Hello!

Long time reader, first time poster.
I apologize if this has been answered many times before.
I am 3/4 through RTK and I moved to Tokyo last summer.

I am looking for users who have completed milestones using core 2k,3k,6k etc. to relay their experiences. Particularly how it helped their real japanese.
What did core do for them? How they were able to apply newfound knowledge.. etc.

I have seen the resources for reading and listening practice mentioned many times.
What I would really like to hear about is first hand experiences of users who used primarily core and when aspects of their japanese began to click. Especially interested in hearing from those who also live in Japan.

ie. Around this mark I found I could really speak with friends, around this mark I no longer feared newspapers, around this mark I was no longer lost when I watched my favorite TV show etc..

I'm also interested in if/when users felt they had branch off from core to accomodate their own interests. such as: "after 3000 I really had to mine my own vocabulary to so that I could..."

I believe I understand the methods posted on this site, but I am looking for stories about when your japanese clicked.

Thanks

I have not yet started Core so I can't answer. But I am really interested in other responses!

I didn't do core 2k/6k and instead did AJATT but at around 2000 clozes I was able to understand enough to read through a manga or visual novel and get what was going on though there were still frequent gaps, so I assume somewhere around finishing core2k is where you make the leap from spotting occasional words and appreciating the pretty pictures to getting an understanding of what's going on.

The similar point with low context materials like light novels came around 4000ish clozes

I've finished Core6k. The big thing is keeping up on the reviews and trying to get stuff matured. Which I've fallen out of doing recently because of other life matters.

If you have basic to intermediate grammar down, then the biggest crutch you will always have in language learning is vocabulary. RTK may or may not help you with word meanings, I hear more people talk about how it does help; I can't say because I've never bothered with RTK.

stratzvda's post is pretty accurate. Getting 2000 down from the core deck will give you a lot to work with. I noticed major changes once I hit around the 4k mark. After 6k, I started adding stuff from light novels and what not. I can now pick up a newspaper and read an article and maybe only spot 10-20% of words I don't know, but it really does depend on the article in question.

One of the things I want to stress though is that if you only do recognition reviews, you'll find you still have quite a bit of trouble producing the right words you want when you want to say something. You'll know you can read the word but saying it can be hard. Going and looking it up will help anchor it in your head though, and make it easier to recall in recognition reviews too I feel.

Well, I'm at around 4k and still fear mostly everything. I actually had a policy of avoiding native media because it would just be too depressing to see how much I don't recognize. I'm slowly relaxing on that policy, because its gotten a bit better now though..

The feeling I'm getting is that core 6k is really only good for a baseline. You should try to keep up a brisk pace and finish it quickly just like with RTK, because its still just beginner stuff. Its really worthwhile to do though, and by the end you'll probably be reading and speaking simple stuff without too many hiccups, so there's always that to look forward to.

Another thing I'm noticing at this point is that if you do production cards (the default style for the deck) like I am, by around the 2k point you'll start noticing a HUGE number of synonyms where multiple answers come to mind for the prompts. I'd recommend writing your own definitions with a bit more detail when this problem comes up. Another thing you can do is just identify the synonyms in the "caution" field so right away you don't get on the wrong track. You can always just switch to recognition cards, but I think production is good because this exercise gives you a chance to immediately try to mentally differentiate between things you might otherwise muddle up, and then include this with the prompts for your cards, naturally enforcing the distinction. It's a bit time consuming, but a good exercise for your knowledge.
That's about all I got for insight at this point. Good luck.

In my experience I really started to feel like I could speak and read Japanese well at about 9,000 flashcards, so a few thousand after Core6k. That is, I felt like I could read interesting things and have meaningful conversations. Of course, that's also after many years of letting grammar and stuff cement, since I was probably three years into learning Japanese before I started Core. I was not efficient though, so it could all be done much faster. Certainly, starting Core earlier would have helped.

Some time after Core 6k and KO2001 and perhaps a thousand extra words here and there I could read 世界の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド and only look up a few dozen sentences in the English version. Slowly, like 10-20 pages an evening, but it wasn't a hard slog either. Also noticed that my English version had whole paragraphs missing that were just not translated...

