but I'm not quite sure what order to use them in once I finish RTK.

I have and am planning to use:

Genki I + workbook (will get Genki II soon as well)
Japanese the Manga Way
An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese

AND I would like to use either KiC, Core or KO. I don't know which is more difficult though, is it KO -> Core -> KiC?

I also have (but am probably just going to use as a reference for now):
All About Particles
Japanese Grammar (Barron's)

Sorry for making a thread that's probably similar to millions of others, I'm just a bit stuck in regards to difficulty of the textbooks, as it's hard for a sort-of-beginner to judge. I was planning on going Genki I -> Genki II -> Japanese the Manga Way (would be good for sentence mining I think) -> and then a sentence deck & Intermediate Japanese together.

My overall aim is to, obviously, become 'fluent' or 'proficient' in Japanese. However, on a short term scale, I want to do the JLPT N4 in December.

I could go over what I liked/didn't like about Core/KO (I'm not really a textbook person...), but I think I'll just link to the best overview I've found on the subject. The only advice I'll give is to try out a lot of methods, to see which works for you, which doesn't, which motivates you, and which makes you bored.

KO is significantly more difficult than CORE. See my posts on the subject on this page:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid129534

As for what to do next, I definitely agree with "try lots and find one that sticks". I went RtK > tae kim > core2000 > KO2001, but have tried many other things too - it took a while to find the routine that worked for me.

@bokusenou: Thanks, I've read that before but it's good to read now that I'm actually thinking about moving on to things like that. (: The overview of KO was very helpful.

@aphasiac: Thank you, that's very helpful too -- am having a good read of these posts now, perhaps I will go for Core to begin with when I reach that stage and see how it goes.

This is a really hard concept to grasp until you've done it, so I don't blame you for posting:

Do them in whatever order feels best.

Yes, use your feelings to encourage intellectual growth. If you'd doing JtMW and feel bored or lost, switch to something else. If you're doing Genki and feel like it's beneath you, switch to something else.

If what you are doing doesn't feel right, don't do it. Do something else.

Nobody can tell you what to do in the 'right order'. There is no 'right order'.

I think after Genki 1 and 2, JTMW would be too easy. It would prob be better to look up the grammar points in JTMW as they come up in Genki

If your aiming for JLPTN4 I would start with the core 2000 as you want to be learning the more common words first.

I can only tell you how i do it, and encourage you, to find your way. I did げんき 1, RTK, and last month started with げんき 2, been slacking off ... and will be done by next week. The next book will be An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, and doing some Subs2SRS of some old Anime.

I also do Basic Japanese Sentence Structures, Basic Kanji Book 1 + 2, Handbook of Japanese Adjectives + Adverbs, and some others.

Currently i'm also planning on MAYBE doing Japanese For Everyone - not sure, mabye just sentence mining, and vocab.

So, i agree with all the others - just try out as many things, and stick to what's working when you find something. Because there is no right or wrong to go about learning, just better and not so good ways. But that depends on how you are learning.

Genki I/II and JtMW cover similar material (I think), but Genki has exercises while JtMW doesn't. I wouldn't recommend doing both of them.

Then again, my studying is really kind of odd. So. I pull vocab from the, er, hypothetical books in the innocent thread about books, and I divided the grammar by N-whatever and am working my way through the DOxJG. I read the sections, and then I add the sentences to Anki using the ginormous deck of doom.

It's simple, I don't have to manually add much, and I enjoy learning vocab from what I want to read. I'm also not studying for the JLPT, I just figured it was a practical way of ordering things. My focus is on reading for now, not writing/others, so my method is tailored to that.

I wrote two detailed posts on what I would recommend in the thread below. KO would probably be too difficult if you haven't studied any grammar points yet.
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7449

As for the JLPT, you'll definitely want to do something like Core to improve your listening skills. You could suspend the entire deck and then manually unsuspend the words you want to focus on, i.e. the JLPT vocab. If you did RTK, you should be good on kanji.

KO is simply vocab and a good way to learn kanji readings. Very useful for two things: the way it orders kanji, and the vocab it suggests. The sentences it offers are too long and tediously dull.

Genki I/II will teach you grammar, some vocab, and listening (if you use the CDs/workbooks.) Also useful. Genki is the only one of the lot that has exercises (except for the intermediate book, but you don't sound like you're at the intermediate level yet.)

EDIT: Actually, KO has exercises, too. You can do those as well if you like.

JtMW is useful for explaining things that Genki skips.

