I read through all of Genki 2 but didn’t do much reinforcement. Meaning I just read through it like a book, took some notes but nothing else. Within a few weeks I started forgetting what I read.
I’ve seen a lot of advice that I should start reading native media as soon as possible. I tried some manga and even simple short stories and although it was hard, I persevered with a dictionary checking a lot. The problem is that dictionaries don’t often provide help on grammar points.
Can you guys share your study habits? Especially with textbooks. Do you reread them multiple times to cement the grammar points into memory? Do you make the grammar points into Anki cards?
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Try doing the practice and workbook instead of just reading it.
Learning a language is about practicing the four skills. Do the exercises of both text and workbook. Without that it was just time wasted and you _learned_ nothing, just, at best, memorized some rules.
No you’re just supposed to read it through like a book. Forget drilling grammar like that it’s not going to work. You just needed to see it once so you’re not completely in the dark.
Now you need to mine sentences and kanji and once you’ve done that you immerse with japanese subbed audio. Then you create your own sentences and mine those. Just take screenshots and put them in anki.
After some months or a year of immersion go back and re read it again. Getting caught up on trying to perfect each step is the biggest noob trap.
Imagine you’re painting a house and you take a tiny art brush and try to perfectly align each stroke. You’ll be there for years and you’ll still be nowhere.
Just move on.
The scope of language is simply too massive to consciously decode. Your brain does it for you, the job of a learner is to facilitate subconscious acquisition.
Don’t worry about it textbooks were made for a traditional classroom setting (rote memorization) with a waaaaaaaaay bigger focus on grammar than is actually necessary, at a point when more than a cursory understanding of these grammar points is a complete waste of time.
>The problem is that dictionaries don’t often provide help on grammar points. Do you reread them multiple times to cement the grammar points into memory? Do you make the grammar points into Anki cards?
I always made them in to anki cards so i can refer to them later but i don’t practice them just because language is not math, you don’t cement them with drills and reading pages of notes.
Its enough to become aware of what they mean so you aren’t in the dark and can start to notice patterns, use something like curedolly if you need to refresh, then blast your brain with as much native content as possible.
When I go through my textbook. For each chapter I make a deck into my Anki with the vocab which usually would also include some brief translation of some grammar.
When I finished adding that vocab I would then also go through the lists of 読めればいい漢字 and 書くの漢字 and add them also into my anki.
That whole process takes me some time. But after that I start to read texts in my textbook. Usually in those texts they include grammar which you going to learn so I would always try to read them with the explanation included in the book. And then also practise using it in my workbook. Genki has also some exercises in the textbook so i would recommend to go through these too.
After which…
I just put all the grammar example sentences from my textbook into my Anki and try to read it out loud, translate and understand it.
When I forget I just take a look at my textbook again, google it or ask people in the daily thread or discord to remind myself about it. And of course write some stuff on sticky notes and put them into my kanji writing notebook which I currently use a lot or just into my Japanese words.txt file on my computer.
Anki helps me to keep consistent with the review which in my opinion helps me understand grammar more than in the past when I just casually studied whole day and then got tired and took a long break.
There are also some premade japanese sentence decks on Anki which I’ve been curious to try out one day. But yeah, some other day maybe.
Forgot to include. I try to use daily atleast 25 mins on my reviewing and studying. And on tuesday/friday i try to study for 45+45 mins
Sometimes I have plans or I get sick so I cannot do it. But usually I would try to follow consistency while practising
Personally, I used grammar books and videos like instruction manuals. Read it briefly enough that you’re aware of it and it’s rough use case, and then you need to see it and hear it used naturally multiple times.
Grammar drills can be a good idea, particularly for the later grammar points, but honestly atleast in my experience, you’re better off just making anki cards for them from stuff you read and listen to and moving on.
Oh, and do lots of relistening and rereading. Works wonders!
I can’t talk for textbook, though I went through an anki deck ranging from N5 to N1 grammar in about 2 month (taken from a grammar series textbook), I since have no problem with grammar at all.
Unless you’re Lt. Commander Data, realing alone isn’t a very effective method of retaining information. If it was, you could read a few grammar books, a dictionary, and be fluent in any language in like a month. You have to USE it and play around with it.
I don’t recommend Anki for grammar points. I’d say don’t worry about memorizing grammar.
Whenever you notice a grammar piece come up in your immersion (native content) and you’ve forgotten it, that’s when you should refresh your memory.
Normally I look up a quick video or do a search, but you can also open the textbook and find the explanation they give.
I sometimes plug the sentence into Romajidesu .com, their translator tries to pick apart the pieces including the grammar so you can look up the individual parts, but it’s not perfect.
Even Japanese people only have a fuzzy understanding of most grammar, so don’t be discouraged if you have to skip some things you can’t understand yet. You’ll probably understand it in a few months or so.
You’ll remember how the grammar works after having experience seeing how it works in sentences and understanding the context, etc.
personally I stare into it until the words are grafted into my eyesight.
do not recommend though. you’re probably better off sentence mining and double checking the points with a reliable source when confused.
after I did genki 2 I went and started reading actual Japanese books (which was excruciatingly difficult at that point)
after I read books for like 1 year I started talking on iTalki with a tutor
pretty fun stuff
It helps using the Workbook and doing the practices alongside with it. Using the knowledge you acquired will help you retain more than just reading through it.
Japanese is totally disconnected from western languages (mora, kanji, vocabulary, grammar). Also, Japanese is relatively formulaic.
For these reasons, the head teacher at my Japanese language school thought that westerners needed a different approach to learning Japanese at the beginner stages.
She advocated memorizing core sentences for grammar and basic “verb tables”. As the mora, kanji, vocabulary, and verbs become more familiar, active memorization becomes less and less important. A side benefit is that one’s memorization skills improve over time.
There are lots of learning approaches advocated here. I think part of that depends on one’s goals. If one wants to speak, I think deeper study is necessary. If one wants to write, that is a different kettle of fish. Regardless, in languages I find a super-solid foundation helps. IMHO.
FYI – Genki is the leading beginner textbook in western universities; it is not particularly dense and is designed for class-room use (rather than self-study). That is a lot of pages to go through so maybe you might find resources that better fit you.