げんき Tests/Quizzes?
 

Are there any online tests or quizzes pertaining to the げんき series that can be taken to help gauge my understanding of the material? I feel that the workbook can be slightly lackluster in helping you show a permanent understanding of the material and seems really simply in the exercises. The lesson practices from the book are okay, but seem to be rather long than challenging.

I don't think there's any kind of "official" Genki tests. I've used the books formally with two different sensei, and both gave their own version of tests which really just pulled from the book material, so if you could do the worksheets then you could do the tests. As for online, I didn't see anything.

Ummm... instead of making another thread, since this is still pertaining to genki, I'll ask it in this thread.

I'm confused with how genki incorporates the kanji into your lessons. You have lesson 1 and 2 without kanji, which 3 just lobs kanji all over the place. Also, I don't understand how the lessons work out with the lessons in the back of the book for kanji.

Am I supposed to do lesson 1 in the front of the book then lesson 1 (hiragana) in the back, which would then be followed by lesson 2 in the front and lesson 2 in the back? They really confused me with their setup.

With genki, I think the idea is to do each lesson, then go to the test segments in the back. There's a bit for each one. And the kanji is a bit random, yeah.

If you go onto the genki website, they have links on the "Self Study room" to some other websites that you can use. I use the "My kikitori" website, they have listening exercises for each chapter of genki.

IF you're on to learning kanji, just pick up Kanji in Context (workbook and textbook) and work slowly through it. It lumps beginner kanji in rational groups (numbers, days of the week, common verbs), and there's a workbook with lessons (which, to be fair, I've never seen—but considering how good the reference/textbook is, the workbook must be great).

This genki, I swear. It just went from two chapters of stuff like これはなんですか？ and にくですか？ to NAMEさん、喫茶店でコーヒーを飲みます演歌。

The book doesn't really let you know what you're supposed to do since it's not really designed for self teaching, but basically you're just supposed to ignore all of the kanji they list in the vocabulary section starting with Chapter 3. You can try and learn it if you want, but it's not the way the book works. If you're on chapter 3, for example, you're supposed to flip to the chapter 3 section of the back of the book where they begin to teach you more basic kanji along with different radicals. As you progress through the book, you'll start to learn what some of the kanji is in the vocabulary lists. That's why they always provide you with hiragana when applicable for the vocab.

Well, that explains a lot now because I was seriously tripping over. I'm sure that I forced myself to learn 12-13 kanji in the past 3 hours verb-wise because of it. Thanks for giving me that info! I was seriously wondering what was the deal with that in the back and scratching my head over it.

So basically, it is never intended for you to learn the kanji in the front part of the book unless, by chance, the kanji is in the back of the book. The front of the book is just for learning grammar, vocabulary, and expressions while the back starts descending you into kanji? I'm guessing that, by the time I finish genki 2, I will have learned the kanji needed for the words from genki 1 then? Or am I just over-thinking things? Also, isn't there a third book in the series with a slightly different name?

The reason I am doing self-study now is because I've always wanted to learn Japanese because my dad lived in Japan in his teenager years and the country was always interesting to me, or well, Asia period. Japan was just... more interesting? (Phillipines would be second favorite) Anyways, I never had the chance to learn Japanese as my high school only had chinese, which I disliked its languages (Cantonese/Mandarin) due to the flow of the words and other reasons. >_> Now, learning that I can't take Japanese in my first term of college (seats are full :/), I'm determined to spend the rest of the summer and fall term getting adjusted to the language so the class would be easier for me to cope with due to my major in chemical engineering taking up all of my time when I take JPN1120 in spring. Also, I found out that they are using the Genki series, so guess what book I started studying? XD

To be clear though, since I am currently on lesson 3 in the front of the book, should I go ahead and catch up with lesson 3 in the back of the book and then just do it as lesson 4 in the front and lesson 4 in the back at the same time and go from there?