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+--- Thread: A Genki question. (/thread-13560.html)
A Genki question. - CrimsonDX - 2016-02-03
Hello, I have a question about the Genki series. About what level would I be at after going through Genki 1 and Genki 2? Would I have enough information to starting diving into simple native material with a kanji and grammar dictionary at my side, or would I need to go through other resources before that?
RE: A Genki question. - RandomQuotes - 2016-02-03
(2016-02-03, 8:28 am)CrimsonDX Wrote: Hello, I have a question about the Genki series. About what level would I be at after going through Genki 1 and Genki 2? Would I have enough information to starting diving into simple native material with a kanji and grammar dictionary at my side, or would I need to go through other resources before that?
You'll be a high beginner. If something is on the simpler side, you should able to read it with a grammar dictionary and regular dictionary, but it won't be too fun. I find that roughly going over the grammar section of an intermediate textbook, over a couple of weeks[or a weekend if you're feeling particularly masochistic], nothing intensive, makes that first leap to native material on the less painful side.
RE: A Genki question. - CrimsonDX - 2016-02-03
(2016-02-03, 9:02 am)RandomQuotes Wrote:(2016-02-03, 8:28 am)CrimsonDX Wrote: Hello, I have a question about the Genki series. About what level would I be at after going through Genki 1 and Genki 2? Would I have enough information to starting diving into simple native material with a kanji and grammar dictionary at my side, or would I need to go through other resources before that?
You'll be a high beginner. If something is on the simpler side, you should able to read it with a grammar dictionary and regular dictionary, but it won't be too fun. I find that roughly going over the grammar section of an intermediate textbook, over a couple of weeks[or a weekend if you're feeling particularly masochistic], nothing intensive, makes that first leap to native material on the less painful side.
Do you have any suggestions for a good
intermediate text?
RE: A Genki question. - RandomQuotes - 2016-02-03
(2016-02-03, 9:48 am)CrimsonDX Wrote: Do you have any suggestions for a good
intermediate text?
If you like Genki, might as well go with the follow up: An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese.
A good supplement for to that for reading is "Japanese Cultural Episodes for Speed Reading," it's written by the same guy, Akira Miura, but as far as I know it's out of print. It looks like you can fine a copy on amazon for something like $15-20.
RE: A Genki question. - CrimsonDX - 2016-02-03
(2016-02-03, 10:46 am)RandomQuotes Wrote:(2016-02-03, 9:48 am)CrimsonDX Wrote: Do you have any suggestions for a good
intermediate text?
If you like Genki, might as well go with the follow up: An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese.
A good supplement for to that for reading is "Japanese Cultural Episodes for Speed Reading," it's written by the same guy, Akira Miura, but as far as I know it's out of print. It looks like you can fine a copy on amazon for something like $15-20.
Awesome, thank you.
RE: A Genki question. - CureDolly - 2016-02-03
At this stage I went through An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese reading the grammar points but not doing exercises or anything else.
I was watching anime with Japanese audio and Japanese subtitles and researching grammar and vocabulary as needed. Pretty intensive but good fun if you like doing it and really helpful in getting over the beginner-intermediate hurdle.
An anime I would recommend for this stage is Heidi (アルプスの少女ハイジ). It has subtitles with furigana (rare) and is mostly at child level but without using a lot of specifically childish language (which can be confusing and not useful). You might want to skip the first episode as it has a lot of more complex adult talk.
It will be slow at first but you'll learn a lot. If you like the show and follow it through all 50ish episodes you will speed up considerably and gain a lot of Japanese knowledge, and equally importantly, a "feel" for Japanese will be starting to take shape.
RE: A Genki question. - SomeCallMeChris - 2016-02-03
You should also be able to start reading 'graded readers' by the time you finish Genki I & II. Those are books that are written with learners at various stages of learning in mind.
The only reader I used was short and kind of terrible so I wouldn't recommend it. I've heard a lot of people say they like this series, but I don't have personal experience with it,
http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Graded-Readers-Level-Vol/dp/4872177118/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1454531469&sr=8-8&keywords=japanese+reader
RE: A Genki question. - mc962 - 2016-02-03
I used Tobira after Genki, and preferred it a bit more over Integrated Approach (I liked the explanations more, as well as the organization). http://www.amazon.com/Tobira-Japanese-English-Mayumi-Oka/dp/4874244475/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454534092&sr=8-1&keywords=tobira
You could probably do NHK Web Easy with the help of the rikaikun addon for unfamiliar vocab. and kanji. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/
RE: A Genki question. - CrimsonDX - 2016-02-03
I have a website booked marked that has a lot of japanese subs for anime. 10-12 years of subbed anime and music at least has trained my ears at least (back in my HS japanese class I could run circles around my other classmates thanks to that). Ive definitely seen the readers, so I would definitely love to get those at some point.
RE: A Genki question. - debrucey - 2016-02-03
I love these stories
http://life.ou.edu/stories/
RE: A Genki question. - FlameseeK - 2016-02-03
I tried graded readers some time ago and while most of what I read was enjoyable, I was disappointed with the excessive amount of hiragana. Simply put, there was a whole bunch of hiragana instead of furigana.
I was doing RTK so I wanted to see a whole bunch of kanji to get used to them... but if you don't actually see kanji being used, how can you get used to them? The purpose of graded readers is to make reading easy as well as help you get used to the language and bridge the gap between beginner and native material. So I think dumbing things down is a horrible choice.
I thought NHK easy news was pretty rough by the time I finished Genki 2. You probably don't need much N3 grammar to read it, but I've noticed that reading kanji and unknown vocabulary is quite the hurdle at your level. A couple of weeks later, I finished RTK and started working my way through Core 2k. Now that I'm done with the first 2k words, I can safely say it's a lot more manageable. But easy? Not really... not yet.
RE: A Genki question. - mc962 - 2016-02-03
Graded readers can come in different levels; I found that readers in this series: http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Graded-Readers-Level-Edition/dp/4872176243
to be pretty good (it goes from level 0->4) and by the time you get to level 4 it can have a fair amount of kanji in it. I think after Genki 2 you could probably go to level 3 depending on how good your current vocab/kanji level is, maybe level 2 (it's been a while so I don't remember for sure).