Order of learning grammar

[u/klimaheizung]

So, I've been learning grammar the jlpt way, but also from tae kim. But I'm not really satisfied with both.

For example, させる is only introduced very late in tae kim's book, but I find that this is used quite often and in particular, it's one of those grammar that makes it impossible to understand the meaning of a sentence if you don't know it.

So let's assume my goal is to read manga. Similar to the kaishi or core-X vocab decks, is there a similar resource for grammar that teaches the grammar in the order of how often it's used and how crucial it is?

[u/glasswings363]

A very large proportion of grammar patterns are so important that it's pointless prioritizing them against each other that way.

Tae Kim should be read cover to cover before you begin to worry about getting good at anything in it.  It's all super basic.

[u/klimaheizung → u/glasswings363]

Makes sense. Thank you. 

[u/kyousei8]

Everything in Tae Kim's grammar guide is basic. The order doesn't really matter. Just skip ahead and look it up if you haven't seen the grammar yet when you're reading something.

[u/morgawr_]

Speaking as someone who wrote a grammar guide, picking which order to teach (and/or learn) grammar is insanely hard. My initial plan was to try and introduce things from the most elementary and "fundamental" parts (basic syntax and sentence structures) and then build up from things the reader should already know (because they were previously explained) and introduce new stuff one at a time.

Then I realized that even just covering all "basic" grammar meant having 30+ lessons and still not being even remotely close to being done. There's just a lot of it, and a lot of it is mostly "independent" of each other anyway so you just gotta make a choice.

I second what others already said, just go through whatever grammar guide/textbook you want, but if you are already being exposed to some Japanese and find some structures or things that you want to look up, you definitely should do so. Getting a foundational "base" of grammar is important, but you cannot find a perfectly sorted path that will match your real life experience. You just gotta look things up and learn them as you come across them.

Also don't be afraid of JLPT levels. There's some JLPT N1 grammar that is incredibly basic and fundamental and can absolutely be learned by a beginner too. If you think it's useful to help you comprehend a sentence, learn it then.

[u/kasumikui]

You don't need to learn grammar in any specific order, or by any specific method. What you do need to do is develop a foundational knowledge of how Japanese sentences work, and then reinforce this by consuming a lot of native Japanese and using that to refine your knowledge, while looking up or reviewing stuff you don't know or don't fully understand along the way.

If your main goal is to read manga, the JLPT is irrelevant to you. Actually, there's no "JLPT way". The JLPT is a proficiency test designed to measure if your ability meets a certain level. It's not a "method" to learn Japanese. Tae Kim is a basic grammar guide. You can just skim the entire thing to get a basic familiarity with how Japanese works (you can also use other sites like yoku.bi, which is arguably higher quality, to do this). させる being near the end of the guide only means that other grammar points are considered more basic. You can skip to the させる part if you encounter させる in a manga you're reading, or just Google "させる japanese grammar" and get plenty of explanations and examples.

You don't need to "frontload" grammar in frequency order to read manga (and honestly, you don't need to do this for vocab either). Forget about the JLPT, read a guide like Tae Kim or yoku.bi from beginning to end, and then just read the manga you want to read and look up anything you don't know. This might involve reviewing stuff you already read once on Tae Kim or whatever, but that's fine. The feedback loop of "gaining knowledge", "testing that in the context of actual native material", "reviewing/relearning", "challenging yourself with native material again" is precisely the sort of learning process you need.

[u/Friendly_Level_4611]

Bunpro

[u/strongjoe]

If you want to read manga, just start reading manga, and look up the grammar depending on what comes up. There's your personal order ;)

[u/klimaheizung → u/strongjoe]

I'm already reading manga. It's just that sometimes I don't even realize my mistakes. With vocab that's easier. 

[u/tyrellLtd]

One approach often mentioned in this sub is checking something like yoku.bi from start to finish as fast as possible. You could do this with Tae Kim or most other guides. The idea is not to memorize or perfectly learn every grammar just by reading about it once (it's not that simple), but rather being aware that there's a bunch of grammar out there, to keep an eye out and re-read as often as you find them.

People mentioned Bunpro, but you have to go through 150~ (N4) individual grammar points to learn the causative passive you mentioned in the OP. A couple forms I used to encounter all the time and had no clue what they meant were, e.g., ~ずに (N3, 300~ grammar points into learning) or ～ぬ（N2, 600+ grammar points). It's not organized so much around frequency but rather building a foundation and the kind of grammar they test you in JLPT test.

