Complete the book, don't do the anki thing. The book should answer a lot of your questions. You can also look into other question books, like matome bunpou and shiken ni deru bunpou.

You can also post questions here about the KiC sentences you don't understand; that's what I did when I was studying KiC way back when.

I'm an advocate of the just expose yourself to as many examples as you can school of learning. For grammar I started with the unicom books and honestly 3 example sentences were not cutting it for me. So now I'm going through 15+ for each grammar point I study. That helps.

Download that massive DoJ Grammar anki deck and suspend everything and merge it with your previous grammar study deck. Then when you go through a new grammar point from X~source or you are having problems on a particular point you can search for additional examples from the DoJG deck and unsuspend them.

That's really what I've been doing lately.

I'm not convinced by the idea of using Anki for grammar study, except to reinforce and make sure you've remembered something you already understand. That is, you should be able to do the quizzes before you start throwing cards into Anki...

The sort of JLPT question you quoted is essentially trying to get as close to testing "production" of a grammar point as a multiple choice test can manage. The testers want to know if you know the correct forms of verbs and so on (eg in Vとたんに V is always past tense). If you study the grammar merely for comprehension you will struggle with these.

So my suggestion is that you should use KM as a structure for which grammar points you want to study, but use different references (the Dictionaries of Basic/Intermediate Grammar, 日本語文型辞典, textbooks) to give you more coverage and better explanations. (KM I think is more aimed at the 'review/revise for test' requirement, it's poor for learning from scratch. I agree with Fillanzea about textbooks too.) Pay attention to the verb forms used (KM tends to put pairs に応じるN and に応じて in one point and expect you to figure out the distinction yourself). You might try putting the quizzes into anki and marking them 'correct' if you can (a) give the right answer and (b) say why.

I'm not sure you're going to find a magic bullet method that will make grammar study "not boring" for you -- maybe you just have to work through it...
(If you happen to have electronic copies of books or whatever you've read you might try searching through them for examples of the grammar you're trying to study. Or do it the other way round -- when you hit a sentence with grammar you don't understand, mark it to look up, and use that to drive which grammar points in KM you cross off first?)

I see you saying 'I studied' a LOT, but I don't see you saying 'I watched' or 'I listened'.  You will never learn grammar from just a textbook.  You have to get out there and experience it.

I'm in the same position you are, btw.  I've been studying Japanese for years, but grammar is my weak point.

About a year ago, I realized that grammar was my nemesis.  Even if I could read all the vocab in a sentence, any grammar beyond past-tense was lost on me.  So I resolved to study.  After a few months of that, I still had almost nothing...  But I noticed that what I -did- have was stuff that I had seen and heard several times -before- I read about it in the grammar books.  Since then, I've been picking up things I read in mangas and learning about them in grammar books (like the basic grammar dictionary) and it has helped a lot.  Do I understand your examples above?  Not a chance.  But I'm on the road to it, and it seems like you're saying that you aren't.

wccrawford wrote:

I see you saying 'I studied' a LOT, but I don't see you saying 'I watched' or 'I listened'.  You will never learn grammar from just a textbook.  You have to get out there and experience it.

The OP said he was reading novels, and the entire point of the post was that this whole "exposure is everything!  don't study grammar!" approach wasn't working for him.

I have to eat a bit of crow here.  I just realized that I learned a grammar rule without seeing it in context first.  I learned it months ago, and haven't really paid attention to it since then, and I still remember the rule and how to use it...  And it was almost instinctive as to how to use it.

So learning from a book without context is possible after all.  Not necessarily the right way to go, but at least possible.

wccrawford wrote:

I have to eat a bit of crow here.  I just realized that I learned a grammar rule without seeing it in context first.  I learned it months ago, and haven't really paid attention to it since then, and I still remember the rule and how to use it...  And it was almost instinctive as to how to use it.

So learning from a book without context is possible after all.  Not necessarily the right way to go, but at least possible.

Personally I prefer doing this first. Now that you can understand that grammar point, you'll be prepared when you do see it in context, and in a much better position to absorb any extra nuance that the textbook examples didn't cover, and reinforce what you already know. It doesn't take long to read a textbook explanation, so why not give yourself a bit of an edge before you encounter new grammar?

Another advantage is how systematic textbooks/workbooks are. Who's to say you're a good judge at spotting grammar points? You might read through things like ～ようものなら、～かと思うほど、～にしたところで, etc, and not realise you're actually looking at a piece of grammar, and skip straight over them. I find that a lot of grammar doesn't even exist until I see it in a textbook first, after which it seems to suddenly start appearing everywhere. You might also end up taking an extremely long time to encounter everything that you could casually go through in a few months using a textbook. This becomes a rather big problem if you're thinking in terms of the JLPT.

