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+--- Thread: Confused about what studying approach I should take (/thread-12134.html)
Confused about what studying approach I should take - pinkmonsters - 2014-08-31
I've been a big idol fan for over 2 years and recently I've started feeling very restricted by my limited knowledge of the language. I want to be able to understand their variety shows or even be able to read news on the internet or read comments on 2ch and other similar sites.
How advanced do I have to be in Japanese in order to be able to understand a typical idol show? For those of you who have never seen one (and I'd assume many of you haven't) here is an example http://
And by understanding, I mean being able to understand at least 90%-95% of what is being said.
I'm being very specific on the reason I want to learn Japanese because after reading up a bit on the forum I've come to the realisation that every person fits a different approach to learning the language depending on what they want to use it for (which is quite obvious). Plus, I've read so many conflicting opinions on different studying methods (RTK1 included) so I'm still very confused on what approach I should take.
And since I get lazy very easily I find it easier to complete a task when I have a set goal (for starters at least). And my first goal is to be able to have a good understanding of idol shows and be able to read online comments and/or articles about them (so reading is almost as important as listening to me)
So my questions are
1)What level do you think I shoud have to reach in order to have a good understanding?
2)Do you think it's necessary or recommended for me to start RTK1?
3)What studying methods/books/decks would you recommend me in order to reach my goal?
And to give a little context, I'm basically still a complete beginner. I know how to read hiragana and katakana and I have an around 200 words vocabulary but this is as far as my knowledge goes.
(did I post this in the right section? sorry if I didn't)
Confused about what studying approach I should take - rich_f - 2014-08-31
Hmm...
This is the best way to learn Japanese, IMO. Just do what DrDunlap says. He speaks so much truth.
Nukemarine's thread is another way to do it, and it's full of resources.
Nadiatims' Method is also something that may work for you.
Your endgame: study until you understand native level speakers, and native level writing. So yeah... native level.
It's totally doable. You just have to not quit.
Really, not quitting is the best way to succeed. Sounds stupid, but it's true. Find the way that keeps you learning without quitting, and you'll succeed. (I've changed methods countless times, just to keep from getting bored.)
Also, spend more time studying Japanese than getting tangled in the meta-game. The meta-game is talking about studying it, arguing about how to study it, etc. Recognize when you're wasting time in the meta-game, acknowledge it, and get back to work. (Crap, I need to do that now.
)Bookwise-- Genki or Minna no Nihongo are the best for beginners, IMO. RTK is a godsend if it works for you. (If not, it's only $20.) It worked for me, so it was a godsend IMO. It doesn't work for everyone.
EDIT: Forgot about Nadiatims' Method!
Confused about what studying approach I should take - cophnia61 - 2014-08-31
Recently one of the admin of one of those translation groups was in japan and a tv show selected him to be in an episode of their show. They pick up foreigners in Japan and follow them to see what they do while there. This fellow was in Japan to see an akb48 concert and to go in a sort of event where you can take photos with an idol. He takes pictures with mayuyu, mariya and another girl. The day after both maryia and the other girl wrote a post about it on google+. Maybe you have seen the recording of that show if you follow bluementaiko, aidols and the like... it was very motivational to me, so I think the same could be for you. Studying japanese requires time and effort but if you habe such a specific goal it's difficult to give up, because japanese is already part of you and after you start it become incoincevable to even think of quitting. Every time I see akbingo, nogibingo etc.. it's a great bost to my willpower to study. It's not my main motivation in studying japanese but it is the thing that make me feel near the languagw more than anything.
Sorry for the length of the premise :p
I did rtk light, it was very useful but it toke me 3 months because at the time I had taken it too serously, with anki, over detailed stories etc.. but as someone said to me at the time, the secret of rtk is to do it as fast as possible, there is bo need to have perfect recall, if you are not interested in writing you could do it kanji to keyword with a huge gain in time. The important thing is to gain confidence with kanji and learn to recognize and diatinguish them. Do rtk (lite) fast and start with real japanese as soon as possible. After rtk I did Genki I and now I've almost finished Genki II. After that I'm going with the third book of the serie (an integrated approach to intermediated japanese) and after that with the fourth. As for now my weakest point is vocab but I prefer to take down grammar first because an unknown vocab you can allways look at a dictionary, while is not so simple to look a grammar point and interpret syntax, relative clauses etc.. if you've not studied them before.
