Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice)

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Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - cloudstrife543 - 2009-02-26

So I just finished RTK1.

I have a bit of grammar and vocab under my belt right now, but I'd like to see if anyone has any advice for the next step.

I have KO2001, tae kim, and iknow all in mind. What I'd like to do is dedicate most of time to one I think, and be adding to Anki along side. Personally, I've been thinking I should do Tae Kim's all the way through entering what I want from it into Anki as I go. Then KO2001 after. And maybe iknow along side both.

What do you think? Maybe someone could suggest a different route or additional resources I should use alongside, instead of, or first, if you have a better idea. Thanks!

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - QuackingShoe - 2009-02-26

It's impossible to actually plan it out since you don't actually know what any of it will be like yet. Just dip into it all, see what works, and then get into your own rhythm based on your experiences.
Whatever you do, don't JUST go through all these courses and whatever. Get lots of authentic input too.

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - bodhisamaya - 2009-02-26

Continue and finish through 3007 but go to http://www.iknow.co.jp also. I just started two weeks ago and it is incredible! There are three RTK lists there as well. Use the brainspeed to make reviewing RTK fun. Fushigi-kun seems to have the best one right now.
http://www.iknow.co.jp/lists/41156-heisig-s-remember-the-kanji-l1

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - Tobberoth - 2009-02-26

Personally, I would skip going through 3007. The kanji in there are very uncommon (I finished RtK1 several weeks ago and I've only added 10 or so kanji from RtK3 from exposure into Anki... and I'm at JLPT2 level so it's not like I'm reading easy stuff). You can learn them through context as you go, you don't need to focus time on them specifically.

As for what to do now, your plan sounds good. Start with Tae Kim. You don't need to finish it before you focus on the rest, some of the advanced topics are rarely used, but get the basic and itermediate stuff down before you start going full out in KO. As for iKnow, give it a try. Personally I didn't like it much, I prefer Anki.

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - QuackingShoe - 2009-02-26

Tobberoth Wrote:Start with Tae Kim. You don't need to finish it before you focus on the rest, some of the advanced topics are rarely used,

I remember it was so long after I read about 塗れ that I actually saw it used. I remember thinking, "Oh! Hey! That guy! From forever ago! Where you been, dude?"
'course, I wouldn't really consider that 'advanced,' but it's in his advanced section and isn't the most common of things.

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - mentat_kgs - 2009-02-26

This is what I do.

1) Pick a piece of text.
2) Underline the new words.
3) Find a sentence for everyone of these words and put them in anki. For this, use whatever resource you find nice.
4) Read the text.

Always) Listen to natural speed audio.

BTW, check the audiobooks from the resources section of the forum and see if there's one you like.

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - cloudstrife543 - 2009-02-26

thanks for the replies!

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - urpwnd - 2009-02-26

Remember when Neo goes to see the Oracle in the Matrix?

Remember how much you use all those silly grammar rules from school?

There is no grammar.

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/there-is-no-grammar

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/grammar-does-not-exist-2

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/on-grammar

Unless of course, you want to become an editor on a Japanese newspaper or something.

Just get tons of exposure in whatever way pleases you. Don't make it a chore, because grammar is boring as shit.

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - welldone101 - 2009-02-26

urpwnd Wrote:Remember how much you use all those silly grammar rules from school?

There is no grammar.

Just get tons of exposure in whatever way pleases you. Don't make it a chore, because grammar is boring as shit.

I like studying grammar! Sad

I get exposed to way more of the language when I do learn the rules. I have a fun grammar book and combine that with fun exposure and it works really nicely.

I think you should find a book series that is designed for self study and stick to it. Definitely don't change once you've dug in, since I tried that and it leads to a lot of annoyances and inefficiency. Anything that forces you to do a daily routine with Japanese is ++.

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - woodwojr - 2009-02-26

Grammar is all there is. Colourless green dreams sleep furiously; buckets watch blue.

~J

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - Nukemarine - 2009-02-26

I'm gonna go with the theory that using grammar is like using RTK, a means to an end. No, kanji is not a bunch of Heisig primitives. No, kanji individually don't really mean what the keyword says it is. However, with it as a shortcut, you reach a place where you can properly use kanji quicker.

Same with grammar. Yeah, grammar doesn't really exist. It's just someone noticing patterns in a language (like people noticed patterns within the kanji), and began organizing it into useful material. With it in your head, you can reach a place where you understand the sentences you're reading or listening to.

Grammar, like kanji, has diminishing returns the further you go along. The kanji from RTK lite get used all the time. The later 1000 get used less so. The next 1000 even less (although there are some common ones in there). Likewise, simple grammar rules will be used often so you'll see it often. The ones in Essential also so. The later "rules" you'll rarely see pop up.

So yeah, I'm treating Kanji, Grammar and Vocabulary as useful means to ends. Here are the steps I'm having my ex-wife and later my daughter do for learning Japanese.

Step 1 - I learn Kanji via Heisig in groups of 1000. I then learn basic grammar via 180 sentences from Tae Kim (or UBJG, or Genki, or others).