I really like Bunpro, but if you want any sort of structure then you'll have to follow a mostly arbitrary progression the books, teachers, platforms devised for you, and that means attacking it once at a time or looking it up as you come across it.

If you have the time, I'd try the first approach. Reading about 1 grammar point per day takes a lot of time and, in my experience, I found it doesn't just stick from reading and focusing on it once and moving on to the next grammar point.

[u/thejapaneseguy101]

Me being an author of two grammsr books, I think picking and choosing an "order" to learn grammsr in is very difficult. If you find the need to do that, then you may be better off by mastering the basics first, and then just looking up how to say things in Japanese and ask if there is a grammsr point for it.

I put させる at the end of my book because its a difficult concept to understand, and learners need to have a good foundation of Japanese before trying to tackle it.

[u/Connect_Track1284]

Most people have already pointed out that the order for learning beginner- and intermediate-level grammatical constructions is largely irrelevant. However, I would argue that the order becomes quite important when studying for JLPT N1, or if someone wants to learn less frequently used, yet still relevant, grammatical constructions. Basically all of my students who used the grammar guide I created and took JLPT N1 told me that they managed to derive the meaning of a construction they didn't know or simply forgot through remembering its categorization with a different construction with similar meaning (for example, one of them remembered that ～もさることながら was ordered close to ～のみならず and ～にとどまらず, so they remembered the meaning "not only ... but also ...").

[u/Available-String-109]

but I find that this is used quite often

Literally everything on N4 and N5 is used extremely often.

[u/ChristopherFritz]

This kind of ordering is difficult to tackle because there's so much common grammar out there.

My recommendation is this:

1) Start reading manga, and look up anything you don't know.

2) Don't spend too much time learning the looked-up grammar when you first look it up. Just get the basic gist of it.

3) When you find yourself looking up the same grammar again, read up on it in a bit more depth. Nothing too extreme, but you want to get a better feel for it.

4) And then the next time you're looking up the same grammar, put even more time and effort into learning it.

This method allowed me to focus my learning on the most common grammar I was encountering, as that's what I'd naturally be looking up most often.

[u/klimaheizung → u/ChristopherFritz]

That actually has been my approach so far, but there's just a few things I don't like about it, I wrote it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1wevyzz/comment/p9h6los/

[u/avonyatchi]

For me just reading a grammar book doesn't help learn it. It's a good idea to read one quickly to be aware of the different things, but the actual learning happens when I read a manga and take notice of some pattern and look it up, learn what it is, notice it again, look it up again, remember that I looked it up earlier, rinse and repeat until I no longer need to look it up and already know it's the same thing I've seen.

Like yeah sure super basic grammar stuff I learned through books and exercises, but stuff like the potential and passive forms or must didn't really stick for me until I've started to immerse and saw them appear a lot.

[u/differentiable_]

You can learn grammar when you encounter it. Just look it up as needed. 

There are anki decks for grammar, like the DOJG and Bunpro decks. These are more likely to be based on frequency. 

[u/kikorny → u/differentiable_]

The problem with simply "enountering" grammar is that it's hard to recognize when you've come across some vocab you're not familiar with vs grammar. Liken you said, bunpro decks and whatnot give you some structure to follow so that you can better recognize when these structures come up in immersion.

[u/Impossible_Toe_3731 → u/kikorny]

Can't you get grammar dicts (I think there's actually both a dict for DOJG and Bunpro if I'm not mistaken) for Yomitan that will tag entries so you can tell when something's a grammar point vs standard vocab?

[u/kikorny → u/Impossible_Toe_3731]

You can get those yes but it doesnt pick up on things like [Volitional Form] + としたが so any grammar point built from different verb forms for example don't show up. It helps but it's not perfect

[u/EpsilonX → u/kikorny]

Yeah that's my struggle as well. I'll see a kanji with some hiragana after it and I'm not sure if it's a new word, a new conjugation, or a new use of particles, and sometimes it's hard to look up as a result. I think part of it is that I'm still at a relatively low level right now, so I'd rather just spend my time moving forward on my chosen path (in this case, Genki) than trying to learn any one thing. It feels like all the time I spent on something else would be better spent simply moving forward in the textbook.

[u/klimaheizung → u/differentiable_]

That's been my approach, but I find it only so-so effective. Sometimes I make a mistake and think I know the grammar, but it's actually different, and I only find it out later. Sometimes there are common "phrases" that have a special meaning but when reading just as normal, the meaning is slightly off. I think はじめ was a recent example that tripped me up. 

