Many mistakes and unclear explaination in Jpod101 PDF

[Jason]

First, let me quickly correct you on a word: it's katakana, not katagana.

2. I enjoy the feeling of being able to listen to the latest lesson. So far, I am only capable of doing it on Newbie, I wish to do that at all lesson. Don't you find it exciting to listen to the latest lesson?

I understand where you're coming from. When you're excited about learning something you want to jump right in and be able to do it all right now. But I'm also concerned with your pace. I imagine med school exams must be incredibly hard and require you to know buttloads of info. But learning a language, especially one as different from English as Japanese, is not like studying for a med school exam. Your brain acquires a language by regular exposure over a prolonged period of time. You may remember the stuff from the lessons you studied at the beginning of the week now, but what about a month or more from now? Really understanding a language is not about filling your head with vocab and grammar facts (though they're certainly important). To obtain a deep understanding of a language, what you need is familiarity. And you can only get that thru prolonged exposure to the same thing over and over. When I took music theory, my professor always said it was better to practice a little while everyday than practice a lot a few times a week. This type of practice builds the kind of familiarity you need to get good at a musical instrument or at a language. While at the pace you're going, you could certainly have listened thru the beginner series and start the intermediate, but I very seriously doubt you would be truly ready for the intermediate series. There are things sometimes in the intermediate lessons that *I* don't understand, and I've been studying this language for 4 years now. Like Javizy said, it's not realistic to expect that you can absorb all the info in such a short amount of time and expect to be able to take on the intermediates so soon.

Am I trying to discourage you from learning? No, of course not. I just think you need to slow down and give your brain time to absorb, not memorize, really absorb the concepts put forth in the lessons. Otherwise I'm afraid it'll come back to haunt you and if you try to launch into the intermediates at the pace you're going now you're going to run really hard face first into a wall of frustration.

[watermen]

I understand where you're coming from. When you're excited about learning something you want to jump right in and be able to do it all right now. But I'm also concerned with your pace. I imagine med school exams must be incredibly hard and require you to know buttloads of info. But learning a language, especially one as different from English as Japanese, is not like studying for a med school exam. Your brain acquires a language by regular exposure over a prolonged period of time. You may remember the stuff from the lessons you studied at the beginning of the week now, but what about a month or more from now? Really understanding a language is not about filling your head with vocab and grammar facts (though they're certainly important). To obtain a deep understanding of a language, what you need is familiarity. And you can only get that thru prolonged exposure to the same thing over and over. When I took music theory, my professor always said it was better to practice a little while everyday than practice a lot a few times a week. This type of practice builds the kind of familiarity you need to get good at a musical instrument or at a language. While at the pace you're going, you could certainly have listened thru the beginner series and start the intermediate, but I very seriously doubt you would be truly ready for the intermediate series. There are things sometimes in the intermediate lessons that *I* don't understand, and I've been studying this language for 4 years now. Like Javizy said, it's not realistic to expect that you can absorb all the info in such a short amount of time and expect to be able to take on the intermediates so soon.

Am I trying to discourage you from learning? No, of course not. I just think you need to slow down and give your brain time to absorb, not memorize, really absorb the concepts put forth in the lessons. Otherwise I'm afraid it'll come back to haunt you and if you try to launch into the intermediates at the pace you're going now you're going to run really hard face first into a wall of frustration.

Thanks for your advice. I will slow down, I am actually quite exhausted too. I will admit that I am also pretty eager to know how effective is Jpod101. I am using myself as an experiment to see if I am capable of reading Yomiuri Shinbun after I reach intermediate level. And how long do I need to study to reach that level? 1 month? 2 months? 3 months??? I believe with everyone's help here and excellent Jpod101 material, I can do it.

[jemstone]

i stand by what jasonさん said about familiarity. to improve in a language, it's not just about listening to some lessons but more on the frequent usage. if you have a friend who is fluent in japanese (i do have two of them, husband and wife) and you have frequent conversations with him or her (this, unfortunately is missing for me), i'm very sure your learning process will be shortened greatly!

