I am trying to improve my listening skill by watching variety shows does anyone know of any good shows? I am trying to improve my listening and understand skills overall got any tips on that as well.

I also have another question how do u guys study new cards. Since I am in college I make stories for my new kanji and then i study them using anki. The most cards I did in one day was 50 new kanji. I dont see how some people can do 50 day all the time. I am just looking for another method to speed up RTK

jordan3311 Wrote:I also have another question how do u guys study new cards. Since I am in college I make stories for my new kanji and then i study them using anki. The most cards I did in one day was 50 new kanji. I dont see how some people can do 50 day all the time. I am just looking for another method to speed up RTK

If your talking about RTK, I did on and off 20,30,50 and 100 cards per day. If you want to get a good number in and be done in 3 months. Do 20-30 cards per day, there are easy to maintain for the long-term. Make visual stories, so you can write kanji well and remember it via story and rate it based on that. Be fair on your reps but not too tough or too easy on them as well. Everyone rates everything differently but personally, I rate it hard but fair at the same time(since I want to be able to remember it for the long-term).

If your talking about sentences+vocabulary cards. Those are different and require more time to do(there is automatic ways of doing this but still adding definitions and searching up unknowns is still a must for beginners). What I know from studying this long is, new cards won't really be "learned" until it reaches a mature rating. Once it does, then it becomes easy to maintain and understand. Those cards are what you really understand well and for the long-term. As long as you make it maintainable for the long-term, you will succeed, if you keep it up daily.

[Zgarbas]

So I finally stabilized my study schedule(sort of). I don't keep to it at a strict basis, but here it is.

A normal week is
Ideally almost 10 hours in the classroom (2h minna vocab&grammar, 2h Tanoshiku kikou, 3h basic kanji book study and 2h kanji exercises&comprehension...this is the one i keep to the least for various personal reasons). Realistically speaking I only make it to about 2-5 hours of those 10. Hope to improve that.

6 hours on Iknow. Sometimes 7, these days I've been busy with exams so i'm taking a small break.

1 hour/day on anki. I have this terribly inefficient way of keeping to it which would hurt the regular's eyes, but this is the easiest to keep to. Sometimes 2 hours. That's about 1000 reps for Japanese per day. Most of it is not unknown material so far, and when that hits in I'll probably reduce it. Sentences, production, listening, grammar, vocab, whatnot. I also read out the sentences to practice my speech. I jumbled up many things into anki =/.

Japanesepod101, though I kind of hate the rest of the podcasts so I stick to the dialogues. If I feel that I am not sure I understood something I'll listen to the dialogue+english translation, and if I did get it wrong I do some self-study or listen to the podcasts. Started off with the beginner dialogues, sometimes run into issues with lower intermediate and I like listening to the upper intermediate podcasts.

I try to make Lang8 at least once per week but I'm very bad at this. I also try to fit in more native material, but again I am working on it.

I've been bad with RTK since I chose to do the Japanese keyword things and that slows me down during reviews. Since I'm a perfectionist about things I slowed myself down between lessons if I feel I didn't grasp them, but it's going at a steady, albeit slow, pace. I've also managed to fit in RTK like stories with my school Kanjis, which has improved my learning pace considerably. My writing has also gotten much better. It will take me more than it has taken many people off this forum but I think that in the long-run it's for the best. I try to never skip a day of RevTK.

I try to read at least 1 lesson in the Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate Japanese grammar per day.

All in all my best days catch me actively studying from dawn till dusk, my worst days still have an hour of active studying.

Am I doing this right?
(surprisingly little burnout ever since I moved to this schedule, btw. I did have a moment a few weeks ago though that was more quitting-smoking and school-angering-me than the studying...)

Wow, I've come back to this forum after a long break and I am amazed to see this thread is still going. When I get some time tonight I will add more anchor links to my first post (hopefully people will find that useful)

done, I have added all the links I was missing. Great job guys this is an invaluable source

jordan3311 Wrote:I am trying to improve my listening skill by watching variety shows does anyone know of any good shows? I am trying to improve my listening and understand skills overall got any tips on that as well.

