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KO2001 and JLPT level - Thora - 2009-05-13
Greatfool - There are some comparisons in here you might find useful.
KO2001 and JLPT level - thermal - 2009-05-26
In terms of vocab if you do all 1110 then yes it is enough. I did all of them except for words that were boring (eg. 暖流 (hot current)、寒流 (cold current)). Don't forget there are still 擬音語 that can trip you up though. I got 74.5% (note you only need 60% to pass JLPT2)
The other thing you need is reading speed. You have ample time for the first to parts, but for the reading and grammar you need to be able to gun through the reading questions.
Also, just remember that KO is great for getting a lot of vocab quick and passing the JLPT2. It is really bad for getting good at Japanese and I personally regret doing it. The sentences are very unnartural and sentences that no one will ever say and sound like this: "Hello Jim, We went to the park earlier. At the park, there was a dirty dog!" You are better off getting sentences from real Japanese, but anyway..
KO2001 and JLPT level - Thora - 2009-05-26
thermal Wrote:I did all of them except for words that were boring (eg. 暖流 (hot current)、寒流 (cold current)).heh, wouldn't have expected that, thermal.
KO2001 and JLPT level - Nii87 - 2009-05-26
thermal Wrote:Also, just remember that KO is great for getting a lot of vocab quick and passing the JLPT2. It is really bad for getting good at Japanese and I personally regret doing it.This is the first time I heard this. You regret doing it? Was the vocabulary you picked up not worth it?
KO2001 and JLPT level - Tzadeck - 2009-05-26
thermal Wrote:Also, just remember that KO is great for getting a lot of vocab quick and passing the JLPT2. It is really bad for getting good at Japanese and I personally regret doing it. The sentences are very unnartural and sentences that no one will ever say and sound like this: "Hello Jim, We went to the park earlier. At the park, there was a dirty dog!" You are better off getting sentences from real Japanese, but anyway..I must say that the Kanji In Context books have great sentences, and I'd recommend them over KO any day for someone at a high enough level. Which, you should be, if you're at all close to JLTP2 level.
KO2001 and JLPT level - mentat_kgs - 2009-05-26
chochajin Wrote:2kyumentat_kgs Wrote:Aha, I just downloaded a past JLPT test, from 2003 and was checking it.Which level?
KO2001 and JLPT level - Tobberoth - 2009-05-26
thermal Wrote:"Hello Jim, We went to the park earlier. At the park, there was a dirty dog!"How is that unnatural?
unnatual language are things that, while grammatically correct, sound wrong. The KO sentences are natural, just not interesting. There's nothing wrong with saying that there was a dirty dog in the park, it's just not a sentence you would use often.
What I'm saying is, learning from KO won't be detrimental just because the sentences in it are simple and often not all that useful. All of it is correct Japanese that you could easily hear a Japanese person say, in the correct situation.
KO2001 and JLPT level - Ryuujin27 - 2009-05-26
I've heard stuff in my daily life and then later bumped into a sentence in KO where I thought, "Huh, that must have been what he said." KO seems pretty good for natural sentences. I'll definitely agree that a lot of them are ones you won't use a lot, but the vocabulary boost is certainly worth doing them.
However, thermal, do you think the KO books actively hurt your Japanese? As in, perhaps they damaged your ability to express yourself?
KO2001 and JLPT level - erlog - 2009-05-26
Tobberoth Wrote:If you actually want to learn the grammar points then get どんな時どう使う日本語. It has grammar points for all 4 levels of the JLPT, and has 4-5 example sentences for all of them. It has explanations of those grammar points in Japanese, and then shorter explanations in English, Chinese, and Korean.greatfool Wrote:Kanzen master sounds good then. Would you recommend studying it over どんな時どう使う?I've never used どんな時どう使う. However, Kanzen master was made specifically for JLPT, so if your goal is to pass a JLPT, Kanzen master is what I would use. Whether どんな時どう使う is a better book in general though, I'll leave to people who has used both.
I'm aiming for fluency in the shortest time possible, and I'd rather get there sooner than worry about the JLPT.
If you just want to pass the test, get Kanzen Master or the Unicom book.
You can do both if you get both, though. You can learn them from どんな時どう使う日本語, and then drill them with one of the JLPT drill books.
KO2001 and JLPT level - FutureBlues - 2009-05-26
Yeah, I've had no problem with sentences in KO-- though the English translations are often the odd sort of translations that Japanese people end up with due to SVO-SOV confusion. Nothing terrible-- and it doesn't matter much anyway because after a certain point you can basically ignore the English translations entirely-- my experience anyway.
KO2001 and JLPT level - harhol - 2009-05-26
Tobberoth Wrote:Well it's not terrible, it's just that a native English speaker would never talk like that.thermal Wrote:"Hello Jim, We went to the park earlier. At the park, there was a dirty dog!"How is that unnatural? Unnatual language are things that, while grammatically correct, sound wrong.
