[Course Forum] Let's Learn Japanese course series (formerly SGJL)

Community-Created Courses Japanese
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Note This is both a collaboration request and a group study posting Note

–> Let’s Learn Japanese (formerly SGJL) Official Patreon Page
–> Let’s Learn Japanese (formerly SGJL) courses on Kanji Koohii Group Study Forums

–> LLJ Basic Study Group (click on this to automatically join the study group)

–> Archive of Streamed Study Sessions on YouTube - Streams live currently Mon-Sun around 10 am - 2 pm Japan time.
–> Discord English/Japanese Study Room Sometimes I’ll do a short live chat here after each study session stream.

–> Become a Patron of this Project - While the course is being developed/expanded, support is appreciated

Memrise Courses - The following link directly to individual Memrise courses. They are designed to be taken in order. Start with SGLJ 01 and go from there.

LLJ Basic Course 01 - 12

LLJ 01 - Remembering the Hiragana
LLJ 02 - Remembering the Katakana
LLJ 03 - Remembering the Kanji Optimized pt 1

LLJ 04 - Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese Grammar pt 01
LLJ 04 - Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese Grammar pt 02
LLJ 05 - Core 2k/6k Vocabulary Optimized pt 01
LLJ 06 - Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese Grammar pt 03
LLJ 06 - Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese Grammar pt 04
LLJ 07 - Core 2k/6k Vocabulary Optimized pt 02

LLJ 08 - Remembering the Kanji Optimized pt 02

LLJ 09 - Shinkanzen Master N4 Grammar - Do Parts I and III of the book
LLJ 10 - Core 2k/6k Vocabulary Optimized Pt 03
LLJ 11 - Shinkanzen Master N4 Grammar - Do Parts 2 and Final
LLJ 12 - Core 2k/6k Vocabulary Optimized Pt 04

Bonus Basic Courses

These are no longer recommend to study. However, they can done in specific parts such as when a lesson was done, or you want to have a fun challenge.

LLJ Bonus - Core 2k Kanji and Yomi

LLJ Bonus - A Dict. of Basic Japanese Grammar pt 01
LLJ Bonus - A Dict. of Basic Japanese Grammar pt 02
LLJ Bonus - A Dict. of Basic Japanese Grammar pt 03
LLJ Bonus - A Dict. of Basic Japanese Grammar pt 04

LLJ Intermediate Lower Course LLJ 21 - 30

LLJ 21 - Remembering the Kanji Optimized part 3
LLJ 26 - Remembering the Kanji Optimized part 4

  • The vocabulary and grammar section will be supported on my Patreon as the Anki courses are completed.

LLJ Intermediate Upper Courses LLJ 31-40

  • This section as well will be supported on my Patreon

Japanese Drama Immersion Courses - These courses are recommend to take after you finish LLJ 12. For your first set of four episodes, alternate LLJ 13 - 16 with episodes 1 - 4 of the series of your choice.

JDI Basic - Zettai Kareshi ep 01
JDI Basic - Zettai Kareshi ep 02
JDI Basic - Zettai Kareshi ep 03
JDI Basic - Zettai Kareshi ep 04
JDI Bonus - Zettai Kareshi Transcripts 01-04

JDI Basic - Hana Yori Dango ep 01 (not recommended, but included if interested)

Overall Material

Most of the material used to create the LLJ on Memrise (audio clips, spreadsheets, text files), and the improvements I made to them as I curated the material will be shared with my patreon members.

Remembering the Kanji - Spreadsheet

  • Beginner Patreon members - Access to Kana and Kanji spreadsheets used to make these courses along with audio files and PDFs.
  • Basic Parteon members - Access to Core 2k/6k, Tae Kim, Shinkanzen Master (with proof of ownership) spreadsheets and audio clips used to make these courses, along with PDFs and audio files.

Assistance Needed

As requested, I will be uploading Core 2k/6k courses to Memrise, but they will not have audio added by myself. Any that wish to volunteer to manually add the audio clips may do so when I have the courses posted.

– LLJ Courses –

No help needed at the moment.

– JDI Courses –

No help needed at the moment.

