Building vocabulary
 

Alright, I've decided before starting on Katakana, I should build my vocabulary by at least a couple hundred words.

So... where could I find a big list of Japanese words? - preferably written in Hiragana, though Romaji works as well.

Thanks so much! *Continues googling*

Why not use the 4kyuu vocab words?
Here (hiragana on the left)

I'm afraid not. That is the wrong approach towards improving yourself in Japanese. Once you are completely done with hiragana, you are more than ready for Katakana. You don't need to wait until you have reached a certain amount of vacabulary before starting it.

Katakana IS your vocab. You get to learn new words as you learn it along the way. By the time you have completed it, you would have learned a couple of new words almost immediately.

By then, your next step should be Kanji.

Ive learned so many words while studying kanji its not even funny. So leanr the words while learning kanji. Its easier.

He's definitely right. Make sure to learn both your hiragana and katakana first. And practice reading words written in hiragana and katakana. And use those words in sentences. My suggestion is if you are learning this by yourself, go out and buy a text book.

One added bonus is that reading in kana (hiragana and katakana) will greatly improve your pronunciation of Japanese. Check out this freeware:

Kotoba

It's very cool. It can give you the english word, then hiragana, then kanji or any order you want that in. There are a lot of word lists available for down load and it's free. But if you like it, you should shoot the programmer some coin.

you can't learn scripts effectively without learning the language. you will learn kana and kanji better if you learn them while learning vocabulary.

my question to you is, why can you only do one thing at a time. why can't you learn say 10 new katakana each day and perhaps 20 words.. and progress from there..

I think the point is to not learn words in Romaji...but if you know 10 hiragana there are surely a mess of words you can write.

i agree completely with that idea. i don't know about you but i almost can't read romaji. i never learnt japanese using it. many language teachers in australia pretty much forbid the use of it. i absolutely hate reading romaji because i often can't make out what people are trying to say. not one of my japanese books, even my first one, contain romaji. give me kana and kanji please!

i strongly recommend you get on the JLPT level 4 vocab list, you can find lists with the katakana words listed with hiragana so you can learn the words and recognise the katakana you are learning at the same time. good luck!