Hi guys I don’t know if this is the right place to ask, but I’m about to reach level 10 in WaniKani, and that’s the point in the Tofugu Learn Japanese Guide at which you should start learning grammar. Does anyone have suggestion on where to go from here? Or what resources to use?
Let me know guys.
(I really do hope this is the right way to ask)
Since I’ve beat everyone else here, I’m going to go for the low hanging fruit.
If you want another SRS system to use, Bunpro is the way to go for grammar! They’ve got excellent grammar write ups as well as a number of other useful Japanese learning features.
If you’re a textbook learner, Genki is the way that many go.
These are the two things that I used to help me study enough grammar to get ready for immersion and I had a positive experience. Your mileage may vary!
Thank you so much I will defo check out both of them and see which one fits me!
Was just about to comment the exact same thing as @Gacee but I was beat to the punch haha. Agree 100%
I will add that I think Genki has better/more involved explorations of the topics, but Bunpro has substantially more content + additional value in a SRS style format for helping remember/master. I have used both and personally found them to be nice compliments to each other, but it’s just a matter of preference for your choice. No matter what I think they’re both wonderful and hope they fit you as they have me
@Gacee ok guys now I’m asking you two since you answered so quickly, how long do you “train” or learn per day? And how much time for each “topic” (like kanji, vocabulary, grammar, other things…)?
I recommend the Genki textbook, along with TokiniAndy’s video series explaining the lessons. After working through around half of Genki 1, you can start reading graded readers, then use Satori Reader and other tools like that.
Good luck with your studies!
I’ll jump on with this comment and add that TokiAndy’s website (beyond the YouTube videos, it costs $10/mo) adds a ton of immersion/reading material for those early GENKI chapters and I find it really helpful. I just finished chapter 5 yesterday. He and his wife also review some of your writing exercises and have chapter tests.
Awesome! I’ve never used his paid site, so it’s good to hear that it’s helpful.
In my personal experience, studying grammar has been the most difficult and textured part of learning Japanese- so most of the time I don’t really approach it with an “always moving forward” mentality like I do with something like learning Kanji and Vocab here. I largely play by ear- if I am feeling comfortable enough to where I think I can handle some new grammar concepts + I have the time in my surrounding life to let it properly sink in, then I’ll spend some time adding in new content and practicing. If I don’t, then I do not.
With Genki, that has amounted to me picking it up and doing (at most) one chapter at a time every now and then. That teaches a nice little handful of new concepts with some practice of each.
With Bunpro, that has amounted to me very slowly adding in new concepts to its SRS system. For context, I usually hover around ~150 reviews a day on WaniKani but on a particularly bustling day only ~20 grammar reviews on Bunpro. I usually cap out at about 3 grammar lessons at a time on days I am introducing content as to not juggle a ton at a time.
I also do things like Duolingo regularly, and while it’s pretty… bad… at “teaching” content, it does give some consistent and repetitive practice with basic sentences- and with enough time I have certainly picked up on grammar ideas and/or used it as a method to practice what I have learned elsewhere. I also generally take extensive grammar notes and just rephrasing/summarizing a concept in my own words tends to serve as good practice, too. That’s not to mention practicing with actual immersion, peeking around the internet, or just having something click randomly in the wild (for example, I read/sing along to Japanese karaoke sometimes for Kanji recognition + speed practice, but sometimes grammar points fall into place there too).
All is to say I don’t have a consistent answer and certainly not a universal recommendation your way. I usually carve out a couple hours a day for Japanese but there are days where I have more time and motivation and go way beyond that mark, and times where I don’t feel up to it either. The ratio of topics within that carved-out time is also never truly consistent. As long as I am having fun and feeling like I am learning well, that’s my main priority.
This sounds wonderful, I will have to mentally bookmark for myself. Thanks for sharing !
and if you are a masochist, doing both is good too.
There are loads of ways to learn grammar. I know Bunpro was mentioned already but I’ll shout out the following two resources as well:
There are of course others but those are the ones I’d recommend.
On the more fun side, GameGengo covers quite a good bit of grammar as well.
