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Learning Japanese: Is grammar or vocabulary more important? -
01-16-2011, 09:29 AM
Hi all, I'm sure a lot of people are currently studying Japanese on this forum. I've already passed JLPT N4 so I've pretty much got the basic grammar structure memorized but otherwise I'm just wondering about how to go on from there.
I know that grammar is important but it'd be pointless to know a lot of grammar when you don't know the vocabulary being used in the sentence. I feel that even if you don't really understand the grammar you can sometimes guess what is being said if you know the vocabulary. There's only so much time in a day and it takes time to memorize vocabulary (there are thousands out there) so is it wise to concentrate more on vocabulary than grammar at this point of time? What do you folks concentrate on when you're studying Japanese? I'm currently living in Japan so communication skills are more essential at this point of time. Thanks in advance! 
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01-16-2011, 11:42 AM
That's kind of hard to answer. Maybe put more time into your vocabulary than you comparatively into your grammar? I tend to wish I had a greater vocabulary, but I'm certainly not sad that I studied grammar. You're going to have to get to both at one point or another, so I don't think it's really possible to say one is more "important" than the other. You could also try choosing the area that *you* feel you're weaker at at the moment. If you're feeling particularly confident about your grammar, spend a week or two working out vocab, and using it in patterns you already know. If you feel good about your vocab, try using it in some new grammar patterns.
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01-16-2011, 04:13 PM
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But until about six months or so ago, I still had trouble just picking up a newspaper and reading it because I only knew about 1000 kanji, and so my vocabulary was understandably limited. Now I know about 1700 and my vocabulary is probably 5000 words larger. You're still at the point where you neither know vocab nor grammar sufficiently. You need to determine your goals and then plan accordingly.
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01-20-2011, 05:56 AM
I think that both are important.
If you wanna speak correctly, grammar is 1 thing you need to know. But if you know more vocabulary you can kinda "get the jist of what people are saying" and understand more words. There certiantly is less "grammar" to know than vocabulary.
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01-21-2011, 02:44 PM
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01-22-2011, 02:32 AM
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A lot of people confuse knowledge of grammar in use with knowledge of grammar in the academic sense (ie. Knowing the terms and reasons for why something is what it is) Just as you don`t have to know the inner workings of a car engine to drive it, you don`t have to be actively aware of the inner workings of grammar to use it. But you DO have to know how to drive a car, just as you have to know how to use your language (grammar). As for thinking about vocabulary vs. grammar while speaking - as a native speaker you shouldn`t be actively thinking about either. You should just "naturally" know what the words mean, and "naturally" know how to put them together to form a coherent sentence. The thing is, this "natural" knowledge is something you did indeed learn at one point - not some inherent ability. As for which is better when learning Japanese - it depends on what you plan to do, and what your future holds. If you want to be able to read something - go for basic grammar with extensive vocabulary. You can often pick up and learn new grammatical patterns in writing from the context, but it is harder to pick up new words that way. If you will be communicating with real people, and speaking - go for a basic vocabulary with more grammar. It is easy to pick up new words if you are in an interactive situation, but without a foundation of proper grammar it will be hard to interpret the new words. I started with very basic vocab and very basic grammar - then worked my way up from there while in Japan.
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