Maybe you'll follow another route but I wrote what I did because I was in a similar position as yours and maybe this could be of help for you.
Btw if you don't know already there is an official google+ of akb48, you can follow all the members. They allways share pictures with notes about events and the like and they use allways the same language and vocabs so with the help of rikaichan it is easy to read what they wrote and to feel in touch with those idols
I hope this will give you more motivation to start studying the language!Some of them also have an english version, for example I like to read takamina's posts and then read the english translation to see if I understood it right. Like the other day she post a pic while she was doing shopping and she wrote about buying 私服 so I learned this new term. Today while surfing on google+ I saw a post of another idol and she uses that same word and I was very satisfied in recognizin it
you'll pick up many vocabs like "hanshake event", "public event", "autumn festival" etc..
Confused about what studying approach I should take - Stansfield123 - 2014-08-31
I watch idol-related stuff too (though not much AKB, mostly H!P related stuff). Not quite as much now, but a lot in the past. I think the older generations used to be pretty entertaining on variety shows (especially their appearances on Utaban, with Takaaki Ishibashi there to provide the jokes), and there's a lot of re-watch-ability there, which is important.
The answer to how advanced you have to be is not very. These variety shows (especially the heavily scripted, formulaic ones like Hello! Morning and AKBingo) are one of the first things I could follow along with without subs. The way I got to that point is that I would find stuff that amused me (made me laugh would be a little bit of an overstatement), watched it once or twice with subs, then, over time, watched either full shows or clips people post on youtube/dailymotion/veoh etc., without subs. Just hanging out on the Internet, clicking around watching clips. Quite the study session, huh?
I even went as far as to rip the audio from shows I enjoyed, and listen to it again on my commute (back when I was commuting).
Another thing I did is go over song lyrics from songs on my mp3 player (I didn't listen to idol songs much - while they're not terrible, they're not my thing; but idol songs would obviously be the most helpful) and study the language used (sometimes entire lyrics added into Anki, other times just words in the songs, added to the front of my Core deck). Obviously, the language in the songs is similar to the language used on the shows, so it helps.
I'd say it's one of the few instances when indulging in a guilty pleasure is actually beneficial. Being able to watch and enjoy tons of shows that feature the same style, people and genre is much better than watching a variety of different kinds of materials, with different styles and people in them. So you're lucky to be into AKB. They're everywhere, and produce a ridiculous amount of entertainment. The more you like them, the more you'll watch, and the more you'll progress.
Btw., H!P used to do tons of radio (their own shows, in fact a whole station at some point, not just guest appearances). I'm sure AKB do it too. Once you're at a level where you can understand a lot of what's being said, nothing beats radio as far as language study materials go.
P.S. My favorite idol related source of materials is hello-online.org. Between all the forums, picture galleries, and torrent tracker, you can find EVERYTHING. Most of it in both subtitled and raw form. And I mean everything. All the lyrics, all the news articles about idols (original and translated), all radio, all pictures, etc.
It's originally H!P themed, but they seem to cover other idols too. Also, if you look around, not only does every idol have a blog that's updated on a daily basis, but the popular ones also have an English version of that blog (fan translated and published). There are no doubt links to them on English language fan forums like hello-online. [edit: the absolute easiest native resource, the one I was able to understand before all else, were the idol blogs -like cophnia61 said above, they use the easiest language you will ever find]
Confused about what studying approach I should take - pinkmonsters - 2014-08-31
rich_f Wrote:Hmm...Thanks for your input! I admit that I've been indeed getting tangled in the meta-game. I've spent too much time trying to find an efficient (and relatively fast) way to learn Japanese and too little time doing actual work, mostly because I really didn't know where to start.
This is the best way to learn Japanese, IMO. Just do what DrDunlap says. He speaks so much truth.
Nukemarine's thread is another way to do it, and it's full of resources.
Nadiatims' Method is also something that may work for you.
Your endgame: study until you understand native level speakers, and native level writing. So yeah... native level.
It's totally doable. You just have to not quit.
