This is a casual study group open to all- if you have just finished Genki 1 and are ready to move on, or if you would like to review upper-beginner grammar along with us!
Textbook Structure
The front of the book contains the Grammar sections for each chapter. There is also a Reading and Writing section in the back of the book that corresponds to each chapter and introduces kanji. Since we’re all here on WK, I will not be focusing on the kanji lessons or the Reading sections. I will post the writing prompts for each chapter if anyone would like to practice their output.
Study Strategies
Please do not feel stressed about this group- all study strategies are welcome here! Since many people are using this as a review of the material, it won’t be necessary to try and do so much that you get discouraged. The bare minimum participation is to read that chapter’s grammar points, and any more studying is up to you!
Schedule
We’ve finished going through this book as a group, but feel free to continue at your own pace and post in this thread with comments or questions on the grammar in the book.
Satori Reader requires a monthly subscription, but is an excellent tool for bridging the gap between textbook examples and native reading. Their Nutshell Grammar series contains bite-sized grammar explanations with multiple context sentences.
I was thinking we could discuss each chapter’s content in this thread rather than making a bunch of extra threads. But this is a democratic study group, so let’s vote!
Yay! You’re ahead of the game! Have you watched his videos before? I really like them, it gives you that classroom feeling so you don’t feel so on your own with self study.
I had not watched his videos before this - his approach is straightforward, his explanations are on point, and he anticipates the questions that his viewers may have, which is great.
I do have to actively watch and pay attention, as, while he lays things out in a natural progression, it’s important to be sure that I grasp every point that he is making, as it’s all too possible to inadvertently zone out and miss something crucial.
Of course, that’s what’s nice about being able to rewind and rewatch portions of the video.
Much of what is in chapter 13 will be a review for me of things that I learned many years ago, but that includes many nuances which I had forgotten - so the combination of Genki and Tokini Andy and the other resources that you listed will be extremely helpful for me.
Agreed! For some reason I resisted watching his videos until I was like halfway through Genki 1, then I was like gee, why didn’t I start sooner?
He also has videos containing the full stream with him answering people’s questions, so I suppose you could watch those if you wanted additional context. I just haven’t because they’re so long and I prefer the concise explanations.
Hooray!!
And if anyone comes up with more resources that are useful, feel free to let me know and I’ll add them to the post.
It’s officially the start date for Genki 2, everyone!
I’m still finishing up chapter 12 of Genki 1 so my only goal for week 1 is to watch the corresponding Tokini Andy video. Then, next week, I’ll read through the chapter and do the exercises.
What’s your study plan?
I guess you’re in Japan, Soggy? Judging from when you’re posting, but maybe not. Either way, it’s a national holiday here tomorrow, so I’ll chill out this weekend and get properly started on Monday! I’ll give Andy’s video a watch and go through some of the vocab quizlet decks on Sunday though, most likely.
Lots of super useful grammar coming up, looking forward to it. I should hit lvl 10 on WK over the weekend too. Progress!
yay! Yesterday, I … gasp, read through the grammar points in Chapter 13! I also looked them up on Satori, so this evening when I’m done with work if anyone else who uses Satori would find it helpful, I will post which “Nutshell Grammar” posts I found that match up a bit with these grammar points.
Like the なら point in Genki really threw me. I see なら in my reading all the time, and then the description in Genki just… didn’t really fit into how I’ve come to think of it. So I read about it in the Dictionary of Beginner (or is it Elementary?) Grammar. And I think the なら I’m thinking of is more in line with what is described there and used with verbs in the “if this is true” sense. The contrastive sense pointed out by Genki is something I don’t remember coming across - or I just didn’t understand it and blew right by it. So I’m looking forward to digging into that one in particular on the Nutshell Grammar (hopefully they cover that sense) and see if I can unravel it a bit. I’ll be interested if this point is a bit abstract/challenging for others, as well. Maybe I’ll have to watch Tokini Andy, I’m sure I’ll be in the camp of why didn’t I do this earlier?
The other thing I did was read the passages at the second half of the book (without doing the exercises first! ha! A win for making this more fun). I like that it’s a similar concept to Satori - they remove furigana for kanji that should be known. It’s easier because of the limited vocab, but I feel like in some ways it’s harder because they intentionally crammed it with kanji that I should know how to read without furigana. So I did enjoy that reading actually.
