User talk:Retropunk/Japanese Curriculum/Outline/Using This Book

Unnecessary bits

 * The following is intended as constructive critisism. I hope I haven't worded it too harsly.

I find this version perhaps babies the reader a bit too much. The hasty ones will never do more than glance at it while the ones that will actually read it are already studious enough. I have nothing against a page on study methods, but a quick paragraph will hardly do much other than touch on the superficial. The first couple of sentences of are informative.


 * "no advanced grammar points will be used for a lower level."
 * "To see the grammar, vocabulary, and kanji for each tier, you should check the material covered for the tier. If you believe you're advanced enough, you can see what's offered in the next tier".
 * "Do not overwhelm the reader."

Do these not go without saying?

And a quick note of scepticism about the usefulness of the "Contributing" section. The history of this book doesn't really indicate that contributors are going to follow this. Notice also that this will conflict with the Japanese/Contributor's Guide. It might be worth while to focus on expanding the "rules" to accomodate more styles, adding a short discussion about the strenghts (and weaknesses) of each. --Swift (talk) 05:21, 12 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. But you're right - the studious will prevail because they know this, the hasty will fail.


 * While I agree that the quoted sentences sound apparent to the oblivious, it's really taken out of context.
 * The first quote had "with rare exceptions" in front of it. The goal was to inform the Reader and the Contributor that there may be rare exceptions when a grammar point/vocab is used in a lower tier.
 * The second quote was re-written because of redundancy. It's only advice to review the previous tier before advancing. Ideally there would be something like a "competency test" rather than a list - but for now, I guess a list is okay.
 * The third is apparently overlooked constantly. Given some of the previous lessons, there's dozens of vocabulary and/or grammar points.  The previous guide goes over this, but gives only a recommendation of "10-15 minutes per section."  I'm further restricting that to "a few grammar points/vocab".


 * The contribution section may be able to be merged with the Contributors Guide. I was hoping that there will be long-standing contributors who may try to keep the book to some standard.  This may never happen.   The previous contributor's (stated in the Contributor's Guide) probably thought the same thing.  My "layout" isn't really a layout.  It's more of a "here's sections that should be covered."  It's the stereotypical set of sections in most books.

--Retropunk (talk) 06:07, 12 December 2008 (UTC)


 * "Damned if you do, and damned if you don't." Exactly, but I'd argue that you're damned even more if you do. The longer the introduction section is, the fewer will read it. Keep it short and to the point.
 * I noticed the context of the first quote, but I'd say a better approach is to assume that the reader recognises that a beginner level will have beginner level material and add that "in some cases a few advanced grammar points are included".
 * Anything along these lines is hardly needed at all. People who need to be told to put on their socks before their shoes won't learn from anything but mistakes.
 * "The third is apparently overlooked constantly." Yes, and not because someone forgot to put it in writing. It's a relative matter and not something that can be taught. This warning is well meant, but those not thoughtful enough to arrive at it themselves or through examples from other lessons aren't going to read this page.
 * Should there be long-standing contributors who will keep this in line, we won't need this page at all. I don't think there is anything wrong with that layout/"here's sections that should be covered". All I'm saying is that there can be other approaches (grammar only pages, discussions on formality, annotated vocabulary and useful phrases that contain only grammar already covered) and presenting a static layout without discussion isn't necessarily useful. On the contrary, it can be counter-productive as new contributors might decide to (would you belive it) rewrite the whole thing. --Swift (talk) 06:40, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I would have to disagree to a point. If you want to snip some of the introduction, fine.  However, I believe there should be guidelines to the lesson contents.  When I did one lesson, I had no idea what to add, and knew that 30+ vocabulary words would be overkill.  Yet, there was no guideline at all - just "10-15mins per section"  wth does this mean?  Per section of what?  A single concept?  What's that? A single grammar point? A conjugation? And for skilled people, does this mean 15mins of teaching?  15mins of studying? 15mins of reading?  What about a complete novice?  I'm assuming this originally meant 15mins of teaching, but this is a book.  So, it should mean 15mins of studying/reading - which is very little in the grand scheme.  The '10-15mins' is too subjective.  The layout can be changed.  It was based on what I did for the first lesson, and it's the traditional layout.  However, I don't think the grammar points/vocabulary should change - but maybe it can change for review lessons.  The 10words a lesson is good enough for annotated vocabulary.  The no more than 3 grammar points is good enough for grammar pages.  Formality wouldn't use either since that's not the goal.
 * The problem with review lessons, and linearity, is now you can't skip lessons very well - at least for contributing. This is a problem I haven't figured out yet.  I don't know of a elegant way of progressing through the first set of lessons.  My thoughts were to skip this linearity and just let contributors put in whatever they want (from the grammar list, vocab)  Hence, the reference sections (for grammar) under each lesson.  If we go the path of linearity, all help breaks loose and we can't proceed without someone making a lesson plan.  If we don't use linearity, we have the problem with "What about a review lesson" - which may be resolved by just using an introduction paragraph and stating the lessons to be reviewed.  In this case, we're back to a similiar problem -- "How many lessons should I review" which the "10-15mins" is still not objective enough.
 * Okay, I've rewritten this a few times, and need to get to work. I'll think about the approach to this a bit more.  -- Retropunk (talk) 17:29, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Choice of material
It would be really useful to know where you got your grammar point list. Japanese/Practical_Lessons/Syllabus uses the State of California Foreign Language Teaching Standards, but you use the JLPT, right? A note on where you got the list of grammar points and why you chose to organise them the way you did would be interesting for prospective readers and contributors alike. --Swift (talk) 07:25, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The JLPT list can directly from http://www.jlptstudy.com/. I've just added the approximated translation/use and sorted them.  I was planning on getting the other grammar lists, but haven't done so as of yet.  I suppose I can make some valid reason for sorting them, but it really doesn't matter much.  Some of the made sense: verb and adj conjugation; expressions; particles; suffixes.  Some of them just happened to be a list because none of the current groups made sense: copula and question words. I guess we could say "sort them by functional use."  -- Retropunk (talk) 16:45, 12 December 2008 (UTC)