Hello,

I've been a member of this board for almost a year now.
I started with Heisig in June-ish 2008 and finished it in a little bit more than 2 months.
After that I tried to do sentences and study vocab, but realized that it was too much at once. My main problem was to remember the onyomi and thus the reading of kanji compouns and thus it was difficult to study vocab.

I decided to study onyomi next with a method similar to the movie method.
I've been doing that ever since September/October-ish 2009 and am still not finished!
I have to admit that I had a few breaks in between, the longest being from end of March 2009 until now (for various reasons).

I guess you can say it was a study break, but then again I still read Japanese every day before going to bed (well most of the time manga / doujinshi only). I listen to Japanese music and watch jdramas almost every day and as I live in Japan and have been here for over 1 year, I get a lot of Japanese input anyway. I had some vacation and while travelling through the country I only spoke Japanese.
So ..... it was not really a break from Japanese, only from studying, I guess.

Anyway ... studying the onyomi took way more time than I expected and I'm still not finished. I don't want to change my method now as I'm almost finished, though.
My doubts, questions and worries are what to do after that.
I have so many things in my mind, but I need structure and I can't do everything at the same time anyway.

When I first started Heisig last year I was already at 3kyuu level anyway and now I'm thinking about taking the 2kyuu in December.
I've never taken a JLPT before and that's not really my goal anyway, but I thought it might be nice to try 2kyuu this year.


So ... after finishing my onyomi studies what I want to do is:

- replacing the heisig keywords with Japanese words (as some of you know there's an awesome anki file with example sentences and all for that) and study some of the kunyomi that way while still reviewing the onyomi as well (am just not sure if I should merge my heisig onyomi and the new kunyomi deck then or not)

- doing sentences in order to learn the reading of kanji compounds and also to improve my vocab (have been doing iKnow/smart.fm for quite a while now and it works really well for me, I skipped Core 2000 Step 1 and 2 as I knew all the words anyway and I didn't have any problems with the higher steps at all. My problem is that I'm not sure what to do with the knowledge I gained from iKnow afterwards or rather how to review. I know a lot of people put it in their anki deck, but I'm not sure if that works for me as well. The way you review will be completely different from how you learned the vocab/readings in iKnow and I'm not sure if that would get too boring for me)

- study either the KO2001 or the Kanji in Context sentences (I haven't decided yet which one to choose, I have both book series at home).

- grammar, grammar, grammar (my weakest point - although I can understand quite a lot of grammar points, I'm completely unable to produce correct sentences - at least that's the feeling I have). I know that a lot of users here are not a fan of "Oh, let's study grammar", but I was wondering how to go about that. As I want to take 2kyuu in December I was thinking about buying the Kanzen Grammar book and just study the grammar points using example sentences in anki, but I'm not sure about that.


So, these are the things I WANT to do. As you can see it's a little bit chaotic and I'm pretty sure I can't do everything at the same time. I'm a little bit confused at the moment and hope that you guys can give me some ideas. I would be really thankful

I only have about 2 hours per day to use for "real" studies, though.

Short side note: Although my output is horrible I have a little success story nevertheless. When I was travelling with a friend of mine who's a major in Japanese I was doing all the talking. Of course his Japanese is awesome. He can read texts I can only dream of and all, but when it was about understanding a Japanese salesperson talking really fast and then answering quickly, I did the job while he was still thinking and analyzing (he just came to Japane a few weeks ago back then while I have been living there for almost a year already - definitely makes a difference!)



Thanks so much for your comments in advance! *bows* m(_ _)m

Wall of text for the win. I won't go into anything, I give my opinions enough as it is, but I really think you SHOULD get the Kanzen master books.

1. The sentences in it are more or less taken straight from JLPT2, so you will not only be training grammar, you will be training exactly the kind of stuff that shows up on JLPT2.
2. Lots of examples, no boring texts about details.
3. We have a google spreadsheet, so inserting it into Anki is a piece of cake.