Really, not quitting is the best way to succeed. Sounds stupid, but it's true. Find the way that keeps you learning without quitting, and you'll succeed. (I've changed methods countless times, just to keep from getting bored.)
Also, spend more time studying Japanese than getting tangled in the meta-game. The meta-game is talking about studying it, arguing about how to study it, etc. Recognize when you're wasting time in the meta-game, acknowledge it, and get back to work. (Crap, I need to do that now.
Bookwise-- Genki or Minna no Nihongo are the best for beginners, IMO. RTK is a godsend if it works for you. (If not, it's only $20.) It worked for me, so it was a godsend IMO. It doesn't work for everyone.
I already have Genki 1 bought but I didn't know if I should start with that. Guess I will. And I will order RTK1 as well. Hopefully it will work for me too.
cophnia61 Wrote:I did rtk light, it was very useful but it toke me 3 months because at the time I had taken it too serously, with anki, over detailed stories etc.. but as someone said to me at the time, the secret of rtk is to do it as fast as possible, there is bo need to have perfect recall, if you are not interested in writing you could do it kanji to keyword with a huge gain in time. The important thing is to gain confidence with kanji and learn to recognize and diatinguish them. Do rtk (lite) fast and start with real japanese as soon as possible. After rtk I did Genki I and now I've almost finished Genki II. After that I'm going with the third book of the serie (an integrated approach to intermediated japanese) and after that with the fourth. As for now my weakest point is vocab but I prefer to take down grammar first because an unknown vocab you can allways look at a dictionary, while is not so simple to look a grammar point and interpret syntax, relative clauses etc.. if you've not studied them before.Thanks for your help!
Maybe you'll follow another route but I wrote what I did because I was in a similar position as yours and maybe this could be of help for you.
What is the difference between the regular RTK and RTK Lite?
I guess I'll take your advice then. I'll start with RTK and Genki 1. And btw how would you rate your understanding of AKB's variety shows right now? Like around 70%? Around 90% or more?
Yes I've heard of that show some of Aidol's translator's guest starred in but I haven't watched it.
And haha yeah I know about G+, I've been a pretty hardcore fan for over two years already. I'll definitely use G+ as a way to practice my reading skills once I get some good vocab + grammar foundations.
Confused about what studying approach I should take - Stansfield123 - 2014-08-31
pinkmonsters Wrote:http://Japanese people just love doing that Heil Hitler thing, don't they. Barely a minute into the video 岡田奈々 has her hand straight in the air in a crisp salute, swearing fealty to someone or other.
Confused about what studying approach I should take - frosty_rain - 2014-08-31
Jesus....x2 what rich_f said.
He's very, very right on two very important points.
1. Don't quit. This...is a difficult topic. For one thing, it's a lot easier to say than to do. Chances are good that there will be many, many times that you just feel like giving up, because there will be a lot of times where you feel like you haven't made any progress or you don't think you can reach that next level. But remember this, it's not about failing OR succeeding. They are not two different paths you can end up on. The road to being good at anything is paved with countless little failures and successes, you just need to learn to pick yourself back up after a failure, and enjoy the little successes that you experience along the way.
There are two things you can do to help you from getting discouraged by those inevitable failures. First, if things are getting rough, either you don't feel like you're making any progress or things are too hard, you need to change what you're doing. There are plenty of different ways to go about studying, and all those different ways come in all different skill levels. If you've been using Anki for awhile and not making much progress, try listening to some podcasts instead. If you're getting hung up on vacabulary, switch to grammar for awhile. If your progress with self-study has stagnated, maybe it's time to find a teacher or a learning partner.
Don't just give up, be proactive and keep trying to find a method that works for you.
That being said, don't give up on things and change to something else unless you feel you've given it your best and it's run it's course. Everything will be hard in the beginning, but if you keep at it, it'll get easier.
**The other thing that will help you to stay to course is your goal. Sooner or later you'll start to wonder WHY you spend so much time learning this language, because you will get frustrated or lose confidence at some point. Whether or not you quit will be based on your answer to that WHY, and if that reason is strong enough. Always keep your goal in mind.
