What do people normally do after they finish tae kims grammar guide (book or pdf or whatever version)?

What JLPT level will it leave you with?

Good prior discussion on this here: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=9805

Consensus seems to be grammar and/or a sentence deck, 常用漢字 (assuming you haven't already committed Suicide by Heisig), and immersing yourself in things in your areas of interest. Simple manga. Cookbooks. 昔話. If you like news, NHK News Web Easy is a great start point, and will keep you busy for months. Start having simple conversations with native speakers.

After a year of hardcore study, I'd heavily recommend the vocab + immersion in native materials route. Learn as much vocab as you can, and reinforce with reading and listening. You need enough of a vocab base and native understanding of grammar that every sentence you encounter doesn't seem like a new puzzle waiting to be solved.

Re: JLPT - consensus is that Tae Kim brings you to about a middling N3.

you can do whatever you want. you can jump into native material if you want. there is rikai-chan and japanese subtitles and whatnot.

[RawToast]

You could probably scrape the JLPT N3 test with Tae Kim as your study guide. I don't believe the guide covers every point for N4. Still it's a good point to be at to start driving through vocab.

To be more specific - in my case, I dove into NHK News Web Easy, 童話 (on this site - http://hukumusume.com/douwa/), nanapi (http://nanapi.jp/), and other random articles I found on the Internet about anime and other subjects that intrigued me. That material drove my vocab SRS deck. If an article felt too hard for the time being, I set it aside for a later date.

If you want something more graded, you might consider LingQ (http://lingq.com), which has an abundance of audio+text articles in Japanese categorized by level. I don't use it anymore, but it's a good system, esp. if you're just starting out.

Well, if you feel like having a challenge, some people here try out my site, which gets updated frequently and covers a lot more information. It's a great resource for anyone that's hoping to anything that could show up on the JLPT and understand Japanese better in general.

Onara Wrote:What do people normally do after they finish tae kims grammar guide (book or pdf or whatever version)?

Depends on what they started with, and what their goals are. If tae kims grammar is the only thing you've done, I'd build up a vocabulary base. Core 2k/6k is a pretty easy way to do that. Also, if you haven't started on kanji, youll want to do that as well.

For Kanji I actually use "Essential Kanji" by P.G. O'Neill, as it doubles as a learning system as well. A lot like RTK, it puts kanji in an order that makes sense for the brain. Otherwise, use RTK, or whatever you want to learn with. The only reason I dont like RTK is because it tackles readings too late for me. I like all that stuff up front.

You can do vocab and kanji simultaneously btw. I usually do 20 words and 20 kanji per day.

I still think that even with doing other things along side it, greatly improving vocabulary will greatly help you when trying to acquire more difficult grammar. Try to well-rounded in what and how you study. Listen to music frequently and look up the lyrics to find new Kanji, words, and grammar structures. Look up NHK articles--they have an easy Japanese section--and likewise meet new Kanji, words, and grammar structures. Make notes of things that you've not seen before and review frequently. Discover and use other grammar resources. Plenty are out there. Also frequently attempt to write things in Japanese and have yourself get corrected. Otherwise, you don't know whether you're acquiring things correctly. Of course, be sure to keep asking questions.

amtrack Wrote:You can do vocab and kanji simultaneously btw. I usually do 20 words and 20 kanji per day.

Skritter is also a good option for this, and has the added benefit that it has you produce the kanji through writing (like Heisig does). If you do RTK, Skritter also incorporates Heisig keywords and hints.

Sorry to interrupt I had a question. When reading is it important to keep reading and not worry about things that you don't understand. That's the problem I keep have when I read something I run into words I don't understand. Is it better to just keep reading and come back or stop and write what I don't know down.

jordan3311 Wrote:Sorry to interrupt I had a question. When reading is it important to keep reading and not worry about things that you don't understand. That's the problem I keep have when I read something I run into words I don't understand. Is it better to just keep reading and come back or stop and write what I don't know down.

It really depends on your tolerance for ambiguity, and on how much you already know. When I first started out, I looked up everything, because nearly everything was new. Now that I have a decent vocabulary, I tend to stop and SRS something only occasionally. The more words and grammar you know, the easier it becomes to pick words up from context.