I have currently finished the Japanese Basics and is currently still on the Beginner's Japanese schedule (not finished yet). Moreover I have at least covered 65% of the words for japanese basics and beginners schedule.
I tried to play a game in Japanese and I feel that I struggled to even parse some of the sentences even with the help of this app... The game was Animal Crossing Pocket Camp if that would be any help.
Question is, can I start using the reading buddy and text analyzer now or should I at least complete Beginner's Japanese schedule first? Should I focus on all the grammar schedule first? That's not including the custom My List sentences, I have no idea in what situation I should start using that one.
You can, but you may want to wait until you are trying to accomplish the specific tasks these tools were built for. Reading buddy is great for compiling lists of new vocabulary and kanji that you encounter when reading Japanese. The text analyzer takes it a step further, allowing you to upload a text and bind it renshuu’s dictionary.
If you have no other Japanese learning experience before renshuu, then grammar would be a good thing to focus on next.
You can ignore My List for now. That’s for when you want to reorganize your study material to suit your changing needs.
I'd say waiting a bit before trying to immerse into games and what not right away. If you can't yet parse a sentence correctly then you're going to have a hard time using reading buddy. Once you get a solid good grasp on particles and know enough grammar (let's say up to like N4-N3) then it's gonna be easier. In the end when using reading buddy the only thing you should be looking up would be vocab, maybe some more advanced grammar but this should be less than vocab. At least that's how I use it, but for now I'd recommend studying more grammar and even vocab and then try to play your game in Japanese and use Reading Buddy.
Hey! Fellow Pocket Camp player here (my current Renshuu profile picture is actually my PC character haha). Love your username by the way.
When I switched the game language to Japanese, I noticed they used puns and slang in the text. They weren’t super consistent with how they used kanji and kana either. Sometimes a word would be in kana, and other times in kanji. That could throw off someone just starting out with Japanese.
I’d say focus on your grammar schedule and use text analyzer to break down sentences. It's even better if you have renshuu pro, you can turn the analyzer results into a new list that you can study. If you don't, you can still add things to a list manually though it takes more time. がんばって！
reading buddy definitely doesn't need to just be for reading. It's basically a powered dictionary lookup. Instead of just looking up a word and forgetting it, you have a very fast way of building a list (or lists) out the terms. It's great when your lookups are not random and scattered across multiple sources. So in your case, you might make a Pocket Camp list, and then just add words as you look them up, then feed that list into a schedule for review.
