hi i'm alivia and today i want to talk about how i went about using the Genki textbooks so
i'll be detailing exactly what my approach was as well as throwing in some things that i wish
i had done differently because i definitely think i could have adjusted some things to
be a bit more strategic in my approach so to give you a quick overview i went through both
of the Genki textbooks as well as the workbooks and i went through the first textbook in about
two to three weeks and i went through the second textbook in about a month so i went through them
pretty fast but i was putting in a few hours every day and my philosophy when i was going through
these textbooks was to gain familiarity with the language to become accustomed to the different
grammar structures to build my vocabulary base but my goal was not to memorize everything in these
textbooks i wasn't trying to have an unwavering understanding of every single grammar point my
aim of the textbooks was just to gain a initial familiarity with how the language worked in a
controlled environment knowing that i'd attain that deeper understanding through repeated
exposure to language in more natural forms than you'd find in a textbook so let me walk you
through how i approached each chapter on the first page we have a dialogue which will incorporate
some vocabulary and grammar that we will be learning in the chapter to come now for the first
chapter or two you probably won't know enough yet to understand what you're reading because you just
started so if you're in that situation start by just trying to sound out the words and get used
to reading hiragana and katakana the first two chapters will have this romanji to help you out
so you're not going to have to flip to the front or the back of the book to check out what each
character makes but don't rely on this too heavily try covering it with a piece of paper while
you're sounding everything out and then reveal it afterwards to check if you're on the right track
these textbooks also come with audio tracks so i would always listen to it while reading to make
sure that i had the right pronunciation so after i had gone through and read the dialogue i would try
and see how much the sentence i could understand on my own i'd see if there are any words that
i recognized if i recognize any patterns in the sentence if i could guess what they were
talking about from the picture or the title and i'd also pay attention to the audio track and
see if i could infer what was going on by the tone of the voices so did it sound like they
were asking a question were they happy or sad and then after i'd given it my best shot i checked the
translation of the dialogue to see what it meant after reading this and knowing what the dialogue
had said i would go back and see if i could figure out what each part of the sentence meant without
having checked the grammar explanations or the vocabulary list as yet so i would just go line by
line looking at the translation and looking at the original dialogue and see if i could map out what
each part of the sentence meant so i would go and see if i could figure out what certain words meant
i could take a guess at what a certain grammar structure was doing and then i would move on to
the vocabulary section so on the next page of the chapter you will find the vocabulary list and if
you see here where there are stars next to the words these are the words that were already used
in the dialogue on the last page so i would start by listening to the audio track of these words
being read out loud and i'd follow along and then i would start learning these words when i did this
i was using Memrise which is really quick and easy to get started with so if you're brand new to the
language i think it's a good starting point for learning vocabulary but if you've been studying
for a while or you don't want to have to switch vocabulary programs later down the line i would
recommend learning those words using Anki and in the description box i'll link where you can find
a deck with all the words in the Genki textbooks now when i was doing this i was learning all the
vocabulary for the chapter in one day and i don't recommend doing this i was spending over an hour
every day learning all the new words and doing all my reviews so i think a better approach would be
instead of learning all of the words on the same day you spread it out over multiple days
so pick a number of new words that you want to learn each day and add to your review system and
once you run out of words for chapter one then you can start learning the chapter two words even if
you haven't got there yet you might even wanna give yourself a head start and start learning
your vocabulary before you get the textbook so if you're waiting for it to arrive in the mail
you can get started on learning that vocabulary right away because i really found that my biggest
hurdle when i was going through Genki 2 was that i had gone through the vocabulary in Genki 1 so fast
and i was just overwhelmed with how many reviews i had to do every day so don't add dozens of words
to your review system in one day because it's going to be hard to keep it up in the long term
so don't try to rush vocabulary a good rule of thumb is anywhere between 5 and 20. because if
you come across a word that you don't know when you're going through the textbook all you have
to do is flip back to this page and look up what it means or on a lot of pages it will actually
have the translation right there for you so next is the grammar section so for each grammar point
i would read the description and i would also make sure i was reading all the example sentences
to practice my reading and make sure when you're doing this you cover the ramanji if it's there
and the translation and then once you've read it you can check to see if you got it right for the
first while i took notes then i stopped doing it because i found that writing it down wasn't super
beneficial to me but if you find that writing things down in your own words helps you with your
understanding then definitely go for it but for me personally i find writing notes to be too tedious
and i never look back at them anyways so what i would do is i just go back to the textbook if i
needed a refresher so one thing i did start to do was that i would highlight and underline important
