What should I do along side WK?

[anon91812488]

I have been doing WK for about a month now and am nearing level 5 so I’m gonna ask what else should i do along side WK? I wanna get better as fast as possible and i feel like i should do something on the side of WK do you have and recommendations?

[ccookf]

It’s really going to depend on what you’re interested in and what you expect to get out of WK. Assuming you’re a complete beginner to Japanese this would be a good time to look into an introductory textbook (or equivalent resource, eg. Bunpro).

The Ultimate Additional Japanese Resources List!

This post is a list of Japanese resources and stands as a collaborative wiki gathered by the WaniKani Community. If there’s a resource you feel is missing from the list, please add it by clicking the edit button above. Include an edit reason by clicking the button at the top of the edit window. Many of the resources here are free, however, the ones that aren’t are marked with a dollar sign $ or otherwise noted. Click on the triangle symbol ► to open a section’s resou…

If you want to dip your toes into absolute beginner reading that’s kind of level appropriate try

Tadoku - Free (series) | L0-19??

And if you want harder reading something like the book clubs

Master List of Book Clubs

Introduction There are several book clubs here on the forums. Reading along with a book club can provide a great source of motivation, and there are a lot of people to help you out with questions, enabling you to tackle harder content. Many of the book clubs have community vocabulary lists, so they can be a great resource even if you’re reading after the book club has moved on. Additionally, you’re always welcome to ask questions even after a book has been finished by a book club. People are al…

[Daisoujou]

You’re going to want to find a grammar resource, and a way to learn more vocab (both because Wanikani’s ordering is beholden to kanji simplicity more than maximizing word usefulness, and because a lot of words you need to know don’t tend to use kanji). How you do that is your preference – personally, I got the early stages of both out of the way by using the Genki textbook. If you don’t like textbooks, there are a lot of Youtube channels and other online resources for grammar (Cure Dolly’s channel teaches a lot of concepts differently from other resources and some people swear by her, otherwise you can use something free online like Tae Kim’s guide). If you can tolerate another SRS, I’d recommend Anki decks for vocab if you’re not going to use a textbook (or even if you are, you can SRS the book’s vocab). The Tango N5 and N4 decks, while I haven’t used them myself, are frequently recommended.

I can vouch for what ccookf linked, Tadoku is good stuff to just get started reading basic extremely simple constructed Japanese when you’re early in learning, as well as the value of the beginner book clubs here when you have a bit of a base of knowledge to work off. Once you learn enough of the basics, the sooner you can push yourself into reading/listening to real Japanese stuff and learning that way, the better!

[anon91812488]

how did you use the Genki books? since i do have the Minna No Nihongo books however idk how to use it to benefit me

[anon91812488]

thanks this is very useful!

[Daisoujou]

Oh, so I went to find the link to the thread the last time this came up and I shared some stuff others had said about using Minna, but it turns out that was you asking before, heh! Not sure I have a lot more I can add on to what was said there – for Genki specifically, the lessons mostly walk you through pretty intuitively, but watching Tokini Andy for a second opinion along with them helped me get a better understanding of some points. Personally I did most of the exercises that work for one person (though I’ve skipped out on writing almost entirely so I only answered them in my head) for the sake of drilling the constructions Genki teaches a bit, but there are a lot of disagreements out there about the value of doing exercises so it’s something you can feel out for your own preferences. Otherwise, there were premade Anki decks for me to study each lesson’s vocab, and that’s about it. My goal was always to rush to immersion learning so I speedran it more than most people advise, but pace is yet another of those things no one can really dictate for you.

I know Minna has a higher barrier to entry since it’s totally Japanese, so perhaps that’s throwing you off? Again, I can’t speak to that specifically. But since there was already an attempt at answering this, perhaps if you have more specific questions/issues with the books, someone might be able to help more?

[anon91812488]

well since i have been studying for around 9 months prior to WK and MNN idk where to start from and how to do it

[Daisoujou]

Ahh ok, I had assumed you were starting more fresh, sorry. It’s going to depend on what it is you’ve done in those 9 months – it seems the MNN Shokyuu books very roughly equate to N5 and N4, whereas Chuukyuu is more of an intermediate text, though it sounds like its contents are scattered on the N-scale.

If you’re coming in with some prior knowledge, that’ll depend on where it came from. There are some basics you just can’t do without, so most places start pretty similar, but despite every program’s efforts to organize it, language learning isn’t exactly a linear thing, so you might find that what you know and don’t know are somewhat scattershot in relation to MNN’s setup.

If you have an idea of your level you might be able to approximate where you should start, but it’s going to take a little judgment on your part probably – there’ll no doubt be some degree of discrepancies in how MNN structures itself compared to whatever you’ve done up to now.