You either don’t have much time or have better things to do with your time than to labor over page after page of boring advice you probably already know. You want to study
Japanese, not study this. That’s why I keep this guide short and to-the-point.
You’ve probably already read my articles, and know everything I’ve talked about there.
No point in repeating myself here. On the off-chance you haven’t seen the articles, here are the links (it’ll take you 10 minutes to read them both): http://www.how-to-learn-japanese.com/japanese_sat_ii.html
http://www.how-to-learn-japanese.com/japanese-sat-ii-faq.html
You can either follow this guide really closely—follow my 14-day plan, use all the tools and books I recommend and my suggestions for how to use them, etc.—or you can use it a la carte , and pick out whatever seems useful to you. Either way works.
What you REALLY need to know, which is maybe why you’re reading this in the first place, is that there are no other resources out there specifically meant for people who are taking the Japanese SAT II. Maybe some more will come along in the future, but as of this writing, there is no big book you can buy about the test. But who cares about
“the future”: you’re probably taking the test this year.
You probably already know the basic facts of the test from my two short articles and maybe from the College Board website. It’s worth mentioning again, though, that you can only take the test in November (sad but true).
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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Also, the test-makers assume you have 2 years of Japanese under your belt. If you’re fortunate to go to a high school that offers Japanese, and if you’ve taken 4 semesters of it, you’ve probably covered the stuff that the College Board wants you to know. If you’ve taken 4 semesters of it at your local college—or perhaps placed into and then passed 3rd- and 4th-semester Japanese—I’m 99% certain that you’ve covered everything you need to know, and them some. However, if you’ve kinda sorta selfstudied for about two years or have a couple of Nihonjin friends with whom you talk casually, I can’t say whether or not I think you’re all set to ace the test.
As you may also know, you don’t need to actually write anything for the test, other than filling in the bubbles. It’s still multiple-choice. So if you feel that your kanji look like the crayon scribbles of a hyperactive toddler who’s crying because he needs his diaper changed, don’t despair.
Genki I (An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese).
This is a fantastic textbook—chances are good you’re even using it already. It’s the first in a series of two Genki textbooks; this first one covers semesters 1 and 2 of college-level Japanese (that is, 1 st
-year Japanese).
The Genki series is widely used, and there’s an excellent match between what the textbook covers and the scope of the SAT II. Genki is a great choice no matter what, but if you want to follow the 14-day study plan I’ve included in this guide, it’s pretty much essential. You’ll probably want to buy the workbook for Genki I , unless you already have a really good method for practicing the stuff you cover in the book.
-Published by The Japan Times, 1999
ISBN: 4789009637
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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Genki II (An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese). This covers 3rd- and 4th-semester Japanese (equivalent to 2nd-year). It picks right up where Genki I left off. Once you’ve covered and know
Genki I and the first half of Genki II , you’ve covered basically everything you need to know for the test (and everything after that is icing on the cake). The workbook for Genki II is good practice, but the test is somewhat weighted toward the more basic grammar, so the more advanced material isn’t absolutely as essential for you to practice.
-Published by The Japan Times, 2005
ISBN: 4789011631
The Official Study Guide For All SAT Subject Tests. It’s an “official” collection of real practice tests—all the SAT II’s you can take from The
College Board. You need it because it has one practice Japanese SAT
II. I REALLY recommend you take a practice Japanese SAT under test conditions, so that you at least know what it’s like before you take the test, but (here too) you need it if you want to follow my 14-day attack plan. Who knows: maybe you’ll also use it for any other SAT II’s you’re taking.
-Published by The College Board, 2006
ISBN: 0874477565
By the way, you can get all of these on Amazon (as I’m sure you know). The Genki textbooks aren’t expensive as far as textbooks go, and the “official” SAT II book is cheap by anyone’s standards.
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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1. Learn from multiple sources and many different angles.
For instance: Don’t necessarily stick to one book to learn some particular grammar form. Or try to use the grammar forms you’ve learned in conversation, as much as possible. Or if you’re trying to learn a kanji, you should both make a flashcard for it, and practice writing it (and pronouncing it out loud when appropriate). You get the idea. Variety is good.
2. Bulk is crucial.
If you’re learning a kanji, for instance, don’t kill yourself trying to learn the stroke order or all the words in which it can be used. Make sure you’re solid on the basic meaning, the on-yomi and kun-yomi, and some of the words the kanji can be used in, and then move on to another one.
3. Repetition is also key.
Don’t just read over your notes on grammar once. Don’t try to remember everything on every last flashcard. Do things over and over again.