2. Definitely don't get caught up in the meta, like he said. Talking about studying can lead to some great insights, and I've learned a lot from the week I've spent on this site. But from my previous experience with drawing, I know exactly how easy it is to get caught up with discussing HOW to practice stuff, and neglect to actually PRACTICE. No offense to this site or anything, but it's probably best to only come here sparingly, to get help if you're stuck, and then go back to actually studying. Which I should be doing right now....
As for study methods, there are four basic parts to any language. Reading, writing, listening and speaking. Some people say that if your goal is only to have conversation ability, then you can focus on just listening and speaking. But I'm of the opinion that they all stack on one another, and that learning all 4 will increase your progress and understanding exponentially as compared to neglecting 2 or even 1 part. But, if you feel strongly that you only need certain parts, then by all means give it a try. I'm not here to tell you what to do.
However, I'll give it my best shot to aid you on learning those four parts.
Reading and writing:
This, for me, is the backbone of my study. It's what I'm most comfortable with, and I know that when I was young my vocabulary in English was vastly superior to my peers because I read books for fun, all the time, when most of them didn't.
To begin in this area of Japanese, you first need to learn and memorize Hiragana and Katakana. They are the two basic alphabets of Japanese, and they MUST be learned. There are 46 characters in Hiragana, and 45 in Katakana. Both the characters in Hiragana and Katakana make the EXACT same sounds. The only difference is the way they are written. You need to memorize both, but after you learn one, the second one will be twice as easy cuz you only need to practice how to write the second.
Most Japanese students are expected to memorize both of these kana alphabets in under two weeks, sometimes only one. It is totally doable, but realize that even after you have them memorized, it will still take a couple months before you become really comfortable with them.
I wouldn't worry about kanji just yet. Kanji is a whole different beast, and not really necessary if you just want to understand TV shows. So you can always start that later when you feel you're up to it.
Resources:
-There are many websites and books that can teach you Hira/Katakana, pretty much every beginner source has them. I would use something that has audio, because you need to know the sounds they make. ら、り、る、れ、ろ are written in romaji as ra, ri, ru, re, ro but are actually pronounced with a sound that is a mix between R and L. So audio is going to be essential. Anki decks can be really helpful for memorizing them.
-Once you get past learning those, you move onto vocab and grammar and basic sentence forms. Once you get to this stage, you'll want to buy a textbook of some sort. Yeah I know, they cost money, but trust me, you'll want one. The three most popular I know of is the Genki series, the Minna no Nihongo series and the Japanese for Busy People series. I've only used Japanese for Busy People, and I can tell you know you'll need a teacher for that book. It sucks for self-study. The Minna no Nihongo series I've heard mixed things about, so if I was going to buy one it'd have to be the Genki series. But I'd recommend you do some research and decide which is best for you.
-Once you start getting lots of grammar and vocabulary under your belt, the next logical step is to try and start reading beginner stories and articles. There are plenty out there, but I'm not going to list them. Cross that bridge when you come to it.
-There is also a site called Lang-8, where you write in Japanese and natives correct your spelling and grammar. But you won't be able to get the most out of it until you can formulate at least basic sentences in Japanese.
Listening and Speaking.
This area I'm not as familiar with unfortunately.
-For listening, JapanesePod101 has great podcasts that you can listen to. They speak in Japanese, then give you it in English, then they break the sentences down and explain all the vocab and grammar. However, they require you to have a membership, which is expensive. Like $100 a year or something. But they let you try it for free, and you can download all of their podcasts for free during the one week trial...
-For speaking, there is a website that uses Skype so you can speak to native Japanese people who are trying to speak English. So you help each other by practicing speaking in eah other's languages. I forget what it was called....but that's kind of advanced, since you probably won't be able to form a complete sentence in Japanese until you've got a decent amount of vocab and grammar under your belt.
-The last option for this is taking a class. This will be either college, or a paid class at a Japanese culture society, which is what I'm doing. I go to the Japanese-American Society of NJ, which is kinda pricey but much cheaper than a college course. Having a teacher will help you in all areas, since you practice writing, reading, speaking and listening. It's also a huge help to have a native Japanese person who can correct you immediately if you make a mistake. Definitely something to look into, you can google to see if there are any culture places/language schools near you. There are also independant Japanese tutors who will come to your home and teach you one-on-one, but that's more expensive.
In conclusion:
For reading and writing...
