I seem to remember だ or た being at the end of all the casual past tense. 分かった！ vs. 分かりました！ (casual/formal) I haven’t hit that chapter again on my second pass yet, so maybe I’m wrong… but…?
Anyway, in my case I felt like I basically knew these from many years of anime viewing… That chapter was an easy one for me… so it’s possible I missed something out of over-confidence.
People will respond to those - you make friends that way by correcting a few of theirs and they correct a few of yours… then you can try out-and-out personal conversations. ^^
I just re-read lesson 6…
Apparently I really did need a reminder on how to use から.
@Answa, @alexbeldan, @ReJi00, @Saruko, and anyone else who hasn’t popped in this thread in a while, how are your studies going?
With how dead the thread has been lately, I think I may just start calling random people out every month to check in! XD
Hey Sylph,
Just wondering how you’re doing. I haven’t seen you around the forums for a while. Hope everything’s okay. Maybe you’re just still busy with those things.
Runs and hides…
I did all my reviews last night, so that’s something.
I’m down to 78 reviews (earlier today they were 70)… So that pile I had that was around 350 is coming down after a few days…
Last week the study group that I’m hosting finally started! So that’s exciting! We have people at different levels - 2 just starting out, 1 says lesson 4 is where she wants to start, 1 had a year or so in college but is very rusty so happy to start at the beginning. I will just go along from the beginning and study 15 min/day. We’re going to do the group and pair exercises from the textbook together (starting with Lesson 1 this week).
If we have questions that we can’t collectively figure out, I’ll definitely be asking in here 
Doing well! Started doing the practice in Lesson 5 this morning (conjugating adjectives–which is such a weird thing to say). I do every problem except, of course, the pair work.
Cool! That’s nice to work together.
If I had a group like that, I’d probably be doing the exercises in pairs or something. Instead, I just skip them and (occasionally) try posting what I’ve learned somewhere on the forums here and/or on HelloTalk, with mixed results. Maybe if I had I would’ve better remembered から, though. Thanks again for pointing out my mistake. ^^;
@Answa - great! Lesson 5 is one I’ll definitely need to keep referring back to for a while yet, simply because a few of those conjugations are weird and feel uncommon to me (I can’t think I’ve heard some of them when watching Japanese media - ever). I need to listen harder, perhaps?
Does HelloTalk have a function where you can write a few sentences like a journal or something and receive corrections? I was thinking of trying to make a habit of writing just a sentence or two a day (about anything - not forcing myself to use recently learned grammar or vocab, although recently learned stuff would probably come out of my head anyway). I have an italki account, so I’ll probably post it on there.
No problem! 
Please do the same for me!
Yep. You post a moment and people can correct it.
Yes. They call them “moments”. Think of them like Facebook status updates, somewhat?
I feel Hello Talk is a mix of Lang-8 and Facebook. I like it better than either of them. The correction features are really great, too. Very easy to use, intuitive, even.
Hey! Yeah, not busy with that anymore, but then I went on vacation so now I’m still catching up 
I hope I can get back to Genki soon.
I’ll be sure to tell you guys!
Sounds good! Glad you’re not busy anymore.
How was your vacation?
頑張って！
How did your study group come together? I WISH I had people IRL to study with. I had a couple Japanese friends who thought the interviews were hilarious, but we are all backpackers right now so I haven’t had any consistent study buddies/language partners
The study group is me, my husband, one of my husband’s coworkers, and a mother and son whom we met through a homeschooling network. We had met the mother and son at social gatherings, but didn’t know they were interested in studying Japanese until the mother emailed the network asking if anyone knew of any local resources for it. Unfortunately, none of us have any Japanese friends or native language partners, but that’s probably why we all have time/energy/need for a weekly study group.
I’ve had a lot of things pop up in my life the past couple months, so I’m horribly behind on just about everything except my reviews here, trying to get back into the swing of things is hard when you are behind on everything.
Tae Kim’s guide is really helpful for learning grammar, as well as Genki. It includes a lot of examples and common vocabulary. It’s also free 
You have to be careful with those free resources though. No matter how great the explanations are, a real book like Genki will always be better since they have enough practice exercises to put the material into your active memory.
It was great, thanks!
If only I wasn’t buried by 850 reviews now 
Well, I better get started