しゃべくり007
人志松本の○○な話　（eX:ぞっとする話、すべらない話。 i WOULD recommend zotto suru hanashi b.c. it's interesting with scary stories b.c. for suberanai hanashi sometimes I dont' find it that funny/ But this show has the least subbing - the big japanese text across the screen that comes up every time people say stuff)
ロンドンハーツ (OMG ARIyoshi is so epic....)
ホンマでっか
深イイ話
いきなり!黄金伝説。
アメトーーク(人見知り episode was hilarious, even the evangelion episode was hilarious even though i've never seen that anime
ブラマヨの世紀の和解SHOW - people in the japanese entertainment/owarai industry try to resolve past issues/fights on the show.
さんまのからくりTV 第6回芸能人かえうた王決定
イチハチ ( some of the episodes were really funny)
arashi shows: 秘密のあらし、嵐の宿題くん (if you find a famous person that you like that went on arashi no shkudai and whatnot, it's pretty exciting to watch lol)
おしゃれリズム
時空間☆世代バトル 昭和×平成 SHOWはHey! Say!』 - to learn about showa heisei. it finished airing a couple years ago? lol.
メレンゲの気持ち
はねるのとびら - the 暴露 corner of that show is hilarious sometimes. I don't care about the 100 yen shop corner, or the weird where they drress up.
やりすぎ都市伝説 - so on the show yarisugi ko-ji, sometimes they tell urban legends.

there's lots more.... But for variety shows. don't just watch variety show to be like OMG I need to keep watching this to improve my listening comprehension. If you find the boring then try fast-forwarding or try watching another show or another episode because there's so much variety shows out there... there's no reason to force yourself to watch variety/talk that bores me.

I've started studying Japanese again after several years. I seem to have retained an innate knowledge of grammar, and need to (1) use it, and (2) refuel my kanji + vocab. Thought I would share what I'm using to get back up to speed:

Anki - 3 decks: Tae Kim, Core2k+6K, custom sentence deck (currently small, but growing). Thinking about creating another deck for words garnered from current reading (see below), but am worried about overloading myself. We'll see.

Kanji - KanjiBox for iPhone in conjunction with stories gleaned from RevTK. I like Kanjibox because it keeps track of my progress, and I can create custom learning sets based on the kanji I encounter in my reading. I have several large custom learning sets containing the kanji I encounter in my reading and Anki decks. I've installed the KanjiDraw add-on, which is an invaluable aid to memorization.

Reading - Working through the stories at http://hukumusume.com/douwa/betu/index.html (a godsend of a resource). Using Yomichan in Anki for assisted reading. Also read some news and ja.wikipedia.org entries. I imagine the scope of my reading will increase as my kanji and vocab knowledge grow.

Listening - the audio stories above + subbed and unsubbed anime (鋼の錬金術師 is a favorite, though admittedly a stretch at times; maybe I should start with どらえもん。。。). Lots of J-POP (宇多田、幸田來未, アニメ OPs). A little of JapanesePod101, though it's less central. I'd rather work my way through fun stories that hold my attention rather than artificial exercises. Plus, it's $25/mo. for a lot of English gabbing. I've downloaded a bunch of the Intermediate podcasts for random listening.

Production - Tae Kim deck. Starting to begin conversations with one or two native speakers via Skype.

I've no doubt I'll keep tinkering with this as time goes on. I am blown away by the number of free resources available these days. Thanks to everyone on this forum for the helpful advice and links!

[returns to lurking]

Right now just the core deck, about 60 new cards per day, and lot's of review to keep my recall rate above 95%. I also downloaded the JLPT1 kanji deck, and I am unlocking the kanji that appear in multiple words with on-yomi pronunciations in the core deck. So far I've only unlocked like 150, because most of the words I know up until this point are basic words that usually use kun-yomi, which I don't really care to memorize outside of the vocabulary.

EDIT: Also I skim over Tae Kim from time to time, and attempt to read some hentai manga when I masturbate for practice, but this early on I can't read too much yet.

How in god's name do you manage to keep up 60 per day? How many reviews do you average daily?! I struggle with even 20, when I actually have the time to review...

EDIT: And for what it's worth, some parts of your post could have been omitted, for the sake of all that is good in the world...

frony0 Wrote:How in god's name do you manage to keep up 60 per day? How many reviews do you average daily?! I struggle with even 20, when I actually have the time to review...

EDIT: And for what it's worth, some parts of your post could have been omitted, for the sake of all that is good in the world...

