Welcome SydNRTgo! 
Good luck with your Japanese comeback! I can totally understand not wanting to review the very basics (more below...) What does "KIC" refer to? Is it "Kanji in Context"? How do you like it? Do you have the workbook as well? 
Haven't read that much about it, so I'm a bit curious, sorry!
When I read your post, I noticed that I didn't write about my own Japanese background yet. So let's do just that! I first started to get interested in Japan and Japanese when I was in middle school... that's about 12 years ago, I guess? I started to study inconsistently a little here and there and I think I looked into about 5 different textbooks, but never got past the third chapter or so? *cough* ... I did get a little further into Japanese for Busy People, but I was still only a few chapters in, when I went on a 11 months student exchange to Japan back in 2006/07. I had lots of fun over there, but I never really bothered to properly study Japanese (stupid me). I communicated a lot in English, which made my English abilities skyrocket (as you may have noticed, I'm not a native speaker), but my Japanese only progressed rather sluggishly.
Once I returned I noticed that my Japanese abilities were in a rather strange place. On the one hand I was able to understand a lot and I was able to make myself somewhat understood in most situations - definitely past beginner stage. On the other hand I made mistakes on even the most simple of grammar patterns and was severely lacking formal study - very beginnerish indeed.
I tried to sit down and study properly but... reviewing the basics of the basics was boring me to death... Then life got rather busy and I just gave up for the time being. I made a few attempts to come back over the years but it essentially always came down to the same: Intermediate stuff was too highlevel but I started to hate going over これはペンです all by myself as well <,< And so I got stuck at an awkward mid-beginner level.
Fast forward some years, a few university friends got interested in Japanese! Yay! My chance?! We went to a community college course together, so I got to review the basics of the basics once more, but we really didn't get much further than learning hiragana and katakana (oh wait, I already knew these even BEFORE I went to Japan... ) and a bit -masu/-desu (this as well..). And lucky as we were, the follow up course was cancelled. Cheers. The others lost interest and I dabbled a little more with the course material that we hadn't managed to finish during the course. But that didn't get me far and when I bought a new textbook and faced これはペンです once more, I just despaired.... For my masters degree I switched university and was quite happy once I discovered that my new university had a Japanese Bachelors and Masters program. I asked whether I could join a course for people minoring in Japanese (even though I don't have a minor) and lo and behold I could! And I was even able to join the second course right away. That course covered the second half of the first minna no nihongo book, which a) made me review the first half of the book in a very short time span on my own and b) made me finally finish my very first Japanese beginner book ever! Yay! Only took me 12 years *cough cough cough*
Sadly I couldn't attend any follow up courses because they were too full already (and the people actually minoring in Japanese had priority
) so now I'm on my own once more. But I'm really SO glad, that I had the course to push me through the very beginner stuff and in a relatively short time span as well.
So yep, that's roughly were I am at right now. I started working on the second minna no nihongo book on my own. (6 chapters into it) I miss the course, because it set a nice pacing and there were others to work together with, but I managed to keep up my motivation so far I picked up a few other resources as well in the meantime and I'm currently working through the Core series on iknow (finished core1k and currently working on step 2 of core2k, so it's still a long way to go) and polishing up my kanji skills on wanikani. I guess that are my main resources for now, but I'm dabbing into other stuff here and there as well.
As I already mentioned in a previous post, I recently took the J-CAT and apparently I'm not an entirely lost cause. Overall it placed me at roughly N3 level, so it seems I'm still profiting from my stay abroad 9 years back... but my grammar skills are severly lacking and only N5-ish (not really suprising, right?)
I set N3 as my goal for now, because it feels like that's finally a step out of beginner-land. ^^ I'm not entirely sure if I'll be able to attend this winter though. Apparently the city I'm currently living in only offers the test in July, and I'm not yet sure if I'll be able to travel elsewhere (I'll probably decide shortly before the signup deadline). But I want to get as much study done as I can until december either way
Ouch the post got a lot longer than I thought it would, sorry
Good luck with your Japanese comeback! I can totally understand not wanting to review the very basics (more below...) What does "KIC" refer to? Is it "Kanji in Context"? How do you like it? Do you have the workbook as well? Haven't read that much about it, so I'm a bit curious, sorry!When I read your post, I noticed that I didn't write about my own Japanese background yet. So let's do just that!
