Practice
“Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.” – Richard Bach
In this chapter you took です (what you learned before) and you added on the ability to ask questions (by adding か) to the end. As you can probably see, you already knew half of the picture (the です) and all you had to do was add the other half, making it that much easier to learn the new concept! :D
On this practice page, we’re going to do a few things. First, we’ll look at some sentences. You’ll practice saying the sentences, and then you’ll import the sentences into your Anki “Sentences” deck (then practice them there). After that, you’ll take a look at the radicals that you just learned, and study / review them so you will be all ready to start learning kanji (by using said radicals).
As long as you know these things by the end of this practice session, the next chapter will be a breeze! (swish swish … that’s the sound of breezing, I think).
Sentences
Go through the following sentences one by one. Listen to the audio then repeat it. Try to mimic the recording as closely as possible until you’re up to speed with the sentence. The sentences are fairly short, so it shouldn’t pose too much challenge if you chip away and persevere, but if it is giving you trouble, take a deep breath, and keep at it.
As you go through, also translate the sentences. A lot of them you will automagically know the meaning of, but for those you don’t be sure to look up the words and jot down the sentences and meanings in your language log. You don’t have to memorize it all perfectly right now (the main focus is being able to read and say the sentences), but you should get as close as you can without adding too much extra work. We’ll be doing the meanings of these sentences afterwards as well with the Anki deck.
a ぶどう ですか？
a さる ですか？
a いちご ですか？
a かぼちゃ ですか？
a ともだち ですか？
a みず ですか？
a でんしゃ ですか？
a せんせい ですか？
a ねこ ですか？
a いぬ ですか？
a みず ですか？ ・ はい、みず です
a かぼちゃ ですか？ ・ はい、かぼちゃ です
a はい、いちご です
a はい、ねこ です
a はい、いぬ です
a からて ですか？
a すもう ですか？
After you can read and say all of these sentences, it’s time to practice the meanings of them.
Import Sentences 2 To Anki
You already have a “sentences” deck on Anki and we don’t want you dealing with two different (or three, or four, depending on how far into the future you think ahead) “sentences” decks going at the same time. In order to avoid that, you’ll be importing little decks into your main decks to make your main deck bigger. It just makes things nice by keeping your decks all in one place – that way you don’t have to fly all over to find your reviews, new cards, and so on. It’s all just right there.
Unfortunately, there’s a couple of steps involved if you want to import one Anki deck into another Anki deck, but we’ll be doing it often enough so it’ll become very quick and natural (once you’ve done it a few times).
The first step is to download the Anki deck that you want to import. This deck will contain the above sentences and that’s it. The above sentences will be tagged with “002″ as well, because it’s the second part of the sentences deck. Although this shouldn’t be something you have to deal with, it will allow you to hide certain tags in case you only want to see certain cards. But, since we’re going in order here, it shouldn’t affect you (as the only cards you’ll have are cards you need to learn and review anyways.
Anyhow, download the Sentences 2 deck:
When you’ve downloaded the zip file, you’ll want to unzip it and pull out the contents. There’ll be a .media folder (with the audio in it) and a .anki file (that’s the deck file). To import, it should be fairly simple., you’ll have to do a couple things.
- Open your original (main) “TextFugu Sentences” deck in Anki (open Anki, and choose “TextFugu Sentences”)
- When “TextFugu Sentences” is open, go to File>>Import, then import the sentences2.anki file into your main deck.
- As long as you’ve done things right (especially with the original TextFugu Sentences deck) Anki should also import the media for you too. Open it up and give it a try to make sure it works (and to study!).
- P.S. Make sure you have the Japanese Support Plugin for Anki installed as well!
Once you’ve imported everything open up “TextFugu Sentences” and start studying them.
Study these until you’ve gotten through all of them, or Anki tells you to stop. Be sure to review every day. Anki will tell you what you need to review and what you don’t need to be review (as long as you’re honest). Keep it up, you don’t want to get behind with something like this!
Radicals 1
Before you continue on to the next chapter, the last thing I want you to do is start learning the kanji radicals. For now, all you need to do is learn the Level 1 radicals. There aren’t many, and it’ll start getting you used to both more complicated radicals and kanji. It shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. Head on over to the Radicals Page and click on the radicals that are within the “1″ Use the mnemonics to learn them and download the following Anki deck as well.
You’ll want to use this deck to create a new “TextFugu Radicals” deck. More info on how to do that can be found here.
Before You Move On
Before you move on, you should make sure you’ve done and can do the following things:
- You should understand です and ですか.
- You should be able to read and say all the sentences on this practice page.
- You should be able to import decks into Anki (in this case, successfully be able to import Sentences 2 in to your “TextFugu Sentences” main deck.
- You should have gone through the above sentences + reviewed the old sentences on Anki.
- Know the meanings of approximately 50% of the 1 stroke radicals (and have gone through all of them). Keep studying them so you know 100% by the time you get to your first kanji chapter.
When you’re all ready to move on you should do just that… move on!
(ﾉ^o^)ﾉ ⌒⊂●⊃ ﾘｰﾁ!