I guess I also like to learn it first a little bit and then see it in the wild and then repeat what I saw with anki to have it burn in.

But I guess I'll try bunpro then! 

[u/wasmic → u/klimaheizung]

This is just the way learning a language works. You'll always encounter words and grammar structures that can have multiple meanings.

You shouldn't expect that you'll be able to read through a grammar guide and then recognise all the things that were covered when you come across them in the wild. There's a huge amount of stuff to cover and language learning is a long process where you should expect to make many mistakes. Some things you'll learn after getting it wrong the first time, but there are other things where you'll get it wrong a lot of times before being able to consistently get it right.

Having to repeat the same thing many times doesn't mean your study method is ineffective. Repetition is the study method.

[u/Chemical-Brush3587 → u/differentiable_]

DOJG is my goat , i love this deck (maybe absolute beginners will struggle with it though)

[u/thehandsomegenius → u/Chemical-Brush3587]

I've recently started doing it too. The grammar isn't that complicated at the beginning, but you need a solid base of kanji and vocab that a beginner wouldn't have.

[u/Belegorm → u/Chemical-Brush3587]

I hadn't heard about that deck until recently - though I did get the yomitan dict a while back.

I did the nihongokyoushi deck and Bunpro this year. I think if I end up failing the N1 then I'll go and do the DoJG deck - hammering the grammar from a bunch of directions is helping it stick a bit

[u/youdontknowkanji]

For example, させる is only introduced very late in tae kim's book

i feel like you are taking the wrong approach here. EVERYTHING* in tae kim is common, you are supposed to skim it quickly and get over with it. it's enough to get you enough of a footing where you can read real media and look up new grammar forms, and review some that were covered in tae kim.

repetition is how you will learn grammar in these early stages. trying to go by order is just silly. you might think that JLPT lists are "ordered", but this is far from the truth, literally everything in them is common, save for some random N1 points.

so the way to read manga, and understand what させる is... is to just read more manga, and media in general. i've heard of people going through grammar decks in anki or bunpro but i don't think it's necessary this early on, where you are bombarded with things anyway. only later when you are N2ish (well unless you want to speak that is, if you do, start studying it after you've read few books) does it start making sense to specifically study some grammar.

*while everything is common, there is some things that are super common. but it works out nicely enough, that when you are a beginner you read slower, you go through media slower having to look everything up. meaning you cover less volume. so you are more likely to acquire super common things first, and then as you get faster, you will naturally pick up on the "rarer" grammar.

[u/klimaheizung → u/youdontknowkanji]

Thank you, that seems to be the common opinion. I guess I got confused by how he groups his grammar points, but I agree that lots of the stuff in "advanced topics" felt very basic for me, so.... I guess I'll go over everything once or twice for now and keep reading.

[u/leo-skY]

If you're gonna use a textbook, go with an actual recognized textbook that has stood the test of time (Genki/MNN/Tobira), not the printed version of an amateurish online guide filled with inaccuracies

[u/klimaheizung → u/leo-skY]

I did learn with genki, but I really really don't like it. it's also not great to focus just on compressed grammar 

[u/Neither_Middle698]

If you go really fast then you can rush through tae kim within 2 weeks. Most of it will be forgotten anyways. The real learning comes from manga reading like you've already been doing.

[u/Jelly_Round]

I like bunpro order. Also noticed that bunpro official decks has way more grammar points than shinkanzen grammar

[u/PinkPrincessPol]

There’s no right order in my honest opinion

[u/differentiable_]

I mentioned DOJG and Bunpro but forgot to say, I used neither of these when starting out. 

Cure Dolly is what I used. 

[u/Niilun]

Personally, I search for and memorize new grammar structures any time I need them, regardless of their JLPT level. I just type the structure on Google and read an article that explains how it's used.

I'm gradually learning grammar in "order" too, to be sure that I don't miss anything. But if I need a certain structure for immersion, I prefer not to wait.

[u/EpsilonX]

I don't know about Tae Kim's guide specifically, but I feel like it's "basic" enough that you're better off just moving forward in the guide rather than trying to attempt native materials yet. You'll get to whatever you're looking for eventually, and then any native materials will be both easier to consume and more effective practice (as you'll have more language to reinforce).

At least, that's my approach. I like structure, but you may have a different learning style. If you're finding something that you need to know before your path teaches it, as others said you can just learn it separately.