4. Take a real Japanese SAT II practice test.
I’ve already mentioned the book you need to get. I’ve also mentioned that you need to take it the practice test under test conditions (it’s only an hour long). I will mention in the 14-day study plan (a bit later) when you should do the practice test and what you should do afterwards.
5. The BIGGEST battleground on the test is vocabulary and kanji.
Without it, knowledge of grammar is pretty much useless. The bad news is that there’s a LOT of grammar and a moderate amount of kanji you need to know. The good news is that it’s a finite amount: As a rule of thumb, you need to know everything in the first Genki textbook, and most of what’s in the first half or so of the second Genki book (more on this later).
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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6. Grammar is the second-biggest moving part.
I say that mostly because it doesn’t take quite as long to get a good handle on a particular grammar form as it does to learn large numbers of new words and kanji, and because the test challenges your broad knowledge of words a little more than it tests your knowledge of grammar. This is where the Genki books come in, which are particularly good at getting you comfortable with usage.
7. Listening practice is where the least amount of your prep time/efforts will go.
It’s important, of course, but there’s only so much you can do to prepare for the listening part. Having someone to speak with can come in handy, but it’s not critical. If you have absolutely no one to talk with or fear that your listening abilities have gotten rusty, The
Rosetta Stone (which I talk about later) is an excellent way to get practice, if you have a couple hundred bucks to spare.
8. Use flashcards.
Lots of them, mostly for vocabulary and kanji. (I’ll go into more detail shortly on exactly how I recommend you use flashcards for the SAT II.)
9. If you have to be really picky with your time, focus on roughly the first 3 semesters of material.
Because the test is in November, it’s quite possible you’ll still be taking your third semester of Japanese when it’s time to take the test. It’s really just the 80/20 rule at work: If you haven’t yet got to your fourth semester of Japanese, I’d suggest you make sure you get solid on everything you learned in the first 3 semesters and are somewhat familiar with the stuff in the second half or two-thirds of Genki II .
Almost all of the grammar on the test isn’t at the 4th-semester level anyway.
10. If you can afford a private tutor, excellent. To the extent that you work out an additional or complementary study plan with your tutor, you’ll be getting great practice— particularly great conversation practice. Second choice: someone just to talk casually with.
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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11. Do at least some of your studying right before bed.
I don’t know why it is, but the human mind seems to absorb stuff much better when it sleeps on whatever its owner deems important to study, sweat, and suffer over. You want to get the unconscious on your side.
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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I hope it doesn’t surprise you that I have a whole section on flashcards. In my experience, not nearly enough gakusei use them. They’re either stupid, lazy, not serious, or (rarely) just haven’t thought of making flashcards. I know you’re a cut above that, and that cutting up some index cards and writing words and characters on them isn’t too much work for you. Flashcards are underrated.
If you follow my 14-day study plan, you’ll need to make a LOT of flashcards for vocab and kanji. Even if you study with a different method, you still need to use flashcards.
Long story short, they are a great, manageable, simple way to learn what you need to.
Anyway, without more hemming and hawing on why you need to use flashcards, here are some best practices for how you can get the most mileage out of them with the least amount of effort:
1. Keep your flashcards simple. Don’t load up each one with 5 readings and 3 meanings. I guess you’ll find what works best, but I also think you’ll find that simpler is better.
2. Keep them separate.
Don’t try to be thrifty and put 2 or 3 different words on one card. Have one card for “dog” and another for “cat.” If you don’t, it gets really confusing and cumbersome to memorize what you need to.
3. Write meanings AND pronunciations on each card. It’s just harder to memorize if you have all these separate fragments—a bunch of different meanings and a bunch of different readings—to associate with each other. In the case of kanji flashcards, I write the kanji on one side, and the meaning and hiragana pronunciation on the other.
If I’m trying to enrich my vocabulary with a new word, I’ll try to look up and write down the kanji for it, so that I kind of kill two birds with one stone.
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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4. Write down verbs in full.
That means include the verb stems (masu or ru ) in the infinitive. That’s how Japanese verbs appear in writing anyway, and (unlike in Chinese) you can’t tell that what you’re reading is a verb if you just see the kanji by itself, without
– masu , masen , -ru , etc. following it. In other words, it’s just much easier this way.
5. Make the cards big enough that you can handle them , but small enough that (A) you can carry them around on occasion and so that (B) you’re not killing too many trees by making the hundreds of them you’re going to need to make. People usually make their cards way too small. You want to spend your time blazing through the cards, not picking them up off the floor. I like to buy packs of 3x5-inch index cards, cut them all in half, and use each half-card for one flashcard.
6. It’s all about cycles and piles.
If you’re trying to memorize a pile of 100 flashcards, go through them all, and have one pile of cards that’s all the ones you got correct, and another pile with all the ones you didn’t know. Let’s say you knew 80 of them and didn’t know 20. Then pick up the pile of 20, and go through it in the same way, with the same two piles for the ones you do and don’t know. Rinse and repeat as you see fit. If I’m at a point of diminishing return, and (for instance) just can’t seem to remember 5 of the cards, I’ll usually just set them aside in a separate pile, to iron out later. By the way, even if you know a particular stack of flashcards pretty well, it’s a good idea to review them over again every now and then, so you don’t get rusty.
7. Always write them out by hand—and know why it’s important to do so.
Maybe this is obvious, but you should NOT try to save time by typing them, printing them on a piece of paper, and then cutting them up into little cards. If you think it’s too much work, you should maybe take up a language other than Japanese. The act of writing the characters and words out REALLY helps memorization. It’s very quick to make a card and of course it takes a while to make many, but think of all you’ll have if you spend even a solid half an hour making cards with some good music on. You’re learning the characters while you’re making the cards. You’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that oftentimes after you make a big pile of cards and go through your pile for the first time,
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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you’ll get a surprising number of them right the first time. That’s because you begin memorizing them the minute you put pen to flashcard.
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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There are all kinds of things I don’t know about your situation: I don’t know how much
Japanese you already know, how much time you have, what your relative strengths are, what textbooks you currently own, etc. I don’t assume that you necessarily have the money for tools like The Rosetta Stone or even for the great books that I recommend later.
But I do assume that if you’re serious enough about Japanese to take an SAT in it, you’re also serious enough to get your hands on the two Genki textbooks and the
College Board book that contains the practice tests.
I also assume that you are figuring out or want to figure out at least a rough plan for how to study.
Therefore, I have a 14-day plan that you can follow religiously or tweak as you see fit.
It involves following 3 distinct, specific steps each day.
If you have several months before you take the test, you can of course either spread the plan out over more than 14 days, or you can blast through it and study less intensively afterwards. There are certainly other ways to skin the cat, but if you’re short on time or short of ideas for a good study approach, then follow the chart on the next page:
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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A key approach to prepping for the Japanese SAT II is to get practice from a bunch of different sources and to mix it up. Below are some great free tools you can use to expose yourself to more Japanese, to refer to when you need to look up kanji or vocabulary, and to get great practice:
http://genki.japantimes.co.jp/self/self.en.html
This is sort of an online companion to the Genki textbooks you have. The site has resources that relate to the textbook, but it also has free practice tools you can use. If you follow the 14-Day study plan, I’d recommend using the practice tools on this site particularly during the first week or so.
Denshi Jisho http://www.jisho.org/
If you don’t own an old-school paper dictionary (like the Compact Nelson dictionary),
Denshi Jisho (Jisho.org) is your lifeline. Whenever you don’t know a word or kanji, use this tool.
Jim Breen’s online dictionary http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi
This is a great online dictionary, like Jisho.org. The only difference is that this is a little less user-friendly (probably because it’s an older site).
RealKanji.com
http://www.realkanji.com/
In their words: “A simple site for learning and practicing kanji by typing hiragana.” This is a great supplement to your flashcards. 15+ minutes a day on this site is not a bad idea if you’re serious about learning your kanji for the test.
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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Renshuu.org
http://www.renshuu.org/
Renshuu means “practice” (as I hope you know!). Here, you can practice your vocab, kanji and listening—a great way to cover all your bases for the test.
Gyford.com hiragana and katakana practice http://www.gyford.com/japanese/
If you’re still getting the hang of kana (that is, hiragana and katakana), this is a quick way to get solid practice. I’m about 99% certain that you’re all checked-out on your kana, but if not, this site will help.
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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Rosetta Stone http://www.rosettastone.com/learn-japanese
If you cover Genki (especially in the way I’ve described), use the online tools I’ve mentioned, and stay hardcore about flashcards, you’re probably in great shape for the test.
However, if you’re willing to invest some dough, the Rosetta
Stone provides excellent practice—for vocab, kanji, grammar, listening comprehension, even kanji-writing.
You’ve maybe heard of or even used Rosetta Stone, and know that it’s interactive software. There’s no point in my describing it to death, when you can just go to the website. I’ll just leave it at saying that it’s extremely effective.
