2023 Tobira Study group - 第1課

Welcome to the first week(s) of the 2023 Tobira Study group! From Mar 27 - Apr 9th we’ll be covering:

第1課:日本の地理


Schedule:
Page numbers are from my 2009 version of the textbook, exercises (ex) are from this website.
This is just a rough schedule to give us some structure, but feel free to post comments or questions about any part of the chapter at any time

Week 1: March 27 - April 2

  • Intro + 読み物 (pg 1-7)
  • 1/2 文法 (#1-8) + ex (#?-?)
  • 1/2 漢字 ex (#?-?)

Week 2: April 3 - 9

  • 会話文 (pg 8-10)
  • 言語ノート (pg 23)
  • 2/2 文法 (#9-16) + ex (#?-?)
  • 2/2 漢字 ex (#?-?)

Poll

  • I’m reading along
  • I have finished this chapter
  • I’m still reading but I haven’t reached this chapter yet
  • I’ll be reading Tobira later
  • I’m no longer reading Tobira

0 voters

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I’ll add the exercise numbers soon, but here’s the thread for now! 頑張りましょう!

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I opened my grammar book this morning to start the exercises and discovered that chapter one had been completely ripped out. Guess I’ll have to totally legally find it somewhere else

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Good luck everyone! :partying_face:

I have a copy of the book as well so if there are any questions, I might be able to help.

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Hooray, here we go! Because Tobira is supposed to bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced, it’s going to be a bit hard for me so I won’t try to do all the exercises. But, here’s all the exercises I want to complete.

第1課:

  • optional 漢字: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14
  1. Vocab + 漢字
  2. 文法ノート
  3. 読 + 聞: p. 4-5 , p. 8-9 , p. 10 , p. 23
  4. T: p. 13 , p. 14 , p. 15
  5. 文法: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14
  6. 漢字: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10

The first chapter has a review section for Kanji one should know ( optional 漢字). I will try to do as many of these as possible.

On the Tobira Study Resources Website you can go through the vocab in multiple-choice, drag and drop, spelling practice or write the definition mode. It’s a good review to do before (or after) each reading/listening component.

The website also contains all the grammar points in the textbook, which makes it searchable with ctrl+f.

The exercises you can find on the website are from Tobira Grammar Power and Tobira Power Up Your Kanji. I will try and do one each day because there’s usually not more than 14. However there are:

  • 基礎練習: basic exercises (which I’ll try and do all of)
  • 応用練習: advanced exercises (skipping for now)
  • 發展練習: development exercises (skipping for now)

if someone wants to do more of them.

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I was super excited to start this morning!

I’ll be using Bunpro for my exercises primarily, but I also like the site that was linked in the OP so I’ll definitely dip my toes in those waters. It’s really nice how Tobira ties everything together as well. I tackled a chunk of the reading this morning, then flipped over to the grammar points and those get tied back to sentences on specific line numbers from the 読み物. It’s very cool! Thanks to the OP for getting the ball rolling on this. I usually have about an hour every morning before I start work, so it’s the perfect time to jump in and nibble away.

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Checking in, how’s everyone doing? I think I need to read through the text on pages 4-5 a few more times, but I was surprised by how much I already understood!

Anyway, today I’m gonna take a look at the 内容質問 on page 13. These’re 10 questions about the text, and it took me quite a while to translate them all. If I was further along in my Japanese studies I suppose I could also answer them in Japanese, but…

The only question that gave me trouble was number 2, so if anyone has any input here it would be more than welcome!

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You mean the question’s text or the answer itself? The question is about the text which modifies the word 都市 on line 2. Tobira has many similar questions to teach the learner how to break down text.

Below the text and the answer

日本には東京のような、世界によく知られている都市が〜

As for the explanation, it usually helps to look at which particles are used to chain the relative clause (な、の usually). Here, there is also a comma to help with parsing.

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Thank you! Yeah, I was flipping it around and was confused because how 都市 was supposd to do the modifying. This makes more sense.

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My plan for the main textbook exercises is to listen to the texts and answer as many questions as I can without reading it first. Of course i haven’t looked at the questions yet, so I’m not sure how feasible this will be, but in any case I will try to understand as much as I can from listening without reading it first.