Memrise Forums Course Series

Suggested Guide for Japanese Literacy -LLJ- Overall
Remembering the Kana in 6 Hours
Tae Kim’s Japanese Grammar
A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar
Core 2k/6k Optimized Vocabulary
Japanese Drama Immersion -JDI-

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Thank you of sharing your way in getting better in Japanese.
Like I said before I got 200% motivation, I just need a good path that I can follow, I hope this will help me.

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I honestly hope it helps. Please provide feedback as well if you can as you go through the courses.

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Thanks for creating these. I’ve recently restarted my Japanese studies after a number of years and this helps as a guide to follow in addition to my textbook.

I’m currently going through the kanji course. I’ve noticed that during every question the list of meanings shows up. When it’s a kanji -> keyword question this is very distracting since the answer is in the question. Is there a way to turn that off? Also of note, In lesson three ‘true’ is in caps. Is there a reason for this? It’s the only capital answer I’ve come across so far.

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There’s currently no way to limit what auxillary info is shown based on test directions. I want them visible when the more important keyword to kanji portions are tested since Heisig’s keywords can be limited at times and have synonyms. Plus, I want to reinforce the idea that kanji can have multiple meanings which can cause confusion during vocabulary and grammar courses.

If you’re on mobile, it’s not too difficult to cover that area with your hand while you visualize the answer. On desktop, the screen is bigger so probably ok to ignore as well. Truth be told, Kanji to Keyword is not as difficult and really you’ll get more practice when it turns into Kanji to Vocabulary in the following courses.

True is in caps because “true” in some (poorly optimized) online and spreadsheet databases apparently fucks with the logic systems so it’s a hold over when I copied it from my spreadsheet. You might notice the same with “myu” not being accepted in the Kana courses.

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Is it worth getting Memrise Pro while taking your course?

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Got your message in my e-mail. Personally, I’m not seeing any benefits for the pro version for the course unless you want to use the listening tests. I got the pro because I was impressed with what Memrise was offering to everyone for free and decided to support them.

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Do you accept donations or is there anyway I can give back?

You could start a kickstarter with the goal of finishing the SGJL series.

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good idea!

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Nah, no need for donations. This is just about time to get them into Memrise. The materials have existed for years on Anki. One user already is offering help as a contributer on the grammar courses by making the Audio Text to Speech in an easier to upload manner.

If you think these courses work and are legitimately effective, just promoting them on the learning sites would be enough of a donation. I like that there are nearing 100 people trying out the Tae Kim grammar for instance.

Edit: Thinking about this, I might set up a Patreon account. Unlike a Kickstarter, a Patreon is meant to reward continuous creation and improvement of material. Finishing this series, creating RTK videos like I did with Kana, and creating Japanese Drama Immersion courses could justify people’s support and build the overall learning material.

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I’m all for Patreon.

I haven’t watched jdramas in more than 10 years but the ones I liked were Pride, GTO and Hana Yori Dango. Not saying you should do any of those for JDI Courses.

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Too late. Hana Yori Dango ep 01 JDI course

It’s not perfect and since the Patreon idea sounds interesting, I think it can work where I make each translated sentence be as good as it can be so others can use it for learning as well. While it would be better if one “translated” their own drama, this can be a reasonable alternative.

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I notice you have 先 as meaning “before” but then I saw this post on reddit. Is it still fine to think of it as meaning “before”?

https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/4nfbdj/telling_if_先_means_future_or_past/

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先 is one of those kanji that have multiple meanings or flavors depending on what word the kanji is used. In these cases, the keyword holds one of those meanings but is more important in eliciting the story that helps you recall the kanji. If it helps, when I see it in 先週 (せんしゅう), 先月 (せんげつ), 先生 (せんせい) or 先輩 (せんぱい) I think of the kanji as marking “Something that comes before others”.

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Thanks for the quick and understandable responses. I’m really liking this system, because after I read the stories for the kanji they get remembered quickly and most of them stick during reviews.

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That’s good to hear. Also, don’t hesitate to create your own Memnote with your own story that you think works better. Most of the stories I posted are actually just copy/pasted from the Reviewing the Kanji website’s top ranked stories. However most of them are almost 10 years old with some dated references, hence a lot of Batman Begins for my “person” based stories.

