March 31, 2022 — Tatsumoto Ren
What's grammar?
Should you learn grammar?
How to learn grammar?
Let's answer these question in this article.
Read more...
December 05, 2022 — Tatsumoto Ren
Studying anything is not a requirement for using the AJATT method.
AJATT is about acquiring a language through immersion.
The core idea is that if infants can do it, adults can too.
There is a big difference between acquisition and studying.
Instead of studying,
AJATTers strive to understand messages
in the target language when they immerse.
If by studying grammar you mean learning from a
grammar guide,
we often recommend doing it because it optimizes your path to fluency.
It accelerates your progress
and helps remove obstacles along the way.
By learning common grammar patterns early on,
you can significantly improve your comprehension.
November 23, 2022 — Tatsumoto Ren
As far as I see, the Tae Kim guide gets divided into 4 sections.
- Basic Grammar
- Essential Grammar
- Special Expressions
- Advanced Topics
So the question becomes, "Can I drop Tae Kim after reading the first half?"
The truth is that all 4 sections describe pretty basic grammar.
You can stop at any point and start sentence mining.
Looking up grammar and making targeted sentence cards with grammar targets
is no different from making cards for regular vocabulary.
Eventually you'll catch up.
I read and mined the entire guide,
but I took breaks between sections,
so it wasn't a continuous, boring process.
May 20, 2026 — Tatsumoto Ren
Have you ever tried using AI to analyze grammar in sentences
in the Foundation or Essentials decks?
If you tell it to "Do a word by word analysis of the following sentences"
with an example of what you want the format to be,
it will produce a pretty nice analysis.
My own experience is that it is about 95% right, but it is so fast.
It might be good enough to eliminate the need for learners to add in Tae Kim or something.
Read more...
November 11, 2024 — Tatsumoto Ren
It's up to you,
but we recommend spending around 15 to 30 minutes each day on grammar.
We all know that reading about grammar isn't exactly the most exciting thing in the world.
Thus,
we think that consuming grammar theory incrementally over time
will make it easier to consolidate and integrate what you've learned.
If you choose to spend about 30 minutes a day studying grammar,
it's perfectly fine to study basic grammar alongside
Ankidrone Foundation
and/or
Ankidrone Essentials.
September 01, 2024 — Tatsumoto Ren
If you seriously want to master your target language,
textbooks are not for you.
We recommend skipping them entirely and learning the language through immersion.
Read more...
January 24, 2024 — Tatsumoto Ren
"All About Particles" is a grammar book.
A Handbook of Japanese Function Words by Naoko Chino.
January 28, 2023 — Tatsumoto Ren
The process of making monolingual TSCs
for grammar and vocabulary is essentially the same,
as there's no significant difference between the two.
After you go monolingual,
you'll continue sentence mining in much the same way as before.
While reading books,
watching things with subtitles,
browsing the web,
you will come across sentences where
you know everything in a sentence
except for one grammar point or one word.
Take that whole sentence
and put it on the front of your SRS card.
On the back,
put the monolingual definition
for the grammar point or word you didn't know.
Some preparations, as explained in the main article:
- Download and install monolingual
dictionaries
for tools like GoldenDict, Rikaitan, etc.
- In Rikaitan, keep JMdict enabled (but hidden)
for times when your monolingual dictionaries don't pick up certain words.
Monolingual dictionaries tend to be smaller than JMdict.
- Mine sentences as you usually would.
Don't add English definitions to your cards.
Having both English and Japanese definitions is acceptable only during the transition period.
You will run into grammar points
that only have English definitions.
Use Rikaitan to identify the grammar pattern,
then consult Weblio
or any search engine to look it up.
Searching the web should lead to explanations in Japanese.
Additionally,
try monolingual dictionaries for grammar.
They cover additional topics and can help when other dictionaries fail.
Some people would prefer to install as many monolingual dictionaries as possible
to cover even more ground and minimize the need to look up words online.
Once you learn the very basics,
the strict distinction between grammar points and vocabulary pretty much dissolves.
For instance,
take the phrase ならでは.
While JLPT might classify this as a grammar point,
I see it simply as another piece of Japanese.
If you look up ならでは in a monolingual dictionary,
you'll find what it means.
Similarly,
if you take ながら,
looking it up in a monolingual dictionary will show you how it's used and what it means.
Beyond the basics,
there isn't a clear distinction between vocabulary and grammar points.
I would just think of them as pieces of the language that you don't know yet.
Whether that's a noun, or an adverb, or a verb in a specific form, or whatever,
everything will be in the monolingual dictionary somewhere.
You just have to know how to look it up correctly.
The process remains the same.
Place the sentence on the front of your card and what you need to understand it on the back.
When reviewing the card,
read the target piece,
ensure sure you can read the kanji,
ensure that you understand what the target word or grammar means roughly,
and what the overall sentence means roughly.
If you can do that, you're good to go.
December 05, 2022 — Tatsumoto Ren
This answer applies.
When I learned Japanese, I read Tae Kim's guide completely, but I did it in chunks.
First I learned some vocab, then I read the first section.
Then I learned more vocab and read the second one, and so on.
Decide if you're ready before starting the "advanced grammar" part.
Maybe you need to learn more words first.
Tae Kim has vocabulary lists built-in, but they're pretty much useless without example sentences.
It's better to learn vocabulary using targeted sentence cards.
This is another reason I started recommending "All About Particles" more.
November 30, 2022 — Tatsumoto Ren
Mining grammar points
from a grammar guide is not required.
But I did it,
Khatzumoto did it too.
If you decide to do the same,
you may end up creating cards for very basic grammar,
in which case delete them once you progress towards intermediate.
I don't recommend mining every sentence like Khatz did,
instead try choosing only the ones that look challenging.
Don't add duplicate cards.
The same grammar point should not already in your SRS,
even if the example sentence is different.
Mining grammar very much like mining regular words.
You create TSCs as usual.
Grammar points become target words.
