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+--- Thread: Thinking about changing my study routine, thoughts? (/thread-13589.html)
Thinking about changing my study routine, thoughts? - muffinsenpai - 2016-02-17
Hi guys. So I've been going through pmnox's Core10k deck for about 2 months now. I've used production cards up till now, and I'm thinking about transitioning to recognition cards. I'm a little hesitant though. I've studied Japanese on and off since 2012: finished RtK1 in 4 months or so, burned out, returned to studying after roughly a year (studied using Core6k, Tae Kim's Grammar Guide and so on for another 4-6 months), and burned out yet again. So now I'm back for round three I guess, lol.
Anyway, I still have my RtK deck, and I still remember a fair bit of the kanji from the book (maybe a third or so). I was thinking about going through the deck or maybe even restarting the book again, but I decided that I would just look up 'em up as I was going through the Core deck, basically using the production cards as kanji and vocabulary practice simultaneously. It's quite a mess, as you can imagine, and I'm kind of surprised it didn't explode in my face yet, but I don't think it's going to be sustainable in the long term. I add 33 cards a day, and, if things go smooth, it takes a little over an hour to add them plus roughly 20 minutes to go through my reviews. But nowadays I have to modify my cards regularly to make sure I can discern between all the synonyms (by changing the definitions or adding hints), plus now I check each one beforehand to preempt any collisions later on, and then I might have to look up some stories for the kanji I don't recognize.... It's quite mentally draining sometimes.
So now I'm thinking about transitioning to recognition, and possibly chipping away at my kanji deck on the side. I've read a lot of topics on the subject of recognition vs production, and it seems people on this forum greatly favor doing recognition cards.The thing is, I really like being able to write a word down when I think about it, and I feel like it helps with memorizing the word as well. Anyway, thoughts? Some of you guys were probably in similar position to mine, so I'd like to hear if doing something like this worked for you.
Welp, that's pretty sizable for a first post.
Apologies if the is the wrong place for this kind of question.
RE: Thinking about changing my study routine, thoughts? - tokyostyle - 2016-02-17
(2016-02-17, 10:59 am)muffinsenpai Wrote: I've read a lot of topics on the subject of recognition vs production, and it seems people on this forum greatly favor doing recognition cards.The thing is, I really like being able to write a word down when I think about it, and I feel like it helps with memorizing the word as well. Anyway, thoughts?
The reason anyone advanced doesn't find much value in E→J vocabulary cards is because it is ambiguous, unsustainable and doesn't have much to do with learning how to produce Japanese. If your card says woman do you write 女, 女子, or 女性? If it says house do you write 家, 自宅, or マイホーム? When actually using Japanese for either speaking or writing you don't think about what you want to say in English first and then mangle that into Japanese instead you collect your thoughts and speak Japanese words and phrases that are easy for native speakers to hear. While translation and localization are valuable skills they are generally easier to pick up once you are very experienced in the language and generally use the overall context of the material as a hint for what sort of word choices and phrasing to use. In addition it is pretty rare for translators to produce their non-native language.
Ultimately you should tailor your study routine to match your goals but you haven't even hinted at what those are. If your goals don't involved word-by-word replacement of English to Japanese then don't spend precious study time on production cards. If your goals don't involve fluid writing of kanji you might consider flipping that around too.
RE: Thinking about changing my study routine, thoughts? - muffinsenpai - 2016-02-17
tokyostyle Wrote:The reason anyone advanced doesn't find much value in E→J vocabulary cards is because it is ambiguous, unsustainable and doesn't have much to do with learning how to produce Japanese. If your card says woman do you write 女, 女子, or 女性? If it says house do you write 家, 自宅, or マイホーム? When actually using Japanese for either speaking or writing you don't think about what you want to say in English first and then mangle that into Japanese instead you collect your thoughts and speak Japanese words and phrases that are easy for native speakers to hear. While translation and localization are valuable skills they are generally easier to pick up once you are very experienced in the language and generally use the overall context of the material as a hint for what sort of word choices and phrasing to use. In addition it is pretty rare for translators to produce their non-native language.Yeah, that's what I was suspecting and what I'm starting to realize now. If I want to speak/write Japanese, the best way to improve that would probably be to actually practice speaking/writing Japanese. I guess what I'm asking mainly pertains to studying kanji in parallel with acquiring vocabulary, and wondering if it's working out for people. I don't feel like going through RtK again, instead I'd try picking them up as I see them (it helps that I remember nearly all the primitives and a good chunk of the kanji already). Just wondering if there are people here that are doing something similar.
tokyostyle Wrote:In addition it is pretty rare for translators to produce their non-native language.I find this quite surprising. Not the fact that there are translators who cannot produce their non-native language, but that they are apparently the majority. It would seem to me that you would have a good grasp on production and recognition if you were able to recognize and translate nuance and idiom from language to language, but I guess I'm mistaken. Anyway, thanks for your answer. I'm more confident now that changing it up would be a good idea.
RE: Thinking about changing my study routine, thoughts? - pm215 - 2016-02-17
(2016-02-17, 12:44 pm)muffinsenpai Wrote: I find this quite surprising. Not the fact that there are translators who cannot produce their non-native language, but that they are apparently the majority.It's not that the average translator *cannot* produce into the non-native language; it's that (for instance) a native Japanese speaker and second-language English speaker will do a better job (all other things being equal) of an E->J translation than a native English speaker with Japanese as a second-language. So when people are paying for translations that's the usual way round it goes. A lifetime of experience with your native language is always going to give you a greater flexibility and confidence with it, I think.
RE: Thinking about changing my study routine, thoughts? - muffinsenpai - 2016-02-17
pm215 Wrote:It's not that the average translator *cannot* produce into the non-native language; it's that (for instance) a native Japanese speaker and second-language English speaker will do a better job (all other things being equal) of an E->J translation than a native English speaker with Japanese as a second-language. So when people are paying for translations that's the usual way round it goes. A lifetime of experience with your native language is always going to give you a greater flexibility and confidence with it, I think.
Right, that makes sense. I speak Russian and English (and I think my English is pretty decent), but I don't think I'd make for a good Russian-English translator, at least not for anything remotely specific (like something highly technical or whatever). I dunno, it feels like my Russian and English live in separate parts of my brain, where sometimes I know what the word or phrase means in English, but I can't remember the Russian equivalent or vice versa. Maybe that's because I get exposed to English or Russian in fairly different contexts, and I just didn't have many situations where I had to translate from one to another.
RE: Thinking about changing my study routine, thoughts? - tokyostyle - 2016-02-17
(2016-02-17, 12:44 pm)muffinsenpai Wrote: I find this quite surprising. Not the fact that there are translators who cannot produce their non-native language, but that they are apparently the majority.
All of the translators I personally know, both native Japanese and native English speakers, can produce their second language very well. A few them have been called on to do translations into their second language for internal purposes only or possibly when it will be edited later by a native speaker. However for the most part when it is important the translations are done by native speaker and then edited by another native speaker.
Anecdotally a friend of mine had to let one of his employees go not because he was bad at Japanese, but because he wasn't a good enough English writing to produce something of the quality level they needed!