Thats nice, but going into ~te form
like I said is natural for me

Doesn't it make sense to just learn the dictionary forms and then just to conjugate them depending on what you want them to become.

I mean you you don't need to learn 食べる and 食べます separately. You just need to that it becomes the stem of ichidan verbs is removed in base 2 conjugations. There's no point learning everything separately when you can just learn the rules of verb conjugation. I mean there are only 2 irregular verbs in the language (3 if you count the partially irregular 行く) so there aren't many exceptions.

I mean I'm still a beginner at Japanese so I could be wrong. If I am then I am sorry. This is the way I've looked at it so far though and it has stopped me from running into a lot of the problems like the ones you have just mentioned so far.

One is polite, and the other is "casual", that's why people tend to learn them separately. It's just like what I was saying with the stem of the verbs, just drop the ます and you're good to go for a lot of things --even getting the dictionary form.

But, I was taught that there are four irregular verbs: ある、　行く、　来る、　and　する.

My mistake. Yes I think ある is irregular also.I know one is polite and one is not but they can all be conjugated from the dictionary form so it makes sense just to learn dictionary forms for learning the verbs but learn how to conjugate them.

uwaa....
it appears that you and i are in the same boat >.>""'

and.... my way of learning....
find someone who speaks japanese.. or atleast knows more about it than you....
and just say whatever comes to mind
and hopefully xD
that person will be kind/rude enough to correct you =DD

I am using a text book to learn and am fixed unclarities on this forum.

Learn short forms :D

i stopped studying japanese a good 5 years ago
so all that i know now
is what i learned back in middle school =P

Unfortunately I know what you mean. I started a good 6 months or so ago but had to stop for a couple months as college was finishing for the final rush and so forth and just very recently have I had to pick it back up again. I have just this week started a 3 hour a day minimum study regiment with the hopes of learning again now that college has finished. I just need to keep up the willpower.

I use the studying of Japanese to help keep my mind straight in college when I have studied too much of difficult subject matter :D . It may sound counterproductive, but learning a language is pretty soothing for me after hours of computer science and calculus. It's sort of like using different parts of the brain. Complex algorithm making/calculus proofs vs. memorization. It's still keeping my brain active so it helps me unwind without losing the momentum!

Exactly! It's a lot easier to learn the base word and then a set of rules rather than trying to treat and memorize conjugated words as a separate entity. This is how I approached Spanish and Japanese.