> @gibosi
> The problem with doing that is you may get 3000~4000 words along
> with the kanji readings, but absolutely no context to put them in. 
> Nothing to differentiate the many words that have similar or same
> meanings, and no idea how those words are actually used in the
> language.  It must be quite hard going when you've got little to
> hook those words on.

This would be true if I wasn't reading at the same time.  I think most of us would agree that after completing RTK1, a best practice is to begin to read immediately.  Reading some Japanese every day and using RTK2 to build vocabulary is working quite well for me.  I am seeing many of the words I have learned in my reading.  And yes, reading helps me to understand something of the range of uses, meanings and subtleties of the words I am learning.

At the beginning my vocabulary was very small and reading was very laborious and difficult.  However, using RTK2 as a mechanism to build vocabulary (and in some sense more fully "own" the kanji) has made a big difference in my comprehension and speed.  My reading is still often agonizingly slow, but I am improving... little by little...  徐々に... 

Again, there is no one best way or best tool that will work for everyone.  It is obvious just from reading this thread that there are many ways to proceed.  For me the structure provided by RTK2 has proven to be very useful.

tokyostyle wrote:

It's not basic because it's easy, it's basic because it's super important!

Oh right! That's a relief. I certainly got that impression anyway. I can't go a block of text without seeing some of the stuff he teaches. But I'll certainly branch out into other stuff people consider more advanced eventually if that's what's needed.

Oh about the JLPT vocab lists. I just finished going through one of the pre set sample lists with Anki (318 words) but I can't seem to find the remaining 400-500 for level 4. Here's what's available:



Is it the JLPT 3+4 I'm after?

EDIT - And here's a side question about this sentence that just came up in my SRS. I think it looks weird, can anybody explain it to me?

アメリカに来てから今日で三年になる。

I literally translate it as:

"America (to) come(and) from today (at) 3 years (will be)."

The translation from A Dict. on Basic Grammar:

"It's been 3 years since I came to America."

It's the から that confuses me. Having "to" and "from" in the same way like that seems strange.

Last edited by Virtua_Leaf (2008 April 18, 12:44 pm)

Ryuujin27 wrote:

The 来てから means "after coming". So it's kind of like after coming to america, I have been here for three years. Better translated less literally the way you had it though.

から applied to て forms of verbs imply a sense of "after that action, something something"

At least that's what I think. I may be wrong though, but I'm at least 90% on this.

Ahh... so it's grammar I haven't touched on. I was thinking 来てから could've been a set phrase or something.

Thanks.

It did actually! I'll put those in my SRS.

Virtua_Leaf wrote:

Virtua_Leaf wrote:

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/2544/jlpthelpwt1.png

Does anyone know about this yet? I tried 3+4 but, annoyingly, most of them are ones I've already done in the 4 file. Does this mean I'll have to put the rest in manually? How did you guys study your JLPT lists?

According to page three of a thread on this forum called "Anki?" under the learning resources section, the premade decks are said to be deliberately incomplete to encourage users to make their own customized definitions.  It looks like a member here called resolve made the full decks available on his website, but now his site appears to be completely down.  I guess you might have to enter them all manually after all.  Sounds like a pain, but then again, I still haven't tried an SRS.