Okay, so now Iāve closed the starting date poll and the what section to include in the reading schedule poll.
Weāll start on March 25th. This will go the same as most scheduled book clubs on this site, Saturday to Friday, thatās the āweekā.
The pieces we will include are:
- Grammatical Terms, 16 pages, 32 terms with explanations ranging from one paragraph to a page
- Characteristics of Japanese Grammar, 46 pages divided by 9 headlines/parts (not equally)
- Main Entries, ca 204 entries, each entry being 1-3 pages usually
- Appendix 8: Improving Reading Skill by Identifying an āExtended Sentential Unitā, 8 pages
I will recommend reading āTo the Readerā when we get to the main entries, being all of 2 pages long and being an explanation for how the entries are formatted feels like it wouldnāt add much for the day with the first entry/entries.
Now is the question how to come up with a schedule for all this. Grammatical terms are fairly dense, if you arenāt used to common grammatical terms this will be extremely dense. For Characteristics of Japanese Grammar, I would assume that most of us (since this is more of a grammar review club) will have a grasp on many of these.
Iām giving my impression because maybe not all of you have the book to flip through yourselves yet.
I think the easiest will be to do different polls for different sections, because they will read very differently.
Except appendix 8 which I think it is easy enough to decide: it gets 1 week. If anyone feels strongly for a different idea for that, go ahead and comment below and Iāll make a poll for it, but right now I canāt imagine a good separate schedule, because Iām pretty sure it needs to be read together to be understood.
Grammatical Terms, pick the schedule(s) youād be happy with:
- 4 pages per week (+/- half a page because of finishing a termās explanation), slightly more than 1/2 page / day. 4 weeks total.
- 8 pages per week (+/- half a page because of finishing a termās explanation), slightly more than 1 page / day. 2 weeks total.
- All in one week, 2.3 pages / day. 1 week total.
Characteristics of Japanese Grammar, pick the schedule(s) youād be happy with:
- 2 parts per week (3 one week), ca 11-12 pages / week. 4 weeks total.
- 3 parts per week, ca 15 pages / week. 3 weeks total.
- 4-5 parts per week, ca 23 pages / week. 2 weeks total.
Main Entries, pick the schedule(s) youād be happy with:
- 7 entries per week, 1 entry / day, ca 14-21 pages / week. 29 weeks total.
- 10 entries per week, 1.4 entries / day, 20-30 pages / week. 20 weeks total.
- 14 entries per week, 2 entries / day, ca 28-42 pages / week. 15 weeks total.
- 17 entries per week, 2.4 entries / day, 34-51 pages / week. 12 weeks total.
- 21 entries per week, 3 entries / day, 42-63 pages / week. 10 weeks total.
I could add even faster schedule options for the main entries, but as organizer Iām saying no. Because if the fastest option gets picked, Iām not sure I could currently keep up because I canāt imagine reading 50 pages of pure grammar each week honestlyā¦
Do remember that this isnāt like reading a novel/manga or anything like that. Not even like reading a regular textbook, because that includes dialog/reading section, exercises, etc. Instead if that is the only comparison you have, look at the pure grammar pages (if the textbook has any) and imagine reading page after page after page of that. That is what reading the dictionary will be like.
The āslowestā option will take a long time, no doubt about it (realize Iām signing up for potentially posting weekly threads for 29+4+4+1=38 weeks), but I would strongly suggest only picking speeds you actually think you can keep up with during an average week. This is grammar study/review.
Lastly, consider that it might be good to have a chance to see the grammar weāve recently reviewed during your consumption of native material. And that it will be very welcome for people to share such examples they see, and/or craft their own sentences using the entry/-ies of the day/week. So if we go fast, this would be a lot less effective and possible.
Can you tell what I prefer even without checking my votes? xD
The polls will remain open until the evening (central European time) of Tuesday next week (March 21st).