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+--- Thread: After finishing RTK 1?? (/thread-12953.html)
After finishing RTK 1?? - sakumaru - 2015-08-18
What tool or book should I begin using after RTK 1? I'm currently working on RTK 1 (I'm about 600 in) and I plan on finishing in about 2 more months. I want to have a plan for what I will be doing after RTK 1 so that I don't waste time later on. I'm in sort of an interesting situation though, I guess. I can speak Japanese decently because I am Japanese and was raised in Japan until I was 5, but my reading and writing is not as good. So in an effort to improve my reading and writing, I was thinking I should learn grammar after RTK. So should I do Genki 1 and 2 afterwards? I'm also entering college as a freshman this fall so I won't have a lot of time everyday. Any advice is appreciated! Thanks.
After finishing RTK 1?? - kapalama - 2015-08-18
My personal take on things is that Genki kind of forces a bunch of weird ways of speaking on you, because as an intro text, vocabulary is nonexistent. And that oddness just goes on throughout the books.
Even though a recent overall removed a couple of non longer used forms (しなくちゃ was changed to しなきゃ), it still takes some decoding to use the text if you already speak Japanese.
If you use them, borrow someones old one, and read through them both in a weekend. There are a couple of decent points in them, but I think I got maybe 5 total pages of notes out of books 1 and 2.
Tae Kim's grammer notes are probably more useful as they are written by a non-Japanese person.
After finishing RTK 1?? - PotbellyPig - 2015-08-18
I liked Genki 1 and 2 but I was a complete beginner and appreciated the deeper grammar explanations. I did't care for Tae Kim's guide but if you already have a foundation in Japanese, it may be right for you.
After finishing RTK 1?? - sakumaru - 2015-08-18
Thanks for your responses. Hopefully there are Genki books and Tae Kim's guide at my university's library so that I can take a look at them and see if they'll work for me. Also, should I continue to RTK 2?
After finishing RTK 1?? - cophnia61 - 2015-08-18
sakumaru Wrote:Thanks for your responses. Hopefully there are Genki books and Tae Kim's guide at my university's library so that I can take a look at them and see if they'll work for me. Also, should I continue to RTK 2?If I remember right "Tae Kim's guide" is free and you can find it on the internet. There is also an Android app which is nothing more than the guide itself. I did Genki at the time and I liked it but it depends much on your actual level of japanese. If you already have a good knowledge of basic spoken japanese maybe Tae Kim's guide is a better choice.
About rtk2, it is all about on-yomi and signal primitives, so it depends on how many japanese words you know.
For example if you know at least one word for each common kanji, which uses the onyomi, then it's best to just hook the kanji directly to the word itself. For example, if you know the word "れいせい" maybe it's just easy to remember 冷 as "れい" and 静 as "せい" of "れいせい".
No need to learn that 冷's onyomi is "れい" because of the primitive on the right, and that the 静's onyomi is "せい" because of the left primitive. Also, as you gain this knowledge, you will automatically recognize the signal primitives as you learn other kanji with the same primitive. For example the left primitive of 静 appears almost allways on the right and it signals that the kanji reads as "せい".
As for exceptions, see for example 情 which reads not as "せい" but it reads as "じょう" most of the time. But still, even there, if you already know the word "かんじょう" it will sufice to remember that 情 is the "じょう" part of that word.
After finishing RTK 1?? - JKS87 - 2015-08-18
I suspect Genki might be incredibly boring for someone who already speaks well, if it were me I would be looking to fill in the gaps in my knowledge rather than starting from scratch. But if I was really determined to go through a beginner's textbook I might try something like Minna no Nihongo but without the English translation. Still, I think some more focused study of weak points combined with a lot of input would be the way to go for anyone with basic Japanese skills.
After finishing RTK 1?? - yogert909 - 2015-08-18
sakumaru Wrote:I can speak Japanese decently because I am Japanese and was raised in Japan until I was 5, but my reading and writing is not as good. So in an effort to improve my reading and writing, I was thinking I should learn grammar after RTK.There is a bit of a debate on wether it is more efficient to learn grammar from reading native materials or formally studying it. Since you can already speak relatively well, I might suggest quickly reading through Tae Kim as it is a more compressed grammar course than a textbook like Genki. However I believe the greatest gains you'll see after finishing RTK will be when you start reading around your level. I would look for some graded readers in your library or something like NHK easy which has both text and audio. Since you already have a decent vocabulary, I would think it would be fairly easy to associate knaji with their yomi while reading along with an audio track or possibly even a text with full furigana.