Given that, if I was just starting, and I had just finished RTK, here's what I'd do per "chapter:"

Take some material from Genki, stick the fill-in-blank stuff in my deck as exercises. Get the Genki answer book, and OCR it. Saves you a ton of hassle. OCR a bunch of repetitive drill exercises from Genki to help conjugate verbs, adjectives, etc. Cloze deletion is your friend, because it makes you think. (This is why I never liked Smart.fm or whatever.)

Take N kanji (N = however many you want to do per chapter, just follow the KO order) and their vocab words from KO. Get sentences from somewhere else because the KO sentences are brutally long and way too hard for a beginner. Stick enough of them in sentences in the deck so that you remember the words. I usually put in 3 sentences per word. You could always steal some from Core, or yahoo.co.jp's dictionary.

Have a look at JtMW, see if there are any useful examples in the material it offers that overlaps with what's in Genki. Is it better than Genki at showing examples of whatever it is in Genki? Are the examples more interesting? If so, use them over Genki.

Something like that.

When you finish Genki, move on to the Intermediate book.

I did...

Genki 1
RTK
KO2001 + DOJG to define grammar from KO2001
Kanzen 2kyu

supplemented with lots of random reading of websites/manga/books and watching japanese tv

make sure your having fun too, don't burn yourself out. Do a little per day/have a lot of fun.

I'm too tired to reply properly right now, I just wanted to say thank you everyone for all of your help and I'll reply individually/in more detail when I can.

I didn't think of using genki and jtmw side by side, that's a really good idea.

Get ready for a bunch of stupid questions hopefully I've quoted everyone properly and not missed someone out...

wccrawford Wrote:This is a really hard concept to grasp until you've done it, so I don't blame you for posting:
...
Nobody can tell you what to do in the 'right order'. There is no 'right order'.

Thanks, I know that there's nothing set in stone. Just was trying to work out things in terms of difficulty.

caivano Wrote:I think after Genki 1 and 2, JTMW would be too easy. It would prob be better to look up the grammar points in JTMW as they come up in Genki

If your aiming for JLPTN4 I would start with the core 2000 as you want to be learning the more common words first.

Looking at it now, I can see what you mean. I hadn't thought of using them together, but why not. I'll probably end up doing that as variety can never hurt. Thanks!
Does core 2000 contain a lot of common words, then?

Nagareboshi Wrote:I can only tell you how i do it, and encourage you, to find your way. smile I did げんき 1, RTK, and last month started with げんき 2, been slacking off ... and will be done by next week. The next book will be An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, and doing some Subs2SRS of some old Anime.
...
So, i agree with all the others - just try out as many things, and stick to what's working when you find something. Because there is no right or wrong to go about learning, just better and not so good ways. But that depends on how you are learning. wink

I've done a bit of genki I, but I've stopped until I finish RTK. Thank you for your input, it's nice to know what other people do

nohika Wrote:Then again, my studying is really kind of odd. So. I pull vocab from the, er, hypothetical books in the innocent thread about books, and I divided the grammar by N-whatever and am working my way through the DOxJG.

I'm sorry, but I really didn't understand this bit D:

prink Wrote:I wrote two detailed posts on what I would recommend in the thread below. KO would probably be too difficult if you haven't studied any grammar points yet.
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7449

As for the JLPT, you'll definitely want to do something like Core to improve your listening skills. You could suspend the entire deck and then manually unsuspend the words you want to focus on, i.e. the JLPT vocab. If you did RTK, you should be good on kanji.

I'll have a good read of those posts when I can. I've studied some grammar points already and by the time I want to do sentence decks I want to have at least a basic grasp of grammar.
As for suspending what I need, that's a good idea. How do I know what vocab will be used in the JLPT? Probably another stupid question on my part

rich_f Wrote:KO is simply vocab and a good way to learn kanji readings. Very useful for two things: the way it orders kanji, and the vocab it suggests. The sentences it offers are too long and tediously dull.

...

Have a look at JtMW, see if there are any useful examples in the material it offers that overlaps with what's in Genki. Is it better than Genki at showing examples of whatever it is in Genki? Are the examples more interesting? If so, use them over Genki.

Something like that.

When you finish Genki, move on to the Intermediate book.

Hmm, if KO is considered quite boring, I might use core instead then.

What exactly is cloze deletion?

Thank you for the informative post, you've been really helpful. I don't really have anything else to ask because you've been very clear and I will most likely take away some good ideas of how to use genki, sentence decks and jtmw from your post. I just feel bad for doing such a short reply! Thanks

kainzero Wrote:I did...

Genki 1
RTK
KO2001 + DOJG to define grammar from KO2001
Kanzen 2kyu

supplemented with lots of random reading of websites/manga/books and watching japanese tv

How's that working out for you?

ta12121 Wrote:make sure your having fun too, don't burn yourself out. Do a little per day/have a lot of fun.