Today I listened to all of the texts from chapter 1, and I’m pleased by how much I understood! I will attempt the questions later when I get home from work.

I’m finding the grammar from this chapter more frustrating, because I’m doing the exercises online (linked at some point in this thread) but I would much rather write the answers. I’ve made it through 5 exercises out of 14 or something, but I’m making a lot of typos on my phone. I may just write out my own example sentences for each grammar point and call it a day for this chapter.

I also downloaded a community tobira vocab deck on kitsun and have been working on the vocab I didn’t already know, but I’m behind. I forgot we were starting this week so I didn’t start memorizing the vocab last week, like I’d originally planned. Also I’m a bit tired of srs flashcards, if I’m honest.

Anyway, no questions so far, hopefully it’s fine to post this kind of update as well.

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Today I want to make an effort to get through all the Kanji exercises. The optional ones meant for review, I mean. Here’s my thoughts on some of them.

Check here for short descriptions of each exercise
  1. A nice reading exercise! Very happy with how much I understood of it. Also another advantage of having the text accessible electronically: looking up things is way way easier. I use this surprisingly little.
  2. Write the hiragana for the Kanji. This is basically just WaniKani reviews.
  3. Find the radical??? This one’s rather weird and at one point it’s unclear which part of the Kanji is considered the radical. Has an additional part of write the hiragana for the Kanji once again. But what I like most about it is learning which meaning the radical most often goes with (eg. ⾙ is used when doing something with money, like 買う or 貸す), at least with the Kanji given. I’m sure there are enough examples to make this distiction moot.
  4. Another “insert hiragana reading here” review.
  5. Now we need to do the opposite and provide the Kanji for the reading. This is something that works better when done with pen and paper, as you can just select the Kanji from the drop-down menu when you type out the hiragana given. At least there is the added difficulty of having to provide the meaning, too.
  6. Now we are given pictures and a bunch of words that we have to use to describe the picture. Additionally we have to write the words in Kanji. Constructing full sentences is too exhausting right now, so I only did the Kanji part.
  7. Making pairs of antonyms!
  8. Now we have to be careful of Kanji with special readings. Just another WaniKani review session.
  9. Stroke order! Not something I am particularly interested in, I usually train my muscle memory with Ringotan and don’t care beyond that. maybe someone else likes this exercise, but not for me.
  10. Combining Kanji to create words. The reading has to be given as well. Fun to puzzle out what is meant from context.
  11. Select the appropiate word from a small collection and write the Kanji.
  12. Another combine the Kanji one, with a twist: two words have the same Kanji in them and we have to find out which one.
  13. This is about Kanji that are used as radicals/parts of Kanji.
  14. Another where we provide the Kanji from the reading, very easy to cheat unless done with pen and paper.

Some of these exercises are not as appealing or helpful as others, I hope this overview helps others pick and choose. My favourites are 1 and 7!

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I think the ones where you have to assign a meaning to a radical in a kanji is quite useful. Same for finding radicals. It’s actually interesting that Tobira provides such rich context for that. When I went through it I wasn’t aware there are even kanji and radical exercises, because I was doing most of my kanji learning via WaniKani.

One of the reasons why knowing individual kanji readings is useful is because when you discuss more complex topics with Japanese people, you can refer to specific kanji and their readings in word context for common understanding. :slight_smile:

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Checking in! I sadly noticed how little the grammar exercises helped me, so I’m thinking of doing Genki ones there instead. But the reading is really fun. I really like how the questions after the dialog help with the overall comprehension.

I’ve read the dialogs and then the information about あいづち on page 23. The latter was a bit difficult to get through because it didn’t have an audio accompaniment, but the text was overall easier to read than the dialogs.

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Heh, when I saw this thread, I knew this question was gonna pop up somewhere. I distinctly remember hitting this question when I first started the book, and going “wow. This is definitely a step above our last book.”

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I in general had lots of problems with these types of questions when I first started studying with Tobira. These and the justifications questions (which part of the text explains/justifies/etc. X).

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Chapter 2 thread is up! I personally haven’t finished chapter 1 yet so I’ll be finishing that up this week and hopefully starting 2 by the weekend!

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