About 250 reviews per day. Granted I only just passed the 1000 cards mark so.

egoplant Wrote:Right now just the core deck, about 60 new cards per day, and lot's of review to keep my recall rate above 95%. I also downloaded the JLPT1 kanji deck, and I am unlocking the kanji that appear in multiple words with on-yomi pronunciations in the core deck. So far I've only unlocked like 150, because most of the words I know up until this point are basic words that usually use kun-yomi, which I don't really care to memorize outside of the vocabulary.

EDIT: Also I skim over Tae Kim from time to time, and attempt to read some hentai manga when I masturbate for practice, but this early on I can't read too much yet.

Great advice!

My method is/was
RTK:

Grammar:
I used tae kim and JPtMW and a few other online resources for basic sentences/grammar.

Native material:
Anki 2:Mining vocabulary (books/manga and shows). Listening comprehension (Subs2srs).

one
Using core plus.

two
mined, monolingual w/sentence.

three
mcds: grammar, familiar words+kanji

I tried Pimsluer & Rosetta Stone. I would say the most learn came from a cross section of both. Using repetition. For writing and reading i started with hiragana. For me to learn Hiragana first helped with katakana.

Zgarbas Wrote:I try to make Lang8 at least once per week but I'm very bad at this. I also try to fit in more native material, but again I am working on it.

I try to read at least 1 lesson in the Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate Japanese grammar per day.

Am I doing this right?
(surprisingly little burnout ever since I moved to this schedule, btw. I did have a moment a few weeks ago though that was more quitting-smoking and school-angering-me than the studying...)

I was also doing Lang-8 at the start of my N1 review but I soon found out I was getting really stressed by it. LOL. Kept running out of things to write about

When you say at least 1 lesson in the grammar dictionary, did you mean 1 grammar point for each day?

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:Kanji - KanjiBox for iPhone in conjunction with stories gleaned from RevTK. I like Kanjibox because it keeps track of my progress, and I can create custom learning sets based on the kanji I encounter in my reading. I have several large custom learning sets containing the kanji I encounter in my reading and Anki decks. I've installed the KanjiDraw add-on, which is an invaluable aid to memorization.

I agree 100% on KanjiBox! I like that it can be quite mean sometimes because it puts similar looking Kanji together and then you are forced to really dig deep into your memory bank for the correct reading.

I have yet to try the KanjiDraw but for a tactile learner like me, it just might prove to be very useful.

I gotta drop this here, I just found out http://www.lang-8.com and it's boosted my japanese reading and writing skills immensely!

I suggest you start it no matter how much of a beginner you are.

Old Username: Cranks
Length Of Study: 2 Years
Past Study History:
- Studied writing and reading from beginning. Did 1 year of listening practice then stopped studying for 1 year. Some language loss took place. Have re-engaged with Japanese through speaking due to change in life situation.
Location: Lives in Japan.

Motivation:
This is important. Without having a rather unpleasant experience with a couple of old guys that basically laughed me out the door, I would have never gotten my act together and decided that I want to be able to own my situation and be able to handle life in Japan. I owe those two men a few flowers and chocolate come next 'old dudes day' (or whatever).

Note:
You can live in Japan and not need the language if you speak English. This is something I have learned through experience. It is not a hard decision to not bother with it given this. Examples might be being able to get a girlfriend/boyfriend, do taxes, get visas, talk to the police, rent an apartment and so on. The only purpose of Japanese (for me) is to live in that higher realm of life that being able to talk to the other 80% of people in Japan can supply. That was and is an important distinction.

Listening:
I did anime mostly with my listening cards. It's actually easier to understand variety shows (and more useful) because of the subtitles. I can read about 50% of what I see (an example being figuring out what medicine bottles or the back of a dedorant can), so subtitles aren't too bad when included with my listening skills. Now, I just hangout in cafes, restaurants, trains and whatever and keep one ear tuned to the conversations I hear. I have learned that real Japanese doesn't sound much like anime (which I can understand quite well - except long complext explainations). I would recommend that anyone wanting to learn Japanese for street use learn from variety shows taken from places like Youtube. I sometimes use my iPhone's memo function to record some TV for later listening, but barely ever listen to what I record.