Heh, I'm going to try my best. Will be trying to fit it round work, which doesn't help with the 'fun' bit. Though I actually find studying fun, so whatever.
I'm starting uni in September though, so I'll have a lot more free time to work on Japanese and have fun with it.
But yes, thank you ta12121 (:

Cloze deletion is a fancy way of saying Fill In The Blank. Anki makes it pretty easy to create these kinds of cards, though-- you take the sentence you want to turn into a Cloze card, and put the bit want to turn into a ____ (Or [...] is how it shows up in Anki) into square brackets. []

It does the rest for you, IIRC. There should be a tutorial on the Anki site.

For things like verbs, you might do something like this:

Q: 私はとなりの人にたばこを[...]ました。 （吸う）（受身）

A: 私はとなりの人にたばこを吸われました。
I was annoyed with the person sitting next to me for smoking.

Here I've put the verb I want to change into its dictionary form （吸う）, and the tense I want to change it into in parentheses next to it (受身形).

Of course, you could just slop through it and ignore the sentence and just see （吸う） and (受身) and just do it that way, but then you kind of cheat yourself of the point of doing the exercise.

As for KO, here's a good example of one of the *early* KO sentences. Can you guess the kanji being tested?

日本は外国からたくさん材木を輸入している。

Yes, as you thought, it's 木. Obvious, right? The problem is, in order to learn 木, you also need to learn 材木 and 輸入 early on as well. It's kind of like piling on. >_>a

That's why the Kore deck makes a lot of sense, because it's all sorted so you don't introduce a lot of stuff, you don't know yet, and keep it to i+1.

I didn't know you could do that with anki, that's a neat trick. Well, I've learnt something new today Maybe I should spend some time looking at the anki documentation!

That's an interesting way of combining sentences and conjugations, rather than just 'this is what it is.' I prefer to make my brain think a bit as well. However, like you said, I'd be tempted to cheat... I'd just have to have a bit of self discipline, I guess.

rich_f Wrote:As for KO, here's a good example of one of the *early* KO sentences. Can you guess the kanji being tested?

日本は外国からたくさん材木を輸入している。

Yes, as you thought, it's 木. Obvious, right? The problem is, in order to learn 木, you also need to learn 材木 and 輸入 early on as well. It's kind of like piling on. >_>a

All I can say is: dear god. I can see why people complain about the KO sentences now.

Thanks again!

Tykkylumi Wrote:

nohika Wrote:Then again, my studying is really kind of odd. So. I pull vocab from the, er, hypothetical books in the innocent thread about books, and I divided the grammar by N-whatever and am working my way through the DOxJG.

I'm sorry, but I really didn't understand this bit D:

Sorry, I used a bunch of random terminology. xD I'll explain more. There's a thread on this forum that's called "an innocent thread about 日本語 books" where you can find a bunch of um, totally innocent links. Anyways. I acquired over 5,000 Japanese novels in .txt form - you can open them in notepad.

Anki has a plug-in called Yomichan created by Foosoft, who's a member of this forum. Once you set it up, you can pull vocabulary from the .txt files and if you set up Yomichan to do so, you can have it automatically create cards once you click on a button by the definition you want to save. That's where I get all my vocabulary.

N-whatever is basically the JLPT or Japanese Language Proficiency Test, and it's measured in 5 levels - N5, is the lowest, and N1, being the highest. There are lists out there that sort grammar by their "N" level, and so I made a word document, listed all the vocab from the source I'm using, and sorted it by the N-level.

The DOxJG is basically a series of three books, which probably someday you will want to pick up. It's Dictionary of (Basic, Intermediate, Advanced) Japanese Grammar. They are literally dictionaries of Japanese grammar in English with of course Japanese explanations. There is a huge deck of all three books in Anki.

Basically what I do, is I go through my grammar list (all from the Basic dictionary right now), decide on a section, read carefully through it, and then unsuspend the sentences from the Anki deck and SRS them, making sure I remember them. I don't use close deletion, but then again, my goals are different than producing right now.

Hopefully that explains stuff. Sorry for being so vague!

Tykkylumi Wrote:

kainzero Wrote:I did...

Genki 1
RTK
KO2001 + DOJG to define grammar from KO2001
Kanzen 2kyu

supplemented with lots of random reading of websites/manga/books and watching japanese tv

How's that working out for you?

It's working fine! Thanks!


Okay, I'll stop with the sarcasm.

