Hello,

after reading through some older threads I decided that it might be better to create a new one.
My problem and weak point has always been grammar. When reading novels, I often can understand all the single words, but not make sense of the sentence as a whole. When taking JLPT mock tests I can easily get through the Kanji/Vocab section of 1kyuu while even 3kyuu grammar gives me a hard time. I want to pass 2kyuu this summer, but I'm very worried about the grammar part.

Grammar has always been a problem:
Grammar - How to study? (July, 2008)
Reviewing Grammar (July, 2009)

It's not July, 2010 yet (　´_ゝ｀) ... but I really don't feel that I made much of a progress in terms of grammar since those last 2 entries. I really need YOUR help here! In all those years I couldn't find a method that was good enough (and not boring as hell!) that would help me improve my grammar!

At first I didn't bother studying grammar at all as most people here told me it's a waste of time and that it will come naturally to me if I just do sentences. Well, after doing RTK1, KO2001, sentences from real media and half of KiC (the latter being too difficult in terms of grammar!) - I can't really say they were right.
In July 2009 I tried to mine the "Dictionary of Basic grammar" - you can see some example cards of mine when you click on the July 2009 link above. As you can see those were "fill in the blanks" kind of cards (and I also had a "Notes" fact where I put in waaaaaaaay too much text and explanation - I stopped reading it soon after that).

Even before I started RTK I already had a basic knowledge of grammar (actually that should have been enough to pass 3kyuu ...) as I took courses at university and did textbook study on my own before 2008 ....


Anyway it's really time to work on my grammar NOW!
Reason 1: In order to pass 2kyuu and maybe later this year 1kyuu.
Reason 2: In order to finish KiC and understand novels.

As for the JLPT I bought the Kanzen Master 2kyuu Grammar book as a lot of people were recommending it. I also got access to the spreadsheet and imported it into Anki. I only went through the first chapter so far to see if it works and then tried the practice test at the end of the chapter. It was OOOKAY, but I completely faild the section where you have questions like this:

カーテンの生地はいろいろございますが、ご予算に(________)ものをお作りいたします。
a)　応じて
b)　応じては
c)　応じ
d)　応じた

今回のシンポジウムは東京に(____)ゴミ処理の問題です。
a)　おける
b)　おいては
c)　おいて
d)　おいても

If it's about figuring out which is the right grammar point to use and you have DIFFERENT grammar points to choose from, the book is really helpful in teaching you that, but if it's about figuring out what kind of FORM of the SAME grammar point to use, it doesn't teach you that at all, so I couldn't solve those questions at all (I had to guess). How on earth are you studying for those type of questions???

I also try to use the "Dictionary of Intermadiate Japanese grammar" to get some more information and maybe better example sentences.

Back to KiC. As some of you might know it's more advanced than KO2001 - especially in terms of grammar. I mainly use it to learn more readings and vocab, but it's really a pain in the a** because I can't figure out the meaning of 30% of the sentences - and that's because there are grammatical expressions or grammar points I don't know yet.

So in order to prepare for the JLPT, but also in order to get a better hang of grammar in general so that I can read novels more easily and finish KiC - what could I do? I'm really lost at the moment.

Thanks so much for reading. Hope somebody has some good advice for me here.

Complete the book, don't do the anki thing. The book should answer a lot of your questions. You can also look into other question books, like matome bunpou and shiken ni deru bunpou.

To be honest, I think the best thing is to find someone with whom you can work through each sentence and figure out step by step what the right answer is and how to get there.

Failing that, if you can find a textbook that's suited to your level, I think that might be better than either the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar or the Kanzen Master, because to me both of those books seem to be oriented to solidifying knowledge you already have, and acting as a reference.


カーテンの生地はいろいろございますが、ご予算に(________)ものをお作りいたします。
a)　応じて
b)　応じては
c)　応じ
d)　応じた

To me, this isn't different forms of the same grammar point. に応じて is not the grammar point -- the grammar point is what you do with a relative clause modifying もの, and in a relative clause the verb is always in plain present or plain past form. There are probably some exceptions to this and of course it can be in passive or causative or passive causative too, but basically, you're going to have 応じるもの　or 応じたもの. It's basically the same thing for the next question as well.

You don't study grammar. You understand it, and then you internalize it.

When I was in high school we would get a couple of examples of a certain grammar point and then have to make up five or ten sentences ourselves using that grammar point. That doesn't seem like a bad place to start, although again, it's hard if you don't have someone checking your answers.

You can also post questions here about the KiC sentences you don't understand; that's what I did when I was studying KiC way back when.

