Hey guys it's me again. I'm making a list right now for brainstorming about: optimizing learning for each skill. Such as reading,speaking,listening,writing. (Doing it for all of them)

Basically I need some help in brainstorming. Basically I just need anyone who wants to comment on this thread. To list some useful things to improve each skill. I want to make a huge list for each skill (brainstorming list). So I can basically optimize learning daily for me (after looking at a complete list or in progress one). I wouldn't mind giving the list once I'm done to all who would be interested.

Example:
Reading:
>keep srsing,reading,looking-up,etc
Listening:
>keep listening,reading,foreshadowing,etc
(Along these lines).

You may ask, what's the point of this? It's just so I can create a list so I can change/add to my study routine daily. Thanks in advance! This forum has helped me a lot.

ta12121 Wrote:Hey guys it's me again. I'm making a list right now for brainstorming about: optimizing learning for each skill. Such as reading,speaking,listening,writing. (Doing it for all of them)

Basically I need some help in brainstorming. Basically I just need anyone who wants to comment on this thread. To list some useful things to improve each skill. I want to make a huge list for each skill (brainstorming list). So I can basically optimize learning daily for me (after looking at a complete list or in progress one). I wouldn't mind giving the list once I'm done to all who would be interested.

Example:
Reading:
>keep srsing,reading,looking-up,etc
Listening:
>keep listening,reading,foreshadowing,etc
(Along these lines).

You may ask, what's the point of this? It's just so I can create a list so I can change/add to my study routine daily. Thanks in advance! This forum has helped me a lot.

Foreshadowing?

@nest0r
It's just a fancy way of saying copy from what you hear. Or maybe I mixed up the wrong word here

ta12121 Wrote:@nest0r
It's just a fancy way of saying copy from what you hear. Or maybe I mixed up the wrong word here

Do you mean ‘shadowing’? I thought you might've been referring to some other, more optimal technique (like controlled shadowing in Kage Shibari! Or my super awesome emphasis on subvocalization).

Getting a mindmapping software might help, I used one called "Mindmanager 8" or something like that.

Nothing more to add though.

When you are asked to read or speak, try to visualize the kanjis and the sentences as a whole with eyes open or closed, before writing by hand anything, *in your minds eye* (try doing it with an english sentences first to practice), it reinforces the reading of the character, when you are out in the world, you can get used to seeing the characters in your imagination and not only printed, this helps solidify compounds and readings, even more than constant reps, it works well with shadowing too.

Optimal techniques change as your skill improves. This is a list of how it worked for me.

Reading:

Absolute Beginner: Vocab lists.
Upper Beginner: Reading EASY manga and vocab lists.
Intermediate: Reading (harder manga, easy light novels) and SRSing new words you find. Vocab lists become less relevant but still a little useful.
Advanced: (I'm not here yet, but I imagine) Reading and SRS'ing new words. Vocab lists are pointless as they can only contain words you'll almost never see in use, making them almost impossible to memorize.

Listening:

Beginner: Pimsleur. I've never seen a course better than it.
Intermediate: Shadowing. Graded readers with audio. Skype language partners.
Advanced: (I'm not here yet, but I imagine) TV, Radio, Language partners, and any other audio input you can find.

Reading & Listening: Watching Anime & Drama with exact Japanese subtitles.

nest0r Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:@nest0r
It's just a fancy way of saying copy from what you hear. Or maybe I mixed up the wrong word here

Do you mean ‘shadowing’? I thought you might've been referring to some other, more optimal technique (like controlled shadowing in Kage Shibari! Or my super awesome emphasis on subvocalization).

Yea I meant shadowing. Must have been tired last night, beacuse when I look at it now. that is pretty random. Kage shibari? haha

wccrawford Wrote:Optimal techniques change as your skill improves. This is a list of how it worked for me.

Reading:

Absolute Beginner: Vocab lists.
Upper Beginner: Reading EASY manga and vocab lists.
Intermediate: Reading (harder manga, easy light novels) and SRSing new words you find. Vocab lists become less relevant but still a little useful.
Advanced: (I'm not here yet, but I imagine) Reading and SRS'ing new words. Vocab lists are pointless as they can only contain words you'll almost never see in use, making them almost impossible to memorize.