Genki 1: I took 2 semesters at a local community college. Tuition was cheap at about $100 per semester and it was a good way to get a basic exposure to the language.

RTK: Cramming all the radicals. Helps me recognize kanji instead of wondering what the radical is or how to look it up in the dictionary.

KO2001 + DOJG: I liked it. rich_f thinks that KO2001 are boring or too difficult. I think that once you get used to it, the difficulty goes down. Sure you spend lots of time in the beginning but I think it's all the same anyway. The sentences are also pretty clean and clear, whereas natural sentences might be extremely long and throw in 5 different grammar points. Also, I think sentences are boring anyway no matter the source, especially in SRS. I've ripped out sentences from novels and websites and dramas and yeah, I get it, Hodoukubo is the area between the plains of Kantou and the hills of Tamakyuuryou, or the game tournament changed from SF4 to Tekken 6, or that you secretly cleaned the wall to help your cousin... the sentences don't get any more exciting the more you SRS it, especially isolated like that =)

(At least that's my opinion.)

Kanzen 2kyu Grammar: Mostly just to pass N2 (or N1 depending on how much I improve this year). You'll certainly bump into a lot of grammar when reading native material, but I'd rather just DOJG that. This book also became a lot easier while going through KO2001.

kainzero Wrote:Genki 1: I took 2 semesters at a local community college. Tuition was cheap at about $100 per semester and it was a good way to get a basic exposure to the language.

;; I wanna go to your college...our community college here is, er, more expensive than that, plus they do quarters. My current four-year uni doesn't even offer Japanese. Blech. Though at this point, I dunno if I'd even take it if they did.

Tykkylumi Wrote:How do I know what vocab will be used in the JLPT?

There are a lot of options. Here's one I know of offhand.
http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/jlpt5/vocab/

prink Wrote:

Tykkylumi Wrote:How do I know what vocab will be used in the JLPT?

There are a lot of options. Here's one I know of offhand.
http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/jlpt5/vocab/

Also remember they can pull like 20% or something of the vocab/grammar from other sources. I think.

I did KO book 1 with the sentences in the book, and got as far as ~600 in book 2 before I decided to change. Reviews were taking longer than I liked, and the sentences themselves just weren't doing it for me anymore.

It's a personal preference thing. You're going to learn the vocab eventually. It's just a question of how/when you're going to learn it. I got sick of having to cram in a bunch of vocab out-of-order from the example sentences... but the extra vocab IS useful, I'll admit.

My main problem was that the sentences themselves were just too long, and bogged down reviews. So I grab sentences/fragments that are short and lend themselves to speedy reviews. I mostly use the yahoo dictionary and alc.

Otherwise, I'd keep the order/vocab of KO in general. It's a good way to knock out kanji.

Kore is another way to go about doing it-- you can plug the sentences/audio into KO order. The sentences are shorter/easier, plus you get audio.

Discussion/Homepage links to Kore (you can sort it into KO order as well):
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5091
https://sites.google.com/site/ankinihongo/home/kore

nohika Wrote:

kainzero Wrote:Genki 1: I took 2 semesters at a local community college. Tuition was cheap at about $100 per semester and it was a good way to get a basic exposure to the language.

;; I wanna go to your college...our community college here is, er, more expensive than that, plus they do quarters. My current four-year uni doesn't even offer Japanese. Blech. Though at this point, I dunno if I'd even take it if they did.

it used to be $80, but then there was a california budget crisis and they bumped it up to $110 (despite LOTS of protest).

heh. =)

i decided to re-enroll, skipping japanese 3 and going straight to 4. it's actually very useful to have a teacher. even though some of the stuff we're learning is very basic and very slow, having a teacher as a reference is great. i always ask her questions after class on N2 grammar =)

kainzero Wrote:it used to be $80, but then there was a california budget crisis and they bumped it up to $110 (despite LOTS of protest).

heh. =)

i decided to re-enroll, skipping japanese 3 and going straight to 4. it's actually very useful to have a teacher. even though some of the stuff we're learning is very basic and very slow, having a teacher as a reference is great. i always ask her questions after class on N2 grammar =)

...I am beyond jealous. xD It was about 1000 at my CC for a standard 15-CR quarter, or three classes. My current four-year is about 4300 just for tuition. Course, compared to multiple other colleges, it's hecka cheap.

I can imagine it'd be useful...hrm. I can't really afford it. xD Besides, my best friend is a native speaker and although she's an idiot sometimes and quite full of herself, she's pretty good to ask.

Oh. I was just referring to Japanese class. I have no idea how much 15 credits would cost.

I'm still paying the $17k+ loan for my university tuition, and I graduated in 2006.