1. You'd never immediately follow a greeting with "we went to the park earlier".
2. The phrase "dirty dog" sounds particularly awkward (you'd say something like "a dog covered in dirt" or "a dog that was dirty").
3. You wouldn't repeat "park". The fact that you were at the park is implied by the previous sentence (sounds familiar huh
).4. Nobody uses "hello" except in job interviews and on the phone.
5. (specifically a written thing) Exclamations are used very rarely in English. Using them at the end of unexceptional sentences like this will make you seem weird or childlike.
If we chop off the greeting, a more natural sentence might be:
"We saw this dog at the park earlier. It was covered in dirt."
KO2001 and JLPT level - yukamina - 2009-05-26
ghinzdra Wrote:And even now I rely on this to get motivated to get the 1kyuu. It's both extremely painful and a great source of motivation.It shouldn't be painful... Are you required for some reason(work, etc) to pass JLPT1, or are you just doing it because you want to? JLPT isn't needed to become proficient in Japanese, and if you get it, it doesn't necessarily mean you're proficient.
KO2001 and JLPT level - thermal - 2009-05-31
See Harhol's post for why it is unnatural. KO is mostly sentences like this.
I don't think it hurt my Japanese, however it didn't really help my Japanese either. In terms of comming up with a word when we speak or write, I believe we (our brains) unconsciously recognise that the situation we are now in is the same as the one that we have heard that word or phrase many times before and it just comes out. Thus we need to study sentences that are real sentences said for a real purpose.
If we stick these sentences in an SRS, each time we read or hear it, we recall the context it was said in and it's meaning, and the tie between these two parts becomes stronger. Eventually without thinking we recognise the same context when we are in it and can say the word or phrase if we choose.
This is why it is hard to learn parts of a language that your own language doesn't have. For example よ. When we start Japanese our brains can understand the meaning, but they don't register when a situation is appropraite to say よ in comes. However, learning something like 痛い is very easy, because we are used to verbalising ourselves when we are hurt. (But then we have the danger of using it as if it's an english word, when they are not exactly the same. This is why you should always learn usage from the context and just copy)
So books like KO, that contain often unnatural sentences in no context do not tie together context and usage in our brains and thus do not do a lot to improve our Japanese. All they really do is increase passive vocab. As a beginner I think using sentences from grammar books are an acceptable evil though.
KO2001 and JLPT level - blackmacros - 2009-05-31
That's an interesting take on things (and one that I agree with), but would you say the cost (in relatively unnatural sentences) is outweighed by the benefit of the vocabulary you pick up? I would venture to say that most people on this forum think KO2001 is almost unrivalled in terms of efficiently structured introduction of vocab/readings. You say that
"As a beginner I think using sentences from grammar books are an acceptable evil though.". What about KO2001 for vocab? Or do you think it would be better mining from all natural sources despite a reduction in efficiency?
KO2001 and JLPT level - thermal - 2009-05-31
I think it depends on what you want. Do you want to achieve a level that is pretty much indistinguishable from a native speaker in most situations? Or do you want to just be able to communicate making mistakes and unnatural sentences here and there?
I have studied Japanese with people who have either passed JLPT level 1 or were taking it and had huge vocabs. They completely sucked at speaking. Almost nothing they said was anything like a Japanese person would say. Even though they knew this vocab I never heard them say a word I didn't understand (I was about JLPT2 level in terms of vocab), so it was very much passive. Nor do I think they understood the nuance of the words. Clearly a big vocab doesn't mean a whole lot about someone's real Japanese level (実力).
In terms of becomming almost as good as a native speaker, I don't think KO helps. It doesn't increase your ability to utilise grammar, as the grammar is not used naturally and there are no contexts to tie the grammar to. We don't know if the words are formal, polite, casual, except through inferance. We don't know how to lead into such a sentence with the new word or lead out of it. We don't know how to use the word naturally. Plus either we look at the English meaning which very likely doesn't have the same nuance as the Japanese word or we read a Japanese definition and given that there is no context it is hard to get much of an understanding of the word. So even the passive vocab is shaky.
However, using the English you can drill a lot of words into your head quickly. They will probably be mostly passive, you will use the words unnaturally sometimes and you may be slow to speak, but it is really fast for this. If you aren't aiming to become kickass then I think it is a reasonable trade off.
If you do want to become very natural then I think it is a waste of time.
KO2001 and JLPT level - activeaero - 2009-05-31
thermal Wrote:However, using the English you can drill a lot of words into your head quickly. They will probably be mostly passive, you will use the words unnaturally sometimes and you may be slow to speak, but it is really fast for this. If you aren't aiming to become kickass then I think it is a reasonable trade off.All words are mostly passive even in your native language and the one known truth is this: If you don't know a word passively then you will never be able to use it actively.