JapanesePod 101
Japanese from Zero Vol 1-5
Genki + workbook
The physical presentation can be a bit hard to deal with, but the YT channel CureDolly is the one thing that made grammar click for me. I’m a non-native English speaker that has always been atrocious at grammar, so resources equating Japense grammar to English grammar didn’t help me.
She has some strong opinions on Eng-JP language education and I understand how some find her criticism of other methods distracting. But on the whole, learning Japanese as Japanese while ignoring the English framework entirely made all the difference for me.
thank you so much for your extensive answer. I will experiment and find what’s best for me
okok thank i will look them up!
+1 to bunpro from me. Can’t stand textbooks, nothing sticks as I want to gouge my eyes out from boredom, having them taught in a similar flash card way is way easier and actually sticks
Personally, I believe Tofugu is wrong and it’s silly to wait until level 10 to start studying grammar. I think the best way is to be learning both vocabulary and grammar as soon as possible, and most importantly I think the most essential part of language learning is to immerse yourself in the language. Listen to a lot of Japanese stuff without subtitles, and eventually do a bunch of reading too.
You don’t have to understand everything, because understanding comes gradually. Eventually your brain will start picking up on patterns you’ve learned when studying grammar and vocabulary. The way children learn language is actually the best way for adults to learn language too. Even if you don’t understand at first, by being immersed in it constantly your brain will eventually start picking up on things in a way no school-course can ever teach you.
I also think most grammar resources are honestly quite horrendous. Genki is a textbook for school, meant to be used in a setting where you have a teacher and coursework. It’s not appropriate for self-learners. Apps and stuff like Japanese from Zero are all usually really bad at trying to speed you along by overly relying on English grammar theory in ways that just do not suit Japanese, leading you to end up confused and stuck further down the line. JapanesePod101 is just generally full of misinformation and bad advice.
In my years of trying to learn Japanese, I’ve found two grammar resources that are actually really good at teacing grammar from a Japanese point of view. It’s TaeKim’s guide to Japanese, and CureDolly on YouTube. CureDolly especially is really, really good at teaching Japanese grammar in an understandable way. Almost every learner who gives CureDolly a shot comes away with the sense that they finally understand the things all the other grammar resources never managed to explain. The only issue is that her voice changer voice can be a little grating and hard to get used to, but it’s well worth it to power through.
Or alternatively, here’s a list to someone who’s made a transcript of her main playlist videos: CureDolly transcript. Personally I can recommend a mix, where you first watch the video, with CC, and then come back to read the transcript to make sure you really take in the lesson.
Either way, good luck with your grammar studies! I really do recommend that you start as soon as possible, and put a lot of time into it from now on. I also recommend you find some Japanese entertainment to watch without subtitles, to give yourself more of that language immersion time.
EDIT: Don’t mind my WaniKani level btw, lol. I recently reset my progress after I left off at level 18 years ago. I was stagnating with my Anki deck because complicated kanji’s were hard to parse, so I figured I wanted to give the WaniKani radical-based approach another go. Hoping it might make it easier to differentiate the more complex kanji when I can separate them into recognizable radicals!
I quite agree!
I mean, there’s nothing wrong with concentrating on one thing at a time, but studying in several directions at once would not only speed up the process, but provide diversity and make the initial process less tedious.
When I joined WK, I actually planned to concentrate on kanji first, but very soon – around level 3 – I’ve discovered TextFugu and changed my mind and started studying grammar as well.
And somewhere around level 20 I started reading, which is where a lot of people here started reading. But again, one doesn’t have to wait till then to start reading, especially with resources like
and
I tried learning grammar too soon, around level 5, and I understood NOTHING. I couldn’t even get past first chapter of N5. It felt awful. I stopped with grammar and came back around level 15 and it was a night and day difference. N5 was relatively doable.
So no, I don’t think you should jump to grammar from the start. It is a bad idea because you actually need to know some words before doing grammar. If it works for you, than do it, but there is nothing wrong with waiting few levels and pushing people to it too soon may discourage them from going forward.