Ipps reviews Ipps' Japanese reviewing

[ippy 66]

I dont study. Im very bad at it. I have almost zero japanese. But ive tried a few ways to learn this stupid language. So heres a pointless review of them since im bored waiting on new comments on other threads and need to kill time (i could, i admit be studying ).

 

1. Pimsleur's Speak and Understand Essential [HA!!!] Japanese 1-3

 

Achieved: First try about half way through section 1. Second crack at it made it about 5 or 6 lessons into section 2. Third try a whole three years later pushed it to about lesson 24ish on section 2. Currently around lesson 8 section 3.

 

Benefits: Pronunciation practice is excellent; Completing section 2 gives you bare survival Japanese; Section 3 seems to have actually useful japanese; So much drilling that youll remember the appropriate response without having a clue what youre saying.

 

Drawbacks:

-Tedium. Theres so much fluff that reviewing chapters feels incredibly unrewarding and a massive waste of time.

-Pace is very very slow. Lessons are too long, youll definitely tune out after 15 minutes.

-Theyre also broken into three main sections (implicit - theres no actual break). First a ten minute review of the previous lesson, then five to ten minutes of new words and phrases and drilling, then question answer testing for the last ten minutes, but it feels over long, insubstantial, and lacking in any explanation.

-There is zero grammatical understanding for development. You learn the phrase or you dont. You remember the particle or you dont. -----They may tell you how the particle is being used in this sentence, but theres no real explanation of how that particle functions in a wider context or why you DONT use x particle in place of it. Even though a previous lesson may have made you think it stands for the word "at" or "in" for example. You wont learn much.

-Section 1 is 15 hours of language youll barely ever actually use in Japan. I did section 1 and it taught me a few things that were handy, but honestly, i could barely answer a single question in the real world because they use SOOOOOOO much keigo. Which is well and good, but since im the chan/kun in the mindset of japan, i aint getting the questions in formal language. I might as well have been learning Swahili.

 

Conclusion:

 

Time versus achievement is WAY out of whack! This becomes apparent the second you pick up a text book and with less than about 5 hours study, all of which is good fun, youll know MUCH more useful and relevant Japanese than the first thirty hours of this course. There was this curious moment in my second year in Japan where i was playing in section 2 and it occurred to me that i didnt know the days of the week or what the relations in my family were called (no, not their names - their relationship to me). How the hell can you spend 30 hours studying Japanese and not come across any of this? Hell, they dont teach you to say hajimemashite until the start of the second section. Right now for example, section 3, lesson 7 i learned how to say i have/havent made a reservation, i want to take a trip to Hokkaido, and id prefer white wine please. This is the kind of stuff you learn after a few chapters in a textbook. And the textbook usually means you also learn how to conjugate a tonne of other verbs, how to express desires and interests, a bunch of activities you might want to do, and how the particle Wo is finctioning in all this (as well as probably ni and de and when theyre interchangeable and when they arent). Youll learn none of that in pimsleur. Instead youll learn a phrase, youll repeat it. If someone asks you the question in a different way or without keigo, youll probably not know whats being asked.

 

Studying pimsleur is like memorising a phrasebook of japanese slang that no one has used in the last thirty years. Its not totally useless, and seems to be getting more useful the closer it gets to the end, but honestly, i reckon once i complete all thirty chapters of section 3 ill still be somewhere around absolute beginner level. And for the sheer time effort and concentration required on it, it seems like a real massive waste of effort to be honest. Its only because its starting to feel a little less dumb that im going to finish it. But if it was year dot and id just come across it, theres no way id bother knowing what i know now. Just pick up a textbook.

[@tokyo 14]

Pimsleur?

[ippy 66]

2. Mina No Nihongo.

 

Achieved: About half way through Book 1.

 

Benefits: So fast. Each section youll learn a TONNE of stuff. The sections are also really well organised once you crack it (takes a while since theres no english at all). You get an intro conversation. Then the chapter starts explaining the grammar involved and throws out plenty of new words to learn. Then you do a bunch of reviews on key sentence structures (with some applications (not actually used in the preceding text or explanations) to illustrate the patterns), and finally the book then has a section testing you on everything you learned. Every 6 or 7 sections theres a big review test of everything in the previous chapters.

 

Straightforward, simple, and above all very easy to gauge your progress. I LOVED studying with this book to be honest.

 

So why did i drop it?

 

Drawbacks:

The pace is so fast that though you might answer the questions right and feel youve moved on, you start to realise around the 6th chapter that you have to have the accompanying explanations textbook (which i honestly didnt know existed until i hit a complete wall and started to realise the book itself lacked EXPLANATIONS. It offers only APPLICATIONS and examples. You need the supplement translations book. Once i picked it up, i was flying off again...)