I should add though that my grammar is solid, having worked through most of the basic and some of the intermediate Japanese grammar books, that I'm getting a lot of newspaper reading practice through work as well, and that I could read technical material in my field long before starting Core6k.

So I would say well worth it because you can then dive into native material that is actually fun to read.

I'm currently going through Core6k, recognition-style for vocab. If a card becomes a leech (5 fails), I un-suspend its production & transcription cards. These I write out. Basically:

Q:来週、妻の実家を訪問します。
A: ほうもん, visit

Production
Q: Next week we'll visit my wife's family home.
来週、妻の実家を___します。
A: 訪問

Transcription:
Q: {audio} 来週、妻の実家を••します。
A: 訪問, visit

Background info: I took 2 years of Japanese in school (we went through the Genki I-II + An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese), so my school-related Japanese is the strongest. I've also done RTK. I'm focusing on reading & listening comprehension atm though.

Here's a quick summary of my progress through Core6k:

Code:

~2k    - NHK Easy news difficult
       - watching Psycho-Pass too hard
       - could play easy school-based VNs though
    
~3k    - watched 好きっていいなよ. It's easy but the             
         main characters really grate on my nerves
       - started reading もしドラ (Kindle ver)

~3500  - NHK Easy news was getting too easy
       - could watch しろくまカフェ

~4500  - Started watching/reading regular NHK news. Some         
         articles are easy but most are hard. <_<
       - Psycho-Pass is easier but I'm not sure if             
         it's just because the buildup is getting more             
         action-based >_>

I think RTK helps in remembering the meanings of words. For example, I saw the word 盗塁 in もしドラ and I could tell it meant 'base stealing'. (I still didn't know its 読み方 though). Some of the hardest words for me in Core6k are the kana-only ones. Like せっかち & きっかけ.

Native media has a wide range of difficulty levels. I think that going through Core6k + reading (easy or regular) NHK articles regularly is useful because you get a sense of where you are reading-wise, and you see lots of what you just learned in real material. I dunno about 'clicking', but I don't think NHK News Easy articles are difficult anymore. I also tried reading the もしドラ manga the other day and it was pretty easy... (after reading those parts in the book lol). I probably wouldn't recommend reading もしドラ as one's first novel though. You do get to see lots of those business terms Core6k loves, but the story starts off really slowly, imo. I read it at a rate of ~10% a week (~27 pages).

I haven't branched off Core yet, so when I read / hear unknown words I look them up if convenient but otherwise just move on. Mining things takes time, and I feel that one should know the words in Core6k anyway, so... =/

Which Core deck did you guys download? I'm looking through the list and there are actually a few different options...

winterpromise31 Wrote:Which Core deck did you guys download? I'm looking through the list and there are actually a few different options...

Look up the "core 2k/6k optimized" or "optimized core". That's the one done by nukemarine here on the forums. It introduces stuff in a good order with new vocab words with the same kanji being grouped together.

Thank you very much! Downloading it now.

Didn't do core, but I'm currently at ~3300* self-input cards. I branched out of adding from textbooks after 1100 cards though, if that is somewhat relevant to your "branching off" queston.

-Can understand about 80-90% of a regular NHK news article and 90-95% of an NHK easy article.
-Have read Kino no Tabi with minor difficulties; understood about ~90%.
-Can watch Pokemon without subs with minor difficulties.
-I find 実況プレイ videos mostly comprehensible.

Ankiing is only a minor part of my studies though, and the only premade deck I've used is an RevTK import from this site. I can't understand how anyone would wish to avoid native materials with a vocabulary over 2000...

*I'm picky, so I have learnt several other words without adding them to Anki, and some of the caards (~300-400) are grammar cards whereas other [mostly old] cards have 2 or 3 new words.

Thank you for these replies! I really appreciate it!

anritsi Wrote:~3500 - NHK Easy news was getting too easy
- could watch しろくまカフェ

Stian Wrote:Didn't do core, but I'm currently at ~3300* self-input cards. I branched out of adding from textbooks after 1100 cards though, if that is somewhat relevant to your "branching off" queston.

-Can understand about 80-90% of a regular NHK news article and 90-95% of an NHK easy article.