-Hiragana/Katakana, google it and find a website that has audio and stroke order.
-Buy a textbook as soon as you have those down. DON'T buy one in Romaji. Romaji is a pointless waste of time.
-Anki will be a huge help in helping to learn, memorize and reinforce everything. Download it.
-When you feel up to it, try finding beginner/graded reading stories and articles and begin reading. Context is everything in language, and learning words and grammar points outside of context will only get you so far. Reading will bring everything together, but it's very tough at the beginning.
-Once you get far enough, there is a site called Lang-8 that you can use to write journal entries, and have native Japanese people correct you. Very helpful, but you probably won't be able to make much use of it in the beginning.
Listening and speaking:
-Try to find podcasts around the internet. JapanesePod101 is great, and I think Smart.fm was a great source but I'm not sure if it exists anymore.
-That website I breifly mentioned where you can videochat with native Japanese people is great, but like Lang-8, you won't be able to really use it until you can formulate at least basic sentences in Japanese.
-Keep watching Japanese TV, anime, drama, anything. You'll notice over time that the words you learned somewhere else will pop up in the shows you watch and listen to, and getting repeated exposure to words and sentences you've learned will help reinforce them and give you a little confidence boost.
-Lastly, if self-study proves lacking, there's nothing wrong with going for extra help. Having a dedicated teacher in a structured learning environment can do wonders for your progress.
Wow...I realize I just pretty much wrote a damn book. Sorry about that, kinda got carried away lol. Anyway, what I said is by no means the de facto study method, but it's what I've learned so far. I'm sure others have different approaches, so take the ones you like best and just start. I find that if you spend too much time agonizing on HOW to start, you lose time that could have been spent actually learning, so it's best just to START. Somewhere, anywhere. I started with Hiragana and Katakana, and I still believe that was the most logical first step. Have to learn your ABC's first, right?
Confused about what studying approach I should take - pinkmonsters - 2014-08-31
Stansfield123 Wrote:Thanks for your help! That's an interesting approach. How much do you think it has helped you learn Japanese? I mean just by watching the shows.pinkmonsters Wrote:http://Japanese people just love doing that Heil Hitler thing, don't they. Barely a minute into the video 岡田奈々 has her hand straight in the air in a crisp salute, swearing fealty to someone or other.
I feel like if I build some good foundations (vocab, grammar etc) then I'll be able to pick up words and sentence patterns easily because I watch A LOT of variety. And yes I'm aware of H!O and I use it regularly.
The lyrics approach sounds interesting too. I think I'll start an Anki deck just for that after I finish RTK which I want to get it over with first.
Hopefully I'll be able to enjoy radio shows in a short period of time as well :') (My goal is to reach Intermediate level in a year. I hope I'm not being too optimistic lol)
And haha, as for the video, I don't think they realise what they're doing at all.
frosty_rain Wrote:In conclusion:Thanks for your post!
For reading and writing...
-Hiragana/Katakana, google it and find a website that has audio and stroke order.
-Buy a textbook as soon as you have those down. DON'T buy one in Romaji. Romaji is a pointless waste of time.
-Anki will be a huge help in helping to learn, memorize and reinforce everything. Download it.
-When you feel up to it, try finding beginner/graded reading stories and articles and begin reading. Context is everything in language, and learning words and grammar points outside of context will only get you so far. Reading will bring everything together, but it's very tough at the beginning.
-Once you get far enough, there is a site called Lang-8 that you can use to write journal entries, and have native Japanese people correct you. Very helpful, but you probably won't be able to make much use of it in the beginning.
Listening and speaking:
-Try to find podcasts around the internet. JapanesePod101 is great, and I think Smart.fm was a great source but I'm not sure if it exists anymore.
-That website I breifly mentioned where you can videochat with native Japanese people is great, but like Lang-8, you won't be able to really use it until you can formulate at least basic sentences in Japanese.
-Keep watching Japanese TV, anime, drama, anything. You'll notice over time that the words you learned somewhere else will pop up in the shows you watch and listen to, and getting repeated exposure to words and sentences you've learned will help reinforce them and give you a little confidence boost.
-Lastly, if self-study proves lacking, there's nothing wrong with going for extra help. Having a dedicated teacher in a structured learning environment can do wonders for your progress.
