皆さん、こんばんは。

I have been working through the textbook JFE (Japanese For Everyone) for about half a year now, and I am at the half way point in that textbook. I find that for most of the "functions" that the textbook introduces, I am looking up relevant entries in the DOBJG (Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar). I love JFE, it is a really great textbook, but I also love DOBJG. Which got me thinking... why don't I just work through DOBJG now that I have covered the very basics? Work through it entry by entry, putting it into Anki. I am at a level of Japanese where for most sentences in DOBJG, I can understand everything in the sentence except the grammar point being introduced, which would have been impossible if I hadn't done half of JFE already. So this idea of working through DOBJG alphabetically, start to finish, is very tempting.


But at the same time, I am worried I'm missing out by not completing the textbook. I plan to do KORE (Core 2k+6k) as the next step, but still, is not completing this textbook going to disadvantage me somehow? I have been so pumped up about pushing through with JFE to the end by the end of December, but I realize that I am looking up DOBJG a great deal now.

I feel really 困った at the moment! I love DOBJG - the thing I love is that the explanations are so lucid and clear that there is no confusion at all. I just don't know what to do right now - finish JFE, or follow my gut feeling and work through DOBJG from start to end? Thanks for any アドバイス!

The advantage of JFE is the dialogues, exercises and intuitive manner that the grammar is taught. I have to agree, I pull out my DOBJG a great deal as well, but mostly as a reference for an unknown grammar piece, or if I am unsatisfied with an explanation.

It's probably best to finish JFE, then if you want to run through DOBJG after that to see what else is in there great. I would find just going through grammar from point to point from A to Z very dry and boring, and without exercises and dialogues, I'm stuck with only the sentence I run across.

If you plowing through JFE that fast anyways, just finish the book! You won't regret finishing it, and if anything, doing DOBJG mining after will let you have 2 books fully completed instead of stopping one half way through, which I never like if I am using quality material.

Yeah, finish JFE, and just make a checklist of everything you've done in it compared to the DoBJG. Then hit the things you didn't cover in it from JFE.

Then you can go get the DoIJG.

To note - there's already a humongous deck on Anki that HAS all the sentence from DOxxJG (all three of them). So you wouldn't have to type the bajillion sentences up. (Over 8500 of them).

I don't know why, but I hate working through the DoBJG. Going from A to Z (あ～わ？） feels really dry and systematic.

With a textbook or study guide, it (kinda) follows some logical order with grammar, and I refer to the dictionary for each point. That's what I'm doing with Kanzen Master 2kyu. In addition, if there are grammar points that stick out when I watch TV or read manga, I look it up and then add it.

I'd finish JFE first.

Thanks for the input everyone. I've decided to see JFE through to the end. Sometimes I guess it's just frustrating when I cover a point in JFE, look it up and realize there's so much more to learn about that point in DOBJG, but that's what languages are - messy, and you can't win it all right away. So I'll do JFE to the end, then see what happens from there. It's my holidays right now and for the last 2 weeks I've been doing pretty much Japanese all the time. Maybe I'm just a bit burnt out, but I have things (like release of uni results tomorrow) to get my mind off hehe.

Yeah, I have to agree with kainzero on that. The idea of going through A to Z makes my mind go numb. It's better to go through in some sort of logical progression, grouped by concepts, frequency of use, or something.

I've been using a review book for N2 where the current chapter has all of the こと and もの phrases just dumped in a pile on top of each other, and it makes me want to scream. It would make some sense if there was an explanation of how/why こと and もの worked behind the scenes, but no, no such luck.

Hence the screaming.

vinniram Wrote:Thanks for the input everyone. I've decided to see JFE through to the end. Sometimes I guess it's just frustrating when I cover a point in JFE, look it up and realize there's so much more to learn about that point in DOBJG, but that's what languages are - messy, and you can't win it all right away. So I'll do JFE to the end, then see what happens from there. It's my holidays right now and for the last 2 weeks I've been doing pretty much Japanese all the time. Maybe I'm just a bit burnt out, but I have things (like release of uni results tomorrow) to get my mind off hehe.

Why don't you use both, then?
When you encounter a grammar point in JFE, go over it in DOBJG to see if there's any loose ends.

I'm going through the DIJG Anki Deck (I suspended all of the beginner and advanced cards) and I'm finding it quite helpful for my 2kyuu study. As soon as a new grammar point comes up I'll read about it in the actual book and try and understand the different usages, and then go through all of the sentences in the deck. Rinse and repeat. I started doing this after I finished KO, so I do my KO reviews and DIJG reviews and new cards every day.

I definitely recommend buying the book(s) though- the Anki deck by itself would be hard to comprehend otherwise (and there are quite a few typos in the English and Japanese that might be hard to spot without the book).

I've definitely seen a benefit when it comes to grammar questions on the old tests, which has been one of my weakest points.