Well now I have finally finished RTK and the Kana I've started on the sentence method currently I'm very much of a beginner at Japanese despite knowing some words and very little grammar i.e. wa, ga, no, to

My basic question is which source should I start with mining sentences from i.e i have both UBJG and all about particles but have no idea which would be most beneficial for a beginner like me with not much knowledge on grammar etc or should I be starting with something else i.e. going through Tae Kim's site although like many people say by working through sentences you tend to pick up the grammar anyway?

I used tae kim's grammer in the beginning. you do them all, you should pretty much be able to understanding everything(minus the vocab)

Why not mine from all of them? From what I hear, all of them are excellent sources for beginners. Just read. Everything you already understand you skip, so it shouldn't take you much longer to mine through 3 books than 1 as long as they bring up the same things most of the time.

In the beggining I tried to use AAP but found that most of the example sentances were way above my level (even the first ones (は、が, etc)). So i went through all of tae kims site and mined sentances from that. By the end of it (only took a few weeks) I could understand pretty much all the grammer in AAP and pick pretty much any example sentance from Yahoo!辞書. I reccomend using Tae Kim's site and after that you can get sentances from pretty much anywere...

Thanks for the help guys I think i will work through the tae kim site while sentence mining from all about particles as i imagine these two will go well together as a starting point and then as tobberoth suggests mine sentences from all sources.

I use iKnow ,its a great website, and from time to time I also use blogs of J-Actors that I either fancy or just really admire. Khatzumoto has also posted alot of japanese sites he finds useful on the AJATT website.

Here's a thought: as you go through Tae Kim's website, look for extra sentences that reinforce the point in your copy of UBJG. If there are particles involved (if it's grammar specific to particles), then look it up in AAP and use those examples to add to your sentence collection as well.

rich_f Wrote:Here's a thought: as you go through Tae Kim's website, look for extra sentences that reinforce the point in your copy of UBJG. If there are particles involved (if it's grammar specific to particles), then look it up in AAP and use those examples to add to your sentence collection as well.

That sounds like a great idea will give it a try.

Personally, after mining sentences from books for some time, I'm starting to think it's not all that great of an idea. They just don't stick with me the same way as material I have actually encountered "in the wild".

My current thinking is that for learning grammar and stuff, just study it hardcore upfront... read lots of example sentences, do lots of exercises, etc. Maybe toss a few "book" sentences into your srs to keep the memories fresh, but then as soon as you encounter some "real" stuff, replace the book sentences.

What ever you do, do it now. Don't sit around wondering what the best method is.

I agree with Zarxrax. I started out and put in all the UBJG sentences in my deck, when I was finished and had really gotten hardcore into real stuff a couple months later, I looked back and wondered what all the fuss was about "finding the right sentences" or guide or whatever. I personally kinda regret it and had wished I had moved to real stuff sooner, but oh well.

nest0r Wrote:Just imagine if you could do both, if you had a book when you were starting out that gave you real source material and progressively broke it down, AJATT-style, to progressively teach you both the formal and colloquial grammar concepts! Oh right, Japanese the Manga Way does that! ... ;p

You LIE! Says I until you've proven otherwise.

I have to agree with Alyks. I sweated sentences cause I didn't really know where to start, some were too much, wanted to know the right source, etc.

There's no need to do all of UBJG and Tae Kim or even AAP. These are example sentences for grammar points. Having 10 example sentences for every point is overkill. Anyway, I vote go for Tae Kim as his has starts with casual and later moves onto polite. Tae Kim's also gives good explanation as about the grammar points (no need to memorize it, just so you understand what's going on). UBJG starts with polite and does not leave it. It's very brief on explanations if any. Both of these start and stay with simple vocabulary. AAP have lots of new vocabulary words that distract from learning the grammar point. Plus AAP sticks only to particles.

So: Use Tae Kim at first (~750 sentences). If you think you need more examples of the GRAMMAR point, look at UBJG as that's its main purpose. AAP and the associated books (Handbook of Verbs, Handbook of Adjectives and Adverbs) if you need more. However, you should be good with what Tae Kim offers (plus it's free).

After the Grammar, you begin to build vocabulary. You can start with real resources like Alyks, Khatzumoto and others did. Another way is use lists that build basic vocabulary. I think KO2001 and iKnow are best for getting basics, though my vote goes to iKnow as you get native audio. Reason I say this way is these are basic vocabulary. They will pop up in any Japanese material you're watching and listening to during all this.