[Javizy]

After the first few intermediate lessons, they are done almost completely in Japanese, the lower intermediate lessons start using a lot less English as well. Listening to the latest intermediate lesson might give you some idea of how far you have to go; you pretty much have to be semi-fluent to get the most out of them, and that's an impossible task for the timeframe you've set yourself. Like Jason said, you'll end up very frustrated.

If you're good at memorising stupid amounts of information, I'd recommend putting that effort into kanji. I think Heisig's 'Remembering the Kanji' might be right up your alley.

[annie]

Thanks for your advice. I will slow down, I am actually quite exhausted too. I will admit that I am also pretty eager to know how effective is Jpod101. I am using myself as an experiment to see if I am capable of reading Yomiuri Shinbun after I reach intermediate level. And how long do I need to study to reach that level? 1 month? 2 months? 3 months??? I believe with everyone's help here and excellent Jpod101 material, I can do it.

3 years of University level Japanese (about 28 credits) will enable you to read the Yomiuri Shimbun with frequent use of a dictionary.

but, fyi, my junior high school students (15 years old) can't read the newspaper with fluency.

[watermen]

After the first few intermediate lessons, they are done almost completely in Japanese, the lower intermediate lessons start using a lot less English as well. Listening to the latest intermediate lesson might give you some idea of how far you have to go; you pretty much have to be semi-fluent to get the most out of them, and that's an impossible task for the timeframe you've set yourself. Like Jason said, you'll end up very frustrated.

If you're good at memorising stupid amounts of information, I'd recommend putting that effort into kanji. I think Heisig's 'Remembering the Kanji' might be right up your alley.

Thanks.

Sure, no problem...I will go and remember 2000 kanjis by the end of this week. I have been using JLPT Kanji project, it is really good, it list out all the Kanji needed up to JLPT 1.　I guess,　I may be able to force memorize it, but not knowing how to use it or apply it.

このページを拝見して下さい。(Just learn this word from there.)

[Jason]

このページを拝見して下さい。(Just learn this word from there.)

Ah, I'm glad you posted this because it illustrates perfectly the problem with not knowing the language more in depth. Japanese has a system of advanced polite language called 敬語 [けいご]. It's a quite advanced topic and it's almost like another language so I won't go into too much detail here. But in 敬語 there are basically 2 ways to show respect to people: use honorific language (尊敬語) to elevate the people you're talking to/about, or use humble language (謙遜語) to lower yourself. The word 拝見 is humble language, and should only ever be used when referring to yourself. It's quite rude to use it in reference to other people. The honorific of "to see" would be ご覧になる.

BTW, just in case you're wondering, the standard 〜ます form politeness is called 丁寧語.

[watermen]

このページを拝見して下さい。(Just learn this word from there.)

Ah, I'm glad you posted this because it illustrates perfectly the problem with not knowing the language more in depth. Japanese has a system of advanced polite language called 敬語 [けいご]. It's a quite advanced topic and it's almost like another language so I won't go into too much detail here. But in 敬語 there are basically 2 ways to show respect to people: use honorific language (尊敬語) to elevate the people you're talking to/about, or use humble language (謙遜語) to lower yourself. The word 拝見 is humble language, and should only ever be used when referring to yourself. It's quite rude to use it in reference to other people. The honorific of "to see" would be ご覧になる.

BTW, just in case you're wondering, the standard 〜ます form politeness is called 丁寧語.

Thanks for correcting me. Appreciate it.

So can I say this --> このページをご覧になて下さい。 (Please correct me if I am wrong.)

Jason you are right, I may be able to force memorize it, but I may not know how to use it appropriately.

[Jason]

Yes, you could. Though since we're your audience, ご覧になってください might be a bit too honorific. I think ご覧ください or 見てください would be much more appropriate as they're still polite but not as highly honorific as ご覧になってください is. In Japanese, it's always vital to know who your audience is.