Correct use of Genki

Japanese Language Grammar
1

Hi everyone! I have started studying through ‘Genki I’ some time ago and currently finishing Lesson 10. But recently it crossed my mind that I may be doing it wrong or inefficient. So I will now proceed to write how I complete each lesson and then ask for some advice.

  1. I read the dialogue, listen to it and try to mimick the pronunciation. I don’t go too hard on it though because I still don’t know the new grammar points.
  2. I go through vocab list, mark new (not yet seen on WK) items and add them to my Anki deck (I use it with Yomitan to dumb down this process).
  3. I read and try to understand all the new grammar points in one go. This is the most fun part for me)
  4. I do each exercise (even try to do wacky group activities) related to this lessons in the textbook.
  5. Same with the workbook.
  6. Reread the dialogue with full understanding of what’s going on.

The thing is that I skip the Reading and Writing sections at the end of the books. The main reasons are:

  • IDC about handwriting at all
  • When I checked out this section once, it had almost the same exercises as in textbook and workbook and felt boring

So, feel free to criticize my approach (but please don’t be too harsh or I’ll get upset) and give suggestions on what I could add to my workflow to make it better. Maybe I shouldn’t skip Reading and Writing? Maybe I should check each grammar in Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar? etc.

Also, I just wanted to add that my current goal is to complete both Genki’s and then finally start reading and watching japanese native content (so called “immersing”). Maybe start some intermediate level textbook. I’m pretty confident about this goal, but still maybe there is something wrong about it.

Thank you for reading! This is also my first post here lol

2

I have not studied from Genki 1, but I’m curious as to whether you have used the Tokini Andy Genki 1 videos to supplement your text and workbook activities, either as an introduction or as a review, such as this one:

3

Thanks for pointing that out. I will def. check it out after finishing current lesson

4

I’d do the reading. Reading motivates me and helps me cement grammar points from previous chapters.

Otherwise I don’t think you do anything ‘wrong’. Seems pretty solid to me. Especially the listening and mimicking the dialog samples I think is super important while studying alone.

Tokini andi as a second explanation (as per serviette) for grammar topics is not bad either if you like it. If the grammar makes sense to you without them it’s not 100% required I think.

5

Thanks, I will give Reading a go at least one more time.

6

Alternatively you could try reading the easy levels (start with level S and go up until the difficulty feels right) of tadoku as a supplement. They will contain unknown vocab compared to the Genki reading but might be more varried if the Genki topics are not up to your liking. Free Tadoku Books - にほんごたどく

Also comprehensible japanese is really good if you like to train your listening more

But both don’t have anything directly to do with Genki :sweat_smile:

7

Nah it’s completely fine, every advice is appreciated. I will check these out if I won’t like Genki’s reading texts or start having troubles with listening)

Though it’s more likely that I’ll stick to Genki, because I’m afraid that if having multiple sources of knowledge is not going to overwhelm me, then it’ll definitely slow me down(

8

This looks good to me. It’s more thorough than what I did (I didn’t do as many of the exercises). I also watched Tokini Andy’s videos which were linked above.

You don’t need to do the reading/kanji stuff in Genki if you’re doing those things elsewhere. You’re studying kanji on WK (level 22 is way past what Genki teaches), so I’d probably look into adding a little reading practice somewhere. Maybe start with the (free) Tadoku graded readers and see how that goes, or look into Satori Reader. The first two episodes of every Satori Reader story are free, so you can see how the difficulty is (for example, their story Spring)

9

Thanks, noted this. I will look into adding reading practice (outside of Genki) after I’m finished with Genki I.

10

I agree with the others,your routine is very solid. You could try the reading section but the key is to keep going. Moving forward is better than doing treading water perfectly. Possibly at your WK level, the reading section is way too easy. I wonder if branching out into the reading resources the others have mentioned if you would move through graded readers and into Satori very quickly. Be prepared for possibly getting bored in Genki II. That is what happened to me, I took very long to do Genki I, started reading other things, and then I ended up learning most N4 and N3 grammar on Satori as part of their glosses and direct grammar guides.

