Hey all.

My friend is going to Japan in March and will be spending at least a month there. He studied Japanese in high school (6 years ago) but has forgotten a lot of it. He is motivated to learn Japanese in order to use it during his trip (and learn more later).

What would be your suggestion?

RTK Lite + Tae Kim + Core2k?
And of course find someone to practice with on Skype at least a month before the trip.

I did RTK myself, but he doesn't have time for that. Would you recommend RTK Lite? Or is there an even lighter version with less than 1000 kanji? Or maybe do RTK for only the kanji which are in Core2k (don't know how to achieve that)? Or can one just drill sentences with Anki without doing RTK?

Any advice is highly welcome!

For a trip coming up in such short time, I wouldn't recommend RTK at all, as vocabulary and some basic grammar would help him much more. He wont really be able to read anything, but a dictionary app or something can at least help him with place names or any important signs he comes across.
I would recommend core2k+tae kim, along with some audio courses like the Japanesepod101 survival phrases series.

I would say definitely re-learn katakana and hiragana (katakana ends up being more useful for a beginner loose in Japan--just by being able to read menu items and stuff like that), along with a basic textbook (Genki) and Rosetta Stone or Japanesepod101 or something for speaking/listening practice.

Does he have money to spend? Doing Core2k on iKnow would probably be useful for vocab. I feel like that's a better way to do it in the short term than anki.

I also recommend a textbook over Tae Kim just because the learning curve is high on Tae Kim.

Best way to have the most useful skills in 3 months would be to practice speaking and listening by talking to a native Japanese speaker, preferably a teacher, spending absolutely no time on reading/writing. Not a valid strategy for long-term at all but will be more useful in 3 months when you are lost in Shinjuku station.

I would agree that Genki Japanese is a great self study book. If he uses it in conjunctions with anki and the audio mp3 for Genki. He can learn a lot in 3 months (useful stuff to him getting around). He'll learn hiragana/katakana and some kanji even so that he will learn stoke order and be able to look up kanji via radicals with an app like imi wa? Best of luck

http://japaneselevelup.com/2012/08/18/po...cord-time/

All he needs. Don't listen to cynics.

What about drilling words/sentences from Core2k or Genki without having done RTK? Isn't that quite difficult? Maybe having furigana on the front side would make sense in my friends case.

I'm sure he has money for a textbook or two, but not a private teacher.

Namorbia Wrote:What about drilling words/sentences from Core2k or Genki without having done RTK? Isn't that quite difficult? Maybe having furigana on the front side would make sense in my friends case.

I'm sure he has money for a textbook or two, but not a private teacher.

I think audio lessons and shadowing would be better.

The fact is that with 3 months practice he is not going to be reading much of anything.

At least with shadowing he could ask and respond to quite a lot of useful things.

ryuudou Wrote:http://japaneselevelup.com/2012/08/18/po...cord-time/

All he needs. Don't listen to cynics.

He, that's pretty much what I'm doing now. About to start the sentence phase but for what it's worth, in respect to RtK at least, the initial high failure rates of learning 100+ a day (I learned some 500+ on my last day) get rather quickly overshadowed by the climbing retention rate. For example, sitting down last night idly writing out kanji (while waiting for the shower/bathroom to be free) on graph paper it came to my attention that the problem wasn't in not having the kanji to recall but in trying to choose which one to write out. Could probably sit down right now and spend hours simply writing out different kanji from memory.

That's with about 15 days of RtK. So at least "Powerleveling", for one person, clearly works. Short term memory can be effectively utilized by cramming a progressively large amount of information in your head, provided they have some semblance of logical links between them. Anki takes care of the rest- like a personal slave, lol.

Well, there is a website that is called "Fluent in 3 Months", I'd look at some of Benny's methods and consider adopting some of those.

Since your friend took some Japanese, he at least shouldn't have to worry too much about grammar. I'd just grab a phrase book and start learning some vocab.

Also, verbling might be useful to find some speaking practice/partners. (Dunno really, haven't tried it.)