 

But then i hit my second and fatal road block. The book simply couldnt explain enough of what its trying to teach you. Theres too much being thrown at you to take it all in and understand whats going on. After the second big test i tried to push on but it was becoming evident my scores with the particle tests in particular was lacking. I tried using the book for explanations, but it just didnt help. You really need a teacher with this one to be honest. Brilliant book, but leaves so much out that youre going to hit a roadblock. For me it was particles, for you it might be something else. But it just doesnt cover enough to be self contained. I kinda got the feeling you need someone to explain the explanations if you really want to progress in it (or you need a genuine innate aptitude for languages and rules which i dont have).

 

Conclusion:

 

Brilliant book. Honestly, i really loved it while i was progressing, but once you nail the answers on section-x you want to go to the next section. And then suddenly the rule you thought you understood doesnt work here and youre now confused to shit. Excellent book, and in conjunction with japanese lessons or a teacher/mate you can bother for explanations you might get through it fine, but on your own and its hard work after a while.

[ippy 66]

3. Remembering the Kanji - The Heisig Method.

 

Achieved: A LOT of kanji in a very short space of time. You can easy remember 50+ with no real effort. From ZERO kanji, i got to about 400 in around a week or two.

 

Pros:

 

Did you read that last sentence? Ridiculous retention. Brilliantly evocative imagery and using radicals for constructing stories meant i could absolutely STUN my mates by telling them what random kanji X means in English. Insanely fast.

 

Cons:

 

But utterly insubstantial. I can sorta tell you what this standalone kanji probably refrers to, but i didnt know how to say it in Japanese, how to use it i a sentence, and how to read it in context. You learn the priorities, you then learn the radicals, you then make a story, you can then remember it via the story. Im pretty certain reversing the challenge would have led to almost zero rentention. Maybe i could have written the kanji for some baby ones, but for anything over 5 or 6 strokes with two or three components, the english to japanese wouldnt have worked at all without outside resources.

 

Conclusion:

 

And thats really what this book seems to be for. Its a great magic trick for beginners, but its not really for us. Its for intermediates and advanced (i assume) learners who know all the ancillary stuff but er, cant quite remember it. Obviously. Does what it says on the tin to be honest. Didnt work for me as a learning tool, but was super fun to go from zero japanese to 400 kanji in a week and annoy my best mate on the train to Osaka by telling her what every kanji in those first 400 meant in English while she looked on in stunned annoyed amazement (i learned nothing - i just remembered a bunch of cute stories). It did sort of help make kanji probably the most fun have learning japanese. I dunno why, but i really like kanji. I just hate words and memorizing. If i do start picking up japanese, ill probably pick this book up again for review purposes. Good fun. Use it like you would a dictionary and its pretty darned effective.

 

4. Kanji Flashcard drilling using the packs by Tuttle.

 

Achieved: 2nd grade Shogakko kanji bishes!

 

Pros: Picked these up last year when i arrived in Japan and damn man! progress was lightning fast. Unlike with the heisig, we had all the info on the card laid out in nice detail. Kun/onyomi readings. 4 example words utilising the kanji, and obviously the english translations on the back. Well organised, clear and simple. Pull out ten cards for day 1, learn them, move on to the next ones. Used in conjunction with a kanji memorising textbook (cant remember the one i have) and you have a bit more depth if you need it).

 

Cons: Its just vocab drilling.

 

Conclusion: Great fun for a while, but then my brain sort of reached some kind fo threshold towards the end of second grade (about 250ish) where for every new kanji i remembered, id forget one from the earlier sections). Reviewing got tedious and i just sorta stopped using them. I probably shouldnt have. Theyre definitely handy as a supplement to actual learning via textbook, but again, as a method in itself its sorta not working for me.

 

5. Genki Japanese 1:

 

Achieved: First crack at it, got to the point they dropped the romaji and just thought "screw this! back to warcraft!". Second time i switched out straight from my mina no nihongo foray. Pushed to about chapter 7, and honestly i dont think i hit a roadblock, but it just kinda fell away...

 

Pros: Gave so much detail and explained things i just didnt realise i hadnt really grasped running mina. It was great reviewing stuff but also picking up more details. Understanding was more concrete and progression was feeling genuinely substantial and solid. Around chapter 5 i saw the workbook and answer book in tokyo so picked them up.Having an answer book definitely helped me move forward, as did having a tonne of other practice questions in the workbook. Progress was strightforward and if you found yourself struggling, you really could just nip to the grammatical explanations of the 5 or 6 key points per section to see what youd done wrong. This book is BUILT for self study.

 

Cons: None really. I really liked it. Great book. You still probably need a teacher on occasion if you want to seriously move through it, but i reckon its fairly self contained and if you aint getting something you can move on without feeling like youre screwing up your future progression. I think it only fell away really because i moved from Saitama to Nagano and just sorta lost the study habit i had finally picked up by not having any access to a computer at work in Saitama. Alas i have one on my desk now... and er, thats why im talking about studying instead of studying.