Hey you know, I like the ambition to do 2 weeks per chapter, but if you (or anyone else) gets behind, I’d say, hey, why don’t we take 3 weeks now and then? Just saying, just in case we get 2 weeks in and you’re feeling like you’d like another week on ch 13, it wouldn’t be tragic to have another week.
So this is a brave new world for me, I’m doing a minimalist version of this instead of doing absolutely everything.
Plan is
minimum: read the grammar points (a very doable goal )
boost: read through some of the exercises and look at them as a source of inspiration rather than “I have to do all of these”! Which of the questions and exercises are closest to the things I might conceivably talk about in the near future? Because I find it hard to just say, ok, right, I’m going to use なら in my next conversation… Instead, do some exercises that look most relevant to me, and see how it goes when attempting to use them with my friend.
Bonus: look up these grammar points on Satori (Nutshell Grammar) to further get into them.
Bonus: practice the kanji in the second half and read the reading passages.
Bonus: do the final page of the workbook listening exercise. I actually find these a good challenge (anyone can do these, the audio is on the publisher’s OTO Navi app).
I’m skipping rigourously adding all vocab and kanji to SRS, doing every single drill, etc. Hats off to anyone who does it all! I know from Genki I that that is super helpful, it’s just not in the cards for me right now and would take way too long, so I’m bravely following @soggyboy’s lead and doing something at a more useful pace rather than everything over a very long period of time (by which I mean, procrastinating indefinitely).
IIRC Tokini Andy was also surprised that the Genki 2 treatment of なら was somewhat abbreviated compared with what might have been expected.
I had once stumbled across grammar points on Satori, but had later forgotten that they existed - when I had first found them, they seemed to be rather random instead of being organized in a comprehensive manner, but maybe I didn’t investigate that closely enough. If it’s not difficult to identify or link to those, sure, I’d find it useful, thanks…
they’re not really organised, although thematically there are useful groups of episodes. The developer is working on a search function and an organised knowledge base, but it’s not quite there yet. For now, I was just scrolling through that series of 70 articles, lol. Although, now that I think of it… OMG, face palm, I was on my phone digging those out but if I’d done that on the browser version I could have done a search for the grammar points (just tested, yes, will do that next time).
Anyway, I’ll link those on here tonight or tomorrow! It’ll be pretty quick to do for future chapters now, too.
Edit: oops hi @soggyboy we just crossed simultaneous messages here!
OK, relavant Satori episodes from their Nutshell Grammar series. If you’re a subscriber, go to the Nutshell Grammar series and I’ve referenced relevant episodes below for Genki II Ch 13.
It’s ok to study these out of order! I personally think Satori does a great job of giving a practical twist to these explanations so I’m prioritising this above Genki’s exercises actually.
The potential - from Episode 16. This covers it well, and there are 2 additional parts that go into more depth.
なら is treated in Episode 24. The sense discussed in genki is from the 19th example. The earlier examples are the more common constructions I’ve seen reading. And if you’re interested in other forms of conditionals and have time, then you might be interested in the set of Episodes 23-27! I’d say just do that if you’ve been reading a lot and you’re thinking, what’s the difference between と vs なら vs たら vs えば. But if that question is not in your mind, then maybe just stick to なら for now.
そう is treated in 3 parts, Episodes 36-38. Now, the first episode contrasts this “it seems” version of そう with a different “sou” (hearsay そう). If you’re not sure what that’s all about, maybe skip this one on Satori for now. But if you have come across both, and the similar “よう” then you’ll enjoy it.
Great! I just updated that post after reading the nara episode! Satori is awesome, it quickly made apparent what genki means with x nara: “well if it’s x you want to discuss”.
The more common construction I think is x nara as in, if x is the case/ true, then…
I studied the し lesson on Satori thinking I wouldn’t get anything new out of it, and it wasn’t until the end when he compared it to から that I thought, huh, I would have compared it to たり why is that? It turns out in my head I simplified shi as an unrestricted list of “ands” a bit like nado, but the crucial difference is that shi is giving reasons for something or listing things that lead to drawing the same conclusion. Genki literally says that in every sentence for a whole page, and compares it to kara right from the start, but it seems it didn’t sink in for me. English brain went “that means and” and the rest of the context went out the window!
Seth Clydesdale’s page for working through the exercises
Satori Reader Nutshell Grammar Series
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