Practice
“Grain by grain, a loaf. Stone by stone, a palace.” – George Bernard Shaw
Let’s practice what you’ve just learned (and practice things you’ve learned a while ago). As always, starting with sentences.
Sentences
Go through the sentences and make sure you can both read and say (out loud) everything really well before moving on. The focus is on reading and speaking right now, not on meaning. In fact, there are a couple grammar points and words in here you won’t know yet (just a couple, don’t worry!). The idea is that as you go through these (and then practice these in Anki) you’ll start absorbing some simple information, and then when you run into the lesson that covers the grammar, you’ll be like “whoa! Hey, I know this! Now I know why it works this way, cool!”
I’ll star the ones with grammar you don’t know, just so you don’t freak out too much, though.
a こうえん じゃありませんでした
a さとう じゃありませんでした
a しお じゃありません
a はこ でしたか？
a こども じゃありませんでした
a しゃしん じゃありませんでした
a しゃしん でしたか？ ・ いいえ、しゃしん じゃありませんでした
a おてあらい ですか？ ・ はい、おてあらい です
a じしょ でしたか？ ・ はい、じしょ でした
a 人 じゃありませんでした
a 一人 じゃありませんでした
a へや に 入る *
a 力 が ある *
a 力 が ない *
a こうえん ですか？
a いいえ、こうえん じゃありません
a しゃしん じゃありませんか
a しゃしん じゃありません
a つくえ でしたか
a はこです。ちかてつです。Supermanです！
a Supermanじゃありませんでした。Aquamanでした。
*these contain grammar you haven’t learned yet (kanji / words are things you know, though). I’ll be slowly introducing some simple things you don’t quite know, so that when you learn it later it will be slightly more familiar and less of an abstract learning surprise. You’ll have to learn the meanings of these straight up, but sentences like these will be on the simpler side and shouldn’t cause too much trouble (any trouble they do cause is just trouble you don’t have to experience later on).
After you’ve gone through the above sentences and are able to say and read all of them, move on to the Anki deck where you’ll learn and practice the meanings. You should know a lot of the meanings already, but this will solidify things (and make sure you learn the meanings of ones you don’t automagically know).
Sentences Anki
Here’s the sentences deck for Anki. Just import it to your “TextFugu Sentences” deck and get started on it. Probably won’t let you go through all of them, but go through as many as you can (and keep coming back to review, even more importantly!).
When you’re all done and ready, let’s practice something else!
Passion List じゃありませんでした
Now that you’ve done present tense, past tense, negative tense, and past negative tense, you’ve finished all the basic noun grammar and can use all of those things.
For this exercise, I want you to take the nouns in your passion list (if you don’t have enough, or you’re getting bored with what you have, find some more), and make sentences using です, でした, じゃありません, and じゃありませんでした.
Of course, these sentences will be unique to you, but if you stick with the patterns you’ve learned so far, you shouldn’t be able to make too many mistakes (or no mistakes at all, I imagine). Just spend some time playing around with everything, seeing what you can create. The fun of learning is being able to create new things from what you’ve learned, so treat it like a little puzzle, relax, and take your time with it.
Before You Move On
Before you move on, you should check the following things:
- Make sure you can say, read, and know all the meanings of the above sentences.
- Make sure you know the meanings of all the kanji from this chapter.
- Make sure you know the vocab words of the kanji from this chapter.
- Make sure you know です, でした, じゃありません, and じゃありませんでした (know how they all work, know the differences between them, and just overall know them).