prink wrote:

Also, be aware that you'll probably be surrounded by people with the mentality of children. I had to switch class periods once, because everyone in the initial section I signed up for were complete morons. Try to figure this out right away and switch asap. My first clue was that people were constantly interrupting to make silly jokes and comments. My second clue was when we broke off into pairs for a conversation exercise and the guy that I got stuck with looked at me, told me he was going to eat my refrigerator in Japanese and then started giggling like a 12-year-old school girl.

It sounds like you were taking class with me... At least I thought it was funny... :-/

@OP, nobody has mentioned this yet, but at my school there were Japanese tutors.  Anyone signed up for a Japanese class had access to 1-on-1 time with a Japanese tutor for two hours every week.  Other students rarely used this amazing opportunity, but I really made the most out of it.  It was really nice.  You can basically talk to them about anything and they will help you with whatever you want to work on.  You should find out if your school offers something like this.

prink wrote:

You constantly interrupted class with obnoxious comments and wasted the time of your classmates? Definitely not funny, especially not when the course costs $2300+ per semester.

I agree with prink. I felt like a lot of class time was wasted with obnoxious comments/ the teacher trying to calm to said people down to continue the lesson. Mind you, all language courses in my community college are two, 3 hour classes/week (6 hours total) consisting of 40-50 people. 15-20 minutes for checking attendance and collecting homework + (x)minutes of interruption = possibly losing 1 hour per class so I guess the 6 hours is generous. That and the costs of tuition.

partner55083777 wrote:

@OP, nobody has mentioned this yet, but at my school there were Japanese tutors.  Anyone signed up for a Japanese class had access to 1-on-1 time with a Japanese tutor for two hours every week.  Other students rarely used this amazing opportunity, but I really made the most out of it.  It was really nice.  You can basically talk to them about anything and they will help you with whatever you want to work on.  You should find out if your school offers something like this.

This is a good idea if there are tutors for your Japanese class. We had 2 Japanese native volunteer tutors back in 101 but 1 moved away and the other decided not to continue volunteering. But while they were around, I always talked to them (mainly sentence structure questions/clarifications).

To add to this, see if you school has a language lab. Like textbook audio CDs, PC Software like Rosetta Stone and such, films (VHS and DVDs), or just use the PCs to watch streaming anime/drama. For every language course, its required that each student does 10 hours in the language lab. I usually spent that time doing homework and watched anime/drama.

I actually have a concern regarding "How to get the most out of a Japanese college course?" for myself.

My class uses a terrible textbook (full of romaji) and I just wanted advice on how to compensate for it. Take a look at the page previews and you'll see what I mean. >_>

http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Japanese-3 … 1878463098

It follows the "desu-masu style". What does that even mean lol

Would using outside resources help? I have "Japanese the Manga Way" book. Would that be alright? Or something more like Genki or Minna no Nihongo books be better because they are a series of textbooks?

RawrPk wrote:

My class uses a terrible textbook (full of romaji) and I just wanted advice on how to compensate for it. Take a look at the page previews and you'll see what I mean. >_>

If you're judging it as terrible based solely on the fact that it uses romaji, don't. 

Jay Rubin, a professor at Harvard who teachers Japanese and translates famous novels, has a nice section in his book "Making Sense of Japanese" about kanji.  He only devotes maybe two pages to kanji and points out that kanji is not Japanese.  And, the truth is, neither is kana. 

There are a million other things to learn in Japanese besides the writing system.  Even if a textbook with kana and kanji is preferrable, it can still be a good textbook in terms of learning the other aspects of Japanese.  The truth is that learning kana is a very small part of the goal of Japanese fluency.  Does the book do other things well?

Genki, for example, has pretty awful dialogues and not-so-great grammar explanations, but uses kana.  Which is more important?

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 August 29, 12:03 am)

Tzadeck wrote:

Genki, for example, has pretty awful dialogues and not-so-great grammar explanations, but uses kana.  Which is more important?

Yeah, the dialogues are shitty, but I liked the grammar explanations. There were only two-three cases where it was a bit confusing.

And romaji makes it hard to understand the mora system, like 千円 has four "syllables" but "senen" makes it seem like it has two...

kainzero wrote:

as for the textbook...
do you know kana or have done RTK?
if you have, you could easily convert the roomaji sentences into kana/kanji and learn them that way.

I do know kana and I'm around 500 kanji into RTK.

Converting the romaji dialogs to kana/kanji was part of our homework assignment. The dialog is only romaji until about Lesson 15. From then on, its Japanese, romaji and English in the beginning of the Lessons. We still have to write the dialogs though for writing practice. All grammar points and most exercises are in romaji.

Tzadeck wrote:

If you're judging it as terrible based solely on the fact that it uses romaji, don't. 

Jay Rubin, a professor at Harvard who teachers Japanese and translates famous novels, has a nice section in his book "Making Sense of Japanese" about kanji.  He only devotes maybe two pages to kanji and points out that kanji is not Japanese.  And, the truth is, neither is kana. 

There are a million other things to learn in Japanese besides the writing system.  Even if a textbook with kana and kanji is preferrable, it can still be a good textbook in terms of learning the other aspects of Japanese.  The truth is that learning kana is a very small part of the goal of Japanese fluency.  Does the book do other things well?

Genki, for example, has pretty awful dialogues and not-so-great grammar explanations, but uses kana.  Which is more important?

The dialogs are ok I guess. I can say for sure the dialogs from the first 10 Lessons were weird but it's gotten better after that. Here is an example from Lesson 15

Lesson 15

山田　　　しゅうまつは、どうでしたか。

ブラウン　とても、たのしかったです。

山田　　　どこかへ、行きましたか。

ブラウン　はい、日曜日に、ともだちといっしょに、とうきょうのかんこうを、しました。

山田　　それは、よかったですね。バスで、行きましたか。

ブラウン　はい、かんこうバスで、行きました。

山田　　どんなところへ、行きましたか。

ブラウン　はじめに、東京タワーに、のぼりました。

山田　　東京タワーから、ふじさんが、見えましたか。

ブラウン　いいえ、きのうは、ふじ山が、見えませんでした。

山田　　それは、ざんねんでしたね!　じゃ、そのほか、どんなところを、見ましたか。

ブラウン　こうきょを見ました。とても、うつくしかったです。それから、うえのや、あさくさにも、行きました。

山田　　ずいぶん、いろいろなところへ、行きましたね!

ブラウン　　はい、だから、かなり、いそがしかったです。

山田　きのうは、さむかったでしょう。

ブラウン　はい、そとは、かなりさむかったですが、バスの中は、ちっとも、さむくありませんでした。東京は、ほんとうに、すばらしいところです。

The grammar points aren't that great but my teacher compensates. She only ever refers to the book when we're covering the dialogs and assigning the exercises. I do like the exercises though. It's simple and gives enough repetition to learn grammar that way like the dialog questions (ex. Where did Brown go this weekend?). Oh, the entire book covers about 200 kanji used for 3 semesters. I'll be starting my 3rd semester next week and will start on Lesson 21.

yudantaiteki wrote:

RawrPk wrote:

It follows the "desu-masu style". What does that even mean lol

Doesn't the book explain what that means?  Or the class?  It sounds like you're not even learning everything the course and book is teaching, so I don't know if going to outside sources is the best idea.

And I agree with the romaji issue -- there's nothing wrong with using kana, but romaji isn't going to kill you.  I didn't even learn kana until I had been studying Japanese for 6 months, but I passed JLPT 1 in less than 5 years.  The idea that romaji will permanently cripple your Japanese is just wrong.

All my teacher has said about the "desu-masu" style its that it's an acceptable form of politeness for people of any age. I guess I wanted a more detailed explanation