If you do want to become very natural then I think it is a waste of time.
If someone was ONLY using KO for their Japanese learning then I could understand your complaints but if you are using KO simply as a tool for efficient acquisition of vocabulary I'm not sure how anyone could ever say having a large passive vocabulary is a fault (not that you are saying that BTW).
I look at KO just like I do RTK...as an efficient building block. The rest of one's daily Japanese input should far outweigh the time they spend with the odd, but still grammatically correct, KO sentences. For example, even if you review 150 KO sentences per day with audio, at an average of 5 seconds of dialog per sentence, that is only 13 minutes of Japanese listening input for the day.
On an average weekday I get roughly 20-30 times that much input from other natural sources so I highly doubt the impact of those 13 minutes of odd dialogue is going to overwhelm the rest.
KO2001 and JLPT level - blackmacros - 2009-05-31
Hrm, I can say that I've already experienced a moment where my Japanese friend has looked at me funny and commented that a particular sentence sounded unnatural. Although the sentence I used was from my textbook (I was rehearsing my class speech in front of him) not KO I think it probably applies equally.
Having said that, though, surely if you are also exposing yourself to native media--jdramas, anime, manga, movies, newspapers etc etc-- this will significantly reduce any harm you might be getting from any KO sentences that are slightly unnatural. Finishing KO2001 book 1 will give you about ~1500 sentences. If we take the AJATT '10,000' sentences as just an arbitrary focal point here KO sentences are only 15% of that. Add on top of that the many thousands upon thousands of different sentences you will get (but not necessarily mine) from native media and its likely that KO sentences will make up a very small final % of the sentences you've been exposed to. I would think that you would be unlikely to use a word in a way that you haven't seen it used in native media.
EDIT: Looks like active and I are making basically the same point here :-)
KO2001 and JLPT level - thermal - 2009-05-31
It's not so much that it is detrimental, although it can be. I am just saying that it is largely a waste of time. It's like Stephen Krashen says, there is learning a language and learning about a language. Learning about a language doesn't hurt, but it doesn't really advance your true level. I put KO in this boat.
KO sentences are nothing but examples warped to try and give a context in one or two sentences, use only words previously taught (they don't always follow this rule), use simple grammar and be easy to understand. You've got to understand that words never exist by themselves, there are set phrases and sentences, set responses that people follow. You know the English ones so well that when listening to someone talk you can constantly predict *.
I completed books 1 and 2 and reviewed them in my SRS for 6 months doing both production and recognition. During this time I also entered in sentences from real Japanese sources. Doing this I noticed that when I review a real sentence I recall the context it was said in and I get a stronger and stronger feel for the sentence. When I review a KO sentence I feel nothing, further more the Japanese is unnatural so it doesn't reinforce my knowledge.
I disagree with the "KO increases passive vocab really quickly. Through immersion you can make these active." point because I think reviewing sentences is not about reviewing words. It is about reviewing phrases and sentences that were said in a real situation for a real purpose.
Don't forget why we don't just study words by themselves. Because without a context we don't know when to use the word. I believe KO equates to almost the same thing.
*what will come next
KO2001 and JLPT level - welldone101 - 2009-05-31
thermal Wrote:[...]I've talked to two Japanese people who've had a lot of contact with foreigners. They both tend to have more respect for people that they can talk to about anything than the one that sounds natural. When one sounds too much like a native it's usually because they've done lots of conversation and not as much study, and those people tend to only be able to talk about things they've talked about.
If you do want to become very natural then I think it is a waste of time.
Personally I'd rather be able to understand and converse about a nebula or a crisis in gaza than spend loads of time practicing basic speech patterns. Unnaturalness is just a fact that non native speakers will always have to deal with.
Also I think that KO2001 is more about learning kanji readings than learning proper Japanese.
KO2001 and JLPT level - Nukemarine - 2009-05-31
On what Thermal was saying, it feels like there's truth to it. I hope I bypassed it with reviewing Tae Kim and iKnow sentences by putting myself into the context or enjoying the context as given. So, even though the sentence may have been about generic guy with generic job, I'll put in about my life and my job. This is not new, as Antimoon suggests doing just that. Put yourself into the situation of the sentences.
Even with mined sources, I sometimes like to think of a situation I'll use it. However, just thinking of the scene from the show is enough.
Perhaps its just small things like this, that you don't think about, that you think others are doing anyway, that get bypassed by others because they did not think about it. So, Thermal, were you putting yourself into the sentences in some way?