There is a problem with Kanzen master though: Reviewing the sentences won't really give you active skill using the grammar points. You will understand them fine and you'll get the "this feels correct, this feels incorrect", but they won't pop up in conversation simply because JLPT2 and JLPT1 grammar are generally not the stuff you hear in conversation, a lot of it is only used in writing and some of it is only used in formal writing. If you feel you have a bad grasp of Japanese grammar in conversation, you should probably go for some easier sources and train your output somehow.

chochajin Wrote:My doubts, questions and worries are what to do after that.
I have so many things in my mind, but I need structure and I can't do everything at the same time anyway.

So, these are the things I WANT to do. As you can see it's a little bit chaotic and I'm pretty sure I can't do everything at the same time. I'm a little bit confused at the moment and hope that you guys can give me some ideas. I would be really thankful

I only have about 2 hours per day to use for "real" studies, though.

Short side note: Although my output is horrible I have a little success story nevertheless.

Well. let's see... You live in Japan, feel your output is lacking and want to improve your Japanese, but at the same time you need fun stuff to do to keep yourself motivated...

Why don't you write a blog about your experience in Japan... in Japanese?!

I'm sure there are lots of things you have to say about the country, culture and your experience there. I'm also sure lots of people would love to read such a blog. That would be fun, you can improve you output and you can create a little community around your blog by using the comments section to talk to your readers, some of whom will be native speakers by the way.

You can use Lang-8 and start writing, give it a try.

Kind of sounds like doing some more structured sentences in Anki may work for you. Maybe doing sentences from two sources, one for vocab building and one for grammar. I may be wrong, but it sounds like you're thinking about doing that but pushing it off into the future.

If you're planning to take the JLPT2 this year then I think it may be worth focusing on JLPT2 specific materials. I also want to take the JLPT2 exam this year, and I know what I'm missing - lots of vocab & some grammar points. Vocab is definitely the hardest for me.

I did about 2/3 of 2001KO and that is quite a good way to learn readings & build vocab. 2001KO doesn't quite map to JLPT2, and now I want to focus more on JLPT2 vocab, so I started using [例文で学ぶ漢字と言葉] for 2級. This is a bit like Kanji in Context (written by the same author) but reworked and focusing only on JLPT2 kanji & vocab. It orders kanji by onyomi groups, so that may be suitable for you.

Before I started doing 2001KO I don't think I could have handled [例文で学ぶ漢字と言葉] but now I can fairly easily, and I'm learning lots of useful vocab from it.

For JLPT2 grammar, I think the best book for learning it (based on ease of learning) is [日本語総まとめ問題集2級]. It can be learned in 2 months no problem. As for reviewing it nearer to the exam it's Kanzen Master. (KM is a lot harder to learn from when starting intermediate level)

@Tobberoth: Thanks for your comment

I'm thinking of getting only the books for grammar and reading (I don't think I need the ones for kanji and vocab as that is covered by other things, sentence mining etc.) - what do you think?

@Sebastian: I do write about my Japan experience and I have a blog, but it's in English (maybe I should mention that I'm not a native speaker of English). I sometimes write in Japanese and I use lang-8 from time to time, too, but as I always felt that I'm not quite ready for that kind of output yet, I stopped using it again. Maybe I should use it more frequently in order to see any progress.
Furthermore I bought something called "dia-blog" which is basically a paper diary. I haven't started using it yet, though.

@vosmiura: So, maybe mining the Kanzen grammar book for grammar and either K02001 or KiC for vocab/kanji? (although I'll have a look at the book you mentioned, sounds good!)
Do you think it would make sense to study the kunyomi extra by replacing the Heisig keywords with Japanese words or is that not a good idea as I will learn kunyomi while studying sentences anyway? Doing ALL of that would take too much time anyway. And I still have to keep reviewing my Heisig deck with onyomi, too!

Thanks a lot for the book recs

I didn't replace the English keywords myself. It sounds like a lot of work to me. If you want to switch to Japanese keywords, how about replacing each Heisig keyword one by one after learning the corresponding vocab in sentences?

@chochajin,

Don't take standardized exams, keep up with the "real exam" you've been taking for a year now of living in Japan.

Save the shells for pachinko

Good luck!