On topic, I’ve just pasted the last of the Basic 12 parts to Memrise. Now I need to start uploading audio to the grammar and vocabulary courses. After that I’ll copy/edit/format the Tae Kim lessons to the last three grammar parts like I did for part 1. Once Basic is fully done, I will move on to Intermediate. That’s currently Vocabulary only as there’s no open source grammar sentences, though seeing that Genki is uploaded in full on a number of courses, maybe I can do the same with Kanzen Master Level 2 and A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar.

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I noticed that you put はなよりだんご (thought I practice my kana typing ;)) as an “example”, how will the actual JDI courses be different?

Hopefully by the time I’m done your course I can practice typing with kanji too.

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Best way to practice typing is just to type. What I did was take the transcript (linked in the lesson course introduction), and just type that out. Same could be done with the subtitles themselves, a page from a book or anything. You could also type out 2ch thread conversations or something from /r/newsokur on Reddit.

As for the actual JDI, since Memrise is limited it’ll be pretty much like 花より団子. It would be better if definitions of words and phrases could be included. Until then, Memnote is the only solution. However, the level of people trying the course will not be known as the idea is many of these courses will be collected for other students to choose from during their studies.

With Anki it was easier as you knew if you understood the line or forgot what it meant. Memrise I have to include the English translation so you have something to select. Best of a bad situation I guess.

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An update on the course progress:

  1. I changed the Core 2k/6k sentence lessons to be audio prompt and Japanese sentence as the answer. There’s been no complaints about this so I’ll keep it for now.

  2. Audio upload is not complete for ADoBJG pt 2. That finishes the first half of the basic course.

  3. I am in the process of uploading “Zettai Kareshi” under the “Japanese Drama Immersion” (JDI) course series. I think users should find it very functional as it’s Japanese Audio prompt for Japanese text much like the Core 2k/6k sentences behave. I also used cb4960’s Japanese Text Analysis Tool to create vocabulary sections much like Tae Kim courses have. What I’ve done is stripped any vocabulary that is covered by Tae Kim and Basic Core 2k/6k. This looks to have enough potential that I will use the same process to create vocabulary lists for each lesson section of the ADoBJG courses.

  4. After the drama upload, I will work to create Memnotes for RTK + 2k1KO kanji course pt 2. That takes anywhere from five to ten hours depending on how much editing I do to the stories.

  5. I do have plans in place for Intermediate and Advanced sections. The vocabulary is done. The grammar I still need to create an order that’s not just alphabetical. Even after all that there’s still the audio uploads which I’ll ask around to have contributor help with uploading.

  6. Japanese Drama Immersion current long term plan is six videos for Basic (all first episodes of six different shows), 12 videos for Intermediate (episodes 1-4 of three different shows) and 16 videos for Advanced. These should all be processed like Zettai Kareshi. Given the large number, again, I’ll likely ask for contributor help. If it proves really popular, I’ll ensure the steps I take are easy to copy for anyone to upload their own course and get added to the JDI list. Drama Immersion works best when it’s a drama you like and that means variety since we all have different tastes. Yes, anime can be included.

  7. I have created a Patreon account, but I won’t link it until I improve the page and have permission from the forum mods. I don’t actually need money to do this work, but there can be other benefits should people start donating.

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I changed the Core 2k/6k sentence lessons to be audio prompt and Japanese sentence as the answer. There’s been no complaints about this so I’ll keep it for now.

I actually didn’t like it and was setting all of them to ignore. The UI is very broken since it tests the reverse where it gives a sentence prompt and makes you pick the audio:

Screenshot from 2016-06-28 04-27-23.png1172×904 333 KB

You can’t click on the choices since it interprets the click as selecting it as the answer so you have to tediously hover over each of them to play them.

And I am not sure why you would want to test this. Even if you can’t read some kanji in the sentence there is usually enough kana for you to guess the correct answer.

I do think the core 2k/6k course is missing something to test kanji vocab readings. But testing audio<->sentences is a very roundabout (and IMO wrong) way to do it.

By the way, thank you for all your hard work!