KO2001 and JLPT level - thermal - 2009-05-31
welldone,
I believe pronunciation and being able to say simple things very clearly and naturally is more impressive that being able to talk on a range of topics. I did homestay with a girl who was half Swiss and half Japanese in Japan. She grew up in Switzerland but spoke only Japanese to her father and from that could speak very naturally, however since they didn't really talk about anything deep she had a pretty weak active vocab (she forgot words like 政治).
I on the other hand have a good vocab, particularly with words that you hear on the news or read in newspapers. I can read the newspaper and understand it pretty well. Overall we were about the same level however, my host family thought she was better than me. She also came to my farewell party before I left Japan and my friends commented on how good her Japanese was, one specifically saying she was better than me. So basically everyone thought she was better than me and hey in terms of real Japanese level I think she was too. Anyway, this is just my experience. I'm sure some people are more impressed by a big vocab.
Quote:Also I think that KO2001 is more about learning kanji readings than learning proper Japanese.Kanji readings are proper Japanese which is why you want to learn them hooked up to real Japanese IMO.
Nukemarine,
I used to occasionally play with different scenarios. Sometimes I would pretend that someone had said the sentence to me and I would respond. Or I would relay the information to someone else. Or I would imagine a scenario in which someone might say the sentence. Mostly I just did dictation.
However, I think what you are talking about is imagining yourself in a scenario in which the sentence is said. The problem is though, that you are not familiar with the new word/grammar, so you don't know when someone might reasonably use it. Doubly with KO, the sentences are unnatural so there is no context in which the sentence will be said. You will be linking real contexts with unreal Japanese.
EG. ホテルが火事になったが、客は全員無事だった。
Anyway, it's not the end of the world
I just believe that you are better off mining the real deal.
KO2001 and JLPT level - Chandlerhimself - 2009-05-31
I don't think the sentences in KO are that bad. Some of them are weird, but others are really good. Some I have seen later in magazines, etc. Anyway, I don't think it even matters if some of them are a little strange. When you're still learning Japanese the chances of you saying strange things/using the wrong words/using words the wrong way/etc is 95%(ok I pulled that stat out of nowhere). I've never heard anyone use words correctly 100% of them time when they're still learning a language, so I don't think think using all native material will help that much.
IMO the point of using KO is to learn as much vocab as you can ASAP. It does this well. IMO it's faster than finding the words yourself and typing them(learning them). For some reason people think words get stuck in your head and bad habits can't be broken, but obviously this is false or we would all still speak like Sesame st. Imagine if you had 2 people studying Japanese and 1 person only used native material from the start and the other used learning material for the first 2 years(then used native materials). After 10 years I doubt there would be any difference in their level or how naturally they spoke Japanese.
KO2001 and JLPT level - blackmacros - 2009-06-01
Chandlerhimself Wrote:After 10 years I doubt there would be any difference in their level or how naturally they spoke Japanese.Thats what I think, too. In the long run individual inconsistencies and differences in study styles will all even out anyway. But in the short run KO seems like a really really efficient way to quickly bolster your Japanese ability. Thats why I'm not too worried about the sentences being unnatural, because I don't think it will be ultimately vey damaging in the long run.
Plus what you brought up about Sesame Street is also spot on, I think. I read a lot of children's books and watched a lot of sesame street as a child, with phrases like 'the cat sat on the mat". This is not something people would usually say, so its not very 'natural' yet I read a lot of that sort of stuff as a kid. Yet I'm not still stuck saying stuff like that. So overall, I don't think its damaging in the long term to learn from somewhat unnatural sources- as long as thats not your only source, and as long as you eventually move on and leave it behind.
KO2001 and JLPT level - FutureBlues - 2009-06-01
So are the people arguing against KO arguing that the Japanese sentences are unnatural or that the English translations are unnatural?
The book is produced by a Japanese company-- some of the translations are a little unnatural, others, very much so, however, the Japanese, while mostly composed of simple grammatical structures, seems relatively OK to me.
What, exactly, is unnatural about the example you've provided?
EG. ホテルが火事になったが、客は全員無事だった。
For EG. "火事になったが" there are over 1,500,000 google hits. Similarly, there are almost 3,000,000 hits for 全員無事.
KO2001 and JLPT level - Jarvik7 - 2009-06-01
@Futureblues: I'm not chiming in on the merits of the arguments, but you googled wrong.
Results 1 - 10 of about 15,600 for "火事になったが". (0.43 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 134,000 for "全員無事". (0.31 seconds)
You forgot to use quotation marks. If you don't use them, Google treats it as if there is a space between each character and so just finds any page that has all of the characters in it ANYWHERE. It gives more weight to pages that have the search terms close together, so it looks like you searched correctly if you only look at the first few matches.
Ex: "店員の言った事は全部無意味だった" would match the second example in a google search if you never used quotes.