That could slow you down unnecessarily, as there will be a lot of other uses of this early grammar that you’ll come across that aren’t as important right now. At the early stage I personally found it most effective to use the dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar as a reference (look things up as I came across them). For example, I see a use of の that is confusing - I look it up and of the (let’s say) 6 uses, I skim to figure out which one is the one I came across and read that entry (not the other 5!). This issue is - if as a beginner you read all 6 use entries of の and 4 of them are completely new to you (from memory, sorry if it’s not really that many), it’s just overwhelming and nothing really sticks.

In terms of systematically dotting all i’s and crossing all t’s in your grammar konwledge and reading it through, or reading it for grammar points you’ve studied more systematically, I personally found that effective way after I was more comfortable with reading. Once I could reliably recognise at least 5, or even 6 of related use entries in my reading, then reading/studying all of those related entries turned out to be really enlightening.

It is a super high quality resource, so imagine your use of it growing over time. It’s ok if you use it very little right now.

11

Thank you so much for your advice!! I’m sorry I can’t really comment on it, but I’ll keep this and everything else others said in mind.

12

Soo after everyone’s advice I started doing Genki’s reading section. It turned out to be really fun, even though I get frustrated from time to time because I still encounter a lot of unknown words. But I guess it’s only natural.

This way, I finished Genki I completely (this is the main reason I decided to write this) and plan to watch linked videos in the beginning of the thread as a recap. Overall it took me about up to 5 months I guess. I wonder if this is slow, but I think it’s ok because I had to continue studying WK at the same time.

Right now I’m looking forward to study through Genki II on my summer break, hope I can get it finished in a month or so, since I will have huge amount of spare time.

13

Also, to be clear about time it took to finish Genki I, I use tofugu’s learn japanese guide as a reference. There it says “2-6” months to finish beginner textbook. Which I find OK if we are talking about only the first volume of Genki, and ridiculous if both volumes (since all Genki is considered a beginner textbook)

14

Congratulations on finishing the textbook! :tada:

15

First of: big congratulations on your achievement.

It takes a loooong time until that goes away with Japanese, unfortunately. Because the language is a little strange, there are NUMEROUS ways to say the same thing. Sometimes the difference is more formal, or casual, sometimes it has a slight nuance. Sometimes it’s just some stupid saying or 四字熟語. Either way the amount of vocabulary you need to know while reading is enormous compared to some other languages.
The good thing is: the vocabulary of the spoken language is much narrower and there are tons of words that no Japanese person would use in conversations. So your active vocabulary can be smaller and you’ll still be fine :smiley:

No it is not slow. The basics matter a LOT. So taking your time with the groundwork materials is not a bad decision in my view. As a comparison AFAIK many universities use Genki 1 for at least a whole semester!

Second, doing Genki 2 in 1 month will be quite tough, that’s 2 chapters a week. Don’t beat yourself up if you go a little slower and instead use additional material, like you are doing now(WK, the Genki reading, some anime watching etc.), instead of rushing through the materials.
The giving and receiving + keigo chapters can be quite the challange.

The good thing is after Genki 2 you have all the verb forms down. The rest of Japanese grammar is arguably mostly some special words you have to learn, but there aren’t many new crazy concepts you have to wrap your head around.

16

Thank everyone for your congratulations! This was really fast.

Yeah, I am actually excited and kind of scared of learning about honorific and humble forms. Because this seems tough, like a language in a language. Completely new words, grammar, etc. But I guess it would be really cool to learn how to use it and speak it)

I can imagine that. I have burnt out already once last fall when I was speedrunning WK like crazy (I looked at the heatmap recently and discovered few days when I did >200 reviews and >30 new items, which seems insane to me now lol). So I will watch closely and take breaks if needed.

