Thanks. It looks pretty good, but that really is quite a bit of English. I think they should have skipped the sentence translations. I think I see pitch accent marks in there, which is nice. Tobira doesn’t do that, but really should. My teacher sends me accent diagrams for each chapter’s vocab, but it’s not like I can remember it, unfortunately.
Familiar feeling there :). I remember a particularly brutal quantum mechanics professor who aimed to make the class average for each exam around 20%. Somehow I passed, but retook it with a professor who actually liked to teach things. Spending three days on one partial differential equation and then forgetting what I was even trying to find out was just a little too removed from the theory.
Yeah, I saw ‘1994’ on some Amazon pages for An Integrated Approach, but I assumed editions could just keep being updated. Admittedly though, sometimes language and teaching methods just change too much for books to simply be tweaked.
My first textbook was entirely based on parallel translations, and I think it was OK. The literal translations that were provided for breaking down sentence structure probably helped a lot more though. Still, if you’re self-studying, having translations available means you can easily check your understanding. The downside is that you might cheat instead of trying to understand the sentences on your own first.
Yeah, it’s a little hard. I mostly try to remember pitch accents by saying things a few times, and by concentrating on which syllable (more accurately, ‘mora’) carries the accent. However, unless you have a comprehensive pitch accent guide containing all the rules, I think what matters most is listening to native speakers and imitating them. I mean, I never learnt to speak Teochew, but hearing my mother say certain things in Teochew repeatedly over the years means I remember the correct tones for them, even though when I compare them with tones in Mandarin (which I do speak), I realise they’re completely different. I mean, learning individual pitch accents is still helpful, I think, but since surrounding words can change pitch accents, imitation is probably more important.
The point is primarily to get an ordering of grammar points, and practice them via SRS questions on them. The former is needed if you aren’t using a textbook, and the latter is useful for practice with immediate feedback when you aren’t using a class. You of course still need use linked resources/printed materials to learn the grammar point.