Grammar is one of my weakest points as well but it is steadily becoming one of my stronger points... i am currently working through the giant 8556 sentence Dictionary of Japanese anki deck and it is working wonders for me. Yes, I am finally able to ACTUALLY SPEAK Japanese! Creating sentences is coming more and more naturally to me now. There are quite a few mistakes within this deck but they are pretty easy to recognize because the sentences with the mistakes in them don't flow well with the other sentences... I'd recommend downloading it and giving it a try

EDIT: ah, I just reread your post... i skimmed it when i made my reply... you look like you are headed in the right direction

I'm an advocate of the just expose yourself to as many examples as you can school of learning. For grammar I started with the unicom books and honestly 3 example sentences were not cutting it for me. So now I'm going through 15+ for each grammar point I study. That helps.

i agree, the more examples, the better... sometimes you think you know something, then realize you don't a few sentences later...

Download that massive DoJ Grammar anki deck and suspend everything and merge it with your previous grammar study deck. Then when you go through a new grammar point from X~source or you are having problems on a particular point you can search for additional examples from the DoJG deck and unsuspend them.

That's really what I've been doing lately.

I second womack's suggestion. Whenever I need to study up on a grammar point that's exactly what I do. It's such a great resource to have in such an easy way to reference.

I'm not convinced by the idea of using Anki for grammar study, except to reinforce and make sure you've remembered something you already understand. That is, you should be able to do the quizzes before you start throwing cards into Anki...

The sort of JLPT question you quoted is essentially trying to get as close to testing "production" of a grammar point as a multiple choice test can manage. The testers want to know if you know the correct forms of verbs and so on (eg in Vとたんに V is always past tense). If you study the grammar merely for comprehension you will struggle with these.

So my suggestion is that you should use KM as a structure for which grammar points you want to study, but use different references (the Dictionaries of Basic/Intermediate Grammar, 日本語文型辞典, textbooks) to give you more coverage and better explanations. (KM I think is more aimed at the 'review/revise for test' requirement, it's poor for learning from scratch. I agree with Fillanzea about textbooks too.) Pay attention to the verb forms used (KM tends to put pairs に応じるN and に応じて in one point and expect you to figure out the distinction yourself). You might try putting the quizzes into anki and marking them 'correct' if you can (a) give the right answer and (b) say why.

I'm not sure you're going to find a magic bullet method that will make grammar study "not boring" for you -- maybe you just have to work through it...
(If you happen to have electronic copies of books or whatever you've read you might try searching through them for examples of the grammar you're trying to study. Or do it the other way round -- when you hit a sentence with grammar you don't understand, mark it to look up, and use that to drive which grammar points in KM you cross off first?)

Hint for making grammar less boring: toss KM in the trash. That book series is awful and like pulling teeth. The only one I'd recommend is the reading practice one.

For grammar I liked the sou matome series (for JLPT prep anyways), and of course "A Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese grammar". I read the basic one cover to cover when I was starting out and found it very interesting because of all the footnotes, something KM lacks.

I don't think you need Anki for JLPT5-2, since all of that grammar is pretty common and you should encounter it frequently if you put your Japanese into practice. Much of JLPT1 grammar is pretty obscure though so you might want to Anki it.

I see you saying 'I studied' a LOT, but I don't see you saying 'I watched' or 'I listened'. You will never learn grammar from just a textbook. You have to get out there and experience it.

I'm in the same position you are, btw. I've been studying Japanese for years, but grammar is my weak point.

About a year ago, I realized that grammar was my nemesis. Even if I could read all the vocab in a sentence, any grammar beyond past-tense was lost on me. So I resolved to study. After a few months of that, I still had almost nothing... But I noticed that what I -did- have was stuff that I had seen and heard several times -before- I read about it in the grammar books. Since then, I've been picking up things I read in mangas and learning about them in grammar books (like the basic grammar dictionary) and it has helped a lot. Do I understand your examples above? Not a chance. But I'm on the road to it, and it seems like you're saying that you aren't.

For getting a really good grasp on the essential grammar, there's nothing better than Jay Rubin's "Making Sense of Japanese." The book is also sometimes called "Gone Fishin," it's original title. I would highly recommend it.

Personally, I think the textbook series "Japanese: The Spoken Language" is the best textbook for grammar essentials, but it's written entirely in romaji and in a fairly technical way, so I can't really recommend it.

Otherwise, someone mentioned Lang-8. I think this can be a really good way to learn grammar. When you learn a new grammar point, immediately write something for Lang-8 and see if you used it right. Remember whether or not people corrected it. If you got it wrong, figure out why, and try using it again in the future. This active style of learning grammar works a lot better for me, at least, so it might be worth a try.

wccrawford Wrote:I see you saying 'I studied' a LOT, but I don't see you saying 'I watched' or 'I listened'. You will never learn grammar from just a textbook. You have to get out there and experience it.

The OP said he was reading novels, and the entire point of the post was that this whole "exposure is everything! don't study grammar!" approach wasn't working for him.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

wccrawford Wrote:I see you saying 'I studied' a LOT, but I don't see you saying 'I watched' or 'I listened'. You will never learn grammar from just a textbook. You have to get out there and experience it.