17

When I did a beginner course a few years ago, it took basically a year to go through hiragana/katakana and volume 1 plus a bit of volume 2 of Minna no Nihongo (roughly equivalent to Genki 1). This was with a 2.5 hour in-person class once a week. So the “go through the textbook in 5 months” seems fast by comparison!

Good luck with your learning journey!

18

I have Genki and I really like this plan! I have a question, do you do all 6 steps all in one go? 1 whole lesson out of the textbook and workbook a day? How long does that take you? I tried splitting it up doing the textbook one day and the workbook the next day but I had a hard time remembering the lessons and majorly procrastinated it.

P.S. congrats on finishing Genki 1!

19

I’m glad you liked this approach! On the days I study with Genki, I usually spend 1-1.5 hours, so:

  1. Steps 1-2: 1 day
  2. Step 3: 1 day
  3. Step 4: 2 days, because there is a ton of exercises and I have to remind some grammars(
  4. Steps 5-6 + R&W section of textbook (I just read the text and so some exercises): 1 day, because usually workbook exrcises aren’t that hard + I type everything on keyboard which makes everything easier.

Sometimes, when I have more free time, the days can merge and I can complete more steps in a single day, but what I wrote is how it usually happens.

Thanks for congratulations and good luck with your study!

20

Hi again everyone!

TL;DR: I finished both Genki’s and would appreciate some advice on what to do next.

So, as I have planned, I finished Genki II in around 1 month, which was tough, as downtimes said, but I’m glad I did it this way because starting next semester I will have to work and do military training besides studying and will have much less free time. Plus, I wanted to get to the immersion stage as soon as possible) (super happy rn)

My method stayed mostly the same, but I added a few things (maybe it will help someone in future):

  1. As I wrote previously, I stopped skipping reading section (at the end of the textbook), because reading even Genki’s texts turned out to be fun and engaging.
  2. I started writing a lot more. Throughout all Genki I, I wrote almost exclusively in workbook, that is, rather simple sentences just to learn the grammar. So, I began writing bigger texts (around 200-300 characters) in the もとめの練習 section of the textbook for each lesson if it has the exercise which calls for a text to be written, which is usually a text for a presentation or research report or something. Now that I think about it, I should have used 書く練習 section to practice writing (pun not intended), but I guess I’m good as is.
  3. I added all the grammar points from Genki I to Anki and continued adding as I learned more. I used this (reddit link) template. It’s main feature is that when you review grammar, a random sentence from a list that you specify is shown. Should have been doing it from the very start.
  4. I started using AI-slop. I hope I won’t get shamed for this, because I needed to at least somehow check my grammar, especially when I wrote big texts, and I’m too broke for a proper private tutor. And I used it only for this, so I hope it’s ok.

For those who come after: if you also study with digital textbook copies, it is super handy to use something like rclone to synchronize your textbook pdfs across multiple devices via google drive or any other cloud storage service. And use some pdf editor of course to annotate the files with text (microsoft edge’s pdf viewer is my personal recommendation, it’s just so good and fast). You can also use something like PDF24 to add bookmarks, I used them all the time to navigate since the textbook is huge.

General Genki impression: I loved it a lot. Grammar explanations are super clear with always a ton of examples. Exercises are interesting, simple and show when and how the grammars should be used. Listening practice is here, writing and reading practice is here, even speaking practice is here if you are up for the challenge: almost all textbook exercises are meant to be done in pairs and I had to solo those. The style is great, the overall quality is wonderful. So yeah, really loved it, heck, I even got hella sad when I read the final lesson title.

So, now that I finished bragging, I would really appreciate some advice on how to immerse correctly. I will go through things that people suggested here and do my own research of course, but if I got recommended something like Tofugu’s learn japanese guide, that would be incredible. I’m now really pumped up to read manga, LNs, VNs and such, but it probably will be too much for me for now.