I will be mining 実力アップ!日本語能力試験2級漢字単語ドリル UNICOM 2Kyuu book for its logical ordering of kanji, helping me to learn the onyomi and kunyomi readings within the context of learning vocabulary as well.
I was wondering if anyone would have a spreadsheet of material from that book, and be willing to share?
usis35
Member
From: Buenos Aires
Registered: 2007-03-31
Posts: 205
I think that after RTK (or better, after RTK LITE, that is a subset of RTK), you should learn the basics of grammar, like Minna no Nihongo 1 and 2 , or Tae Kim complete. After that one should devote most of the time to learn vocab through sentences, that is the most time demanding part of the Japanese. There are many books mined already. The best way for me, was to set up a deck including KO2001, and then I add my own sentences, from things that I listen or read or examples of grammar points.
rich_f
Member
From: north carolina
Registered: 2007-07-12
Posts: 1708
I have both. The Unicom book is actually very good. It's full of example sentences, it just doesn't bother with English translations. KO2001 has English translations, and a different clustering approach to the kanji. Unicom goes by similar readings, KO2001 goes by groups of 5 kanji that either share similar concepts or are all parts of related words. I like the KO2001 approach, because you don't get confused by 10 different readings for アイ all at the same time.
The only downside to KO2001 is that they dogpile you with a lot of outside vocab in the sentences at first, so you'll need to find a coping strategy. I just looked up the vocab on Yahoo's online JP dictionary, and grabbed a couple of example sentences of words I didn't know, to cover for them. It's worked well so far, but it does slow down the process a bit. The upside is that the outside vocab in the sentences is useful for the most part, and keeps showing up over and over again, so it's worth the trouble.
The vocab in KO2001 is very useful for news and business-related stuff, too. I found that I could follow an NHK special on money-laundering pretty well, thanks to some of the vocab I've picked up from KO2001.
rich_f
Member
From: north carolina
Registered: 2007-07-12
Posts: 1708
The other fun thing is chasing around new words. You'll run across a new word in a sentence, which will lead you to Yahoo, which has another useful new word (sometimes), and before you know it, you're getting some serious vocab going.
The main downside with KO2001 is that the sentences are longer than they really need to be. You can either cut them into chunks, or just find your own sentences online. (As I said before, I chose to deal with them in their entirety.) But the real benefit from KO2001, IMO, is the order in which it presents vocab.
