I’m hoping to supplement my learning with a Japanese textbook. I’m just wondering what topic compliments learning Kanji at the same time. I was thinking of getting a book for grammar, but I’d love to hear what would be better or more beneficial. Thanks a lot!
Vocabulary? That’s pretty much everything. I mean, the first sentence on the Wikipedia page for “language” is
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary.
You’re covering some vocabulary with WaniKani, but learning more will always help. You can use a textbook to learn some grammar, as you suggest.
Focusing on WaniKani for the first ~10 levels can be beneficial since getting a decent kanji base will help with the rest. It’s easier to focus on learning grammar if you can read the kanji in something like お父さんは新聞を読んでいます for instance.
When you decide to start studying grammar seriously there are many paths. Genki is very popular although I personally found it a bit too school-y, if that makes these.
There’s Cure Dolly on Youtube and Tae Kim who has a grammar guide on his website. Those are 100% free which is always nice.
There’s Bunpro that can be used for grammar SRS (not free though).
There are a bunch of Anki decks that you can use alongside these various resources too.
I’d recommend experimenting with all of that until you find something that suits you and your objectives.
Grammar is a good choice
Trying to learn even more vocab on the side while you’re already working hard at wk could be too much.
You’ll naturally pick up new vocab too over time but eg drilling some 10K deck alongside wk wouldn’t be my recommendation for a beginner.
You need to understand how the language works through studying grammar.
If you’ve just started learning Japanese, then I’d suggest a few things:
- Watch some YouTube videos about the basics of Japanese grammar.
The basics are easy to grasp and can get you quite a long way. Seeing and hearing multiple examples is much more effective than just reading about them and doing paper exercises. You can even watch a video again and treat it like an exercise, or rewind each spoken example an speak along with it the second time.
- Watch some Japanese films / tv shows / anime.
Get a general feel for the language, some words and phrases will crop up multiple times and you’ll learn how to say useful things like “good morning” & “prepare to die”. Watching is better than listening at this stage because if you understand nothing you’ll tune out audio quite quickly, and with video, there’s extra context for the audio.
- Get a level 0 graded reader.
Reading is very hard to get in to, even in your native language, so you might as well make a start.
- Learn Katakana properly, until you know it as well as Hiragana.
Because it’s all over the place.
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