Learning vocabulary first then grammar?

[addictedKool]

I was reading this article about an effective way to learn Japanese and the author suggested that, rather than learning the grammar structure and then learning vocabulary as you go along, to instead learn as many vocabulary words as you can before learning the grammar rules.

How To Learn Japanese Words Fast

What do you think? Does it seem logical to follow the author's advice? Instead of cracking open the "How To" books, should I learn a decent amount of vocabulary words beforehand?

Also, in the bottom of the article the author linked to a site offering a mnemonic method called "Speak Japanese Fast" to learn 100 words/hr. Has anyone tried it? What do you think?

[DJnohara]

Originally Posted by addictedKool

I was reading this article about an effective way to learn Japanese and the author suggested that, rather than learning the grammar structure and then learning vocabulary as you go along, to instead learn as many vocabulary words as you can before learning the grammar rules.

How To Learn Japanese Words Fast

What do you think? Does it seem logical to follow the author's advice? Instead of cracking open the "How To" books, should I learn a decent amount of vocabulary words beforehand?

Also, in the bottom of the article the author linked to a site offering a mnemonic method called "Speak Japanese Fast" to learn 100 words/hr. Has anyone tried it? What do you think?

Thats basically how I learned.
I tried tediously memorizing phrases from books and online at first.
But what finally worked was taking a college class.

[jesselt]

You should always be cautious whenever someone tells you that a certain method will help you learn "fast" because learning a language is never fast.

The program that he linked at the bottom is crap IMO. There is no way that you can learn 100 words an hour unless you have an extremely lose definition of the word "learn".
The program even promises "The amazing thing about this course is that once you have learnt the word, you never forget it." which is clearly faulty thinking. Also, the authors cannot even use proper English (you learned words, not learnt) so I wouldn't trust them to teach you Japanese.

[Lucas89]

I don't think it matters whether you learn lots of vocab before grammar or not, since the same argument can be applied to both ways of learning.

They say "How are you going to use the grammar structures, unless you know a lot of words to go with the grammar?".

Well I say, "How will you use the correct words in correct context, without correct grammar and sentences (Sentences which you need grammar to understand)".

Learning both at the same time is what most people seem to do, and it works, also like jesselt says unless you have a very loose definition of "learn" then it's not really possible to learn so many words in such a short time.

Originally Posted by jesselt

Also, the authors cannot even use proper English (you learned words, not learnt) so I wouldn't trust them to teach you Japanese.

Although this thread is about the article linked in the first post, I just want to point out that both learnt and learned are valid, and both proper English.
Learnt happens to be more common in British English, there are a number of verbs that follow this same rule.
I know I say "learnt" all of the time.

[addictedKool]

Thanks for the reply!

Let's say I want to study vocabulary first... would you suggest I learn the kana version of the words or should I just go ahead and learn the kanji to them?

[Lucas89]

My own opinion is start Kanji as early as possible, your going to see it everywhere, so you may aswell get used to it

Also the kanji will help you differentiate between words which are pronounced the same but have different meaning, for example.

代える - To replace/substitute
帰る - To return
変える - To change
All are pronounced かえる

And even if you can't write them all out at least you will be able to read them when you see them, which is miles better than not being able to read any at all.

[jesselt]

Originally Posted by Lucas89

Although this thread is about the article linked in the first post, I just want to point out that both learnt and learned are valid, and both proper English.
Learnt happens to be more common in British English, there are a number of verbs that follow this same rule.
I know I say "learnt" all of the time.

Whoops, I didn't realize that this was a British word. You will never hear "Learnt" in American English, or at least not where I'm from~

[alanX]

You can't end a sentence with a preposition.

[MMM]

If you have the patience to learn a pile of vocabulary without being able to put a sentence together, then this system might work for you. I learned both at the same time, which is how most people do it.

[jesselt]

Originally Posted by alanX

You can't end a sentence with a preposition.

Grammar Girl :: Ending a Sentence With a Preposition