There are two things here – one is the timeframe you’re realistically going to be able to learn and absorb the knowledge and the other is the extent of the knowledge. For example, you could “learn” 20 kanji per day using Heisig’s RTK book and thus “learn” all the jōyō kanji in just over three months (a claim I still see from time to time). Realistically, though, what you are doing is learning to recognize the kanji and link them to a keyword and that’s just a small part of what knowing kanji entails.
WK is much more realistic in that regard, but still, you only learn a part of how kanji are used. What you are getting from WK is a degree of passive ability to recognize or deduce the meaning and pronunciation of kanji in a lot of cases, but by no means all of them.
Also, completing WK in just over a year is possible in the sense that learning 2000 kanji with Heisig’s book in 3 months is possible – you’d either have to live in Japan and be surrounded with kanji every day or you have to be able to dedicate a good portion of your day almost every day to learning. And even after you have burned them all, spaced repetition is not magic – it helps you retain what you learned better, but only up to a point – burning a kanji is not a guarantee that you’ll be able to remember it.
That’s so so so so wrong. It’s painful to hear : )
Опыт лидерства is a legit thing these days, unfortunately…Although I’d hit anyone who’d say it : )
And трансфЁр? Seriously? I heard both трансфЕр and трАнсфер - even though the E-stress is right (thanks for pointing this one out, by the way ), but трансфЁр?
“САДИТ с детками деревья” - my personal favourite… where did they get those people (or texts?) - that sounds as if they never went to school, poor things.
And that’s not what @Leebo means saying about beginners targeted courses.
Those are not the examples used for the sake of simplifying things for beginners who don’t have other options in terms of vocab/grammar to build the target phrases. Most of the listed items don’t sound just robotic and unnatural, they are plain wrong.
Personally I don’t like the voices there in general - male voices especially! The first is basically a foreigner (Lithuanian probably? Which would be absolutely all right if they mentioned that), the second needs a speech therapist, that’s not a speech model I’d recommend to copy, even though he might be Russian.
Thanks, @FlamySerpent! I had my doubts about 101 before, but now…
I bought the N5 version and went through it a few months ago. I thought it was useful and gave me an idea of where I was at and what I needed to work on.
Sister-in-law bought me the N5 one two Christmases ago. Used it months later preparing for the next December’s test. (fail by two points, dag-nab-it). But, it was definitely useful, as I had never taken the test before. Gave me a good indication of test format and everything, so I didn’t go in blind and get overwhelmed not knowing what to expect. Suppose they’re now less useful since I’ve taken the real thing, but will still give indications of how hard the questions are for that level.
I obtained a free copy of Japanese Rosetta Stone from 5 years ago. It’s not that bad… Definitely not a standalone resource, but if you were to consider it a supplemental game I don’t see a problem with it. The lowest price I saw for it was $120, which I would never pay… That being said I’ve never pushed past the first handful of lessons.
In terms of value… 1 year of Wanikani versus the whole set of Rosetta Stone Japanese… I might be biased but I think we all know which one is better.
It’s hard for me to list a resource that you should avoid at all costs… Although I do see a lot of scammy-sounding websites in my google ads.
I will say though, as far as textbooks go, most people agree that Genki is king. I’ve used Japanese from Zero, Yookoso, and Genki, and Genki is clearly superior. Yookoso wasn’t so bad… It just felt really outdated, and the CD exercises program was really glitchy. In terms of the order that material is presented however, Yookoso is nearly identical to Genki.
I haven’t looked through all of it, but it looks like these are the full official practice workbooks, audio files, and answer sheets.
Even if you already have the physical books, the PDFs are handy for printing an answer-sheet (i.e. sheet for writing answers on, not the sheet containing the answers… though it has that, too)
The book you described above is available on the web site as a download, as posted above. That sample paper is a lot easier than the actual test. I wrote the following about the resources I used and what I thought of them:
I’m taking N1 in July… I tried the sample vocab questions linked for N2 and N1. 28/32 for N2 and 13/25 for N1. Guess that’s not too bad considering I still have about 2 months to study. And I guess I was right to think that at my current level N2 is “too easy”.
I’m surprised that they were actual tests. I worked through the free practice paper before going through my other resources. Instead of finding the papers getting progressively easier, the free JLPT practice paper was the easiest of all.
The actual test, was at least as difficult as my most difficult (commerically prepared) paper.
What makes a question harder? kanji with jukugo. kanji with words that are less frequently used. All N5 words are very frequently used but some (大) are more frequent than others (毎週). Last year’s paper had a kanji character for a colour. Some of the JLPT N5 lists are shorter than others because they don’t have colours (赤 白 黒).
In the grammar section, one of the sections required that we rearrange a bunch of words to form a sensible sentence. I was stuck on a question which used a sentence to qualify a noun. e.g. 本を読んでいる学生 Maybe I was stressed (because it is an exam, not a practice) but I couldn’t work it out. That grammatical structure is included in Genki 1 but it is harder to grasp than other Japanese grammar concepts.
At my local Kinokuniya, there is a sign on the book case which said “If you found the official JLPT practice questions too easy, try this” next to a bunch of other practice books.
I don’t wish to dismiss the free sample paper outright. I suggest working through the free JLPT practice paper first. If a candidate struggles through that paper, they know not to sit a higher level.
@wunderbunny, thanks for the detailed response! I’m cataloging contents of various practice tests and textbooks for a project, so it’s good to have some additional sense of how various resources differ.
), but трансфЁр?