So, I've read through pretty much all of the "how should I study Tae Kim" posts on here, and I for the most part they tend to get derailed by flaming or never get specific enough. So I thought I would try it another way: for those of you who got into Tae Kim right after RTK1, how did YOU study it?

For example, I know several people on here who say they focused on grammar instead of vocab because they knew KO2001 was coming up, but how exactly does one do that? Does that mean memorizing verb tables, or just being able to recognize grammar patterns in sentences without knowing what's actually being said?

Also, for anyone who DIDN'T explicitly memorize grammar points in Tae Kim: do you feel like that worked for you?

Again, I would love to not be responsible for a flame war, and I'm really hoping that by sticking to experiences instead of recommendations that might not happen. Probably unrealistic, but oh well =P.

My took three different phases till I found a good groove.

First, I always read through the chapter first. After that, I wrote down each example sentence by hand once. After that, it was only card reviews. Problem was, I kept changing up how I approached the card reviews.

Now, last year, I tried kana to kanji (very annoying due to repetitiveness). Then I switched to English to Kanji (annoying due to many exceptions even with detailed descriptions and politeness markers). I tried Kanji reading with understanding it being a pass, which I think I did too fast and did not get the benefit of reviews. Next, I tried Kanji to writing out the grammar point of the sentence by hand (tedious again).

Early this year, I switched it so it was Kanji to typing out the sentence. This was the deck I posted to Tae Kim: Kanji with bolded grammar portion. I liked it, but still felt it was a tad too easy.

A couple months ago, I did one more alteration. Now it's cloze deletion Kanji with English grammar description. The answer is to type out the entire sentence. I've been most pleased with this both by it being a difficult test, but not too tedious. This feels like a winning combination.

Q: 先生が[...give favor of teaching, to any including speaker]んですか。
A: 先生が教えてくれるんですか。

Q: 早く[...attempted to sleep]けど、結局は徹夜した。
A: 早く寝ようとしたけど、結局は徹夜した。

In all these cards are kana sentences, english translation and notes like in the deck I posted.

What I planned on doing was posting the Cloze Deletion deck to Anki after I did the Advanced Topics. As I scheduled to do Tae Kim's advanced topics after my next subs2srs drama, I should post it sometime this month or early next.

Very cool. Looking forward to that.

As an aside, are all of those audio tags in your deck placeholders, or is there really a set of Tae Kim audio files floating around out there?

I didn't and don't recommend it unless you really need something free from the internet.

And no matter what you use, first contact with Japanese should not be focused on memorization from the very start. First understand, get the general feeling and then you can start memorizing (and don't worry you'll get enough of that for a lifetime

I simply added the example sentences to anki whilst reading through.

Cool. But... well, what did you DO with them? Recognition? Recognition of grammar only? Staring at them and softly crying? This last one is my current strategy, btw.

dawhite Wrote:Very cool. Looking forward to that.

As an aside, are all of those audio tags in your deck placeholders, or is there really a set of Tae Kim audio files floating around out there?

There is an audio deck floating around, but turns out it's not necessary. I made those before iKnow and subs2srs came about and Japanese audio for cards were limited. I'd say just delete that column. I don't even use the audio with the cards anymore as the Text to Speech software sounds so gods awful compared to my other stuff now.

dawhite Wrote:Cool. But... well, what did you DO with them? Recognition? Recognition of grammar only? Staring at them and softly crying? This last one is my current strategy, btw.

I only did recognition.

Front:
Sentence with Kanji

Back:
Word Definitions

When reviewing I read the cards, and passed it if I understood it. If I couldn't understand it, I failed it and read the grammer point on Tae kims site to refresh my memory.

Cloze deletion sounds like an interesting idea, NukeMarine. Are you worried about relying too much on English->Japanese?

I have not done Tae Kim, but am working through みんなの日本語 (vol 1) to acquire my grammar and vocabulary.Thus far, I am on lesson 17 out of 25 and basically reading sections, doing exercises and mining most sentences. My deck is up to 700+ sentences with 475 distinct kanji covered. My studies are recognition only, with 95% being J-J. I use the grammar guide (english) to get the drift of the sentence patterns. I will be working on vol 2 starting next month and then onto KO. Tae kim seemed nice, but I already owned みんなの日本語, so I stuck with it since they basically accomplish the same thing - except みんな has an enormous amount of vocabulary.