http://smart.fm is a good (free) beginners' resource. Just copy & paste a kanji into the search box, select Sentences from the drop-down menu and voila. Just use any of the ones which are marked "created by Cerego". Most of them have full mp3 audio which you can right-click, Save As and add to Anki. Nothing particularly poetic, but it gets the ball rolling.

I also have recently finished RTK1 quite recently (Just a week ago) and this is the route I'm currently starting along with.

1. Review your RTK1 cards.
2. Go to Smart.fm and do a couple Core2000 lessons and Kanji Odyssey along with various interesting Japanese lessons on the way.
3. Do Tae Kim's grammar guide.

Notice that there is currently no sentences there at all. To me, I think it's logical to start with building a good knowledge on vocab and grammar before you start on sentences. Starting on sentences without having any to much knowledge of real Japanese at all is comparable to charging into an unknown territory with only a dictionary to help you out on. If you have spent some time learning a bit of vocab and grammar, it would only logically become much easier to do sentences and you can rely less heavily on those Japanese dictionaries for help on words you don't know. Think of it in a way where you complete a whole jigsaw puzzle without any pieces completed to completing the same puzzle with some pieces completed already for you.

I'm still a novice when it comes to Japanese and haven't really done the path for long term, so you might want to take my advice with a grain of salt.

mafried wrote:

3) As soon as you knock back a basic set of kanji readings and grammar, stop sentence mining.  Or rather, start sentence picking--doing things in Japanese and adding sentences to your SRS from natural sources and only as desired.

That is what sentence mining is. It's to get a book you're interested in and mine it for interesting stuff you didn't know. People who are using nothing but premade sources are the ones who has misunderstood what sentence mining is. Mining is all about finding the GOOD stuff, picking exactly the sentences you need.

I think this is probably the hardest step, switching from RTK to sentancing, because your kind of on your own without a path to follow.   I've decided im going to use "Japanese Sentence patterns....."  to get the grammar down and some vocab.
I tried using the iKnow Core for a week and it bored my senseless,  to go back to what feels like simple rote memorisation after the RTK learning feels like a huge step back.

I will go back to iKnow once im finished this book and sweep it for sentances, i just find it a chore. Its like a bunch of minigames as opposed to a learning tool, and the fact that doing your 10 review things always brings things up in the exact same order fools you into thinking you know something when you don't. its just your brain doing what its been trained to. find a pattern and give you the answer.  so you know the answer without learning it.  so next time it appears your blank on it.  (what i found.. i prob just didnt spend long enough going over each thing)

kinda like rosetta in a way. You will learn that way  after going over and over the word rote style.  which begs the question, how is learning the stuff like this any better than just using a word list.

Maybe im being harsh, i duno.  I'll go back to it once my grammar is of a little higher. See if i can find some enthusiasm for it.

Last edited by Gingerninja (2009 May 02, 8:27 am)

harhol wrote:

http://smart.fm is a good (free) beginners' resource. Just copy & paste a kanji into the search box, select Sentences from the drop-down menu and voila. Just use any of the ones which are marked "created by Cerego". Most of them have full mp3 audio which you can right-click, Save As and add to Anki. Nothing particularly poetic, but it gets the ball rolling.

Oh cool, I didn't know about that resource. Thanks for the tip!

Asriel wrote:

I think that I'm going to take the Kanji Odyssey route. It's said to progress in a very logical manner, and it makes sense and the readings stick with you.

Yeah, I was thinking about getting Kanji Odyssey. But I want to give just plain old sentence mining a shot first.

As for making the readings stick? I haven't really gotten to that point yet, in the sense of Kanji Odyssey. With all the kanji I do know, it's because of exposure to them in different words that I am used to with different readings -- then I can just associate the readings with it.

They just stick, huh? Hmm... maybe I just need more exposure then...

Doorknob wrote:

I also have recently finished RTK1 quite recently (Just a week ago) and this is the route I'm currently starting along with.

1. Review your RTK1 cards.
2. Go to Smart.fm and do a couple Core2000 lessons and Kanji Odyssey along with various interesting Japanese lessons on the way.
3. Do Tae Kim's grammar guide.

Notice that there is currently no sentences there at all. To me, I think it's logical to start with building a good knowledge on vocab and grammar before you start on sentences. Starting on sentences without having any to much knowledge of real Japanese at all is comparable to charging into an unknown territory with only a dictionary to help you out on. If you have spent some time learning a bit of vocab and grammar, it would only logically become much easier to do sentences and you can rely less heavily on those Japanese dictionaries for help on words you don't know. Think of it in a way where you complete a whole jigsaw puzzle without any pieces completed to completing the same puzzle with some pieces completed already for you.

I'm still a novice when it comes to Japanese and haven't really done the path for long term, so you might want to take my advice with a grain of salt.

Yeah, that does make sense, considering that's the way people usually learn languages. But I liked the sound of Khatzumoto's method better, so I really do want to try that first. His method makes a lot of sense too, at least in theory.

mafried wrote:

1) Don't go "sentence mining," except for basic grammar.  Most people here recommend Tae Kim, although there are plenty of other good resources.  Personally I like Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication.
I shouldn't go sentence mining? That kind of contradicts what Khatzumoto suggests.

2) Getting an understanding of grammar and kanji readings are separate goals.  Don't conflate the two.  Since you're having trouble remembering readings, perhaps you should try the movie method.  Best to focus solely on that until completion, then move on to grammar.

