Genki Study Buddies - 「皆さんはGenkiを勉強しています」

How’s your class going? I was just reading some of the old thread around Lesson 7, and it was around the same time you tried to read the first few chapters of Genki with little hirigana knowledge. Is that much better for you now? :slight_smile:

Hmm… 2-3 sentences for every grammar point… that might be a great way for me to review everything after I’ve read all of Genki. I like that idea…

Awesome! I just about finished the textbook pages for the main chapter, both reading and exercises (I’m skipping all the pair and class activities except for the ones that say to make a dialogue; those I’m writing out). I’m now trying to get through the workbook pages, then I’ll go to the reading comprehension section for chapter 17. I’m hoping to be finished with the workbook and onto reading comprehension by this weekend– that work for you?

I’m still in chapter 3, I need to catch up to you guys and yea a buddy will be motivational.

Lol. Classes are going great. A in the first one last summer. Then did absolutely 0 studying for about 6 months until this quarter. I think I’m on track for an A? I’ve gotten an A both midterms, but every once in a while I have a poor quiz (And we have quizzes nearly every day). But yes, I can read Hiragana smoothly enough now. :smiley: Katakana is still slow, but I’ve put like 0 effort into it.

Grammar-wise, it’s going good. I just always forget it, which is my main reason for wanting to go back. I’m also terrible at particles. I missed less than 10 points out of 100 on my last midterm and 5 of them were particle mistakes. :sweat_smile:

Count me in buddy

I’m almost finished with chapter 1, I could definitely use a study buddy!

An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese.

I’m half way through chapter 14. I finished Genki I in about 3 weeks sometime around August, and have been dragging my feet about starting Genki II until last week. A lot of this is technically review, since I minored in Japanese in college, but it’s been 10 years… So I didn’t retain a whole lot. ~_~
It’s weird studying Japanese alone! I’d love a study buddy!

@rfindley got it with “Integrated Approached to Intermediate Japanese” as the basis for the IAIJ initialism. A lot of people suggest going straight from Genki to Tobira, but I say, porque no las dos?

I feel you on falling off the wagon. I fell off hard twice in the last year. Once after my trip to Japan in April (which at the time was just travel–I walked from Tokyo to Kyoto) and again a month after I moved here in December. Eventually the pressures of Japanese life overwhelmed me and I sorta kicked back at the whole “Japan thing” en masse.

I’m in Japan now with the JET program as an ALT. Hokkaido was my first choice, luckily enough. In fact, this exact region of Hokkaido was my first choice, which basically makes me the luckiest damn JET ever (among a few other perks). I’d been waitlisted, but I got the call at the very end of October that they wanted me and I arrive in mid-December.

I like Hokkaido a lot, especially the community–both the local native community and the ALT community. Amazing people everywhere I turn. The weather is very, very gradually starting to improve. It’s been snowing like crazy ever since I arrived. That said, the climate in Hokkaido changes quite radically from region to region. Even an hour’s drive can change the climate, the flora, etc. It’s really cool :slight_smile:

When you finish Genki I skip the N5. Go right to Genki II. You’re level 13 and halfway through Genki I. You can already do N5, I’m certain. That said, what’s the thread? Can you link me?

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I don’t actually have the workbook :frowning: My workflow is like this:

  1. Copy down Grammar point 1 lesson
  2. Do Grammar point 1 exercises
  3. Repeat 1 & 2 for the remaining grammar points

I do the group/pair exercises that tell me to “as your partner the following questions” and just pretend that the book is my partner and it’s asking me xD Typically, doing the grammar lesson and exercises is enough to get it into my head. I try to get my reading through manga, games, and light novels… text book reading is just so boring, even though I know I should do it :frowning:

@gahllib Maybe we could just do the pair exercises together as they come up?

Also, how does everyone typically contact each other for this? Just post updates in the thread, rely on outside chat system, etc? I’m fine with whatever.

That’s great to hear!
Haha, I’m still slow at Katakana too… but that’s more because I’m trying desperately to figure out how the Japanese tried to make our English (or sometimes French or German) words sound “Japanese”…
Because yeah, sometimes it’s that different pronunciation that throws me off, even though I can read the characters themselves… ^_^;

Particles are difficult! Nihongonomori’s videos on (basic) particles was pretty helpful for me… It’s probably not enough, but hopefully will clear up a few things for you? (Videos 1,3,4,5,6 on that playlist.)

@rfindley - Ah… Yes I have seen that title before. It just seems a mouthful.

@jomteon - oh yeah, you were basically doing a classic Tokaido! (There’s a game about the pilgrimage between Tokyo and Kyoto. : D It’s fun.)
Hm… let’s see if I can find that… This is the thread to which I was referring: Post your J-CAT score! and this is where you can download N5 and N4 and other JLPT practice exams (as PDFs) for free: http://jlptbootcamp.com/2012/10/the-official-jlpt-n5-practice-workbook/
The other links are in the top of the J-CAT thread. Since I’m not doing any of the work with Genki, and really only reading the grammar points (and the dialogue at the beginning of the chapters to the best of my ability, then checking what I thought it meant versus the translation a page or two later), I think it’d be good to test myself. Not sure if I’m going to try and do it in the allotted times, or just work through it like a workbook. We’ll see how gung-ho I feel when I get there.

