Short and Sweet:
How do you go about understanding grammar. What is your next step when you know every word in a sentence but not 100% sure about the sentence meaning as a whole. What do you do?
Long and rambling (if you dare/care);
So I would like to start off by saying I really enjoy LingQ and all the content it gives me access too. However, there is one aspect of the study method i’m not quite clear on and that is grammar. I keep running into situations where, I know every single word in a sentence (or close too), but still am not 100% sure what the sentence means.
So my question is, how do you all, or hopefully Steve can chime in, deal with grammar and/or fully understanding the meaning of a sentence. I love how well I can obtain words using this website, and get quality listening practice (which i was VERY much lacking). But, if I don’t understand the sentence, even after knowing, or presumably knowing, every word in a sentence, what do you do next.
I assume you are not a fan of endlessly studying grammar rules. But how do you go about looking up a grammar rule you don’t know. Or checking to see if your “translation” or understanding of a sentence is actually what it means. How do you go about figuring out all these little nuances such as なの、なのに、かな and endless other little things interjected in natural Japanese speech. When you feel completely lost on a meaning. What do you do. Its really hard for me to move beyond a sentence without knowing what it means. Even if I don’t understand every single context of that grammar rule, I want to know all the rules and words and such of that specific sentence before moving on. Is this possible?
I think most LingQ members can relate to this. But because you are studying Japanese (like me) you have an extra difficult task.
You can only understand your target language through massive amounts of input (as Steve likes to say). You just need to read, watch videos, listen to audio and lots of it. By seeing words and phrase in different context then only you will start to understand the meaning of it. Unfortunately there is no shortcuts to this. I read though the LingQ lessons and try not to understand the meaning in depth. I find that when I re-visit the material much later on I understand it.
Click on the exchange home button and have a look at the rankings list. See the users profiles and how many words they have read in the last 3 months. This is the sort of dedication you need (if Lingq is your sort of thing) in order to understand the language.
I started off with the Assimil series before using Lingq, so I had a basic understanding of grammar patterns. My transition to Lingq then went very smoothly starting with beginner content from Emma and other creators, and I was already familiar with some of the basic grammar and vocabulary.
I don’t suggest using Lingq right off the bat at ground zero.
I also wanted to say that I found LingQ difficult when I first started. I used it for about 3 months and gave up because I felt like I wasn’t making progress. It’s only now, 6 months later I feel my studying is improving.
What I found that really helped me was watching 100’s of hours of videos in Japanese. It’s easy to understand from videos why people have certain sayings or gestures. I believe once you have a better grasp on the culture then it makes studying LingQ easier.
