bodhisamaya Wrote:

Zarxrax Wrote:My advice is to not get in over your head. I think a lot of people overstate just how easy JLPT is. I studied Japanese for 4 years at university, completed RTK, and I still failed JLPT3 last year.

I think this is more of a reflection of how pathetic our educational system is in the US than how difficult the JLPT is. I volunteered teaching English in Kyoto at a charity run by a Catholic priest in exchange for a room and meals. He had a program where American students spent three months teaching in Japan and earned credit hours towards their Japanese degree. My room-mate had three years of study at Illinois University (I think it was). After only 9 months of self study while holding a full-time job in Japan, I was at a higher level than he was.

I would bet someone doing self study four hours a day for six months on a site like smart.fm would score higher on JLPT than a C average Japanese major graduate from a typical American university and avoid repaying the $30,000 in student loans to boot.

Haha, it's sad though isn't it... because they really go to school thinking that in the end they will be masters of japanese... the reality is they will be like 10 years old in Japan... being generous(maybe their vocab could be high, I doubt it, but I guarantee subtleties of Japanese would be far beyond them since they were barely exposed those whole 4 years, probably in the last 2 months I've had more exposure to japanese than a college major gets in a year or more...sad)

Hi guys! thank you so much for all your help

After summing up all of your answers, I came up with a "plan" of studying for the next 5 months Here it is:

RTK1 > Tae Kim > Japanesepod101.com

Do you think this would be enough?

Also, do you think it would be a good idea to take Tae Kim and Jpod together at the same time? (so I can maximize the 5 months) Or should I finish tae kim first before jpod? or vice-versa?

Would you also recommend the RTK 2 and 3? I haven't seen the book yet.

Thank you very much!

Zarxrax Wrote:My advice is to not get in over your head. I think a lot of people overstate just how easy JLPT is. I studied Japanese for 4 years at university, completed RTK, and I still failed JLPT3 last year.

That can't be a fair comparison though. I got 95% on JLPT3 after studying for 6 months.

Vocabulary is important, but you don't need a lot of vocabulary for JLPT3. I don't even think you need to know 2000 words. As for grammar, Tae Kim covers it.

bloo8 Wrote:RTK1 > Tae Kim > Japanesepod101.com

Do you think this would be enough?

Yes, and add vocab too. You need to learn at least 10 words every day.

Quote:Would you also recommend the RTK 2 and 3? I haven't seen the book yet.

RTK2 - no, most people don't recommend that.
RTK3 - after you master more of the language.

I'll take the JLPT 3 in December as well, but I'm not studying for it in particular. It's still 5 months away, by that time it will probably be far too easy, but I don't want to risk JLPT2 yet.

If you work on your general ability in a structured and efficient way you should be fine. Tae Kim is enough for the grammar, I think there are even some grammar points beyond JLPT3 in his guide. Vocabulary also shouldn't be a problem if you use a general frequency list like KO2001 or Smart.fm Core 2000. (I use the group effort KO2001 Smart.fm list that was created by the people on this forum, with Anki though.) That should also get your listening comprehension up a notch. And of course, J-Doramas with Japanese subtitles.

Hinode Wrote:I'll take the JLPT 3 in December as well, but I'm not studying for it in particular. It's still 5 months away, by that time it will probably be far too easy, but I don't want to risk JLPT2 yet.

If you work on your general ability in a structured and efficient way you should be fine. Tae Kim is enough for the grammar, I think there are even some grammar points beyond JLPT3 in his guide. Vocabulary also shouldn't be a problem if you use a general frequency list like KO2001 or Smart.fm Core 2000. (I use the group effort KO2001 Smart.fm list that was created by the people on this forum, with Anki though.) That should also get your listening comprehension up a notch. And of course, J-Doramas with Japanese subtitles.

Where can I find J-dramas with subtitles? I've heard about this but could never manage to locate any.

vosmiura Wrote:

bloo8 Wrote:RTK1 > Tae Kim > Japanesepod101.com

Do you think this would be enough?

Yes, and add vocab too. You need to learn at least 10 words every day.

Quote:Would you also recommend the RTK 2 and 3? I haven't seen the book yet.

RTK2 - no, most people don't recommend that.
RTK3 - after you master more of the language.

thanks! I didn't think there would be such a huge number of vocab for JLPT 3. I thought it would actually be more on the grammar and sentence construction. I'll add this as part of my study plan



@Yonosa: try mysoju.com

bloo8 Wrote:@Yonosa: try mysoju.com

I believe they only have English subtitles on that site unless I missed the Japanese subtitles part somewhere.

Yonosa Wrote:

Hinode Wrote:I'll take the JLPT 3 in December as well, but I'm not studying for it in particular. It's still 5 months away, by that time it will probably be far too easy, but I don't want to risk JLPT2 yet.

If you work on your general ability in a structured and efficient way you should be fine. Tae Kim is enough for the grammar, I think there are even some grammar points beyond JLPT3 in his guide. Vocabulary also shouldn't be a problem if you use a general frequency list like KO2001 or Smart.fm Core 2000. (I use the group effort KO2001 Smart.fm list that was created by the people on this forum, with Anki though.) That should also get your listening comprehension up a notch. And of course, J-Doramas with Japanese subtitles.

Where can I find J-dramas with subtitles? I've heard about this but could never manage to locate any.

d-addicts.com has a subtitle index where there are a FEW J-subs. It's very limited and only a few series are completely subbed... but it's the best place I've found.

While it's true that only a few (10-ish?) are completely subbed, many are only missing one or two episodes and these are almost always middle episodes (meaning you get the beginning and the end, but might have to struggle through a few episodes in the middle).

All in all, I have 24 seasons of dramas from that website sitting on my HD, all with at least 80% of their episodes subbed.

Also of note, all the subbing is done in raw text, as opposed to image files. Here's why this is really handy: while watching the drama, I like to keep the subtitle file opened in Firefox. Then I can just use the Rikaichan plug-in for very, very quick lookup of vocabulary I don't know. And if I want, I can just copy/paste the sentence it's in into Anki.

Yeah, d-addicts has some dramas with Japanese subtitles. And there is always the (totally absurd) possibility of actually buying the DVDs. :p