Listening:

Beginner: Pimsleur. I've never seen a course better than it.
Intermediate: Shadowing. Graded readers with audio. Skype language partners.
Advanced: (I'm not here yet, but I imagine) TV, Radio, Language partners, and any other audio input you can find.

Yea for the reading, I get vocab from context now, thanks to rikaichan. I got away from pre-minded lists.

Almost done my list, will post it u soon.

i think that for reading in the beginning, parallel texts that have been "directly" translated are very helpful for seeing how grammar works.

tae kim does this rather well

Here is my random brainstorming session: Feel free to add anything to it.

Brainstorming: (This is something I just wrote up; some of the ideas posted are copied as this is just a brainstorming session)
Reading:
-srs reps via vocab deck+sentence deck
-read material
-variety of material: (anything enjoyable)
-when reading, don’t look up words, just keep reading
-read in bursts
-read anything that grabs you in/won’t let go
-Vocab lists. (frequency works well with this, this is recommend for beginners)
-Upper Beginner> Reading EASY manga and vocab lists.
-Intermediate: Reading (harder manga, easy light novels) and SRSing new words you find. Vocab lists become less relevant but still a little useful.
-Advanced: (I'm not here yet, but I imagine) Reading and SRS'ing new words. Vocab lists are pointless as they can only contain words you'll almost never see in use, making them almost impossible to memorize.
-i think that for reading in the beginning, parallel texts that have been "directly" translated are very helpful for seeing how grammar works.
-parallel texts/grammar guides

Listening:
-keep listening+doing vocab deck (frequency for vocabulary)
-keep audio of some soft on (Japanese), when doing something, anything.
-listen to podcasts,shows,talk-shows,news,dramas,animes,movies,old-style movies,etc
-Do two types of listening, one where you focus on listening/ another where you focus on it


Writing:
-write all my srs reps via production deck (kana to kanji)
-add 30 per day new cards/useful ones.
-Write RTK reps as well via production deck
-write outside the srs, anything (small notes/journals,numbers,etc)
-try to maintain writing small journals everyday
-get forms/any materials online that can help build writing skills
-make it fun, so you can do more/build on it

Speaking:
-shadow from what you hear.
-double check on pronunciation
- Pronunciation course online (test a lot of things)
-make it into a game (i.e shadow things exactly like there are. Example: gokusen “speechs”,etc)
-practice with natives online,in person,etc
-just talk/get corrected. Speaking gets easier once you can understand a lot. It’s cause and effect.
-preparing before on what to talk about helps, but to gain that natural skill to speak randomly/naturally comes from a lot of listening/practice.
-doing a vocab deck, rapidly increases your listening skills(learn words based on frequency in the beginning as it helps a lot)
-buy a mic and record yourself shadowing a song or show or anything in Japanese. And see how you much up (although for songs, don’t worry about that. Just follow things like talk-shows,dramas,news,etc)


Side projects:
Being able to transcribe better in Japanese
-read a lot
-type/listen/get scripts/listen to the corresponding audio with it
-learn appropriate kanji via anki,reading,decodin,etc
-learn to distinguish sounds from listening. (Exact kanji,exact kana= か、買った、きょう、きょ、きょうい (along these lines).

For frequency lists, I thought there was a topic a while ago where people were making frequency lists based off of light novels, but can't find it. I can't remember if the lists were for kanji or vocab either. Does anyone know about that?

yukamina Wrote:For frequency lists, I thought there was a topic a while ago where people were making frequency lists based off of light novels, but can't find it. I can't remember if the lists were for kanji or vocab either. Does anyone know about that?

See the cbJisho thread for a dictionary based on novels amongst other things (with a list of said novels); cb4960 also provided a .txt of the words in a later comment. For the novels themselves, see the last page of the ‘totally innocent books’ thread (or just Google for [the number of books rounded down to nearest thousandth] + Japanese books). cb4960 provided a tool where you can make your own frequency list(s) based on whatever you want.

