What are the best learning materials?

[Snake Plissken]

What are the best learning matierals to use to learn Japanese fluenty within 3 years. I have been wondering about this Rosetta Stone program, and wondered if anyone knew how great it was or if it was a poorly made program with many grammatical/spelling errors. Also, this Pimsleur thing i hear about. Is this somewhat of a "learn to be a good tourist program."? or does it teach you how to become very fluent? I have already learned my hiragana/katakana. I still have been meaning to work on my Kanji. I wish to know more about putting kanji into sentence structures and mixing them with others words to make words such as baby cat- koneko / baby dog - koinu... and how each different kanji grouping would be used to create a sentence(koinu 小犬 or else 子犬)
Are there any great books that have recently been made? I have looked at books made by tsui and cheng but these books look poorly made. I'm looking for a book with lots of meaning and i'm willing to read it if it's even 900 pages. Does anyone have any ideas on how i could obtain fluency without going to japan, or else could you perhaps tell me what you used as resources?

 

[Fantt]

Rosetta Stone is pretty freaky - I don't think you can learn Japanese by using it alone, but I think it can certainly help you along in your journey. It does things to your subconscious - pretty trippy. I don't know if it's worth it's full price though.

Pimsleur is great. You will not become fluent in the language, but after just 16 (out of 90) lessons I feel like I have had a great start. I can make lots and lots of sentences in Japanese - mainly ordering beer and asking girls to come have a drink at my place. It's the only way I have right now of hearing native Japanese speakers. It's pretty damned expensive too - probably over $1000 for all 90 lessons. But I found my copies at a local library. You may be able to find it other places as well.

There's a TON of links that are posted all over these forums for places to learn japanese. The best is this one. At least it's an awesome place to start.

As for books - I have Japanese for Busy People I and Nakama 1. Both are excellent (and expensive). You'll also need some good dictionaries (also expensive). Go look at what people are recommending on Amazon.

 

[Snake Plissken]

thanks for the info

 

[Mike Cash]

What's this rush everyone seems to have to become "fluent" within two or three years?

When I started out, my goal was "reasonable proficiency" within 10 years.

 

[Fantt]

I don't really have a date in mind. I'll just keep learning - I don't think you can just say, "Ding! That's it! I know all of Japanese now!"

Or English for that matter...

 

[Scrivener]

I really liked this book:
http://www.routledge.com/colloquials/languages/japa.html
That was my text when I started. The grammar explanations are great, but unfortunately it uses romaji. (EDIT: so it's irrelevant to this thread I later realised... :joyful: )

You can get reasonable fluency in spoken Japanese in one year, good fluency in two, but kanji and newspaper/academic level written Japanese takes a lot longer. Still, you get there eventually if you keep at it. But as Fantt said, there is always more to learn. Especially if you start studying the history...

Best way to learn kanji is to read manga that has furigana, if you already have a conversational level of Japanese (but maybe you don't yet...). Otherwise just rote memorization... You can learn Kanji faster by working out how they are constructed - they are made up of very few elements. Also make sure to learn the pronounciation at the same time as the meaning - don't use that book that teaches the meaning only. Otherwise you are doubling your work. Elements in kanji work together with pronounciation, so it's easier to learn both at once.

 

[m477]

You can get reasonable fluency in spoken Japanese in one year, good fluency in two, but kanji and newspaper/academic level written Japanese takes a lot longer.

:? I think you are confusing the word "fluency" with "proficiency".


But anyway, back on topic... fluent in three years?? Let me put it this way - in the best Japanese language programs at the most elite universities in the country, a student with 4-year degree in Japanese, even with high marks, will still not be fluent. I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it would require an extremely grueling pace to say the least.

 

[Scrivener]

To the extent that one gains proficiency in speaking a language, one gains fluency in that language.

Fluency just means "flow", but it spawned a more specific usage "to be fluent", which came to designate a level of fluency at which the speaker has no problems communicating.

"He is fluent in Japanese" is different to "he has increased his fluency in Japanese". One means "he can communicate with no problems", the other just means "his Japanese flows better than it did", which could be applied to a comparative beginner.

(Why am I writing this???) :?

 

[Fantt]

I would guess that the definition of fluency is probably not very objective without some sort of testing and even then there would probably be some disagreement in what to test. Does a passing score at all levels of JLPT indicate fluency? A couple of levels? You need a lot more than that? Or is fluency indicative of how well you can converse with the "average" Japanes? And just who would that be? Maybe fluency is personal?

 

[m477]

Well, in the real world, things like JLPT L1 or TOEIC 865+ are commonly referred to as fluent.

In my Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, fluent is defined in regard to languages as "ready or facile in speech" .

 

[Scrivener]

Yes but I didn't say "you can become fluent" did I? That would be the same as saying "you can become proficient". I said "you can gain reasonable fluency", which is exactly the same as saying "you can gain reasonable proficiency". I guess you haven't seen the word "fluency" used in this way before, but if you put it into Google you will get 1800 hits for "reasonable fluency", e.g.

"Japanese 3 is a continuation of J2 or the equivalent. Upon completion of this course, students should have acquired mastery of basic contemporary Japanese grammar, vocabulary and a total of 400 kanji with new readings, and be able to communicate in Japanese in everyday situations with reasonable fluency."

That is about the level you could get to in a year if you studied hard.