After finishing RTK 1?? - kapalama - 2015-08-18
I would say that skipping RTK2 which is all about readings, and maybe going to RTK 3 works better.
After finishing RTK 1?? - Stansfield123 - 2015-08-18
I don't think what you study with matters much, as long as it's in Japanese (if you already speak Japanese decently, you have no business reading about Japanese in another language), and (if it's a grammar guide) you focus on the example sentences, not the rules and explanations.
Personally, I wouldn't go with a grammar guide at all. I would go with something that has more natural and conversational content. Here's something that would probably be great for you:
https://www.erin.ne.jp/jp ( I never had the patience for it - or any other study guide like that - but I'm pretty sure you can skip everything you don't need, and just use the content to study reading and writing).
Or you could skip study materials altogether, and just mine content out of an easy manga (that has furigana). With manga, you would have to actually type in the content you want to study, to create flashcards you can SRS (unless you find something you like that someone has already transcribed). But why not? I assume you want to learn how to type Japanese...what better way to practice?
You could also go with more generic content, found in one of the many pre-made Anki decks. If you go down this route, I recommend Nayr's 5000 sentence deck. I believe it actually consists of example sentences mined from a best selling grammar/study guide. But they're all nicely packaged in a high quality Anki deck, with excellent native audio.
After finishing RTK 1?? - Stansfield123 - 2015-08-18
Another thing I would definitely do, if I were you, is look up the lyrics to my favorite Japanese songs, go over them, and every time I find a word I can't read, copy paste the line it's in into an Anki deck.
For a beginner, song lyrics can be confusing. But for you, if you already understand the lyrics, they would be perfect, because you would know the context of everything you're studying. Rather than studying out of context example sentences out of some grammar book, you'd know all the context there is to know about the lines you're studying.
In fact you probably have a lot of the lyrics half memorized already, from listening to the songs, so you would have a really easy time recalling the readings of words. And that's a good thing: when learning how to read, you don't need to study readings. Reading doesn't consist of looking at each symbol on a page, and then putting them together to form words. Reading consists of looking at a written word, and knowing what word it is. Having heard the lyrics before will help you more easily develop just that ability, for all the words contained in it. Without having to ever bother trying to memorize Kanji readings.
Besides, later on, once you studied entire lines, you can also make cards out of the more difficult individual words, just to make sure that you can also recognize them outside the context of specific lines. But that won't be necessary for most words, since most words repeat, don't just show up once. Once you're able to recognize a word in five, six different contexts, you're able to recognized it in any context.
After finishing RTK 1?? - poblequadrat - 2015-08-18
[double post]
After finishing RTK 1?? - poblequadrat - 2015-08-18
kapalama Wrote:My personal take on things is that Genki kind of forces a bunch of weird ways of speaking on you, because as an intro text, vocabulary is nonexistent. And that oddness just goes on throughout the books.I'm not sure I agree 100% - I think Genki is very good at explaining elementary grammar in a way that's almost never confusing. I think the dialogue serves this purpose, too - I guess the aim of the book isn't to teach you Japanese as it's spoken, but to get you to the level where you have a good grip on the basic structure of the language so you can actually learn from listening around. You have to admit that most other textbooks don't even teach you elementary spoken-style stuff such as -なきゃ! As for vocabulary, it's light on useless 熟語 and newspaper jargon so you could do far worse than Genki. (btw, it doesn't drop -なくちゃ and -なくては entirely, but it demotes them to footnote status iirc).
Even though a recent overall removed a couple of non longer used forms (しなくちゃ was changed to しなきゃ), it still takes some decoding to use the text if you already speak Japanese.
If you use them, borrow someones old one, and read through them both in a weekend. There are a couple of decent points in them, but I think I got maybe 5 total pages of notes out of books 1 and 2.
Tae Kim's grammer notes are probably more useful as they are written by a non-Japanese person.
However, if OP already speaks Japanese I don't think they can get much out of Genki. I think it'd be a better idea to read stuff with furigana to learn the readings and look up confusing pieces of grammar.
Also I think Stansfield's suggestion is great! Once you learn a song by heart you'll have no trouble remembering the meanings of the words, but it has to be said that I've found a lot of songs with lyrics that were confusing as hell and pretty flowery...