Step 2 - I then learn 400 basic vocabulary via iKnow (or KO2001). Then it's 500 kanji from RTK, 320 essential grammar sentences from Tae Kim and 800 intermediate vocabulary from iKnow.

Step 3 - Lastly it's 500 kanji from RTK, 230 special grammar sentences from Tae Kim and the last 800 intermediate from iKnow common core.

What I'm not doing (and I don't recommend doing), is learning the grammar "rules" then going and trying to make sentences from them. I'm using the "rules" to figure out when I'm reading manga or watching shows.

PS: I'm writing out the kanji with RTK reviews, the vocabulary word only with Vocabulary reviews, and the grammar portion of the sentence (the bolded portion on Tae Kim's sentences) with Grammar reviews. I do reverse cards on vocabulary (reading it out) and grammar (very, very controlled English + Grammar rule to Japanese spoken).

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - woodwojr - 2009-02-26

I was joking in my last post, but I think the fact that a completely meaningless, nonsensical sentence can be constructed in a way that is unambiguously correct in some structural fashion is a strong counterargument to any serious assertion that grammar does not exist.

(Note that this is independent of the question of how much explicit study of grammar is useful.)

~J

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - welldone101 - 2009-02-27

woodwojr Wrote:I was joking in my last post, but I think the fact that a completely meaningless, nonsensical sentence can be constructed in a way that is unambiguously correct in some structural fashion is a strong counterargument to any serious assertion that grammar does not exist.

(Note that this is independent of the question of how much explicit study of grammar is useful.)

~J

Sorry, could you repeat yourself using different words for my sake? I'm getting stuck on the "meaningless [...] exist." part. >.<

Edit: paraphrasing here, "a meaningless sentence that is grammatically correct is an counter argument that grammar does not exist." So a rewrite could be "a meaningless sentence that is grammatical is an argument that grammar exists."

Is that right? In which case I guess I agree, or don't agree, but either way I'm not really sure that it IS an argument that grammar does exist. I think the best argument that grammar exists is when a 2 year old says "I just go-ed to the park and come-ed back."

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - nwatkins - 2009-02-27

Nukemarine,

How do you suggest using the iKnow system, for both sentences and vocabulary?
I have an iKnow audio -> kanji/kana sentence anki deck I'm thinking of starting. Just wanting to hear another opinion.

Thanks!

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - cangy - 2009-02-27

Nukemarine Wrote:PS: I'm writing out the kanji with RTK reviews, the vocabulary word only with Vocabulary reviews, and the grammar portion of the sentence (the bolded portion on Tae Kim's sentences) with Grammar reviews.

do you have bolded bits in your tae kim deck? 'cos your spreadsheet doesn't have anything bolded...

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - pm215 - 2009-02-27

welldone101 Wrote:So a rewrite could be "a meaningless sentence that is grammatical is an argument that grammar exists."

Is that right? In which case I guess I agree, or don't agree, but either way I'm not really sure that it IS an argument that grammar does exist. I think the best argument that grammar exists is when a 2 year old says "I just go-ed to the park and come-ed back."

Grammar is basically the set of rules which limits how different classes of words fit together and says what meaning results from the way they're put together. So "colourless green ideas sleep furiously" obeys all the rules, and as a result it's obvious that the ideas are green, that the things that are sleeping are the ideas, and the way they're doing it is furiously, and so on.
The fact that you can get this information (in a way that you can't get it from "furiously ideas green colourless sleep") means that your brain has those rules in it somewhere; it's not just working out sentence meanings from the meanings of individual words.

For practical purposes, I think nukemarine has it right. People who go around saying "grammar doesn't exist" get my back up because it's such an obviously silly thing to say (and thus a really bad thing to say if you want people to actually pay attention to any sensible advice you might follow it up with).

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - stoked - 2009-02-27

urpwnd Wrote:Don't make it a chore, because grammar is boring as shit.

I love learning grammar.

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - Nukemarine - 2009-02-27

cangy Wrote:
Nukemarine Wrote:PS: I'm writing out the kanji with RTK reviews, the vocabulary word only with Vocabulary reviews, and the grammar portion of the sentence (the bolded portion on Tae Kim's sentences) with Grammar reviews.
do you have bolded bits in your tae kim deck? 'cos your spreadsheet doesn't have anything bolded...

Um, sorry, no. I got that spreadsheet from here I think as a text file. I've been going sentence by sentence in Anki and modifying them to suit my needs. Not too difficult as Tae Kim's site has the parts in orange text.

Although I'm only upto Special Expressions sentence 37, I can export the Anki file as text and make a new spreadsheet. Although it could also be useful to do it yourself and bold the areas you think are worth writing down EACH AND EVERY TIME. I emphasized that, as writing out the entire sentence will burn you out fast.