Moving on to Lesson 8 today…

I’m just posting in the thread. But if people (especially people who have decided to partner up) want to get in on chat apps and things… feel free! I think that’s really cool! :slight_smile:

Well, so far I’m hoping that Lesson 8 will be easy. I thought it would be, considering it’s on the short forms (or informal variants) of things… but I’ve already been practically backwards with the dialogue off the top. I thought a sentence had said “Will you bring anything?/What will you bring” when it was “Should I bring anything?” *hangs head*

Here is the original:
何か持っていきましょうか。

Typing it out now, of course I realize my mistake. The ~ましょうか is indicating “can I help you/do this for you”… XD Well… yup. Thanks for listening to me work this out. >_<;

EDIT: So far so good. Short forms or informal forms make sense. However the footnote goes on to list various ways to call these forms… (er, thanks, Genki), including the ever-awkward sounding (and WTF is that?) “distal” form in the case of polite/formal forms… Because yeah, that’s a word that we use on a daily basis in English.
I’ve seen all these before (in the opening chart) and am more comfortable with (the negative at least) of these than the formal versions. 「じゃない」… ah… I feel like I’ve come home…

Yep, I feel like this is all stuff I already know or have picked up from other sources (much anime and drama (but especially the anime), and also Nihongonomori’s videos)… Informal speech for the most part just feels more natural to me. I mean, all the adults on Terrace House decided straight off the top “hey, we’re living together so let’s just use our given names”, which I didn’t expect, and was cool to see… so I have a feeling that people of my generation are (possibly?) using polite speech less and less (except probably at work or when talking to their teachers, of course)… But this is totally my outsider’s perspective FROM AFARTM.

Until grammar point 4. That’s interesting.
And grammar point 5 - another use for が: We both know X happened, but I know that Robert did it, and you don’t, so ロバートさんが沖縄に行きました。
I’m also kind of surprised that they didn’t cover the past tense informal forms. Maybe that’s next chapter, though.

Grammar point 6 (page 159/160) - 何か and 何も - while already familiar with 何も, it’s interesting to see these other uses (other than just answering “nothing”… “What are you doing?” “何も。。”, "何でもない"or “別に” that I often hear.) Slotting them into sentences looks really useful. I’ll have to keep an ear and eye out to see if I catch these uses!

Then Genki points out what I thought to be fairly obvious about する verbs… that the noun preceding it is *gasp* a noun! XD

Well, that’s it from me for Lesson 8. I’ll probably re-read some points of the chapter next week/next time before reading Lesson 9… as that seems to be my thing… This was probably the easiest chapter for me to understand since the first few.

Despite having some idea of short forms before going into the chapter, I found chapter 8 difficult. At least in a classroom setting. With practice, I’m sure it’s simple (and short), but as everything before this was conjugated one way, having to conjugate the same things in a new way without getting mixed up was/is a challenge. ):

Hmm… I guess I can see that. For me, coming from a perspective of having watched anime with subs for 18-19 years already, (and being a fairly active listener and occasional shadower from the start), with many of them being highschool anime… the basic informal tones used in Lesson 8 are more natural to me than the ~ます形 (especially in the case of godan verbs, I think?). I haven’t been watching dramas as long, and even most of those aren’t in office settings or contain plots where formal speech is used much (or worse, they’ve been in Korean instead, so I’ve picked up 5-8 words of that accidentally…).

Man… writing that… makes me realize that I’m getting close to having been “self-studying” Japanese for twenty years… (I think that will be 2019 or 2019/20, really)… That’s kinda freaky…
But totally, “self-studying” needs those quotation marks, because I mostly wasn’t.

Yeah, chat apps works for me– do you LINE?

@gahllib Yeah! My LINE ID is toukosaanya. If anyone else wants to chat with me there feel free, I won’t mind unless you’re actively being a creep :smiley:

Today was impossible to actually sit down and read the textbook more than at a glance, though I have had time to cram flash cards from Chapter 8. Today the 3rd-year students graduated, so it was busy as heck. And then a neighbor gave me a bicycle, so I went out for shopping :smiley:

Btw, I didn’t do the Tokaido, as a matter of fact. I did the Nakasendo. Tokaido–as the name implies–is a shoreline route between the cities, whereas the Nakasendo cuts down the spine of Honshu. I highly recommend the Nakasendo. The Tokaido is such a commercially important space that it’s been completely covered over by the modern world. The Nakasendo feels like a journey back though time–especially if you do it Tokyo to Kyoto. There’s even sections of the original path still open to walk on–that’s how I did a chunk of the hike.

It’s only a mentally difficult challenge. All other aspects are wonderful. You can pitch a tent literally anywhere (within reason) in Japan, so you always have somewhere to sleep, and there’s lots of food options and decent signage along the way. It was a life-changing experience in the best possible way–five weeks of high-test personal growth!

Anyway, time to cram a little more before bed. Good luck everyone!

Geez have I fallen off the study train before even really getting anywhere.

Count me in if you guys get anything up and going! I think being held accountable by ANYONE would be helpful to me.

Is anyone starting from like, Lesson 1? :slight_smile: