Why don't you try cloze deleting sentences from those books. That's what I am doing.

Also, thinking yourself "fluent" makes you worry when you see your faults/holes. It's not your thing, it's a general thing of people thinking themselves fluent just after 3~4 years of actively studying language X.

Last edited by delta (2013 January 03, 1:33 am)

What you need to do is to use grammar the same way that Japanese natives use them.
Study grammar points for the JLPT help you understand grammar points, but to actually use them
you need to hear Japanese natives use them in conversation. Otherwise, you risk using it a non-native manner.

Download some j-drama subtitles and study them.
Not passively, but actively.

For example, since the subtitles are the exact actual words from the actors, it's basically a screenplay.
So actually act out the scenes yourself. Actually read the words aloud and put some feeling into it. Also, try to see if you can figure out the context from just reading the words. Imagine the situation in your mind.

This really helps because the next time you're in a situation in real life, you might be able to recall a scene from drama and use the same grammar. That's what I usually do. I find a similar situation in real life and them pretend I'm acting out a drama scene.

Grab some subtitles from here (or D-addicts):
http://jpsubbers.x10.mx/

Last edited by chamcham (2013 January 03, 4:41 am)

yeah I just MCDs for this problem and it's been working out.
http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?p … 08#p172208
now i have over 2000 cards lol.

basically you have to pay attention every single syllable so for that there's MCD's, reading out loud, memorizing sentences word for word etc etc.

in that thread I mentioned the MCD plugin which is really convenient which is available for anki 2 too.
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3001772895

Last edited by howtwosavealif3 (2013 January 03, 8:36 am)

Thanks everyone for your replies!
I really appreciate them all!
I just got "A Dictionary of Japanese Particles", I'll definitely start working on that. Thank you very much for the recommendation, uisukii!

Do you guys know of any books covering all the basics in a very concise way?
Since I haven't used any textbooks in my studies, I'd like to go through all the basic grammar once more and check if I can actively use it all. However, going through the 600+ pages of the basic Japanese dictionary and / or going through textbooks just looking for the grammar points will probably get boring really fast, so I'm looking for a list or a book, similar to tae kim's guide but more concise covering more stuff.
Is this asking too much, or does something like this exist?

I'm sorry about all the questions, it's just that I really like to study in a systematical way, knowing that I'll cover everything.

Thank you!!

I don't think I said that I haven't studied grammar?
I've studied grammar, using Tae Kim's guide, JLPT grammar books and other resources like 知恵袋 etc. However, up until now I've done so passively only, meaning I've been focusing on recognition only. Even though I can understand very high level Japanese grammar, I can put to use only a small percentage of that, and that I want to change. I want to be able to use more of the grammar I understand passively, so that I can express myself more freely and have more interesting conversations

Last edited by Zorlee (2013 January 04, 8:00 am)

Well, currently I am between JLPT N3 and N2 so your Japanese skills are far beyond mine but I've been thinking about the same lately. I ended up asking myself: how did I learn to speak English (more or less) properly? My native language (Hungarian) and English is very different so I thought Japanese wouldn't be much harder than that. In conclusion my answer is that the same method will do in the case of Japanese too.

I plan to fill out some workbooks, write compositions (short ones for first and a bit more advanced ones step by step) and have them corrected (on lang-8 for example). I remember when I started Japanese and heard about these self-teaching methods I thought that the techniques used in classes were so ineffective but I have realized that they had their own advantages. In class you are forced to use your skills no matter how little you know and you just gradually get more and more confident and acquire new knowledge. If you are in Japan then I guess you can ask a Japanese person to have a little talk with you regularly and check your compositions. You could simply go by the book with typical language learning topics like family, school, eating in and out, sports and so on. You have to try to use your Japanese even if you make mistakes, you have to come out of the comfort zone, you have to push yourself. I learnt German a few years ago and I realized quite soon that if I wrote my compositions directly in German I didn't try to use phrases I couldn't use properly. So for a while I wrote my compositions in Hungarian and then translated them into German. In the beginning I had so many mistakes, the whole paper was filled with red. But from the corrections I learnt the correct forms of those phrases and I always tried to use them in my following compositions. And I did the same in my conversations, of course. You always have to put the bar higher than your actual knowledge.

Honestly, I think SRSing, filling out empty spaces and brackets won't get you far as far as production is concerned. You have to start using Japanese for real and exert yourself. Write and speak as much as you can, and always aim a bit higher than your skills to learn something new.

Actually, the most important reason behind this post is that I wanted to use my English a bit Nevertheless it also helped to summarize my thoughts on this topic. I hope it was somewhat useful for you too

EDIT: structuring

Last edited by gombost (2013 January 04, 6:53 pm)