I'd love to quiz you guys on your actual comprehension of NHK easy, I'm way past core 6k and still wouldn't say its "getting too easy". Sure, there are articles that are really simple but usually there are 4-5 words, key words I might add, without which the article reads like "something something about something"...

It reminds me of a certain Frenchman who confidently stated "I speak Japanese" only to be dwarfed by a simple conversation with 2 Japanese girls... He actually made me look good and I was even more abysmal then I'm now.

thurd Wrote:I'd love to quiz you guys on your actual comprehension of NHK easy, I'm way past core 6k and still wouldn't say its "getting too easy". Sure, there are articles that are really simple but usually there are 4-5 words, key words I might add, without which the article reads like "something something about something"...

Okay, if I were tested solely on NHK Easy listening comprehension, I'd probably fail. But reading... Truthfully, I don't think 4-5 unknown words per article is that bad, with a popup dictionary. You can look up a word and move on within seconds.

Sometime after 2 months of NHK News Easy reading I realized I had just read (minus proper nouns) entire successive articles out loud. (My browser doesn't show furigana). Maybe it was a super easy day or something. But listening to the TTS had been annoying me for a while, so I decided it was a sign to move on.

Anyway, I read today's NHK Easy articles, strictly grading myself on whether I knew the words. word -> my guess -> actual meaning

国連安保理が北朝鮮を制裁する決議
理事会 -> logic meeting -> board of directors
制裁 -> system tailoring -> restraints; sanctions
決議 -> decisive meeting -> resolution; vote; decision
乱用 -> using violence -> abuse; misuse

津波でも倒れないビルの研究が進む
鉄筋コンクリート -> iron-strength concrete -> reinforced concrete
模型 -> pattern -> model
ピロティ構造 -> something-construction -> stilt construction

インフルエンザウイルスを増やさないようにする物質を見つける
ドコサヘキサエン酸 -> something-acid -> docosahexaenoic acid; DHA

So, an average of ~3 unknowns / article, and I always have at least some kind of guess as to what they mean. I dunno, but that doesn't seem very challenging.

~4000 words in on core6k and it's getting really awesome. I can read what people say on discussion forum and official personnel posting about a game I'm playing. What trip me up are the gaming centric vocab and the technical terms like resolution and server malfunction etc. But I expect those words to stick in time.

Sure, I don't 'get' all the words I know, but I can deduct the meaning and as the result I understand the word in more ways than before, plus I instinctively start understanding the grammar! It's a massive boost in my confidence and willingness to read more Japanese.

I started from NHK Easy but frankly, the vocab is so theme-centric (one article they talk about airplane parts and in the other about what a congressman did in the House of Representatives) that I find it hard to care about learning that stuff at this point.

Even then it was interesting to see how Japanese news use the vocab and grammar in a peculiar way for a Western mind.

Frankly, written interviews are the hardest for me. I am not used to reading spoken Japanese and the way the (imo) ambiguous grammar concepts are used make it hard for me to deduct the meaning of what is being said. Which means I need to focus on interviews even more.

Started core 2k a long time ago, got bored, and started my own vocab deck. Basically get all my vocab from stuff I read or hear. Surprised to see so many people sticking with it.

thurd Wrote:I'd love to quiz you guys on your actual comprehension of NHK easy, I'm way past core 6k and still wouldn't say its "getting too easy". Sure, there are articles that are really simple but usually there are 4-5 words, key words I might add, without which the article reads like "something something about something"...

It reminds me of a certain Frenchman who confidently stated "I speak Japanese" only to be dwarfed by a simple conversation with 2 Japanese girls... He actually made me look good and I was even more abysmal then I'm now.

The most useful words aren't necessarily the most common ones; I learn words that are common in whatever I read, watch, etc. and often there are words that are below the 20k most common, instead of plowing through a frequency list praying that it might click one day...

I wasn't really saying that it was getting "too easy" (don't put words in my mouth), but still it's kind of easy - only three-four words in every article that I don't understand, but I often figure out some of them out of context. [Also, 90%-95% isn't much really if you think about it; that means every 10th-20th word is not understood, which is pretty bad in my opinion]

Quote:Even then it was interesting to see how Japanese news use the vocab and grammar in a peculiar way for a Western mind.