 

Conclusion:

 

I loved genki. Its not IMMEDIATELY as thorough as Mina if you just use the book, but once you throw in the workbook you realise youre learning at probably the same pace. The exercises are detailed covering everything you might have skimmed over in one or two questions in the text book and if you find yourself stuck, its never uch barrier that you feel you cant just move on and see if the next few chapters might drill it into your head. Brilliant book for self study and well worth dropping the cash on the supplementary materials. I really should just pick it up again and get on with it.

 

6. Ipod Touch JLPT n1-5 Kanji App.

 

I like studying kanji and i cannot lie. Its colorful and fun. When you learn one you feel like youre progressing in the language. So im having another pop at just taking the n5 kanji and vocab and just pushing them onwards. Forget grammar. This seems to be alright, it doesnt feel like im studying right now, which is exactly how you want it to feel. Memorisation is pretty quick and more words means more things i can talk about in Japanese even with my garbled misuse of particles/structure. The downside on it is that the multiple choice format makes getting the correct answer realllllllly easy since it often has the verb in its ru form for example and gives you only one option with a ru ending. So it kinda forces you to pick the wrong answer in order that the computer doesnt think you know that kanji and stop testing you on it. It also gives only one reading for the kanji (for example sen/seki only has the seki reading listed for example).

 

Still, ill take it. Its fun, you can spend as much or as little time as you want on it, which for someone like me who doesnt really "sit down" for a study session, means you can pick up plenty of handy kanji/vocab whilst dicking around on your phone before popping back on snowjapan to write 300 page thesis on carbon array.

 

So far so good. Im enjoying it, plus it uses only the vocab from N5 directly (whilst also learning to recognise some rather horrendous kanji which im pretty sure you wont be tested on until much later - at least i hope not!) which means once you have those 500 terms on lock, its off to the next step in JLPT... which is about as good a progression benchmark as you can get studying this language. Ultimately this is probably best used in CONJUNCTION (isnt it always!) with a proper study pattern and a decent textbook since its techno-flashcard drilling.

 

I reckons though if youre not really after fluency but just enough vocab to get by, a few months with this and a bit of an attempt to actually memorise the terms and youll have enough to ninja through a conversation or ten so long as youve got some kind of passing understanding of structure (ie. you live here and you hear japanese enough to recognise a vague syntax).

[Alexander L 80]

are you a student or something?

[ippy 66]

of the multiple means for japanese language acquisition! of course!

[kokodoko 67]

A very superficial review. needs more work.

[Tubby Beaver 209]

Only 10 million words?! Ippy must do better

[Alexander L 80]

Ipps, th best way to learn Japanese is to marry a Japanese woman. Then you'd wish you didn't know Japanese.

[kokodoko 67]

[grungy-gonads 54]

Or, alternatively

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYGdSaZubiM

 

[ippy 66]

I wish i could be motivated by love and marriage to care about language enough to then hate the fact learned it once i get married to that person and have to listen to them. But alas, i live inside a bubble inside my own head. I spend enough time fleeing small talk in my native language without compounding the problem by learning a second one. And for what? Sex? Jesus christ, two things i hate all in one hideous package: Sex and small talk. Why not throw in some ****ing spiders and mukade while youre at it!

[grungy-gonads 54]

[Alexander L 80]

I wish i could be motivated by love and marriage to care about language enough to then hate the fact learned it once i get married to that person and have to listen to them. But alas, i live inside a bubble inside my own head. I spend enough time fleeing small talk in my native language without compounding the problem by learning a second one. And for what? Sex? Jesus christ, two things i hate all in one hideous package: Sex and small talk. Why not throw in some ****ing spiders and mukade while youre at it!

 

No. It's about lerve. The lerve that grows for your partner as she slowly and methodically arranges your life so that you no longer need to think about where to go on vacation. You're just told.

[Alexander L 80]

And if you think marriage is about sex?...........................

[kokodoko 67]

[Alexander L 80]

[hellyer 216]

I wish i could be motivated by love and marriage to care about language enough to then hate the fact learned it once i get married to that person and have to listen to them. But alas, i live inside a bubble inside my own head. I spend enough time fleeing small talk in my native language without compounding the problem by learning a second one. And for what? Sex? Jesus christ, two things i hate all in one hideous package: Sex and small talk. Why not throw in some ****ing spiders and mukade while youre at it!

 

No. It's about lerve. The lerve that grows for your partner as she slowly and methodically arranges your life so that you no longer need to think about where to go on vacation. You're just told.

 

3 times married The Stones Ronnie Wood now has a different outlook on marriage - he said he would rather just find a women he hated and give her a house.

[mina2 6]

And for what? Sex? Jesus christ, two things i hate all in one hideous package: Sex and small talk.

 

You mentioned it so.... honestly, you don't like sex?

[ippy 66]

Honestly... nope. Doesnt interest me all that much. Never did.

[Chriselle 158]

hahaha.......you.........silly......!

[Tubby Beaver 209]

hahaha.......you.........silly......!

 

[grungy-gonads 54]

Honestly... nope. Doesnt interest me all that much. Never did.