Here's the reason for my suggestions: My feeling is that you have to change up how you approach this as you go along, akin to how you probably changed up RTK as you went along (getting more strict, changing how you do stories, etc.). With grammar, maybe go recognition only (read the sentence, know what the sentence is trying to do). When you go to basic vocabulary, do reading and dictation. Here, maybe stress just that one vocabulary word the sentence was put there for. Plus on the dictation part, just dictate one vocabulary word and not the whole sentence. That's all for basics (Kanji, Basic Grammar, Basic Vocabulary).

After that, and you move onto doing sentences like at Antimoon, it depends on the purpose of that sentence. If you learned a new word, set the word off in the sentence (bold letter, repeated at the beginning, etc). If it's a phrase that's a whole package (like a figure of speech, old saying, morality tale such as "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" or "Ask not what you country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country") then offer the description. This is the part where context is very important.

Basically: Tae Kim sentences (simple answer to original question).

I do agree with what people are saying in that i should probably mine sentences fromr real sources but at the moment with my lack of knowledge, real sources make much less sense than a structured source on a specific subject i.e. on particles etc.

So for the moment i will probably take nukemarine's advice and start with tae kim which i have already started doing reading through tae kims explanations and adding the example sentences hopefully by the end of the guide i will have enough grammer under my belt to make sense of normal sentences etc although it might be just me but i find some of tae kims explanations confusing and i often mix up one sort of verb with another for example but hopefully srsing sentences will help with this?

So the current plan is tae kim, more sentences from UBJG & AAP perhaps and then onto vocab using iknow and real sentence sources.

Although i do have one last question for the people that keep saying they wish they started with just real life sources of sentences instead of one's from textbooks, do you think that starting this way would be easy for a beginner as i realy cant see it as there is just too much a beginner does'nt know not to mention its much harder for a beginner to know if there translation of the sentence is correct, i've noticed a pattern that all the ones who use the sentence method seem to have started from ones in text books and gone onto real sources obviously because of all the knowledge they gained from the text books this seems to be the same for Khatz and for the people on these forums.

tibul Wrote:Although i do have one last question for the people that keep saying they wish they started with just real life sources of sentences instead of one's from textbooks, do you think that starting this way would be easy for a beginner as i realy cant see it as there is just too much a beginner does'nt know not to mention its much harder for a beginner to know if there translation of the sentence is correct, i've noticed a pattern that all the ones who use the sentence method seem to have started from ones in text books and gone onto real sources obviously because of all the knowledge they gained from the text books this seems to be the same for Khatz and for the people on these forums.

You shouldn't listen to those people. i+1 is an integral part of effective language acquisition and there's few sources as good for i+1 for beginners as textbooks. The important think to remember is to not get stuck in textbooks. As soon as you know the basics, start using "real" sources instead (or as well).

Nothing wrong with textbooks while you still find them interesting. But when they start to bore you, change your source.

tibul Wrote:Although i do have one last question for the people that keep saying they wish they started with just real life sources of sentences instead of one's from textbooks, do you think that starting this way would be easy for a beginner as i realy cant see it as there is just too much a beginner does'nt know not to mention its much harder for a beginner to know if there translation of the sentence is correct, i've noticed a pattern that all the ones who use the sentence method seem to have started from ones in text books and gone onto real sources obviously because of all the knowledge they gained from the text books this seems to be the same for Khatz and for the people on these forums.

Don't listen to the people who say you *have* to start with textbooks and stuff. Do what's interesting and fun. If you hate textbooks and long for something in Japanese, don't even bother with the textbook. If you get to the point where you hate picking up that Japanese and wish you had a textbook, then put that book down.

P.S., if you're still a beginner using translations, only use translations written by people who know what they're doing.

Btw, today I was just flamed by a guy in another (less liberal) forum when I suggested everyone should try reading the newspaper as soon as possible. He said he was studying for 9 years and lived in japan for the last 5 years and blablabla and that newspapers were impossible - even for Japanese. Major bullshit.

You can get the easy stuff even in a jungle "hard" stuff. All you need is ignore what you can't understand. The awesome thing is that you will be constantly surrounded by fresh material, so it means you'll have to reach only a little to learn something new everyday.

If you love manga, go for manga today. Search for short sentences. Put them in the dict. Try to understand them.

Don't worry about grammar. For your Japanese to be really useful for you, you'll need at least few thousand of words under your belt. This takes a lot of effort. Grammar is only a very small set of patterns and you'll see these same patterns in every sentence. While you fight for vocabulary, you'll learn grammar without even noticing.

mentat_kgs Wrote:Btw, today I was just flamed by a guy in another (less liberal) forum when I suggested everyone should try reading the newspaper as soon as possible. He said he was studying for 9 years and lived in japan for the last 5 years and blablabla and that newspapers were impossible - even for Japanese. Major bullshit.