parts of my textbook so that when i did go back and review it it was a lot easier for me to find
so you can see on this chapter i highlighted the main use of the grammar point and i underlined it
in the example sentences and when i was learning about these grammar points i would often flip back
to the dialogue at the beginning of the chapter and find an example of the point being used
there so once again i was only trying to build familiarity with these grammar points i was not
trying to memorize them so i wasn't spending hours and hours trying to understand how each point
worked once i felt i had a decent understanding of what was going on i would go to the next but
if you are struggling in understanding what the textbook is talking about you can always go online
and find another description and hopefully the way it's presented there will make more sense to
you i usually went through all the grammar points for a chapter in one day and it usually took me
around an hour and then at the end of each chapter there will be a culture note and it will teach you
something about japanese culture so the next thing we have is the exercise section now this may be a
bit controversial but i actually skipped a lot of the exercises i found a lot of them required
a partner or they were really focused on speaking and writing practice so language production but my
goal at the time was really to focus on language comprehension so reading and listening i really
want to focus on my comprehension of the language before trying to produce it on my own because the
only thing i'd be able to do at this point would be really awkward textbook talk and not how actual
people speak so i wanted to wait until i had a better understanding of the basics before i tried
to use it on my own so many of the audio questions will be call and response style so it will ask you
a question and then there will be a pause for you to answer it in japanese and then it will say what
the correct answer was i would usually skip this middle part and just listen to the question and
the answer and try to understand what is being said and sometimes i would shadow the audio and
repeat back what they were saying to try to get the right pronunciation if there was a question
that was more writing based i would turn it into a reading exercise so i'd read all the questions
and make sure i understood them but i usually wouldn't take the time to write out my answer
to the questions and then on the last page of the chapter they'll show us some useful expressions
and i would read through these and listen to the audio track and then depending on what
the topic was i might add it to my vocabulary reviews now before we start the next chapter
we have a few more places that we need to look now at the back of your textbook there is this
reading and writing section and this is where there'll be a lot of exercises that are based
on each chapter for chapter one and two it's going to be mostly focused on hiragana and katsukana and
just getting you familiar with the different characters but then starting on chapter three
they're going to introduce kanji so i was already learning kanji with wanikani so i didn't pay too
much attention to this page i'd mostly just skim it and see if there were any characters that i
hadn't learned yet but otherwise i would just move on and then after this will be some reading and
writing exercises and i would actually do most of these the main ones that i would skip is if it was
asking me to do kind of like a journal entry style of question i'd usually skip those i'd
pay the most attention to the reading exercises and also listening to the audio tracks for those
passages so after you've finished the chapter in the textbook both in the front and the back of
the book you'll also have the workbook so by now you may have guessed that i did not do the entire
thing but i found the exercises in here a lot more enjoyable than the ones that i found in a textbook
so i actually did a fair amount in the first one the workbook is also divided into two parts
the first chunk is called conversation and grammar so there's lots of writing and listening exercises
for the first few chapters i actually did nearly all the questions and just got used to writing
in japanese and i would always do the listing comprehension questions but as i got farther along
i stopped doing most of the writing questions and i would simply make sure that i could understand
what the question was asking and just getting some reading practice there at the back of the
workbook we have this reading and writing section and here you'll be given space to drill writing
hiragana katakana as well as the kanji from the textbook and then there's some problems where you
can use it i did nearly all of these for the first workbook because i really enjoyed learning how to
write it but if writing isn't a priority for you right now you could save it for later so that is
how i went through the genki textbooks and i went through both of them in about two months like i
said i was doing a couple hours every day and i'd usually spend one to three days per chapter what i
would normally do was the dialogue the vocabulary and the grammar section on the first day and then
i would do the exercises in both the textbook and the workbook on the second and third day so i
think a better approach to take would probably be instead of learning all of your vocabulary on one
day to spread it out over multiple days and focus more of your energy on the reading and listening
exercises than the writing and speaking exercises if you want to do all the exercises totally go for
it but if you're like me and you don't really enjoy doing exercises that much and you want to
focus on your language comprehension before your language production just skip any questions that
you don't feel are fitting that style of learning and then you can put that time into building your
vocabulary a bit faster maybe by starting that tango N5 deck with anki that i talked about or
you could even start reading some beginner materials that have a built-in dictionary
if there's anything that i missed or if you have any questions let me know down in the comments
if you enjoyed this video make sure you give it a like so more people can find it and make
sure you're subscribed if you want to see more that's all i for today and i'll see you soon