I first started to get interested in Japan and Japanese when I was in middle school... that's about 12 years ago, I guess? I started to study inconsistently a little here and there and I think I looked into about 5 different textbooks, but never got past the third chapter or so? *cough* ... I did get a little further into Japanese for Busy People, but I was still only a few chapters in, when I went on a 11 months student exchange to Japan back in 2006/07. I had lots of fun over there, but I never really bothered to properly study Japanese (stupid me). I communicated a lot in English, which made my English abilities skyrocket (as you may have noticed, I'm not a native speaker), but my Japanese only progressed rather sluggishly.Once I returned I noticed that my Japanese abilities were in a rather strange place. On the one hand I was able to understand a lot and I was able to make myself somewhat understood in most situations - definitely past beginner stage. On the other hand I made mistakes on even the most simple of grammar patterns and was severely lacking formal study - very beginnerish indeed.
I tried to sit down and study properly but... reviewing the basics of the basics was boring me to death... Then life got rather busy and I just gave up for the time being. I made a few attempts to come back over the years but it essentially always came down to the same: Intermediate stuff was too highlevel but I started to hate going over これはペンです all by myself as well <,< And so I got stuck at an awkward mid-beginner level.
Fast forward some years, a few university friends got interested in Japanese! Yay! My chance?! We went to a community college course together, so I got to review the basics of the basics once more, but we really didn't get much further than learning hiragana and katakana (oh wait, I already knew these even BEFORE I went to Japan... ) and a bit -masu/-desu (this as well..). And lucky as we were, the follow up course was cancelled. Cheers. The others lost interest and I dabbled a little more with the course material that we hadn't managed to finish during the course. But that didn't get me far and when I bought a new textbook and faced これはペンです once more, I just despaired.... For my masters degree I switched university and was quite happy once I discovered that my new university had a Japanese Bachelors and Masters program. I asked whether I could join a course for people minoring in Japanese (even though I don't have a minor) and lo and behold I could! And I was even able to join the second course right away. That course covered the second half of the first minna no nihongo book, which a) made me review the first half of the book in a very short time span on my own and b) made me finally finish my very first Japanese beginner book ever! Yay! Only took me 12 years *cough cough cough*
Sadly I couldn't attend any follow up courses because they were too full already (and the people actually minoring in Japanese had priority
) so now I'm on my own once more. But I'm really SO glad, that I had the course to push me through the very beginner stuff and in a relatively short time span as well. So yep, that's roughly were I am at right now. I started working on the second minna no nihongo book on my own. (6 chapters into it) I miss the course, because it set a nice pacing and there were others to work together with, but I managed to keep up my motivation so far
I picked up a few other resources as well in the meantime and I'm currently working through the Core series on iknow (finished core1k and currently working on step 2 of core2k, so it's still a long way to go) and polishing up my kanji skills on wanikani. I guess that are my main resources for now, but I'm dabbing into other stuff here and there as well.As I already mentioned in a previous post, I recently took the J-CAT and apparently I'm not an entirely lost cause. Overall it placed me at roughly N3 level, so it seems I'm still profiting from my stay abroad 9 years back... but my grammar skills are severly lacking and only N5-ish (not really suprising, right?)
I set N3 as my goal for now, because it feels like that's finally a step out of beginner-land. ^^ I'm not entirely sure if I'll be able to attend this winter though. Apparently the city I'm currently living in only offers the test in July, and I'm not yet sure if I'll be able to travel elsewhere (I'll probably decide shortly before the signup deadline). But I want to get as much study done as I can until december either way
Ouch the post got a lot longer than I thought it would, sorry
Edited: 2016-05-15, 6:18 pm