That also makes sense, in a traditional learning way.

3) As soon as you knock back a basic set of kanji readings and grammar, stop sentence mining.  Or rather, start sentence picking--doing things in Japanese and adding sentences to your SRS from natural sources and only as desired.

That's really what I want to do from the start. I don't like the idea of downloading premade packs of sentences. The only problem is I don't know how to get the translations of sentences I find on the internet.

EDIT: 4) Never, ever, translate.  Just leave it in Japanese with no translation.  Figure out what it means of course, but don't write down a translation.  Unless your translation comes from an official source, of course.

Okay, so I think I know what that means... but I'm having a hard time understanding how I could figure out what it means. And I guess that's where grammar comes in. But I guess I wanted to learn how to do it in the context of Khatzumoto's method.

Tobberoth wrote:

That is what sentence mining is. It's to get a book you're interested in and mine it for interesting stuff you didn't know. People who are using nothing but premade sources are the ones who has misunderstood what sentence mining is. Mining is all about finding the GOOD stuff, picking exactly the sentences you need.

Right. But what do you do once you find the sentences that you need?

Mafried wrote:

True.  Khatz had a post on this topic a few months back.  IIRC he was discouraged that people were taking premade decks to the extreme and becoming sentence collectors.  Sentence mining had come to mean this other activity of hoarding premade sentences in an SRS and spending all your study time doing reviews.  So he introduced the term "sentence picking" as a way of refering to the original definition of sentence mining.  That was the distinction which I was assuming in my post.

Yeah, "sentence picking" was my original interpretation of what he meant by sentence mining.   
 

Gingerninja wrote:

I think this is probably the hardest step, switching from RTK to sentancing, because your kind of on your own without a path to follow.   I've decided im going to use "Japanese Sentence patterns....."  to get the grammar down and some vocab.
I tried using the iKnow Core for a week and it bored my senseless,  to go back to what feels like simple rote memorisation after the RTK learning feels like a huge step back.

Yeah, it probably is the hardest step, but it's also more exciting to me than learning the Kanji, at the idea is. I don't mind feeling lost... as long as I have at least some inkling of a direction to go in.

I will go back to iKnow once im finished this book and sweep it for sentances, i just find it a chore. Its like a bunch of minigames as opposed to a learning tool, and the fact that doing your 10 review things always brings things up in the exact same order fools you into thinking you know something when you don't. its just your brain doing what its been trained to. find a pattern and give you the answer.  so you know the answer without learning it.  so next time it appears your blank on it.  (what i found.. i prob just didnt spend long enough going over each thing)

Hmm, I haven't checked out iKnow yet. But I don't like the idea of just doing a bunch of minigames.

kinda like rosetta in a way. You will learn that way  after going over and over the word rote style.  which begs the question, how is learning the stuff like this any better than just using a word list.

I tried Rosetta Stone once, but I didn't really like it. I just couldn't remember anything. But I didn't really stay with it for long. I know those things are designed to be long term. Then again, anything that has to do with learning a language is designed to be long term...

So it seems like the general consensus is opposed to Khatzumoto's advice, which is going from the Kanji straight to sentences, and learning the grammar as a "side affect" of learning sentences. In fact, he even goes so far to say that you shouldn't even try to learn the grammar on it's own. I do like the sound of that, and I'd really like to try that, for a while at least.

I would still really like to hear from somebody know has followed the AJATT method, if anybody here has. But in either case, I will definitely take your guys' advice into consideration.

Thanks for all the answers so far! Although I hope I can still get some more insight into the second question, which still is a bit fuzzy to me...

Regarding your second question. I think that you still have to know basic Japanese grammar. I think after that, you can roughly know what Japanese sentences means just by finding the unknown words meaning. You can then learn new grammar by the context of the sentence, and get used to how the grammar is used.

I'm also against translating the whole sentence to English. I usually just have the meaning and reading of the unknown words on a new sentence in Anki.

So you should pick sentences that are just slightly higher than your level. If it's too difficult, then you'll be lost at trying to understand what the sentence means.

That's what I think, I hope it made sense.

Alright, that makes sense. It's very possible that I have misunderstood his advice. In fact, I know I have, otherwise I wouldn't be having this problem.

I think I'm going to give Tae Kim's grammar guide a shot. Everybody seems to be saying good things about it.

Yeah, I do know that both Khatzumoto and Antimoon are very against translating, and I do think I understand why that is.

Okay, I think this clears up my understanding a bit. Hopefully as I understand a bit more grammar my retention rate will increase a bit.

Okay, cool. Thanks for all the help! Hopefully now I'll start actually learning Japanese, rather than learning about learning Japanese.

[edit]
I just read the introduction to Tae Kim's grammar guide and I already really like it. He's coming at it from the same angle as Khatzumoto, which makes me feel less guilty about reading it. (I'm only kind of joking...)

Thanks again everybody for pointing me in the right direction!

Last edited by jonny_wonny (2009 May 02, 11:38 am)

I think there's a bit of confusion about what constitutes "learning grammar". Clearly, before you start mining sentences, you need to know the type of grammar that's being used in each sentence. Sentence mining in itself is learning grammar, because you're drilling rules over and over until you recognise them. What Khatz and others are against is the (common) practice of reading English sources which say things like, "This is the pluperfect subjunctive imperfect stem form, copy out these verb conjugations 100 times." Acquire a basic knowledge of each particle & form then mine sentences which contain them.