[Official] Rains’ Japanese Grammar Livestream (&Youtube)

[rainsismyfav]

[Currently on Week 13]

 

Good day folks,

 

You can call me rains

 

My youtube channel (pls don’t mind the extra random videos in there)

https://www.youtube.com/user/rainsismyfav

 

This is the official thread for my (attempt at a) casual teaching series. For those who are interested please follow this thread as I will be constantly updating the 1^st post for every session.  

 

[WEEK 14] は ??? です EST; No guarantees, my life is quite busy nowadays. I need to focus on my responsibilities first on top of my regular work. I will eventually get this series done and I'm hoping to do it ASAP. Please be patient, I'll try to get things going. Thank you guys for the feedback; it's nice to see people check out my videos.

 

Planning to cover: ???

 

You can pm / skype / email me anytime you have questions or feedback. In the future, I want to constantly receive feedback from you guys so I can tweak my sessions.

 

 

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Youtube links:

[Week 0] -

Edited September 28, 2015 by rainsismyfav

[Deep Blue]

thanks for this

[Zalor]

[Week 0] Saturday, February 21. 4:00 pm

 

[WEEK 0] will occur this Saturday, February 21 at 4pm until whenever I finish. It will be a very short session.

 

[Nosebleed]

4pm according to what timezone? 

EST (GMT -5)

[rainsismyfav]

Yeah I realized last night that I didn't put the timezone but I had already shut-down my computer. Sorry about that, and thanks Nosebleedさん!

[rainsismyfav]

Introduction Week 0 is set to start in 2 hours and 8 minutes

[Snowtsuku]

Sadly I have to leave in 2 hours or so. I'll just wait for the VODs.

[Deep Blue]

thanks for uploading them to youtube, I can't see the stream but I will watch them later

[rainsismyfav]

Bumping my thread, stream in 15 minutes...

 

I'm going to try two different approach. Feedbacks appreciated

[Rose]

Was late and only heard "bye bye". Gonna try to be on earlier next week. ):

[Fred the Barber]

Thanks, Rains! This is a great supplement to the other things I'm doing to learn; I definitely learned a lot of useful stuff in a short period of time. Most useful for me was the explanation of the informal particles; this isn't taught much by the other resources I have, since they're not expecting you to be doing much casual conversation, but casual speech is of course going to be very common in a VN, anime, etc.

 

You were asking for suggestions on what to do about vocab: my suggestion would be to put the whole sentence in Japanese on the slide, pronounce it in Japanese, and on the line below, put translations for any vocab (spacing out the Japanese sentence as needed so the translation lines up with the original). Then we can hear how the sentence would flow in Japanese and see how the grammar particles are written in the sentence, but hopefully not get tripped up too much on the vocab.

[rainsismyfav]

Thanks, Rains! This is a great supplement to the other things I'm doing to learn; I definitely learned a lot of useful stuff in a short period of time. Most useful for me was the explanation of the informal particles; this isn't taught much by the other resources I have, since they're not expecting you to be doing much casual conversation, but casual speech is of course going to be very common in a VN, anime, etc.

 

You were asking for suggestions on what to do about vocab: my suggestion would be to put the whole sentence in Japanese on the slide, pronounce it in Japanese, and on the line below, put translations for any vocab (spacing out the Japanese sentence as needed so the translation lines up with the original). Then we can hear how the sentence would flow in Japanese and see how the grammar particles are written in the sentence, but hopefully not get tripped up too much on the vocab.

 

 

Thanks for the suggestion Fred! I'll try that out next week. Hopefully the vocab issue wouldn't be too bad as it goes on~.

 

Youtube video for this week is uploaded, check 1st post for it.

[Nosebleed]

Damn it, I was too busy reading yuri fanfics forgot about this

 

I'll catch it next time. I'll also watch the videos and try to give feedback.

[LinovaA]

My internet couldn't handle the stream sadly.

I'll be sure to go check it out as I did last week on Youtube.

[Nosebleed]

Personal feedback after watching the videos on youtube

 

For Week 0

No Amenbo no Uta, 0/10

#SingAmenboNoUtaPls

 

Just kidding it was actually really solid and taught everything you would need to know about pronounciation and the different aplhabets.

 

You even pointed out something I didn't know which is how katakana is used for emphasis sometimes with Japanese words, I actually didn't know there was any difference besides pure artistic preference.

 

For week 1

 

• Furigana

I think it's important to have furigana as early as possible. I think I showed you how to do it on powerpoint.

