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.
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.
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).
I read and try to understand all the new grammar points in one go. This is the most fun part for me)
I do each exercise (even try to do wacky group activities) related to this lessons in the textbook.
Same with the workbook.
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
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:
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.
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
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(
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)
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.
