I think I know just the book for you.
Read Real Japanese. It has short writings of eight writers in japanese, romaji, translation, and explanation on some grammar.
I would tell you more, but I can't seem to find mine right now.. =/

Here some link though:
http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese...4770029365

That book looks great and is just what I was looking for.
Thanks a lot alantin! :-)

i just lost my very informative and thorough post that i was typing for you all by pressing the shitty backspace too many times and it all got lost so now im sulking.
so in brief
if you want
1 example sentances
2 flex your kanji via understanding them like suffix/prefix

check out

building word power in japanese by timothy j vance (power japanese series i think)

cant even be arsed to link it to amazon im that p***sed. had a nice little excerpt as well.

undo

hey cmon im not that stupid...when i meant i pressed the backspace key too many times I meant it deleted some characters as i wish and then performed the keyboard shortcut to go back to the previously viewed webpage. Trying to go forward yielded nada...

thanks for the "windows for dummies" tip though ;-)

Aye, that's happened to me a few more times than I care to remember. I like it best when you go for SHIFT then hit CNTL instead and do some random shortcut myself.

[ファブリス]

Out of topic: regarding the last posts, this got me thinking there is probably a Firefox plugin that makes filling forms more "secure", I'm at work so I don't have time to check now. I know how annoying it can be, when browsers were more buggy just typing in that damn textbox could crash! So sometimes I typed into Notepad and then copy/paste.

thegeezer3 Wrote:hey cmon im not that stupid...when i meant i pressed the backspace key too many times I meant it deleted some characters as i wish and then performed the keyboard shortcut to go back to the previously viewed webpage. Trying to go forward yielded nada...

thanks for the "windows for dummies" tip though ;-)

In Safari it won't lose the contents if you go back and then forward again. Backspace also doesn't function as back when a textbox has focus

I wouldn't suggest running it on Windows though, hearing about how buggy the Windows port is (being a beta and all).

I just recently decided to try the method. So far I am using these sources for sentences:

http://jisho.org/ - easy to find lots of example sentences for any word.

Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication: A Self-Study Course and Reference. - Can't recommend this book enough. 142 essential sentence patterns of progressive difficulty, each with plenty of examples.

A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. - For every grammar point there are example sentences.

The Complete Japanese Verb Guide. - For every verb, 5 example sentences. Shame its in Romaji.

EDIT: For clarification

vosmiura Wrote:I just recently decided to try the method. So far I am using these sources for sentences:

http://jisho.org/ - easy to find lots of example sentences for any word.

As has been said may times those sentences may contain errors. It is not the safest place to take them from.

Do you mean jisho.org, or any of those sources? I certainly did find errors in some of jisho.org's example sentences. Fortunately I have someone who can validate them for me.

vosmiura Wrote:Do you mean jisho.org, or any of those sources?

Aye, please clarify on this: I most definitely do not want to inscribe faulty sentences into my brain.

Sorry just jisho.org I quoted wrong and will edit.

This is really pointing out the obvious but... AJATT says "input before output", however it begins by advising that you should finish RTK1 first, which is all output before input. There is really no one rule fits all, and there's no denying that "production" is very effective for remembering the kanji.

vosmiura Wrote:This is really pointing out the obvious but... AJATT says "input before output", however it begins by advising that you should finish RTK1 first, which is all output before input. There is really no one rule fits all, and there's no denying that "production" is very effective for remembering the kanji.

I don't think RTK1 is output in the sense the AJATT site means. Output there means Japanese output in the forms of speaking or writing. Just writing single characters does not clarify as writing Japanese, anymore than writing random letters from the alphabet means you're writing English, French, Spanish or any other language...

Well, if you want to differentiate it like that then yes, although if you just know the alphabet you can't make sense of any written English, French, Spanish, etc. whereas Kanji have meaning, and IMO they're a lot more like learning vocab out of context than learning an alphabet.

Learning Kanji out of context doesn't make you fluent at anything, but this divide and conquer approach to learning them sure gives a big leg up in getting to reading and writing fluency. I may be wrong, but the same probably applies to other parts of the language too.

I can't believe it took me so long to notice this, but for fellow AJATTers, don't forget to switch the interface language for your SRS over to Japanese!

I scared myself a little today - I was playing around with switching over to a monolingual dictionary, which I'd say I'm rather overdue for, and I caught myself instinctively switching input modes - input kanji, input kana, *switch* input definition. What an obnoxious habit. I can't wait to be rid of it.

shaydwyrm Wrote:I can't believe it took me so long to notice this, but for fellow AJATTers, don't forget to switch the interface language for your SRS over to Japanese!

:o !That's just so obvious! :o

Can't believe I haven't done that!

I have recently found this site, which looks pretty sweet for 10,000 sentences method

http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji_jukugo.php

can anyone confirm that the sentences there are good?

I really don't understand all this sentence collecting people have gotten in the habit of doing and frankly it is starting to grate on my nerves. Every time I say "sentence" these days, I cringe, and that is a problem. So now I am going to vent a bit.