FooSoft elsewhere provided a kanji frequency list based on a smaller earlier batch from a totally innocent books thread.

nest0r Wrote:

yukamina Wrote:For frequency lists, I thought there was a topic a while ago where people were making frequency lists based off of light novels, but can't find it. I can't remember if the lists were for kanji or vocab either. Does anyone know about that?

See the cbJisho thread for a dictionary based on novels amongst other things (with a list of said novels); cb4960 also provided a .txt of the words in a later comment. For the novels themselves, see the last page of the ‘totally innocent books’ thread (or just Google for [the number of books rounded down to nearest thousandth] + Japanese books). cb4960 provided a tool where you can make your own frequency list(s) based on whatever you want.

FooSoft elsewhere provided a kanji frequency list based on a smaller earlier batch from a totally innocent books thread.

sweet, gotta take a look at that

Yeah I just wish there was an easier way to take a list of words and use it to unsuspend cards in decks. Like if Anki had an OR search function for the item browser so I don't have to do 20 separate searches.

Thanks for the help, nest0r. I hope I can find what I was looking for, or maybe figure out how to make my own lists.

Thanks for the help nest0r.

It might be a fun experiment to:
1) Convert a subtitles file to plain text. Aegisub export command can do this.
2) Use cb's Japanese Word Frequency List Generator
3) Profit! - because now you know the most common words in that script.

jcdietz03 Wrote:Thanks for the help nest0r.

It might be a fun experiment to:
1) Convert a subtitles file to plain text. Aegisub export command can do this.
2) Use cb's Japanese Word Frequency List Generator
3) Profit! - because now you know the most common words in that script.

I ran the generator on both seasons of K-ON and on the 2009 Full Metal Alchemist. I stripped out non-kanji or kana entries and single hiragana entries.
K-ON word frequency
FMA word frequency

balloonguy Wrote:

jcdietz03 Wrote:Thanks for the help nest0r.

It might be a fun experiment to:
1) Convert a subtitles file to plain text. Aegisub export command can do this.
2) Use cb's Japanese Word Frequency List Generator
3) Profit! - because now you know the most common words in that script.

I ran the generator on both seasons of K-ON and on the 2009 Full Metal Alchemist. I stripped out non-kanji or kana entries and single hiragana entries.
K-ON word frequency
FMA word frequency

I can't believe 錬金術 is below 私. /sarcasm lol (Though not by much!)

Thanks for those!

I just checked out the Frequency List Generator. I don't specifically care for frequency info but I was just curious how many unique words are in dorama subtitles. So I crunched jp subs for 50 doramas in increments (yeah, I like d-addicts).




This graph shows number of unique words over 50 doramas:



The bottom graph is the percentage change over the number of unique words, to illustrate vocab acquisition rate. Hopefully it makes sense.

I always liked the saying, "you only need 3000 words for day to day life"

guess I was wrong LOL

seems like 20000 should be a goal...

Well, if you know 3000 most common words you will probably understand 80-90% of a typical dorama. That's where word frequency data would come in handy if you wanted to crunch the subs for that. My math skills are too poor to figure out how to do it properly.

Just looking at the final results file I can see that out of 25k words (total from 50 doramas), 6362 words have the frequency of 1 (meaning they appear only once).

Also, mecab is not perfect, so for example 今　and いま are counted as two different words. There is also some hiragana and punctuation counted as words, so all in all the numbers are somewhat on the high side but should be representative enough to give the general idea.

I came up with another way to use the Frequency list generator for my twisted purposes:

1. Use the program to calculate the total number of unique words in subtitles from doramas that I watched.
2. Take the number of problematic words that I saved to my learning list in Wakan while I watched the doramas. This is easy, Wakan just shows the number.
3. Subtract 2 (words I don't know) from 1 (total words) = Total number of unique words I know.

So, my known vocabulary then is around 9000 words. This literally takes two minutes to work out if you keep a list of words you didn't know from each dorama you watched. The cool thing is, it doesn't matter if you watched a beast with lots of new vocab (medical theme or whatever), since you subtract the problem words from the total anyway.