After finishing RTK 1?? - kapalama - 2015-08-18
yogert909 Wrote:I would look for some graded readers in your library or something like NHK easy which has both text and audio. .Are there anymore like this without furigana?
(Also how do you get the audio?)
After finishing RTK 1?? - kapalama - 2015-08-18
poblequadrat Wrote:I'm not sure I agree 100% - I think Genki is very good at explaining elementary grammar in a way that's almost never confusing. I think the dialogue serves this purpose, too - I guess the aim of the book isn't to teach you Japanese as it's spoken, but to get you to the level where you have a good grip on the basic structure of the language so you can actually learn from listening around. You have to admit that most other textbooks don't even teach you elementary spoken-style stuff such as -なきゃ! As for vocabulary, it's light on useless 熟語 and newspaper jargon so you could do far worse than Genki. (btw, it doesn't drop -なくちゃ and -なくては entirely, but it demotes them to footnote status iirc).I was specifically talking about the OP's case. Genki is might be fine as an intro text, but it was so slow going that I found myself fighting with the book, and flipping it off because x,y,z.
However, if OP already speaks Japanese I don't think they can get much out of Genki. I think it'd be a better idea to read stuff with furigana to learn the readings and look up confusing pieces of grammar.
Of course, an intro text has to move slow, but man I hated going through those books. (I was fluent before I used a book, too.) I have to take new learners word for if Genki makes any sense starting from scratch. For me, it was good as long as I could buzz through it in a weekend. But then it was a useless reference as I found out when I was trying to double check something in it.
But then again the text was not written for me. Or likely, for the OP.
After finishing RTK 1?? - sakumaru - 2015-08-18
Again, thanks for all the advise. It seems like a combination of Tae Kim's guide, japanese literature/reading, listening to japanese songs, and some Anki with Nayr's 5000 sentences deck may be a good way to maintain japanese studies. Since I'm on summer break, I have the time and energy to do RTK 1 at a decent pace (24/day), but once college starts I will likely have too much on my plate to do any rigorous studying outside school work. So hopefully things will work out even at a slower pace.
Also, regarding vocabulary, should I create my own anki deck of new words I want to retain? Or should I just create a simple running list on something like a Google docs file?
After finishing RTK 1?? - yogert909 - 2015-08-18
kapalama Wrote:I assume you are asking about NHK easy..?yogert909 Wrote:I would look for some graded readers in your library or something like NHK easy which has both text and audio. .Are there anymore like this without furigana?
(Also how do you get the audio?)
- Most of the articles have an audio reading of the text and an accompanying video above the text.
- There is a python script to download the audio for offline listening.
- There is a stylish script for chrome and firefox that will turn off furigana.
- An alternative is the NHKeasy reddit which has the text without furigana and user translations.
- Yet another alternative is a 2013 archive of that year's NHKeasy articles with audio and text.
After finishing RTK 1?? - yogert909 - 2015-08-18
sakumaru Wrote:Again, thanks for all the advise. It seems like a combination of Tae Kim's guide, japanese literature/reading, listening to japanese songs, and some Anki with Nayr's 5000 sentences deck may be a good way to maintain japanese studies. Since I'm on summer break, I have the time and energy to do RTK 1 at a decent pace (24/day), but once college starts I will likely have too much on my plate to do any rigorous studying outside school work. So hopefully things will work out even at a slower pace.Sounds like a good plan. I'm sure you'll get a better feel for what works for you once you get into it. Regarding vocabulary, Anki would make it much more convenient for studying and organizing your list.
Also, regarding vocabulary, should I create my own anki deck of new words I want to retain? Or should I just create a simple running list on something like a Google docs file?
After finishing RTK 1?? - ktcgx - 2015-08-19
sakumaru Wrote:I'm in sort of an interesting situation though, I guess. I can speak Japanese decently because I am Japanese and was raised in Japan until I was 5, but my reading and writing is not as good. So in an effort to improve my reading and writing, I was thinking I should learn grammar after RTK.My advice is:
READ
Just read
Find graded readers (see my thread on them for suggestions) or novels with furigana, and read ones which are easy and interesting to you.
Read for at least 30 mins each day.
Read different types of texts (but more importantly, ones that you like and are interesting to you!)
That's all you need to do. You already speak Japanese so your grammar is fine, you just need to see the written forms and to increase your reading skills. The only way you'll improve your reading skills is by reading