You can get the easy stuff even in a jungle "hard" stuff. All you need is ignore what you can't understand. The awesome thing is that you will be constantly surrounded by fresh material, so it means you'll have to reach only a little to learn something new everyday.

If you love manga, go for manga today. Search for short sentences. Put them in the dict. Try to understand them.

Don't worry about grammar. For your Japanese to be really useful for you, you'll need at least few thousand of words under your belt. This takes a lot of effort. Grammar is only a very small set of patterns and you'll see these same patterns in every sentence. While you fight for vocabulary, you'll learn grammar without even noticing.

Probably the same guys that think it takes a year to learn the kana lol

Yeah maybe i'm a little too worried about the grammar i'm probably just scared that i might be choosing the wrong path etc and trying to find the best way for me as a beginner to start, (dont worry alyks while im worrying about this i'm still sentence mining ) I should probably stop worrying and just mine sentences from any source etc and hope i start to see my Japanese improve.

It's just interesting to hear what other people started with after RTK and how they got to were they are now, maybe after a 1000 sentences or so i will wonder what all the fuss was about

Worrying about grammar is good but only when it matters. For example, you might have a sentence where you understand every single word but you don't understand the sentence. In those cases you have two options:
1. Ignore the sentence, do not put it in your SRS.
2. Check a source on grammar, learn the grammar so you understand the sentence, then put the sentence into your SRS. This is why guidetojapanese.com is good because all the example sentences have explanations on grammar around them, when you don't understand the sentence fully you can read the text so you have the buildingblocks needed.

My point is, you only need grammar to tell you what the sentence means, actually learning the grammar will come from exposure of the sentences you understand. When you use translated sources, this doesn't matter all that much since your understanding will be based on the translation anyway.

The reason I suggested the basics (RTK, then basic grammar then basic vocabulary) was that I noticed more comprehension from my fun stuff (watching TV, reading manga, conversation, karaoke). Yeah, you can mine for the fun stuff at the start, but if there's stuff already done for you then it saves time. For me, mining the fun stuff was annoying, for others it's fun. Do what works for you, and be wary of those that say "you MUST do it this way".

Overall, don't sweat it too much. Keep that +1 concept Tobberoth mentions to heart as that'll help you from going to fast or slow.

Mentat, really, 9 years? Jeez, it's difficult, but even after three months of 2 hours a day you can probably get 50% or more comprehension. I feel sorry for the guy. Mentat, out of interest, what board was that on?

This is a really brilliant post for mining sentences. I'm just starting my path to sentence mining today, and you all have helped me quite a bit!

The funny thing is that it's really bewildering. Going through RTK1 provided a structure. No worries, just study the next few kanji in the book. Learning sentences is venturing out into the unknown!

mentat_kgs Wrote:Btw, today I was just flamed by a guy in another (less liberal) forum when I suggested everyone should try reading the newspaper as soon as possible. He said he was studying for 9 years and lived in japan for the last 5 years and blablabla and that newspapers were impossible - even for Japanese. Major bullshit.
.

Either he was not equipped with the tools we have or he is a very excuse oriented person. I really do hope he is not trying to give advice on learning the language.

The board was in brazilian orkut forums, "nihongo oshietekudasai" community.
Yeah, what makes me sorry is his conviction. He has experience and because of that he is hurting all the newbies that believe him.
What impresses me is the number of people that are the same as him. People that aim to learn japanese only at an intermediate level and after reaching that keep preaching that higher levels are sacred and reserved only to those born in japan.

I've heard worse. There are parents that put their children in Brazilian schools, so they will only learn Portuguese. There are people that have pride to only know Portuguese. It seems there is a factory where there is an old manager that boasts that he is in japan for 20 years and never learned any Japanese.

And there are people use that a excuse for failing.

But there are lot of great things. These boards give me a lot of motivation.
Japan current crisis is affecting Brazilians directly. 3700 of the 8000 demissions are Brazilians. These people are posting in these boards.
For instance: There is an specific thread where a lady tells her story on how she learned Japanese in 6 months (after suffering a lot in hers previous job). She heard from an old Japanese lady: atama o karappo ni shite, terebi o mite, zutto oboete. AJATT!
But not only that, she tells how she protected her family by knowing Japanese and much more. Well, I already wrote too much.

Btw, for learning grammar, you can put the "grammar particles" in the dictionaries and they'll prompt you with many simple example sentences for every usage.
I recommend doing the same with popular verbs like kureru, ageru, iu, morau, etc. As they have many different usages.