I already know how to read Hiragana and Katakana so I'm gonna go straight to Step 2. I have Genki 1 and I'll start it after I finish RTK. Hopepfully by the time I finish those two I'll be able to have at least some good understanding of those beginner stories. The JapanesePod101 podcasts sound like I good idea too but I guess I'll keave them for later.
And I wish I could take it up as a class but unforunately the closest Japanese learning school is hundreds of miles away from where I live so that's not really an option for me right now.
Confused about what studying approach I should take - frosty_rain - 2014-08-31
Sorry to hear you don't have any language schools near you, that's a bummer.
Although you might possibly be able to find a personal tutor if there's a Japanese person who lives somewhere near you who is doing it on the side for some extra cash. They'd be harder to find than a school, but if you google hard enough, you may get lucky.
Also, you can take just a class or two at a community college without going for a degree, but that's very dependant on how big your wallet is. I know a single class near me costs something to the tune of $1,200 for a semester. My language school luckily only charges $300 a semester.
But if you don't have that option, I guess that's neither here nor there.
Anyway, while I won't say you shouldn't read RtK, that book is pretty much for Kanji only, so it really won't be much help for learning the basics like vocab and grammar. In my mind trying to learn Kanji before learning basic words and sentence structure is kinda like trying to run before you can crawl.
I've never read RtK (although I will in the future) so maybe some of the other members have a different opinion on this, but I think RtK might be more useful to you a little later on down the road, when you're ready to learn Kanji.
That's just my opinion.
Confused about what studying approach I should take - Chomskyan - 2014-08-31
I mean, I finished RTK before learning any vocabulary or grammar and I feel it worked great for me. It's made picking up kanji vocab a total breeze. Of course, I'm still very new to the language (in the last few chapters of Genki 2 right now) so I can't claim any great success with this method just yet.
Edit: OP, you seem to be taking the route I am so let me give you a heads up. Genki has almost no listening practice. If you buy the workbooks (which you should) you'll get one listening comprehension excercise per chapter, which is really not enough. You'll need some sort of listening supplement if you want to be able to understand those idol shows.
I can't really recommend anything since I'm kicking this further down the road myself, but I've heard JapanesePod101 is good. Personally, my plan is to take the optimised i+1 10k card deck that's floating around and turning it into a sentences listening deck.
Most of all, be ready to be in this for the long haul. Getting any real grasp of a language as difficult as Japanese is very time intensive. Genki 1+2 represent a year's worth of coursework in Japanese. I've been intensively studying (~12 hours a day) Genki for the last 2 months and I'm still not finished with it. Even once you've finished Genki you'll really only have the basics (it seems like). It'll probably take years and years to become truly proficient in Japanese. Just be ready for that and don't expect anything to come easy.
Confused about what studying approach I should take - Aikynaro - 2014-08-31
If there are subtitles available for these shows, subs2srsing them seems like a pretty obvious way to go.
I would give RTK the skip, because it doesn't seem very relevant to your particular goal.
Confused about what studying approach I should take - rich_f - 2014-09-01
The meta-game is powerful. It *feels* like you're working on your Japanese (or w/e), but you're not. You're talking about it, which isn't the same.
For a substitute for an in-person school, I use Japanese Online Institute (i think it's japonin.com?) Others here use italki, and report good results. Demo some lessons, and find a teacher you click with, because working with a teacher you don't like just makes something hard even harder.
Knowing when to cut bait and move on is a powerful skill in life.
Look up "sunk cost." It's a deep topic, but useful to know.
RTK or don't RTK? You don't have to do it RIGHT NOW. I did it after I already knew some Japanese, and was banging my head against a wall trying to find a way to learn kanji that didn't suck.
Writing the same character 20 times? Sucks. Not fun, and I had poor retention.
I'd say look into it when you start to feel like you need to know it. There's a sizable PDF excerpt of RTK as a sort of "demo version" for free. When you want to start trying to wrangle kanji, it's a good time to give it a shot and see if it works for you.
Confused about what studying approach I should take - cophnia61 - 2014-09-01
Chomskyan Wrote:I mean, I finished RTK before learning any vocabulary or grammar and I feel it worked great for me. It's made picking up kanji vocab a total breeze. Of course, I'm still very new to the language (in the last few chapters of Genki 2 right now) so I can't claim any great success with this method just yet.How are you studying it? Do you mine sentences from the books and put them on anki? Are you doing the exercises?
