずしもいい将来があるわけではないという気持ちが強くなっているのかもしれない。

これは、相手の気持ちを大切にする日本人の考え方が日本語に現れている表現の一つですから、「。。。」が使えるようになると、会話が上手に聞こえます。

So that gives an idea of roughly what reading level you’re at after finishing a beginner textbook course (in this case Genki 1&2), in which case I don’t think you would get much value out of “Sentence Particles”. On the other hand, the “Dictionary of Japanese Grammar” series is likely to remain a useful reference even for advanced students.

For a beginner I have no doubts that it would be useful, but I still think DoJG series is the best resource that can be bought.

[マーク・ウェーバーMember]

I will take on thing at a time, and even though some books I ordered will arrive this week, I will complete TextFugu first before I move over to something else(for grammar). Still at waaaaaay beginner level, but hopefully I will reach で&と chapters by the end of this month :P
As for today, I got an overview of how many kanji I know from JLPT5, and actually I only need to learn 36 kanji in 6 months (lol xD) in order to know the kanji for it. Will however aim for JLPT4 instead, but I am still considering taking JLPT5 this summer. Also did reviews, and a little bit of writing more sentences using a new sentence pattern I learned
日本語を習ったら今勉強すったらどうですか？
should make sense if my logic is right :)

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