The OP said he was reading novels, and the entire point of the post was that this whole "exposure is everything! don't study grammar!" approach wasn't working for him.

That doesn't change my post a bit. Yes, he's reading. So was I.

And I never said 'exposure is everything' or 'don't study grammar'. If you'll actually read my post this time, you'll see that I said exposure was necessary, and that studying grammar should come after exposure.

He's falling into -exactly- the same trap I was, and I told him how I was climbing out of it.

I have to eat a bit of crow here. I just realized that I learned a grammar rule without seeing it in context first. I learned it months ago, and haven't really paid attention to it since then, and I still remember the rule and how to use it... And it was almost instinctive as to how to use it.

So learning from a book without context is possible after all. Not necessarily the right way to go, but at least possible.

My grammar recommendations are pretty much unchanging at this point: I went through Japanese the Manga Way which broke everything down with examples and explanations and simply SRSed 1-3 examples per point in the book, reading the book itself of course as well. Then after finishing I just pick up grammar as I deconstruct new sentences and SRS them, and I also periodically read through the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar books, pick out a few points with example sentences, and SRS those. Works for me. ;p

wccrawford Wrote:I have to eat a bit of crow here. I just realized that I learned a grammar rule without seeing it in context first. I learned it months ago, and haven't really paid attention to it since then, and I still remember the rule and how to use it... And it was almost instinctive as to how to use it.

So learning from a book without context is possible after all. Not necessarily the right way to go, but at least possible.

Personally I prefer doing this first. Now that you can understand that grammar point, you'll be prepared when you do see it in context, and in a much better position to absorb any extra nuance that the textbook examples didn't cover, and reinforce what you already know. It doesn't take long to read a textbook explanation, so why not give yourself a bit of an edge before you encounter new grammar?

Another advantage is how systematic textbooks/workbooks are. Who's to say you're a good judge at spotting grammar points? You might read through things like ～ようものなら、～かと思うほど、～にしたところで, etc, and not realise you're actually looking at a piece of grammar, and skip straight over them. I find that a lot of grammar doesn't even exist until I see it in a textbook first, after which it seems to suddenly start appearing everywhere. You might also end up taking an extremely long time to encounter everything that you could casually go through in a few months using a textbook. This becomes a rather big problem if you're thinking in terms of the JLPT.

As for context, I'm not going to dispute how important it is in learning new language, but that doesn't mean dramas and novels provide ideal ones, or that it's always necessary to be so elaborate. Take ～わけにはいかない. In どんな時どう使う there's the example「試験があるから、遊ぶわけにはいかない」. Would some bad acting centred around a nearing university entrance exam in a drama really add anything that the example doesn't already have?

Javizy Wrote:Who's to say you're a good judge at spotting grammar points? You might read through things like ～ようものなら、～かと思うほど、～にしたところで, etc, and not realise you're actually looking at a piece of grammar, and skip straight over them.

Yeah, this happened to me with ては: I completely didn't notice I was missing the meaning of it in sentences like 1ページを読んでは顔をあげて窓の外を見ている until my teacher at the time pointed it out. We'd just gone through the reading passage, and I was completely thinking "no problems, understood all that", and then she said "ok, so what about this then?"...

First of all, thanks to everybody for your great and really interesting comments!

I also read through old grammar related threads in this forum and found that many people recommended 日本語文型辞典 (単行本), so I'm really interested, but I'd love to see some example pages before purchasing it. I've been looking EVERYWHERE, but couldn't find any preview scans at all. Anybody can help me?
Also, is this the same book used for the huge grammar deck in Anki that some of you mentioned here? If so, is it wise to get the book nevertheless?

Btw. I've never had huge problems learning grammar when I was still in school. I studied English, Spanish, Latin and French back then. No big deal. (well Latin sometimes was ...)
I guess it's just really difficult to "learn" / understand grammar all by yourself!?

Hashiriya Wrote:Grammar is one of my weakest points as well but it is steadily becoming one of my stronger points... i am currently working through the giant 8556 sentence Dictionary of Japanese anki deck and it is working wonders for me.

Womacks23 Wrote:Download that massive DoJ Grammar anki deck and suspend everything and merge it with your previous grammar study deck. Then when you go through a new grammar point from X~source or you are having problems on a particular point you can search for additional examples from the DoJG deck and unsuspend them.

Sounds really good!
Is it this one? 8555 Japanese Sentences - from the　日本語文法辞典??

pm215 Wrote:ISo my suggestion is that you should use KM as a structure for which grammar points you want to study, but use different references (the Dictionaries of Basic/Intermediate Grammar, 日本語文型辞典, textbooks) to give you more coverage and better explanations.

Do you know where I could find example scans of the 日本語文型辞典? I do have all 3 Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar already, but sometimes the explanations in there give me headaches (and not only because I'm not an English native-speaker).
Do you have any recommendations for good textbooks?

Jarvik7 Wrote:For grammar I liked the sou matome series (for JLPT prep anyways), and of course "A Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese grammar". I read the basic one cover to cover when I was starting out and found it very interesting because of all the footnotes, something KM lacks.

I do like the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar books, but the explanations in there sometimes give me a headache. They're too linguistic.

IceCream Wrote:1. translate something. (make sure its something you have the english translation for already).
this'll help draw your attention to the grammar being used, and why one thing is used where.

3. DON'T ADD SENTENCES YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND TO SRS!!! if there's some grammar you don't understand in your sentence, it's good to work out why you don't understand it, and look it up... ：）

Hey, thanks for the tips
I'd love to translate things from time to time, thing is I just don't have enough time to do that and squeeze that in between my "study time". I only have like 1 hour per day anyway *sigh*

3. If I only put sentences in there that I already understand, then it doesn't feel that I'm actually learning things. I put sentences in there, BECAUSE I don't understand them, but want to understand them eventually ... hmmm.

wccrawford Wrote:I see you saying 'I studied' a LOT, but I don't see you saying 'I watched' or 'I listened'. You will never learn grammar from just a textbook. You have to get out there and experience it..

Oh, but I did/do. I just didn't mention it, because I don't consider this as "studying" - especially in terms of grammar.
I've been listening to / watching Japanese stuff for over 10 years now. Started in 1998 and ever since then I've been watching/listening at least once a day to Japanese native material. During that time I didn't study anything, though. Apart from my listening comprehension and randomly picking up new vocab - it didn't really help that much.

Javizy Wrote:Another advantage is how systematic textbooks/workbooks are. Who's to say you're a good judge at spotting grammar points? You might read through things like ～ようものなら、～かと思うほど、～にしたところで, etc, and not realise you're actually looking at a piece of grammar, and skip straight over them. I find that a lot of grammar doesn't even exist until I see it in a textbook first, after which it seems to suddenly start appearing everywhere. You might also end up taking an extremely long time to encounter everything that you could casually go through in a few months using a textbook. This becomes a rather big problem if you're thinking in terms of the JLPT.

Any textbooks you could recommend then?



P.S.: Not really important, but I'm not a "he" XD

Liar, there are no girls on the internet.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Liar, there are no girls on the internet.

Hold it, I've got ovaries!

Though it is true. Men are men, women are men, and children are the FBI.

chochajin Wrote:

Javizy Wrote:Another advantage is how systematic textbooks/workbooks are. Who's to say you're a good judge at spotting grammar points? You might read through things like ～ようものなら、～かと思うほど、～にしたところで, etc, and not realise you're actually looking at a piece of grammar, and skip straight over them. I find that a lot of grammar doesn't even exist until I see it in a textbook first, after which it seems to suddenly start appearing everywhere. You might also end up taking an extremely long time to encounter everything that you could casually go through in a few months using a textbook. This becomes a rather big problem if you're thinking in terms of the JLPT.

Any textbooks you could recommend then?

I've just been using the 完全マスター workbooks (although I'm planning on getting a few different ones for 1級), and どんな時どう使う and the Makino dictionaries as references. I've got no idea how どんな時どう使う compares to 日本語文型辞典 though.

One thing I recommend is doing more exercises and drills. They're especially good for reinforcing 接続, but they essentially point out what you're having problems with, so that you can look up what you need to review. You might make mistakes, but that just means you're going to learn something, rather than being something you should get too worried about.

I can't say how good my grammar is, but I rarely ever make a mistake on, or even spend any time thinking about, 2級 practice questions. If the JLPT is your aim, then practice makes perfect, I guess.

rosenafglenn Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:Liar, there are no girls on the internet.

Hold it, I've got ovaries!

In a baggie in your freezer? I'm calling the police!

Okay, let's try a different question then.
If I already have all 3 Dictionary of Japanese grammar to back up my Kanzen 2kyuu grammar book, is it still a good idea to get 日本語文型辞典?

Javizy Wrote:I've just been using the 完全マスター workbooks (although I'm planning on getting a few different ones for 1級), and どんな時どう使う and the Makino dictionaries as references. I've got no idea how どんな時どう使う compares to 日本語文型辞典 though.

One thing I recommend is doing more exercises and drills. They're especially good for reinforcing 接続, but they essentially point out what you're having problems with, so that you can look up what you need to review. You might make mistakes, but that just means you're going to learn something, rather than being something you should get too worried about.

I see, thanks a lot.
So you're not really using any textbooks like Genki or anything like that, right?
I'd love to do more exercises and drills - the question is where to find those.