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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I’ve already mentioned that you’re going to need Genki 1 & 2 and The Official Study
Guide For All SAT Subject Tests . Those are what, in my experience, you absolutely need.
However, there are also books that provide great (and easy) reference when you really need it, make studying easier and quicker, and that will serve you well long after you’ve aced the Japanese SAT II.
Here are some personal favorites, in rough order of usefulness to you for the
Japanese SAT II (as of this writing, they’re all available on Amazon.com):
by Masatoshi Yoshida, et al.
The online dictionaries I recommended are great, but an old-school paper dictionary is still quite handy. This one, in particular, is great, because most definitions have example sentences, so that you know how to use whatever it is you’ve looked up.
“What’s furigana,” you ask? Furigana are simply tiny hiragana characters—that is, the basic syllables—written above the more complex kanji.
Furigana are useful when you don’t know how to pronounce kanji. So this is a furigana dictionary because when you look up a word, you see the kanji one would use to write it, and you see the furigana you need to know how to pronounce the words correctly.
Sounds complicated, but this dictionary is incredibly easy and intuitive to use, and I highly recommend getting a copy.
-Published by Kodansha International, 1999
ISBN: 4770024800
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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This isn’t a kanji dictionary, nor is it a regular dictionary, but it’s an excellent reference tool and way to pick up a lot of kanji quickly. As the name suggests, it shows you the basic kanji plus many more.
I particularly recommend using it when you’re covering the kanji in the
Genki textbooks. When something about a kanji is unclear in either of the Genki books, I’d suggest referring either to Jisho.org or to Essential Kanji.
-Published by Weatherill, 1973.
ISBN: 0834802228
by Kenneth G. Henshall
This is like Essential Kanji on steroids. It covers pretty much the same characters—certainly WAY more than you need to know for the SAT II— but in a somewhat more logical way than Essential Kanji does ( Essential
Kanji doesn’t always cover the most basic characters first). The truly great thing about Henshall’s book, though, is the mnemonics: he gives you little phrases by which you can remember each kanji—and it actually works quite well.
-Published by Tuttle, 1995
ISBN: 0804820384
If you’re ever shaky on how to conjugate tricky, irregular verbs (like suru and kuru ), this book is just what the doctor ordered. It covers over 600 verbs—which is a lot more than you need to know for the test—and
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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shows you exactly how to conjugate each verb. It’s a fantastic reference tool, and (even more important) exposes you to so many verbs that you get the hang of how to conjugate them.
-Published by Tuttle, 2001
ISBN: 0804834245
If you’re attacking piles of kanji and vocabulary flashcards, and you feel like you’re absorbing much of it but also feel as though quite a bit isn’t seeping in, Building Word Power in Japanese is a godsend. Timothy
Vance explains all the little modifiers, prefixes, suffixes, etc. that dictate meanings of Japanese words. For example, he shows you how to turn any word into “anti-,” “un-,” “pro-,” and so forth. This book helps the scattered pieces of
Japanese fall into place, rather than hog precious space in your memory.
-Published by Kodansha International, 2002
ISBN: 4770027990
The title pretty much explains it all. Rubin’s book is much more bigpicture than Vance’s, even though he uses plenty of examples to illustrate when you want to use one verb or another verb, or this pronoun versus that one. I’d suggest reading it (it’s pretty short and punchy) only if you’re really comfortable with all the material in Genki , the vocabulary, the kanji—all the stuff I keep harping on.
-Published by Kodansha International, 2002
ISBN: 4770028024
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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by John Haig, et al.
You don’t really need this for the test, but I’d be remiss in not mentioning it. It’s a full-blown kanji dictionary , and it actually takes a little bit of skill to use it as a handy reference. But because I assume that you’re going to stick with Japanese after the test, I’ve also got to assume that at some point you’ll be looking around for a great dictionary. Look no farther than this one.
-Published by Tuttle, 1999
ISBN: 0804820376
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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I doubt you will have any questions—after all, you’re busy enough with prepping for this test and probably others.
I won’t be your private tutor, and I don’t have any “inside information” on the test that you can’t get by ordering the practice test from The College Board. But if you have a question or two about test-prep or even about Japanese, by all means, drop me a line.
You can reach me through philrozek@gmail.com
or through my “Contact Me” form at http://www.how-to-learn-japanese.com/contact.html
Shiken o gambatte !
Phil Rozek
© 2010 Philip Rozek www.How-To-Learn-Japanese.com
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