As for context, I'm not going to dispute how important it is in learning new language, but that doesn't mean dramas and novels provide ideal ones, or that it's always necessary to be so elaborate. Take ～わけにはいかない. In どんな時どう使う there's the example「試験があるから、遊ぶわけにはいかない」. Would some bad acting centred around a nearing university entrance exam in a drama really add anything that the example doesn't already have?

First of all, thanks to everybody for your great and really interesting comments!

I also read through old grammar related threads in this forum and found that many people recommended 日本語文型辞典 (単行本), so I'm really interested, but I'd love to see some example pages before purchasing it. I've been looking EVERYWHERE, but couldn't find any preview scans at all. Anybody can help me?
Also, is this the same book used for the huge grammar deck in Anki that some of you mentioned here? If so, is it wise to get the book nevertheless?

Btw. I've never had huge problems learning grammar when I was still in school. I studied English, Spanish, Latin and French back then. No big deal. (well Latin sometimes was ...)
I guess it's just really difficult to "learn" / understand grammar all by yourself!?

Hashiriya wrote:

Grammar is one of my weakest points as well but it is steadily becoming one of my stronger points... i am currently working through the giant 8556 sentence Dictionary of Japanese anki deck and it is working wonders for me.

Womacks23 wrote:

Download that massive DoJ Grammar anki deck and suspend everything and merge it with your previous grammar study deck. Then when you go through a new grammar point from X~source or you are having problems on a particular point you can search for additional examples from the DoJG deck and unsuspend them.

Sounds really good!
Is it this one? 8555 Japanese Sentences - from the　日本語文法辞典??

pm215 wrote:

ISo my suggestion is that you should use KM as a structure for which grammar points you want to study, but use different references (the Dictionaries of Basic/Intermediate Grammar, 日本語文型辞典, textbooks) to give you more coverage and better explanations.

Do you know where I could find example scans of the 日本語文型辞典? I do have all 3 Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar already, but sometimes the explanations in there give me headaches (and not only because I'm not an English native-speaker).
Do you have any recommendations for good textbooks?

Jarvik7 wrote:

For grammar I liked the sou matome series (for JLPT prep anyways), and of course "A Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese grammar". I read the basic one cover to cover when I was starting out and found it very interesting because of all the footnotes, something KM lacks.

I do like the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar books, but the explanations in there sometimes give me a headache. They're too linguistic.

IceCream wrote:

1. translate something. (make sure its something you have the english translation for already).
this'll help draw your attention to the grammar being used, and why one thing is used where.

3. DON'T ADD SENTENCES YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND TO SRS!!! if there's some grammar you don't understand in your sentence, it's good to work out why you don't understand it, and look it up... ：）

Hey, thanks for the tips
I'd love to translate things from time to time, thing is I just don't have enough time to do that and squeeze that in between my "study time". I only have like 1 hour per day anyway *sigh*

3. If I only put sentences in there that I already understand, then it doesn't feel that I'm actually learning things. I put sentences in there, BECAUSE I don't understand them, but want to understand them eventually ... hmmm.

wccrawford wrote:

I see you saying 'I studied' a LOT, but I don't see you saying 'I watched' or 'I listened'.  You will never learn grammar from just a textbook.  You have to get out there and experience it..

Oh, but I did/do. I just didn't mention it, because I don't consider this as "studying" - especially in terms of grammar.
I've been listening to / watching Japanese stuff for over 10 years now. Started in 1998 and ever since then I've been watching/listening at least once a day to Japanese native material. During that time I didn't study anything, though. Apart from my listening comprehension and randomly picking up new vocab - it didn't really help that much.

Javizy wrote:

Another advantage is how systematic textbooks/workbooks are. Who's to say you're a good judge at spotting grammar points? You might read through things like ～ようものなら、～かと思うほど、～にしたところで, etc, and not realise you're actually looking at a piece of grammar, and skip straight over them. I find that a lot of grammar doesn't even exist until I see it in a textbook first, after which it seems to suddenly start appearing everywhere. You might also end up taking an extremely long time to encounter everything that you could casually go through in a few months using a textbook. This becomes a rather big problem if you're thinking in terms of the JLPT.

Any textbooks you could recommend then?



P.S.: Not really important, but I'm not a "he" XD

Jarvik7 wrote:

Liar, there are no girls on the internet.

Hold it, I've got ovaries!

Though it is true. Men are men, women are men, and children are the FBI.

rosenafglenn wrote:

Jarvik7 wrote:

Liar, there are no girls on the internet.

Hold it, I've got ovaries!

In a baggie in your freezer? I'm calling the police!