Hi

I've finally got 90% of my cards into column 5 of my SRS (Stackz is not recommended by me!) and I'm about to launch myself balls deep into the next step... Which brings me to the next question: I plan to do either UBJG or JSPFEC. Is one better than the other? I notice JSPFEC has fewer examples, but more explanation than UBJG, but is this a good thing? I could be done quicker, but is the lack of 10s of examples a bad thing?

Any help on which to choose would be appreciated.

UBJG will take your further, but it's an open question as to whether that is actually better. I think JSPfEC leaves off at a good place for making the switch to monolingual dictionaries and learning the remaining grammar in context. Tae Kim will be even faster, albeit with less vocab learned than JSPfEC.

fine print: I have JSPfEC and Tae Kim in my SRS, but I only looked into using UBJG.

I haven't studied any of them from cover to cover, but in my opinion the clearest is JSPFEC, then UBJG, then TaeKim. But all are decent.

I did UBJG and I don't regret it. The way I did it was to just import all of the sentences and go through a set amount a day with my reps. This helped enormously because it was very easy, didn't require a lot of studying, and I could just delete what I already knew. Actually sitting down and going through something would be too time consuming I think.

The author of Sentence Patterns is a solid writer, and while I don't own that book of hers, I do think she's a good choice. UBJG is lacking in the vocab department, but you can get through grammar really painlessly, especially with the method I wrote above.

Tae Kim is, well, Tae Kim. Read through it and make up your own mind. It has slightly more info than UBJG and more vocabulary, but it doesn't matter much. It's also much more difficult because he loves his grammar rules.

UBJG is very good. I didn't use it from the beginning, but later I wish I had.

How are you guys testing when you SRS for grammar?

Filling in the blanks? Writing out the sentence? Just reading it? English to Japanese or vice-versa?

Herbo Wrote:How are you guys testing when you SRS for grammar?

Filling in the blanks? Writing out the sentence? Just reading it? English to Japanese or vice-versa?

I just read it. I grade based on how well I understand the sentence or concept.

Treat it the same as any other sentence in your SRS...

I found JSPEC to be more straightforward, better organized, and easier to understand than UBJG.

What about grammar for the not so beginner?

kazelee Wrote:What about grammar for the not so beginner?

Well, Death Note is fun to read. Shin chan is also really funny.

alyks Wrote:

kazelee Wrote:What about grammar for the not so beginner?

Well, Death Note is fun to read. Shin chan is also really funny.

Yeah, I got to third volume of Death Note before I lost interest, though. Probably had something to do with seeing the movie first which made me wonder why they were doing such buddy-buddy things together. I'll have to check out the Shin Chan.

Any other suggestions?

So what's UBJG? Google refuses to help me.

"Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar"