I picked up a manga called　よつばと！ at my local bookstore today and it looks really fun / simple to learn from. I'm currently a 3rd year Japanese student and I'm around 350 into RTK1. I'm wondering what the best way to go about reading the manga? Should I read a decent amount (10+ pages) and then go back afterwards and look up all the words I don't know? Is it better to read a sentence, look up the words I don't know, and then try to get the full meaning of the sentence 1 by 1?

Has anyone used manga as a tool to get better at Japanese / what is the best way you have found to go about doing this? Thanks!

edit: よつば* my bad

よつばと! is an excellent manga, good choice!

Here's the skinny on reading. Read however you want. No matter what you do, it's going to help. Don't try to be as efficient as possible, because you'll probably end up associating reading that manga with a lot of work, and consequently not do it often. So, just read. If you don't get something, look it up. If you don't get something and you find yourself not caring too much that you didn't get it, don't look it up. Want to add it to your SRS? Don't want to?

It's up to you.

I agree with Ryuujin. Just do whatever you find interesting. If you like looking up all the words, then do that. If you prefer reading without a dictionary, try that. Don't force yourself to do something you don't want to do, though, or it's not going to be fun. Most people find it good to use a middle-of-the-road approach; look up some words, but not everything.

Um, I assume you mean よつばと！...? If you do a search of the forums, you'll see it's been discussed quite a bit over the last few years. Perhaps the info you're looking for is in there.

How you go about reading/studying it is entirely up to you - there's no single 'best' way to study anything For some people, picking apart each sentence till they understand it fully is the most effective route, and others fly through it, glossing over things they don't know and aiming for general understanding.

I went through the よつばと！series about three months into starting self-study, and leaned toward the latter option. The only reason I looked up words or grammar patterns was if they precluded me from understanding what was going on, or if they kept coming up and I couldn't figure them out through context.

It's pretty easy stuff, and if you're two to three years into studying it, the subject matter and grammar shouldn't give you much trouble. The target audience are kids, so there's not a lot of kanji, and from memory there's furigana over all of them. There are chapters within each volume, and I found it was pretty easy to get through one chapter in a sitting.

よつばと！is a fun little starter manga. Hope you have fun with it!

I usually start by looking up the first few words I don't know, and when I have some looked up and entered into anki I just put the dictionary away and keep reading. Keeps it fun to do whilst still learning a few new words

I would just read the manga in english on onemanga.com (which should take very little time) and then read with complete leisure the Japanese. That way you have pretty good context and understanding, but you don't have to do any formal study-like work.

That can be a good idea, although note that it doesn't work for everyone. Personally, once I've read something in one language, I rarely have the motivation to read it again in another language (even the original language) unless it's something I really, really like.

As a way in between, what I did when I started out reading manga was picking manga from anime I already watched (preferably some time ago). You'll know the general story, so you wont get completely lost. Usually manga versions differ a bit from the anime adaption, so you still get to see some fresh content

yudantaiteki Wrote:That can be a good idea, although note that it doesn't work for everyone. Personally, once I've read something in one language, I rarely have the motivation to read it again in another language (even the original language) unless it's something I really, really like.

Same here. I think it can be a disadvantage to know the story in advance as well, since you're not required to use your Japanese reading comprehension skills to work it out. I suppose that can be a good or bad thing depending on your aim, but it's a good idea to test yourself once in awhile.

If I'm reading a manga that's available in English, then I read the Japanese first and then the English version - that way I have to try to work it out first and then I get confirmation - I do this on a chapter by chapter basis, so it gets easier the more I read. I'll second reading something that's an anime that you've seen. I read One Piece and sometimes Naruto like that - One Piece is far better, but I have a soft spot for Naruto.

If I'm reading a manga that's not available in English, then I tend to just read through without the aid of a dictionary. The one I'm reading at the moment is Major, which is also an anime - I would recommend both the anime and the manga. It's a about baseball, but doesn't take ages over the games (not that I'd mind, as I'm a baseball fan, but the story progresses a lot faster), and features a lot outside of the sport. The main characters start in kindergarten, but get to 4th grade fairly quickly, so it's fairly easy to understand for the most part.

よつば, my bad, feel like a tool now :b.

I've gotten two chapters into it and it's fun. I definitely like reading it since it's pretty easy to understand and it feels like I'm learning.

So supplementing RTK with listening to audio, watching dramas with no subtitles, learning from my textbook, and reading manga ... is that the best way to go? I feel like even though I can understand the gist of what is going on in the manga, there's no way I can replicate or output my own sentences. Japanese -> general understanding seems way easier than english (in my head) -> Japanese output.

I think I read an article on it on AJAT a while ago (lots of input before output), is this the general consensus? Should I keep just chugging along, doing what I'm doing and eventually there will be a very slow, graduated change into being able to output Japanese at a decent level?

I've been getting ~4 hours a day 5 days a week of Japanese listening / talking since summer started because of my intensive, but I still feel like my Japanese talking ability is not up to par.

I hate staring at vocab lists and trying to brute force memorize them (something that's absolutely required to not fail my class).

Because I'm at the highest level of Japanese language class (not including reading classes) at my university, a lot of the people that are in the class where either born or semi-raised in Japan, went to Japanese school for 10+ years, talk Japanese to their parents, studied in Japan for half a year+, etc... It's really frustrating because you can tell a huge difference between their speaking fluency and someone like myself, who doesn't have that kind of background.

Is there anything I can do, short of going to Japan, that would help me? I just started getting into the dramas / music, and listening to my textbook's audio recordings while walking around at work or in class and I feel like it's helping my listening comprehension quite a bite.

My grammar when writing is decent because I have time to think about what I'm saying, but my speaking grammar is completely atrocious. It's like when I'm put on the spot to say something i forget 75% of the grammar and vocab I know.

My personal way of doing it, when reading novels, is to use an electronic dictionary. If I don't understand something, I look up the most important unknowns. That is, I don't look up every single unknown word I run into, just the ones I feel I need to understand. When I'm done, I simply look at the electronic dictionary's history and add the words I looked up into anki (if I feel they are important).

By doing like this, I get to read and understand almost everything without rereading, and without having to put too much effort into the "studying" part of it all.

Don't y'all think it would be tiresome using manga as a primary native study / word mining source? Just curious, as it sounds hard looking up kanji by radicals, typing things in an SRS, etc.

At least with songs, you might find a site with lyrics, or for a novel, you might find a ebook, and for a TV show, you might find a closed-caption file, and for newspapers and magazines, you can read them online.

I like manga too, but it seems like a particulary difficult choice of material to study.

Mushi Wrote:Don't y'all think it would be tiresome using manga as a primary native study / word mining source? Just curious, as it sounds hard looking up kanji by radicals, typing things in an SRS, etc.

At least with songs, you might find a site with lyrics, or for a novel, you might find a ebook, and for a TV show, you might find a closed-caption file, and for newspapers and magazines, you can read them online.

I like manga too, but it seems like a particulary difficult choice of material to study.

If it's got furigana, then its pretty simple to look up the words.
I sometimes download a copy of the manga to read along with my hard copy. Then I can just use the Windows snipping tool to copy a section of the manga and paste into anki.

Finding japanese ebooks is really hard (for free at least). Finding japanese ebooks with copy-pasteable text is almost impossible. Using a song for SRSing is not a very good idea, with the grammar and words used in japanese songs.

Still, I personally don't mine actual sentences. I find words I don't know and add those words, sometimes with sentences from japanese dictionaries.

Putting vocab into anki as I go along sounds like a good idea... my main questions with that are:


1. Do you put the whole sentence into anki so you can understand it in context? I tried sentence mining for a little bit, and I seemed to remember the words when given context (in Japanese of course) a lot better than drilling it constantly in a kanji -> furigana -> definition only kind of setting.

2. Without learning any specific grammar rules, do you eventually just "absorb" grammar by reading a ton of sentences? Example: "ぞ”　ending is something they did NOT teach us in school, but I've already encountered it a ton of times in the manga. I can guess that it's a masculine-type ending said to someone of a lower status than yourself for emphasis, but I really don't know since I haven't looked it up.

Thanks!

edit: Also, do you pay special attention when reading to try and cover the furigana of kanji so you can try to guess the sound before just auto-looking to the furigana for help? I feel like if I know the furigana is there, my brain is going to automatically look for it rather than try to read the kanji itself (I won't actually learn how to read anything)

Some grammar can be absorbed, some can be absorbed to a passable degree and some is really really hard to absorb. I would personally not trust exposure to get grammar knowledge very far, it's better to use a proper grammar resource to learn the details.

ぞ is an example of grammar which is faily easy to get. It's used rarely and often, especially in media like manga and drama, in fairly exaggerated settings. You will associate it with a certain type of situation or character more so than the sentences etc where you hear it, so simply being exposed to it will teach you what's important.

An example of something harder is the difference between the various 仮定条件, -tara, -nara, -to and -ba. You will hear them all in pretty much any situation, from any person. The only thing showing you the difference is the nuance which is very dependent on the full context. You can quite easily create a sentence where everything is identical except the structure used and the sentences would all be a proper japanese sentence, used in extremely similar situations, but meaning different things.

Just as a quick example, 彼が来ると彼女が嬉しくなる。and 彼が来るなら彼女が嬉しくなる。 Both sentences are correct Japanese and could be said in very similar contexts, but they do not mean the same thing. The first one implies that when he shows up, she becomes happy, it's like a natural occurrence. The second one, however, says that if it's TRUE that he will come, she will get happy.

Because of how the difference doesn't show up clearly from context, these things become almost impossible to learn from context since it will take such a huge amount of exposure to get it. People can get a feeling and hindsight-bias "Sure that's the difference, I felt that all along", but the knowledge of explaining it and properly using the differences in output won't come from exposure unless you do it to an insane degree for a really long time.

Summary: Get a good grammar book for the situations where you can't explain grammar structures clearly.

Quote:2. Without learning any specific grammar rules, do you eventually just "absorb" grammar by reading a ton of sentences? Example: "ぞ”　ending is something they did NOT teach us in school, but I've already encountered it a ton of times in the manga. I can guess that it's a masculine-type ending said to someone of a lower status than yourself for emphasis, but I really don't know since I haven't looked it up.

Many people will claim that study of grammar is unnecessary, and that you will simply absorb and master it as some sort of linguistic osmosis. However, if you intend to have a strong grasp not only of understanding, but of the use of the Japanese language I cannot stress enough how vital grammar is. Japanaese is a language with many different grammatical concepts that have not only similar meaning, but are very different in their nuances and in what sentences they can be used. Understanding the differences is necessary to not make grammatical errors.

You can pick up on simple grammar like masculine/feminine sentence endings from exposure alone, but trying to learn complex grammatical ideas that way seems rather pointless, as it's infinitely faster to just read a short 4 sentence explanation in a grammar reference than it is to encounter the grammar countless times and hope it magically clicks.

Quote:edit: Also, do you pay special attention when reading to try and cover the furigana of kanji so you can try to guess the sound before just auto-looking to the furigana for help? I feel like if I know the furigana is there, my brain is going to automatically look for it rather than try to read the kanji itself (I won't actually learn how to read anything)

I think this is only an issue if you read the furigana and skip the kanji itself altogether, rather than reading both together. Having furigana is fine to reinforce the reading in your mind, and shouldn't hamper your ability to recognize the kanji by itself as long as you don't ignore it. It can be irritating to students if they get in the habit of always looking at furigana though, because it basically trains the eye to glance at it even when they already know how to read the kanji perfectly fine, and in a text that's brimming with furigana that can become very irritating to the reader pretty quickly. My personal advice is try to train your eye to try and read the kanji without furigana first, and only use furigana as a last resort.

Thanks for the examples, I know what you mean. We recently went back over たら、と、ば、なら in class. Our teacher didn't really give us concrete instructions on when to use what because he felt that since language is fluid, you just have to hear it enough times "in context" to be able to eventually discern if something sounds "right" or "wrong."

I have some grammar books, but the meaning for very hard (for english speaker) grammar points such as those is still really hard for me to understand. Another one is transitive vs intransitive verbs. Basic examples like 窓を閉める　ｖｓ　窓が閉まる。 (hope i did that right) are pretty easy for me to get. But when you put it a complicated context / use harder verbs or situations, it's really frustrating.

I guess the point I'm getting at is starring at a grammar book and its example sentences hasn't really been cutting it for me. I understand the grammar point to some extent, but if theres 5, 10 or even 15 example sentences, I still won't understand the grammar point in a lot of situations that are not exactly the same as those examples that I memorized. Is this where material like manga comes into play?

I feel as if I have ZERO knowledge of slang or colloquial terminology / usage, but I have a pretty basic understanding of a LOT of the grammar that is used in day to day conversations. At this point, I wonder if just reading, listening, and talking through as much material as possible is the best course of action; rather than re-reading the same old grammar rules, example sentences, textbooks, etc...

I really appreciate everyone's input. I'm really new to trying to use sources other than the given textbook to learn Japanese, and I'm just getting frustrated with my lack of progress and difficulty of the course load .

It's understandable that you're getting frustrated, especially if after reading grammatical explanations/example sentences it seems no clearer than before. I firmly believe that a student can understand any concept so long as it's explained to them in the right light, but as individuals it's often very hard to find the right examples and words that will finally make something click into place. Many people that have trouble understanding how something is used when just presented with examples, are able to get the hang of it by using it yourself. Have you tried using the grammar in sentences of your own creation, in conversations, etc? If you can learn how to express with it, things should fall into place.

If the explanations of textbooks, teachers, and grammar resources, and using it yourself aren't helping much, then the best course of action is usually to ignore the grammar for the time being, and just let yourself be exposed to it. It may take seeing it dozens of times before it finally clicks, but I promise you that it eventually will

I really want to be able to try and use grammar points in sentences, but I'm always scared to do so because I don't know anyone who will willingly correct the sentences if they're wrong. I'm afraid to right a ton using incorrect grammar and then nail incorrect grammar usage into my head, making it sound "right" even though it's actually "wrong."

Japanese class has the effect of sometimes making me feel like a pretty smart kid, or like my hard work is paying off, and other times it makes me feel super discouraged, stupid, and useless. >_<;;

I think the biggest compliment I ever got was my teacher asking me if my mom spoke Japanese to me as a kid (im half), cause my grammar is (relatively?) good, so he thought I knew when things sound right / wrong. In reality, I struggle a lot though!

edit: amazed how helpful this forum is and how quick people respond !

Fear is a common problem when learning a foreign language, but you gotta attack it head on! If you don't try to fly you might never fall, but you're sure not going to fly either. Finding a language partner sounds like the best thing for you right now; someone whom you can speak to in Japanese, and will correct any of your mistakes. If you can befriend any of the exchange students at your school that's a wonderful resource, but there's also tons of language exchange resources on the internet. Just be very clear with the person that you want them to correct anything you say that's wrong; people generally won't point out your mistakes otherwise, as it makes them feel bad.

This forum is also a wonderful resource. If you're having trouble with any specific grammar, or want to make sure a sentence is correct, then just post away in the "What's this Word/Phrase" thread and posters will try their best to help you get the hang of it. If you post about the transitive/intransitive issue for example, I'm sure you'd get many elaborate responses explaining it as best as they can

givemeplain Wrote:2. Without learning any specific grammar rules, do you eventually just "absorb" grammar by reading a ton of sentences? Example: "ぞ”　ending is something they did NOT teach us in school, but I've already encountered it a ton of times in the manga. I can guess that it's a masculine-type ending said to someone of a lower status than yourself for emphasis, but I really don't know since I haven't looked it up.

Sort of, and very good level of absorption from reading manga alone, although still a little off. It's not necessarily used towards someone of lower status, but because it is casual and also conveys assertion, in many situations, it may be directed at a person of lower status, but not always.

For example, I would use ぞ when telling my father about a great restaurant I just found. This is appropriate because we are casual (being family), and I am asserting this information to convey my feeling of enthusiasm. But my father is obviously higher status than I am.

Aijin Wrote:It's understandable that you're getting frustrated, especially if after reading grammatical explanations/example sentences it seems no clearer than before. I firmly believe that a student can understand any concept so long as it's explained to them in the right light, but as individuals it's often very hard to find the right examples and words that will finally make something click into place. Many people that have trouble understanding how something is used when just presented with examples, are able to get the hang of it by using it yourself. Have you tried using the grammar in sentences of your own creation, in conversations, etc? If you can learn how to express with it, things should fall into place.

If the explanations of textbooks, teachers, and grammar resources, and using it yourself aren't helping much, then the best course of action is usually to ignore the grammar for the time being, and just let yourself be exposed to it. It may take seeing it dozens of times before it finally clicks, but I promise you that it eventually will

I've found that learning grammar is easier after enough immersion from reading/listening/understanding. It just makes sense once you can understand Japanese to Japanese. Or at least easier, even with an English translation

givemeplain Wrote:I really want to be able to try and use grammar points in sentences, but I'm always scared to do so because I don't know anyone who will willingly correct the sentences if they're wrong. I'm afraid to right a ton using incorrect grammar and then nail incorrect grammar usage into my head, making it sound "right" even though it's actually "wrong."

I found the process of writing to be very useful in learning grammar. I exchange emails with a Japanese friend (who doesn't correct me unless I specifically ask), but if I didn't, I'd write short journal entries or imaginary emails. The point is to construct real, meaningful sentences that are relevant to your life, instead of boring, artificial grammar-point sentences. And it forces you to use random grammar points, so you have to really think about them instead of reeling them off by rote. For anything I'm not sure of I use the DBJG (excellent, clear, nuanced explanations), plus dictionaries and other reference books, so I'm immersed in grammar, but in an interesting way. It feels like a game to me. Sometimes it's really hard, and I know I get things wrong sometimes, but for me it's been a fun and effective way to study grammar. (YMMV.)