If not furigana, at least try to use hiragana as much as possible in paranthesis.

 

It's important that people familiarize themselves with the alphabets as soon as possible and this also helps build kanji pronounciation.

• Vocabulary box might be useful.

Rememeber you're doing a video. Some people like pausing and looking at things to make sure they get it.

Having a vocabulary box when you have example sentences could probably help a lot for those who like to pause and analyze things.

 

As far as casual slides vs prepared slides, I vote for prepared slides because, like I said, some people like pausing and taking notes so it's important to make sure you have the essential things you want to teach written down for them because you might forget something on the spot.

 

Always be casual and engaging like you were and feel free to add stuff on the spot, but also always have at least the essentials you want to convey prepared beforehand to make sure they don't slip by 

 

• And one thing that sort of bothered me personally: Syntax order.

 

You didn't really touch on Syntax order which might get confusing for beginners that just came into contact with Japanese sentences.

I don't know if you were planning on it later but I remember this was the very first thing you taught me and I think it's very essential to know

 

Although I know in this week all you touched was particles and state of being and you did properly explain that  だ・です acts as a verb (to be), you should probably make a mention on how verbs always come at the end of sentences.

 

Though I can't speak for anyone but myself, it could cause confusion not knowing it right from the start.

I know I was confused before you explained it to me.

 

I don't think this will bother people too much if they really want to try and learn, and your focus was just declarative sentences here, but I'm just trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who knows absolutely nothing.

 

So yeah I don't think this was essential for the lesson in itself since you didn't expand on verbs, I'm just pointing something for future references. I believe clearly understanding the verb is at the end and not confusing something like 私は as "I am" is very essential in understanding Japanese as a whole and people really need to familiarize themselves with the fact that Japanese works entirely different than English does.

 

 

 

Overall I think you did a solid job at covering all the topics in lesson 1. I think what you can do better is only related to the slides and material themselves and not the way you teach so keep doing what you're doing and having that attitude, it was pretty fun.

[rainsismyfav]

Very nice and detailed feedback Nosebleedさん！ I appreciate this a lot! がんばります！

[Nosebleed]

Oh and I forgot to mention I really like the fact you used full VN sentences for those more "hands on" examples (as in stuff you'll come up against in the VN world). Keep doing that, those are always the most informative since they require more thinking and deciphering.

 

I'm still waiting on Amenbo no Uta, though. This is an order from Nico. Beginners use as example too.

[Zalor]

Great lesson! I was going to provide my own feedback, but I stand by everything Nosebleed said. I would really appreciate if the words were in Japanese, but you provided English means. So basically I heavily support the text box idea. And most of all. Rainsismyfavさん ありがとうございます.

Noob Question: Could I have written ありがとうございます Rainsismyfavさん?

[Nosebleed]

Great lesson! I was going to provide my own feedback, but I stand by everything Nosebleed said. I would really appreciate if the words were in Japanese, but you provided English means. So basically I heavily support the text box idea. And most of all. Rainsismyfavさん ありがとうございます.

Noob Question: Could I have written ありがとうございま Rainsismyfavさん?

[Kelebek1]

A lot of the Japanese end up using >(name) at the end of their sentences when addressed to someone. Just saying thanks is really basic so either way is fine, but for longer ones just pointing out who it was too makes more sense than trying to stuff their name in somewhere.

 

Also Nosebleed, I always liked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4zbOLzzltM. "トテトテタッタと飛び立った" is definitely my favourite line.

[rainsismyfav]

Week 2 streaming in 20 mins~

 

EDIT: Week 2 is posted on youtube~ Enjoy guys. Sorry for spazzing out powerpoint and minor phonecall interruption there.

 

 

 

 

As a bonus I have also uploaded a video of me playing "jrpg", a kanji slaying game designed to help you learn hira/kata/kanji.

http://youtu.be/uWiLYfvL_zA

[rainsismyfav]

Week 3's uploaded on youtube. Enjoy

[rainsismyfav]

Week 4's up... but idk why it's not processing. 待つしかないか～

 

Update: It's FIXED

 

Enjoy~

[rainsismyfav]

Week 5's up yada yada yada, you know the drill. It's starting to feel weird bumping my own thread and seeing my posts one right after the other.... derp

[Zalor]

Don't worry I'm watching your videos in conjunction with Tae Kim's guide. I've been doing things Aaeru's method, and quite fittingly you started this series a bit after I finished RTK. That said, I haven't watched week 5 yet. Again, thanks for doing this Rains!