Start watching from the beginning. Two options to help is watch a Japanese show once with English subtitles then once right after with Japanese subtitles, or to watch an English show you like with Japanese audio activated (Netflix is a god send for this now, though the Japanese subs are not 1:1 with the Japanese dubs in most cases). Be willing to watch and re-watch the same stuff if like as well.
As for benefits, that increases with time and with study. Every course you finish means you comprehend more and more of the show. Every show you watch without distractions in Japanese is one more step toward 1000 hours. Done evenly, you get listening fluency built over time.
As for what to watch, there’s way too much too list. Also, it should be something you like to watch. Again, Netflix is good as you can watch a show you like with Japanese audio in many cases.
Thanks! I have a free month of netflix available so maybe I’ll give it a try and do what you said with japanese shows, and maybe I could rewatch some anime and sitcoms I’ve seen before with Japanese subs.
Maybe you should add this advice to a list of stuff you should do while following your course outside of the course itself?
Heads up that I re-ordered the SGJL somewhat. First, I removed all the “bonus courses” from the study group. I put the Tae Kim Grammar in the first half. I also made the SKM N4 grammar in the second half (with instruction to do pt I and III for SGJL 09, and pt II and mock test for SGJL 11).
As I’ve been saying on my broadcast, I won’t be directly supporting Memrise anymore. While it is an amazing site and has supported my efforts, unfortunately the creation of courses for Intermediate levels and beyond will take far to much mundane effort to do. The Basic SGJL will remain, and I’ll link to them as they’re still effective. However, all further efforts will be directed toward my Patreon and the Anki decks.
I just want to say thank you for your courses, I’ve just started getting into them, and the way they are laid out are brilliant.
Also your youtube streams with the Japanese tutors are really good, made me much more confident for getting a Japanese tutor/language exchange partner in a few months time when I feel I’m at a half decent level of understanding Japanese, now I know what to expect and how chilled tutors can be.
Oh, isn’t there a way to copy anki decks to memrise?, not sure how hard that is to do though.
Is it possible to put the bonus courses back in the study group? I’ve always been clicking onto my groups page to see which reviews I have for the day. While going to home shows all the reviews that you have at the top, I prefer the groups page because it shows all the courses without having to load them as you scroll down and they are in order.
Thanks. I’ve had fun with the tutors though I don’t feel I learn that much. It’s more like going to karaoke or to a bar where I get to use my Japanese outside the study time with a person that’ll correct and help me as needed. Yes, iTalki is much easier and less scary than people think.
You can’t copy directly from Anki to Memrise, but export the deck as “notes” in Anki, use that in a spreadsheet to format, the copy/paste to bulk upload to Memrise. There’s an Anki plug-in to download Memrise courses though.
I noticed that on SGJL 04 - Tae Kim’s Japanese Grammar pt 01 ends with lesson 11 but on SGJL 04 - Tae Kim’s Japanese Grammar pt 02 it begins with lesson 21. Is there a course missing between these two?
Interesting re ordering, guess I have a lot of grammar in my near future, though I’ll go ahead and finish part 1 of vocab since I’m so close to the end anyway. What made you decide to change the order? (not that I mind, just curious)
Also anyone else had the timer disabler script stop working? I’m doing vocab and thankfully it still works for audio questions, but for vocab its still on. It does give enough time I guess, but its stressful.
edit: it doesn’t work for grammar either, this is going to be a real problem
That is unfortunate but perhaps you could give some of the active SGJL users access to create the additional SGJL courses here based on the material you gather in Anki etc?
So how well am I meant to understand what’s in Tae Kim? I’m getting on to the essential section now and starting to have a bit of trouble breaking down sentences and fully understanding them. Is just sort of getting a rough understanding understanding enough to keep moving forward, or should I really be understanding it totally so that I get more advanced stuff later?
Keep moving forward. Let the SRS test your retention of what you learn, as you learn more and more new things. Remember though to do all reviews first, then use remaining study time to learn more.
Bummer about more advanced courses being more mundane/tedious to create within Memrise. Are they open to suggestion? I’d really love to keep using Memrise and paying them for the perceived value but when I get to the advanced level, I may stop paying.
hey, I was looking at one of your Zettai Kareshi courses today, and I noticed there were no more English translations. Did you remove all of them when you quit memrise?
