One of the coolest things about writing your own textbook is the ability to make fun of other people’s textbooks… I’m not sure why more people didn’t take advantage of this. I don’t think my physics text in high school once took a jab at another physics text. Maybe they just didn’t have any sense of humor (or, they were just horribly boring to begin with).
Although I haven’t posted updates on the blog in a little while (make sure you follow TextFugu on Twitter if you want update alerts as they happen), there have been quite a few updates. One of them, the most recent, is the beginning of “conversation practice,” which basically sits you down with a conversation script to read and go through. This sort of text is pretty standard in any Japanese textbook. Heck, it’s even required, I’d say. The problem with these, though, is that they’re terribly boring… and they don’t do a good job explaining themselves, which essentially means you memorize the words and phrases as is (unless you have a teacher around to expand your horizons). Here’s what TextFugu is doing instead:
- Be interesting with the story. End on cliff hangers (so you want to keep learning) and make you laugh.
- Explain each and every line in a way that a) helps you learn the sentence, and b) helps you learn it in a way that you understand the underlying concept, so that you can use that concept to say other, similar things. It’s not very useful if you memorize conversations line by line, and still can’t use any of the grammar to be found within it.
Anyways, I can tell I’m going to enjoy writing these. If you want a sneak peak (or a full peak), you can take a look at the first part of the story: Mary Makes A Horrible New Friend.
Kanji Updates
Because I’m finding that adding kanji to lessons is taking a lot longer than it should (seriously, I don’t know why it takes me so long, despite a good typing speed & masterful knowledge of shortcut keys), I’m going to start trying to put up approximately five new kanji every day (and hopefully a little more when I can). This means there will always be one “in progress” kanji chapter. It won’t be done, but you’ll have access to the most recently added kanji. Just be warned that some small changes may happen between its “in progress” stage and its “finished” stage, but at least you’ll be able to study them, if you’re at that stage.
Also, it’s a good opportunity for people to find and submit bounties. Heck, I love that I have hundreds of editors going over everything.
So, pretty soon you’ll see an “in progress” kanji chapter pop up, and there should be smaller (but more frequent) kanji updates going up almost every day.
Anyways, stay classy San Diego.