Corrections & Such [P13]

[wizcoder]

Just kidding.

Hi,

I finished Genki 1 & 2 after 1 year and 4, 5 months? Now I'm looking for what's the next step. I'm looking for a really good site that helps you practice pronunciation and another site for Kanji. I've been on this forum since when I started so... July of last year. If anyone has any good stuff for post genki then it'd be great.

Notes: I already re-read げんき 1 about 3 times to further my understanding and did げんき 2 about 2 times.
-> I feel I need to work on pronunciation
-> I feel I need to work on learning more Kanji
-> I feel I need to work on building sentences in my mind more quickly

Thanks

 

[lanthas]

Well, even Genki describes itself as an integrated course in elementary Japanese, so it's only logical that there's still much to do after completing it.

For learning a base list of kanji, I personally used the KanjiDamage website - I can recommend it. It's somewhat crude, but very pragmatic and not afraid of pointing out characters that look extremely similar, have strange irregular pronunciations in certain words, only have limited use in practice and so on; all helpful things which more formal learning resources like Genki don't do. Oh, and unlike WaniKani it's free and doesn't even require registration. That said, even after completing this list you'll still keep encountering new kanji frequently for a long time to come.

Concerning pronunciation and quick sentence building, you could find a speaking practice partner on a site like GoVoluble (was advertised by its creator here on JREF some time ago). Apart from that you can switch your internal monologue to Japanese: when you mentally react to something you see, when you're pondering on something... do so in Japanese thoughts instead of in your native language.

I could stop here, but it surprises me that you didn't mention anything about grammar and reading/listening practice; with just Genki under your belt you won't get very far. I can recommend "An integrated approach to intermediate Japanese" as a followup textbook, it introduces a lot of useful extra grammar not covered by Genki and has only minimal English text.

For listening practice there are plenty of options. Personally I was watching English "Let's Play" videos before I started learning Japanese, so I started watching Japanese ones as well. If this is something that interests you, you just have to search for 実況プレイ on Youtube or ニコニコ動画. (Do not search for レズプレイ like I did at first, that's something completely different). Later on you can switch to something more difficult like the news.

 

[wizcoder]

Well, even Genki describes itself as an integrated course in elementary Japanese, so it's only logical that there's still much to do after completing it.

For learning a base list of kanji, I personally used the KanjiDamage website - I can recommend it. It's somewhat crude, but very pragmatic and not afraid of pointing out characters that look extremely similar, have strange irregular pronunciations in certain words, only have limited use in practice and so on; all helpful things which more formal learning resources like Genki don't do. Oh, and unlike WaniKani it's free and doesn't even require registration. That said, even after completing this list you'll still keep encountering new kanji frequently for a long time to come.

Concerning pronunciation and quick sentence building, you could find a speaking practice partner on a site like GoVoluble (was advertised by its creator here on JREF some time ago). Apart from that you can switch your internal monologue to Japanese: when you mentally react to something you see, when you're pondering on something... do so in Japanese thoughts instead of in your native language.

I could stop here, but it surprises me that you didn't mention anything about grammar and reading/listening practice; with just Genki under your belt you won't get very far. I can recommend "An integrated approach to intermediate Japanese" as a followup textbook, it introduces a lot of useful extra grammar not covered by Genki and has only minimal English text.

For listening practice there are plenty of options. Personally I was watching English "Let's Play" videos before I started learning Japanese, so I started watching Japanese ones as well. If this is something that interests you, you just have to search for 実況プレイ on Youtube or ニコニコ動画. (Do not search for レズプレイ like I did at first, that's something completely different). Later on you can switch to something more difficult like the news.

Thanks man, you presented a lot of great options for me. Never heard any of them but now I know them and can use them. Keep up the good assistance.

 

[lanthas]

There's one more thing I forgot regarding reading practice: once you feel you know enough kanji, be sure to switch the language of all the software on your PC to Japanese. Your OS, your browser... Everything that has a language option built in or available as a downloadable language pack. That way, there is no escape . Computer-related Japanese is littered with katakana so you may find that you get used to it surprisingly quickly - still, there's no doubt you'll pick up a number of useful words.

In addition, since your browser will now announce Japanese as your preferred language, search engines and other websites will conform to this.

To change Windows's language, you may need to use this tool if you don't have an Ultimate edition.

 

[wizcoder]

There's one more thing I forgot regarding reading practice: once you feel you know enough kanji, be sure to switch the language of all the software on your PC to Japanese. Your OS, your browser... Everything that has a language option built in or available as a downloadable language pack. That way, there is no escape . Computer-related Japanese is littered with katakana so you may find that you get used to it surprisingly quickly - still, there's no doubt you'll pick up a number of useful words.

In addition, since your browser will now announce Japanese as your preferred language, search engines and other websites will conform to this.

To change Windows's language, you may need to use this tool if you don't have an Ultimate edition.

Hmm.. thats interesting, I thought you needed to do a fresh install of windows in order to change the whole systems language because I only know how to change your keyboard through the language options. Thanks again