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+--- Thread: So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? (/thread-3651.html)
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - stplush - 2009-07-31
My understanding is that KO2001 teaches vocab. Can you not get that from sentence mining? I thought that was the point of it. If you do think it's necessary, then please describe about proving I do own the KO book? I heard you have to prove you own it and email two people to get a spreadsheet or something?... Thanks for any help.
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - brianobush - 2009-08-01
Yes IMHO you need some structured source for sentence mining.
As for myself, I am using みんなの日本語 (vol 1 and 2) as my first sources for sentences while learning grammar/vocab. I like the structured learning a bit more than the free-form approach. After these two volumes, I plan on sourcing KO2001 and "Japanese sentence patterns" for sentences out in the wild to enhance my vocabulary. As you go along you will also find that you need to know more kanji than RTK1 presented, which is a neat experience since you learn it the same way you did with the kanji in rtk1.
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - Nukemarine - 2009-08-01
If you've read AJATT, you'll notice he offers this bit of advice trying to figure out words you come across in mining: Example sentences. Now, when he was doing it, those came from either E-J dictionaries or online sites like Yahoo.jp. In other words, he wasn't using these example sentences as his "sentences" but to supplement his cool sentences that came from Tiger and Dragon or Evangelion or Star Trek Voyager (Japanese Dub). Those cool sentences use the word properly, but the cool sentences don't get across the meaning of the word.
So, if you have 5000 to 10,000 available sentences for vocabulary words that are made specifically to highlight those vocabulary already formatted and ready to go into an SRS, why not use the resource? You're not forced to go word by word, sentence by sentence with the book. You can use it as a supplement and activate words as you come across them sentence mining. Then again, you can also look for a good example sentence on dic.yahoo.jp as well. By the way, with Smart.fm's KO2001 based series we put up, you really don't have to buy the book.
**self serving bit follows**
To be fair, my thinking on the matter has been altering over the last two years. At first it was any sentence was a good sentence. Then in was any sentence from a good learning resource was a good sentence. Now it's any good sentence from a learning resource is a good sentence ... as a learning resource. These learning resource sentences don't count against the 10,000 you need for AJATT anymore than the 2000 kanji you learn would count against it.
I'm now of the mind that having those 2500 vocabulary sentences and 750 grammar sentences in my memory make me not much better at understanding Japanese than the 2500 Kanji under my belt. However, with those resources at my ready disposal, I'm attacking real sentence mining with a vengeance and seeing better results all around (listening, speaking, reading, typing).
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - blackmacros - 2009-08-01
No its not necessary. But it makes your initial journey a hell of a lot easier. From first hand experience I can tell you that completing KO has allowed me to start playing Chrono Trigger, reading the Haruhi light novel, understanding a large amount of what I hear in the anime and dramas I watch as well as enjoy reading Full Metal Alchemist without a dictionary. I could have reached the same competency by mining real stuff, but it would have been harder initially (I tried).
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - sup3rbon - 2009-08-01
Blackmacros, just curious, but how much of Tae Kim's grammar guide did you do before you started in with KO2001? As I just finished RTK today I took a quick glance at it to see how much I knew/how much was in it. My plan was to go up to and including the "essential grammar" part, and then switch over to KO2001 from there, is that basically what you did? How difficult did you find the transition into KO2001?
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - blackmacros - 2009-08-01
I did up to and including Conditionals in the Essential Grammar section. That was enough for KO, although there were still a few unfamiliar grammatical constructs I encountered. Thankfully these tended to be repeated often enough that I was able to pick them up pretty easily.
I did RtK-->Tae Kim-->KO so I pretty much came into KO with no prior knowledge. I found the first ~160 kanji to to be fairly difficult, because there were a lot of new words in each sentence and remembering the readings for all of them was tough. Once I got past that point, however, it was pretty easy and its gets progressively easier the further you go because your knowledge naturally builds upon itself which makes it easier to learn new words and readings.
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - sup3rbon - 2009-08-01
Excellent, it sounds like that's what I'll end up doing then. I'm really just dying to get into learning actual japanese, and get away from having to spend all my mental effort just learning kanji. Now that I'm actually using them it seems like all the work I did is paying off. And I'm not too worried about the massive amounts of vocab, I'll probably just turn them into multiple cards, which I think you mentioned doing in another thread.
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - Asriel - 2009-08-01
I think you should do it.
This is coming from someone who has studied formally (in university) for 2 years, although I took 6 semesters of Japanese already (when I start on my 3rd year of university, I'll be a 4th year Japanese student...)
I started RTK a year and a half into my studies. A year.and.a.half. You'd think that I should know a lot of kanji at that point, wouldn't you? Unfortunately, classes don't teach you that. They don't teach kanji, they just help out with speaking, listening, and grammar (and some vocab, of course).
I'm here, 2 months before I depart for Japan, just beginning KO2001. Of course, a lot of the kanji are overly simple, words I already know, etc...
But it's a structured way to go through the kanji....learn the readings...and learn a lot of useful vocab all at the same time (as well as learn the kanji for words I already know!)
So yes, if you plan on learning to read the kanji, I would definitely suggest doing KO2001 right after RTK. (It's what I'm doing, and I'm not a "beginner" anymore!)
I'm doing the Smart.fm/iKnow sentences, though...I find there's more vocab in there for me to learn, and the audio is better. (I also learned that I really like to use parenthesis).
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - stplush - 2009-08-01
Alright, I see what you mean. What about the two people I'm supposed to message for KO2001? And what do you mean by "DOING" Tae Kim's grammar guide? Do you mean just reading it I'm guessing? If so I did that before I even did RTK1.
Thanks.
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - Zorlee - 2009-08-01
Asriel Wrote:I think you should do it.Asriel - it looks like we´ll be partners in crime through KO2001, just like RTK! =)
This is coming from someone who has studied formally (in university) for 2 years, although I took 6 semesters of Japanese already (when I start on my 3rd year of university, I'll be a 4th year Japanese student...)
I started RTK a year and a half into my studies. A year.and.a.half. You'd think that I should know a lot of kanji at that point, wouldn't you? Unfortunately, classes don't teach you that. They don't teach kanji, they just help out with speaking, listening, and grammar (and some vocab, of course).
I'm here, 2 months before I depart for Japan, just beginning KO2001. Of course, a lot of the kanji are overly simple, words I already know, etc...
But it's a structured way to go through the kanji....learn the readings...and learn a lot of useful vocab all at the same time (as well as learn the kanji for words I already know!)
So yes, if you plan on learning to read the kanji, I would definitely suggest doing KO2001 right after RTK. (It's what I'm doing, and I'm not a "beginner" anymore!)
I'm doing the Smart.fm/iKnow sentences, though...I find there's more vocab in there for me to learn, and the audio is better. (I also learned that I really like to use parenthesis).
I´m on Kanji 25, and man - it´s tough in the beginning. But it gets easier...
Hopefully, haha!
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - Asriel - 2009-08-01
Zorlee Wrote:Asriel - it looks like we´ll be partners in crime through KO2001, just like RTK! =)I knew I hadn't seen the last of you
I´m on Kanji 25, and man - it´s tough in the beginning. But it gets easier...
Hopefully, haha!
Are you going through the sentences in the book or the Smart.fm sentences? I hope to do 15 kanji/day...so basically one of the smart.fm lists per day, until things start to get tough for me.
I've done 45 kanji already, and added 24 words that I didn't know to a separate deck (words that were in the sentences that used kanji that weren't the directed kanji). Words like 結び目、標識、求人 etc, that will be showing up later. I'm trying to load up on vocab....
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - Zorlee - 2009-08-01
Wow, 15/day is a great pace! Personally I´m working with the sentences in the actual KO2001 book. My goal is to do 25 sentences each day, so that I´ll finish before Christmas. I find it hard to remember the readings, but it gets easier every day, so hopefully I can up my pace once I get in a groove!
I think I just have to get used to remembering actual Japanese, instead of just english stories, hehe! =)
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - stplush - 2009-08-01
WHO do I message for the spreadsheet?
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - vosmiura - 2009-08-01
@Nukemarine, I think you just need to pick something and stick with it. If you had stuck with KO originally those 3000 sentences would have been long finished by now. I didn't finish it either but my own problem has been just not sticking to learning Japanese continuously. Out of the past 3 years I probably have studied less than 1, with huge gaps in the middle.
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - Asriel - 2009-08-01
Zorlee Wrote:My goal is to do 25 sentences each day, so that I´ll finish before Christmas. I find it hard to remember the readings, but it gets easier every day, so hopefully I can up my pace once I get in a groove!25 sentences is a great pace! I'll definitely drop down to something like that when I start getting to words/kanji that I don't recognize.
I think I just have to get used to remembering actual Japanese, instead of just english stories, hehe! =)
You're obviously not at the point where a lot of the words and grammar aren't already internalized, so 25 sentences (therefore 25 vocab words) per day is a wonderful pace!
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - stplush - 2009-08-01
Make another topic if you want to socialize. Now who do I contact to prove I have the damn KO2001 book to get the spreadsheets? It's so coveted around here like it's treasure or something.
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - blackmacros - 2009-08-01
stplush Wrote:Make another topic if you want to socialize. Now who do I contact to prove I have the damn KO2001 book to get the spreadsheets? It's so coveted around here like it's treasure or something.vosmiura and rich_f have access I believe. You should be able to do a user search and contact them by PM. One of them can give you the spreadsheet for book 1, and the other can give you the spreadsheet for book 2.
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - nest0r - 2009-08-02
stplush Wrote:Make another topic if you want to socialize. Now who do I contact to prove I have the damn KO2001 book to get the spreadsheets? It's so coveted around here like it's treasure or something.hehe. Instead of becoming upset, try searching the forum. Although you'd do better to find the thread that links to the smart.fm lists that use the KO order.
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - Tobberoth - 2009-08-02
No, you don't need KO2001. If you find it uninteresting, ignore it and get your sentences elsewhere.
There are some good reasons for using KO2001 though:
* You can copy-paste from a spreadsheet so entering your daily-sentences is easy and fast.
* You get example words for most of the kanji, so you learn the readings.
* If you have the correct version, you have an audio CD, which is nice when you're a beginner and need to train listening comprehension.
Some reasons to not use KO2001:
* For a structured approach, I feel it has a pretty odd selection. It's supposed to go off kanji frequency, but many of the sentences feel quite useless to me. I find smart.fm to have more useful phrases, so I think smart.fm might be better if you want to converse and use Japanese early in real life.
* It's a corpus, and they all have the same problem: You didn't pick those sentences, you didn't find them in a context. It's just random generic sentences. It will therefor be harder to remember them and they will mean less to you.
My advice for beginners is to pick a textbook they enjoy, like genki or minna no nihongo and mine from that since it has a context, it has dialogues and it's structured to teach you the important basics first, it also includes grammar. If they don't want to use textbooks (a lot of people don't), I recommend properly mining for sentences and only take sentences from KO2001 or Smart.fm when you don't have the time to be mining. That way you'll get a lot done easily and you'll still get personal sentences.
So I just finished RTK1. Is KO2001 necessary in your view? - stplush - 2009-08-02
nest0r Wrote:I understand, sorry about that everyone. Thanks for all the help.stplush Wrote:Make another topic if you want to socialize. Now who do I contact to prove I have the damn KO2001 book to get the spreadsheets? It's so coveted around here like it's treasure or something.hehe. Instead of becoming upset, try searching the forum. Although you'd do better to find the thread that links to the smart.fm lists that use the KO order.