It's the English translations that are peculiar, and often quite shallow. :p

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=3327


2164 words with 80% coverage
3364 with 85% coverage
5578 with 90% coverage
10958 with 95% coverage
20000 words learned and you have 99% coverage.

The data follows the Pareto principle and the law of diminishing returns.
20% of the words give 80% of the result.
Gradually, learning more words gives less returns.

Words gradually become more context heavy, and are used less often.
You can understand a lot with just 2000 to 3000 words, but you may or may not want to learn more in order to fully comprehend more complex texts.

Many "polyglots" take advantage of these principles by not actually reaching complete fluency. Hypothetically, you are capable of enjoying more with a 5000 word vocabulary in 4 foreign languages as opposed to knowing 20000 words in one foreign language. It's up to the learner to decide if that's true.

Aspiring Wrote:Hypothetically, you are capable of enjoying more with a 5000 word vocabulary in 4 foreign languages as opposed to knowing 20000 words in one foreign language. It's up to the learner to decide if that's true.

I've thought about this before and the idea seems very compelling!

Aspiring: beyond the first 2000 = 80%, I wouldn't count on that statistics being correct, as they are taken from a minimum number of different souces.
Also:

Quote:You're confusing frequency with importance for understanding meaning. A kanji's frequency of appearing has little do with how important it is for understanding. In fact, you could make the case that frequency and importance have an inverse relationship. The less frequent kanji are probably more important because they are only used when they are necessary. The same goes for words.

Edit:

undead_saif Wrote:I've thought about this before and the idea seems very compelling!

You do realise that if you know 90%, every tenth word be unknown?

If you were studying English and had a 90% understanding, you would have needed to look up 11 or 12 words.

Stian Wrote:You do realise that if you know 90%, every tenth word be unknown?

If you were studying English and had a 90% understanding, you would have needed to look up 11 or 12 words.

As a native English speaker, I would say that even my comprehension of English is probably between 90%-95% of most things. This taking into account that for my age, my vocabulary and comprehension would probably be slightly above average, and well above the average of those with my level of formal education.

I think the difference is that many of those words which aren't fully comprehended individually, are given a sense of comprehension and meaning due to the surrounding context. That is to say, you get so used to certain patterns and similar usages that even if you come across a word several times which by itself you couldn't provide a solid definition of in isolation, they become comprehensible by fiat in relation to the greater context.

Meaning by association seems to hold greater relevancy to more familiar you are with a language. As a learners of non-birth languages, most of us don't have the luxury to fall back into being exposed to a word and it's common expression patterns many thousands of times to be comfortable enough to not fully "comprehend" it as a unit, but still "understand" it as a part of communication. Most native speakers of English I've conversed with over the years pay very little attention to actual breakdown of meaning and value of individual units of language; only really impeding effective communication if the phraseology deviates too far beyond the unspoken of but expected standard of speaking patterns.

Just because you don't understand quantum physics and stuff like that doesn't put you in the same situation as someone with a 5000 word vocabulary. "Comperehension" isn't necessarily the same as being able to namedrop the definition.

A few weeks ago, I asked a native English speaker (I'm a non-native) what "scrutiny" meant. She knew the word, but wasn't able to explain it properly, but still, she understood the word far better than I did.

Stian Wrote:Edit:

undead_saif Wrote:I've thought about this before and the idea seems very compelling!

You do realise that if you know 90%, every tenth word be unknown?

If you were studying English and had a 90% understanding, you would have needed to look up 11 or 12 words.

Yes I do realize this. I'm used to ignoring a lot of unknown words as long as they aren't vital to understanding the meaning, and for the vital ones, I keep on for a paragraph or two before looking them up, because later context can show their meaning.

Also, most of the unknown 10% are specialized terms or terms related to certain fields, so maybe a book on philosophy would have 5% unknown words, you probably won't even see non-specialized words that aren't related. (Nothing accurate here, just the general idea.)

I wasn't really at all suggesting that it would put someone in the same situation as someone with a 5000 word vocabulary. Your second paragraph is an example of exactly what I was talking about.