Can you become fluent with just Jpod101?

[rupenpatel702727]

Hi there

I am on Newbie Season 3 (AB) and haven't started learning kanji yet (I plan to start very soon).

I was just wandering if Jpod 101 is enough on its own. I use the flashcards every day to practice vocab (my list has about 700 words, of which around 230 are mastered and a further 200 learnt), I also do one lesson every day, and write up my notes after wards.

But is it enough? Obviously I'm a newbie but I am worried that Jpod 101 by itself isn't enough. In many of the podcasts, the senseis talk about classes and as such, but I don't go to anything like that.

So is Jpod enough or should I also do other things?

Thanks

ルペル

[mmmason8967]

JPod101 focusses on grammar and vocabulary so it provides a good core for learning Japanese. But I think pretty much everybody uses additional materials. For example, you mentioned learning kanji and this is outside JPod101's main focus, so although there is some material on the site to get you started, you'll almost certainly want additional material. Some typical ideas are:-

Watching Japanese TV and movies in order to practice listening skills.

Reading Japanese books aimed at children to practice reading and increase vocabulary. Books for children often have furigana, which are small hiragana next to kanji that help you read unfamiliar kanji. For example, you could try e-hon or picture-books; many of them are traditional stories that everybody in Japan knows, so they're also good for learning cultural background. If you prefer manga, one that's often recommended for beginners is よつばと, which means "Yotsuba And…"; it's about a five year old girl learning about daily life in Japan.

Using the Firefox web browser with the Rikaichan add-on. If you prefer Opera or Chrome there's a very similar add-on called Rikaikun. It's a pop-up dictionary that works on Japanese language websites, so it enables you to try reading online material that would otherwise be too difficult.

And of course there are dictionaries and textbooks. There are textbooks that focus on particular grammar such as particles or verb conjugation, and there are some that aren't really textbooks at all: Jay Rubin's Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You is especially good.

マイケル

[rupenpatel702727]

so if I use Jpod 101 everyday (working through the lessons and going through the flashcards), study Kanji separately using the "remember the kanji" book, watch japanese tv and read childrens books, I should be fine?

That sounds good, except for the children book part. I have a few books on my computer such as issunboushi, Urashimatarou and so on.

Unfortunately (those books have no kanji) I really can't even understand those! I am an absolute beginner so maybe I just need to get a bit further!

I am really thankful for your answer!

[mmmason8967]

Unfortunately (those books have no kanji) I really can't even understand those! I am an absolute beginner so maybe I just need to get a bit further!

You mean it's just in hiragana? That's really difficult to read! It's much easier when you have kanji. You can see an extreme example of the problem by looking at a well-known Japanese tongue-twister that involves saying "niwa" seven times in a row:-

うらにわ にはにわにわにはにわにわとりがいる。

It looks even worse in roumaji: ura-niwa-niwa-niwa-niwa-niwa-niwa-niwa-tori-ga-iru. In kanji, though, it's quite clear that it's not really the same word being said seven times:-

裏庭には二羽庭には二羽鶏がいる。

庭　　⇒　niwa is garden or yard.
裏庭　⇒　uraniwa is back-garden or backyard.
には　⇒　ni wa is the location particle ni followed by the topic particle wa.
二羽　⇒　ni wa is the number two followed by a counter that shows we are counting birds.
鶏　　⇒　niwatori is a chicken.

裏庭 に は 二羽　⇒　In the backyard, two (birds)...

庭 に は 二羽 鶏 が いる。 　⇒　...in the (front) garden two chickens exist.

So it means "there are two chickens in the garden and two in the backyard". Don't worry if you don't quite get it: after all, it's designed to be confusing!

マイケル

[mewes6190]

ルペルさん、
こんにちは。

I want to back マイケルさんs post. I doubt, that you can learn japanese from only one source, it is, especially in the beginning, "battle on a wide front". You have to learn so much - vocabulary, the kana, Kanjis, pronounciation, grammar, listening comprehension...
jpod101 is good for a lot of these, especially the grammar point (although they move quite slowly in this, but that might be good for some people), vocabulary and especially listening comprehension.

Still, I would back the grammar learning by some workbook, find some good books for the Kanji.

But all in all, what you need, is stamina! It is my experience, that you're learning somewhat "into the blue" for quite a long time. At least that's what was (and still is) going on for me. I'm learning a lot, for a long time now, and I'm just starting to earn the fruits of my labour.
It often felt, like I was learning and learning, and whenever I looked on a japanese text, I got nothing. And then, one day - it just switched, and I got it. Still missing a lot of vocab, but that's my main concern now.

Japanese is, in my experience, not a lesson where you can start reading newspapers, websites or books after you learned for a month. It's just to foreign. But at some point, it just clicks and you will start to make sense out of that "gibberish".

So - patience and stamina, that's what I recommend more than anything else.

But it's just my personal experience.

Best
くろくま

[rupenpatel702727]

So its more difficult to read without kanji?? I didn't know that! I admit the lack of spaces between words was really making me struggle!

[mewes6190]

So its more difficult to read without kanji?? I didn't know that! I admit the lack of spaces between words was really making me struggle!

Well, I guess it's more difficult for foreigners. Native speaking kids already know the words by heart, and only lack the Kanji-knowledge. So, when japanese children read hiragana-only texts, I guess they just know, what word is used. (Might still be confusing sometimes though).
But as a foreigner, you often just NEED Kanji to just recognise the word. At least it's making it much easier!! Especially with all the homophones...

And I guess everyones struggling with the lack of spaces at first. At some point, you see where the words end, 'cause you start to know all the proper sentence-ending-structures. By now, I only seldom miss a wordending, and in most cases because I lack some vocabulary or sentence structure.

So, keep up the work, it'll come.

[mmmason8967]

Here's a scanned image of the opening sentence from my copy of Issunboushi. It's written vertically, so start at the top right-hand corner. It's mostly hiragana with a few kanji, which have furigana: the kanji 子 has a very small こ next to it to tell you how it is pronounced. And it has spaces!

マイケル

[community.japanese]

ルペルさん、マイケルさん、くろくまさん、
こんにちは

Thank you very much for helps, マイケルsan and くろくまsan!
The scanned image of Issunboushi is really nice!
For the reading practice, those children's books are really helpful and will come in handy
when you're fluent in Japanese because those stories are very famous and almost all Japanese
know them.

If you really want to be fluent in any language at all, it'd take more effort than using just one material.
Of course, since J-Pod is self learning material, you might need to seek some opportunity to output what
you've learned, right? This would probably the most difficult part for any of us to find, but tust me,
even just thinking out loud alone (despite being weird) would help you being fluent when you speak.

Good lcuk!

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com