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - woodwojr - 2009-02-27

pm has the idea. If there were to be no grammar, that would leave semantics as the only actual attribute of a sentence (modulo a few other things that don't, I believe, change this argument). However, both "Colourless green dreams sleep furiously" and its twin ("furiously ideas green colourless sleep") are semantically completely empty. The idea of sleeping furiously is nonsensical; so is the idea of dreams sleeping, or of dreams having colour (or its lack), or of something being both colourless and green.

So we have two sentences devoid of semantic content. If grammar does not exist, they should be on equal footing. However, one of them is clearly more "correct" than the other; among other things, one of them I was able to analyze and produce portions of that were, in particular, meaningless. That analysis is not possible with the reversed version.

So clearly some structural attribute of the sentence exists independent of semantic content. "Grammar" is the term we use to describe structural attributes of sentences.

On these grounds, I claim that one cannot say "grammar does not exist" in any manner more meaningful than one can say "vocabulary does not exist", or even "language does not exist". The assertion "the parts of a verb are only parts of the same verb because we say they are" is, while potentially true, standing on the same logical foundation as "green is only green because we say it is".

~J

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - Tobberoth - 2009-02-27

I love learning grammar as well. It's an extremely fast and effective way to get a very high level of understanding and production ability. Like Nukemarine said, it's an ends to a mean. Grammar doesn't make you awesome at a language, it just makes it easier to become awesome.

It's a shortcut, nothing else.

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - urpwnd - 2009-02-27

The grammar doesn't exist thing is more of a joke. For all of you that didn't read the posts that I linked to, they basically state:

That grammar does exist, as an abstract concept, because we say it does

That you don't need to spend a ton of time learning it

With adequate exposure, you'll pick it up naturally anyway and end up sounding like a native (as opposed to sound like grammar-bot 5000)

This works in almost any language. A good friend of mine, a Japanese native, was born in Tokyo. He lived in Pennsylvania for a few years during elementary school, moved back to Tokyo, and has lived/worked there ever since. His English is ****** fantastic*. At elementary school levels, you aren't doing grammar. When he got back to Japan, he spoke better English than his "English teachers" in school, and didn't bother with any other formal training. All his exposure since then is purely through media. He reads a lot, watches American TV and movies, and picks up stuff via the web.

I'm not saying studying grammar is a waste of time, I just think it's not as important as people make it out to be. I mean, really... how much do you study grammar in your native language? Did you speak well, grammatically speaking, before getting into REAL grammar study in roughly middle school? Massive exposure will have you speaking like Japanese people speak, which is kind of the point, right?

The most important part is to do whatever works for you, have fun, and stay motivated. If you like grammar, go nuts, study it like crazy. It still counts as exposure. ^____^

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - woodwojr - 2009-02-27

I read it, but again, the arguments under which it is correct also apply to vocabulary. "Abstract" as a word exists only because we say it does. It's not a useful observation.

~J

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - Gingerninja - 2009-02-27

urpwnd Wrote:I mean, really... how much do you study grammar in your native language? Did you speak well, grammatically speaking, before getting into REAL grammar study in roughly middle school? Massive exposure will have you speaking like Japanese people speak, which is kind of the point, right?

i agree with this. Often as im learning Japanese, i come across people who are learning English and they'll ask questions and I'll try and explain things, but then i find when explaining English grammar.. i can't. i dont know the rules myself.
I know what is right, what sounds right when spoken, and what should never even be said. but once you get past, verbs, noun, adjectives. my grammar knowledge goes right out the window.
I've never used English grammar, because its native, its all programmed into me, kinda how the AJATT method suggests learning Japanese. If i ever see an English grammar rule i have to actually stop and run things in my head to check, yes they are usually right, but not knowing the rule beforehand didnt stop me knowing about it subconciously.

sorry for spelling errors, horrible use of english etc.. but its 11:30pm.. i've got corrections to do and im itching to go shoot things on killzone 2. Smile

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - jokoto - 2009-02-28

Concentrate on remembering your learned kanjis. This is as important as learning them in first place.

Finished RTK1, what now? (need advice) - zwarte_kat - 2009-02-28

Grammar exists because we say it exists. It's a name we once gave to describe patterns in a language, and thereafter we started learning the language with the use of the knowledge of these patterns. We also sometimes slightly adjusted grammer (rules) for various reasons, like the evolution of languages, or to make things easier to learn. But grammar still is just that: re-occurring patterns (is that double?). Not everything fits inside these patterns, which is why there are exceptions. If every bit of grammer was designed as a rule, we wouldn't have those exceptions. (I have no source it's just what I think)

So that's how I view grammer: as patterns. That's why I like books as UBJG.

I am in the same situation, just finished RTK1, with some grammer and vocab already mastered. I am reading through the UBJG book, learning the things I don't understand well yet. I don't plan to let that take up for more than a month, the info doesn't have to be engraved in my memory yet. After that I will purely focus on vocab for a while, which will enable me to understand many things that i WANT to read for FUN. From there on it's reading (and listening/talking) fun stuff and let my knowledge expand by itself, like it happened with my English. Only this time I will have support from Anki, and I will keep learning grammar on the side.

That is what I recommend.