Hi everyone. I live in the UK and have almost finished secondary school and have decided to take a gap year before going to university. I've decided I want to get serious about Japanese in that year, and would like to take the JLPT 2 exam in December 2010 (a few months after starting uni) but am unsure as to how I should go about getting there.

Based on what other people have said, learning all the vocabulary for JLPT 4 to 2 word by word is not the way to go, even using an SRS program such as Anki. Some users seem to think that learning packages such as Genki are useful because multiple words may be learned in sentences, and I believe I would certainly need something like that to learn grammar.

I hope I am right in thinking that RTK 1 is a great advantage in tackling kanji readings later on, as I can learn which kanji appear in which words (through knowing the key meanings of the kanji) which should lead to an almost automatic learning of the readings. Am I right or wrong in suggesting this?

I have been very interested in the Japanese language for a while now, but have only recently started taking it more seriously. In any case, I want to stop learning from books where Japanese is written in romaji and focus more on learning the language as it is written in Japanese, as my rate of reading hiragana is currently abysmal. I'm currently 17% through RTK1, and should have a lot of time on my hands quite soon which means I should have it finished within 100 days.

Are my presumptions true and if not, what's the best way to go in studying for JLPT2?

Ydde2009 Wrote:What's the best way to go in studying for JLPT2?

The method most popular around here is the sentence mining method, whereby you learn vocab, grammar & kanji readings by exposure to thousands of correct sentences rather than individual words or readings (e.g. RTK2). But first you need to familiarize yourself with the basics of grammar. Nobody would argue against using Tae Kim's Japanese Guide to Grammar, a superb free resource. Read up to the end of chapter four, understand it all and mine every sentence on there. That should get you a few hundred sentences in Anki to start with.

Then you have a choice to make. Most people here use either KO2001 Kanji Odyssey or smart.fm's core2000 lessons to get their first couple thousand example sentences. Both have audio and both will teach you lots of readings (but not all). smart.fm is free and can be imported directly into anki, but KO2001 comes with a book and is said to be ordered more intuitively (haven't used it myself).

Once you've finished with those, you have another choice to make. You can either jump straight into native sources (manga, light novels) and begin mining sentences from there, or you can buy another, slightly more advanced textbook and mine those sentences. Most people would advise reading native sources ASAP, especially manga (which you can view & download at Manga Helpers), and I'd be inclined to agree.

At a certain stage you'll also want to change your Anki cards from J-E to J-J and stick exclusively to a J-J dictionary. Some claim to be able to do this after 500 sentences but for most people it'll be a while longer. If you use Firefox, you should also download Rikaichan, which is parser for the accliamed WWJDIC. If you don't mind torrenting, you can save yourself £250 by downloading the EBWin dictionary reader and then looking for a torrent of the Kenkyusha J-E/E-J EPWING (digital) dictionary. I say "look for"... if you just google "Kenkyusha EPWING demonoid" it's the very first result.

Once you reach a certain level of proficieny you can start to think about using the Kanzen Master books, which are written entirely in Japanese and are designed specifically to help you pass the JLPT (as well as being an excellent sentence source). If you study full-time this could well be within six months. And I guess this is why I'm suggesting a more general method rather than one geared specifically towards passing JLPT2; focus on attaining fluency and the JLPT2 will be a walk in the park in 18 months.

[You can ignore all of this, of course. This is just my planned approach.]

Ydde2009 Wrote:I hope I am right in thinking that RTK 1 is a great advantage in tackling kanji readings later on, as I can learn which kanji appear in which words (through knowing the key meanings of the kanji) which should lead to an almost automatic learning of the readings.

It won't be "automatic"; readings are difficult and annoying however you learn them. The benefit of RTK is being able to recognise Kanji easily when they're written in normal size (e.g. 語). Some kanji are so similar that they're almost impossible to tell apart without zooming in. There's also something unquantifiably good about being able to look at a page of Japanese and recognise all of the squiggles in an instant. It's a real morale booster. Learning the readings is certainly easier after Heisig because you'll rarely (if ever) confuse the Kanji themselves, i.e. you can focus entirely on the readings. But readings are still tricky, make no mistake about that.

Ydde2009, I suggest All Japanese All the Time. It is the basis of the "sentence mining method" that harhol mentioned. If you spend some time reading through his site (start with the table of contents, and try going from top to bottom), I think you'll get some really great ideas with which you can make more informed decisions about the next step.

Also, if you want to move your kanji over from this site to Anki, so you can review right along with your sentences, I recently wrote an article about that.

Good luck

Also, Khatzumoto's latest post would be a wise read if you're thinking about doing a lot of these pre-mined sentence packs that float around here in a semi-religious sort of way.

The best way to study for JLPT2 is to study for JLPT1.
The best way to study for JLPT1 is study real japanese.
The best way to study real japanese is read it or listen to it. Again and again.

mentat_kgs Wrote:The best way to study for JLPT2 is to study for JLPT1.
The best way to study for JLPT1 is study real japanese.
The best way to study real japanese is read it or listen to it. Again and again.

nice!

mentat_kgs Wrote:The best way to study for JLPT2 is to study for JLPT1.
The best way to study for JLPT1 is study real japanese.
The best way to study real japanese is read it or listen to it. Again and again.

Cute, but wrong.

JLPT1 contains thousands of vocabulary words and hundreds of grammatical forms that are not on L2. Studying material that isn't actually on the exam isn't going to help you pass it.

And likewise for L1 -- you will learn the material much faster and easier if you specifically study it. For example, using a grammar textbook, I can get through all of the grammatical forms in a few months. How many dozens or hundreds of books do you think you would have to read to hit all same information by random chance?

I'm not sure. I don't count it. I'd guess around 10 books? But maybe more.

Count for a year 1-5 articles from yomiuri each day + 1 light novel each 2-3 months + random stuff from 2chanel many times/day.

Who cares?
I'm not doing it to pass on a exam. I'm not even doing it to learn Japanese.
I'm doing it to enjoy Japanese media, talk with Japanese people and raise my chances of survival in that country.

mentat_kgs Wrote:Who cares?
I'm not doing it to pass on a exam. I'm not even doing it to learn Japanese.
I'm doing it to enjoy Japanese media, talk with Japanese people and raise my chances of survival in that country.

But you're recommending that method to someone who is trying to pass an exam.