For the record I love the AJATT site because it is motivational. I don't care about the "AJATT method" in itself. I study Japanese the way I want and just go to the AJATT site when I need a little push. Sometimes I wonder if people following the "AJATT method" even bother to read the site at all or if they just read the post they want then decide that is "the method" and get to work.

I think he makes a good point in this post. In particular the part where he says:

Khatzumoto Wrote:Remember, selectivity is key. Your goal is not to collect every sentence to which you have access, your goal is to collect sentences that are interesting to you. Think of it like baseball cards or stamps: unlike Pokemons, you don?t have to get them all. You only want the cool ones. Only pick sentences that are interesting to you at that moment. Only pick sentences that contain something you REALLY, ACTIVELY want to learn immediately. Not something you think you ?should? learn. Not something that you think you ?have to? learn. But something you really really really want to learn RIGHT NOW. RIGHT HERE. Those are the sentences you should pick to enter into your SRS. There are too many sentences even in a single dictionary for you to pick them all. Only pick the ones you care about right then. And feel free to change your mind ? maybe yesterday, you wanted to learn that sentence, but today you can?t be bothered. Throw it out, find something cooler, and enter that cooler sentence into your SRS.

Studying Japanese is not a shopping spree at "Sentence Depot" or collecting MP3s from "The Sentence Bay", but that is what the followers of the "AJATT method" seem to make it out to be. They focus on the 10000 sentence goal and just try to collect that many en masse. I think understanding the difference between what is being suggested and what some people are doing is important. The bottom line here is that simply collecting 10000 sentences is not going to net you "Japanese fluency in 18 months".

Proponents of the "AJATT method" themselves are sometimes guilty of making the site out to be the be all end all answer to study, some sort of miracle spring water. This, in turn, feeds the opponents who love to focus on how the "AJATT method" is input-centric at the expense of output. They complain about how collecting sentences is a lame way to study, and in a major way they are correct. All the while, so many people ignore the fact that the guy took his college notes in Japanese and that he had Japanese friends at college for conversation practice and error correction. That sounds like output to me, and pretty serious output at that. He says in several places on his site that its not input only but its output too just in baby steps.

The key to understanding the "AJATT method" is to understand that it is actually the "Be Diligent To Your Studies And Study Through Media That Interests You Method". The only thing new to the plate here from what has been said for years by followers of the "BDTYSASTMTIY method" is that you use an SRS to reinforce those things that you want to commit to Long Term Memory.

It is not a religion people, its just common sense advice and should be treated as such.

I don't seem to be getting the same impression that you are getting. I certainly don't think anyone here is ONLY using sentences or is under any illusion that shoving 10,000 sentences into an srs is going to get them to fluency. (at least I hope).
Studying sentences is a good supplement to increasing Japanese ability, along with other techniques.

As for "shopping at the sentence depot," I don't do or recommend that at all. I get way more of my sentences from actual Japanese media, but if I need to learn specific vocabulary lists (for JLPT etc.) then dictionaries and other resources with example sentences are a great place to quickly find an example with that word. If all I used were these type of resources, I'd get bored very fast, and never get anywhere.
For beginners, even Katzumoto says to use beginner Japanese-English dictionaries with example sentences, so its not as if you should never use these types of resources.

You make a good point, but I think (hope) everyone realizes that sentences are not the end-all-be-all for Japanese.

uberstuber Wrote:can anyone confirm that the sentences there are good?

I have been using the website last couple of days. Sentences seem pretty decent (i have five plus years of japaense grammer) and nice thing is you can choose one kanji and get a lot of voc for that one kanji

vosmiura Wrote:This is really pointing out the obvious but... AJATT says "input before output", however it begins by advising that you should finish RTK1 first, which is all output before input. There is really no one rule fits all, and there's no denying that "production" is very effective for remembering the kanji.

I think many are missing the point of the site. Its not about "10,000 this or that" or "input before output". Its about immersing yourself in Japanese.

From what I have seen he only listened to Japanese music,only watched Japanese movies or TV, wrote only in Japanese when he had the option and only talked Japanese when he had the option to. He spent every moment he could learning Japanese by forcing himself to only use that language and live only in a "Japanese" environment where ,if what I read is correct, he even switched his diet to a Japanese one.

If you immerse yourself in the environment of any language, as he did, then it only follows that input would out pace output. I see and hear more English in one day then I output in a week everyone (in an English speaking country) does unless they live under a rock. (or you are a 16year old girl with a cell phone)

What I got from the site is ......the more you immerse yourself in a language then the faster you'll "pick it up" no matter what method you choose to use to learn with.

EDIT: as a side note once I started trying this AJATT "method" by watching tons of Japanese TV (I Just leave TV Japan on all day or watch a few movies sans subtitles) I noticed one day that I could finally speak the Japanese "R". It was kinda strange I could just say it right and now I wonder how come I couldn't get it before its so easy.

Your mileage may vary but I though that was kinda cool!