Edit: OP, you seem to be taking the route I am so let me give you a heads up. Genki has almost no listening practice. If you buy the workbooks (which you should) you'll get one listening comprehension excercise per chapter, which is really not enough. You'll need some sort of listening supplement if you want to be able to understand those idol shows.
I can't really recommend anything since I'm kicking this further down the road myself, but I've heard JapanesePod101 is good. Personally, my plan is to take the optimised i+1 10k card deck that's floating around and turning it into a sentences listening deck.
Most of all, be ready to be in this for the long haul. Getting any real grasp of a language as difficult as Japanese is very time intensive. Genki 1+2 represent a year's worth of coursework in Japanese. I've been intensively studying (~12 hours a day) Genki for the last 2 months and I'm still not finished with it. Even once you've finished Genki you'll really only have the basics (it seems like). It'll probably take years and years to become truly proficient in Japanese. Just be ready for that and don't expect anything to come easy.
I started genki 1 exactly three months ago and I've almost finished genki 2. And I don't study as near as much as you. Most of the days I do reviews only. I feel with more efford one could do it in ghalf the time. Maybe I'm not studying it particularly well but whenever I encounter words and grammar I've already studied from those books, I recognize them. Also a college year is not truly 12 months and they study other things as well, and we all know colege is slow paced. I know people from college did N3 in less than three years but I also know ex college students converted to self study which did it in half the time. Saying this just because I fear the op might be discouraged by interpreting your post the wrong way.
I don't understand pretty well audio content but I'm starting to understand decently written content, or audio if ithas japanese subtitles. Clearly genki 1 and 2 is not enough per sé but armed with god will one can study them and a third intwrmediate book (aiaij, tobira etc) in relatively little time and then fron there study as much vocabulary as he can... As I already said my major problem is vocabulary, but the last period I am very slow paced. I feel an average student can do both genki in 2 months (I did it in three but also I know one who did it in a month) and beside it mine vocabulary from idol posts, songs etc.. so beside grammar and basic vocabulary from genki he can study more vocabulary with a sum of let's say 30 new words a day (somethin I'm not doing because I'm bad, but I assure you is pretty possible). I know some in this forum have little simpaty for ajatt, jaluo etc.. but I sugfeat you to read the article on jalup about the first 1000 j-e sentence mining, where e does an estimate of the time needed to mine the first 1000 sentences from genki 1 and 2. He says 1 to 4 months is needed, obviously it depends from the effort and time you put into it but I believe his estimate is right.
Sorry for the long post and for the arguing about the other user post, I don't intend to vriticize it or to say he is wrong, only to give another point pf view just so the op has more sources from which he can forms his own idea.
Confused about what studying approach I should take - Chomskyan - 2014-09-01
No worries man. Yeah I do 100% of the exercises including the pair exercises which I do with a native Japanese friend. I also do all the exercises in the workbooks. I learn the Genki vocab at a rate of ~25 words a day via E->J production, and I also mine audio for all the vocab from the Genki CD to add to my anki deck. On top of that I've been working my way through Core10k recognition at a rate of 30 cards a day. I also have to maintain my maturing RTK anki deck. It honestly does take around 12 hours a day. I can sometimes do it in less if I maintain iron-like discipline.
I might be slightly overestimating how long I've been working on Genki I and II. It's been less than 2 months, but it's around there. I try to move at a rate of 1 chapter per 2 days, so if everything had gone according to plan it would have taken 46 days. of course life has happened several times. My grandmother died and I had to fly out to attend her funeral. Right now I'm on a 2 day vacation with my family. So add 10 days or so of lost time for all the stuff that's popped up. 2 months seems to be a reasonable time frame for completing Genki I and II given full time studying.
Confused about what studying approach I should take - pinkmonsters - 2014-09-02
So can anyone tell me where I can find RTK Lite exactly?
Confused about what studying approach I should take - yogert909 - 2014-09-02
pinkmonsters Wrote:So can anyone tell me where I can find RTK Lite exactly?http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=993&page=1