Reading:
It's basically a useless skill in many ways for me. I could totally live without it and get by. I read manga a bit back in the day - using re-reading over and over to install visual recognition of words. I also tried a novel, but couldn't be bothered. In the end, your goals probably should match your study method. I thought reading was useful. I also thought the same of Kanji. Now, for my goals, I found I was wrong.

Kanji:
I probably know about 500 or so (no idea which). It's enough to get around and definitely more than most here who do the whole teacher-student learning experience 1 hour a week with 40 minutes homework. I think it's nifty for getting around, but not super important. I used Anki a lot back in the day and did the same things everyone else has done on the forums here.

Writing:
I can copy anything. I spent a lot of time doing multiple repititions of one kanji after another in my notebook. I also used to write out my Lang-8 posts by hand before posting. I don't believe writing is that useful now as I can just tell whoever I'm talking to, to write it out for me. Dictation is fun, yes? It's faster and easier. I rarely write anything but Hiragana into my computer as well.

-----

Now, we get to the fun stuff. My goal is SPOKEN Japanese. Here is what I am doing:

(This takes about 3 hours a day, by the way. I usually average 1.5 to 2 hours on a good day.)

Speaking:
3 part method.

1) Fluency. I am developing fluency by talking TO MYSELF (yes, no one around to reply) on the phone as I travel around from job to job or fun activity to fun activity. I get about 1 hour in at the moment of that. (Logic is that grammar drills only bring out a small framework of grammar and vocabulary where speaking freely uses everything you currently have to communicate and, therefore, creates massive internal remembrance and use.)

2) Grammar. I have a Tai-Kim's Grammar Guide and I am simplifying it down to something I can Riff Off (the idea in music where one player will create something new from a piece played by another player - or whatever.)

Here's an example:

～[くーVerb]＋ない ＊ can't
-- きく(to listen)
-- うごく (to move)

～[ぶーVerb]＋た ＊ could
-- あそぶ (to play)
-- えらぶ (to choose)

～[つーVerb]＋なかった ＊ couldn't
-- たつ (to stand)
-- かつ (to win)

(lol, at the people that are about to go "き-け-ない！" It's only a part of a sample. There's the rule about 5 verbs up. I just didn't copy it.)

I then just freely create sentences from this (I speak these outloud). I also talk to myself as I do it in Japanese. I usually say things like "Something's wrong here. Shouldn't this be は or が not を? I remember something about the potential form..." I often explain things to myself in Japanese. I find that really helps out.

3) Vocabulary. I just make a list of sentences. I use the JAPANESE dictionary app and save a sentence in a word list. I then read them outloud to myself (looking to the definition sometimes or clicking words I don't remember and adding them in.) I usually have about 200 sentences and that takes me about 10 minutes for 1 rep. Lately, I've been getting fast, so I am considering doing two sections (two lists) per day as I find it a bit annoying to do the same one six times in a row (60 minutes of 1 list).

--- extras ---

4) Pronouncation. I just copy TV. (Shadowing.) Nothing really that special. I say whatever I hear and get about 50% right. I find this sort of fun.

5) Conversations. I rarely talk to full native speakers (one's that don't speak English), but most say I have ok pronunciation. I also agree because I can hear the difference between myself and the guys and girls I meet who are way above me. I can usually get things done (example: I need can ask questions in mixed English and Japanese - I just use the English word if I don't know it because sometimes they do. Yesterday I asked a security guard - who had just told me off, lol - about the shrine I was at's wedding chapel. He understood and replied in a way I understood.)

-------

So what do I need to improve?

- I can't remember more than about 50-80 verbs. This is probably closer to 100-200 because I don't use all the verbs I know. I find it difficult to remember verbs and I will have to figure how to get that sorted somehow. I think time and practice will probably do it.

- I have very limited grammar at the moment. I can make sentences fluently with some correctness, but I lack mastery of some of the basics (example: Would you like x1 OR x2? Would you like a apple or an orange? I have to A and B today. I have to buy a apple and an orange.) This is probably the main thing that is letting my speaking down right now.

-- Side note: The things that I have found most improved my speaking was drilling grammar outloud and doing vocabulary outloud.

-----

What would I do differently?

I would forget about learning Kanji beyond whatever I came across that I needed to understand to live here. I wouldn't have used Anki (hmmm.... not 100% sure of that) and would have gone straight to the spoken lists after doing a little copying and hard specific practice on the basic sounds (you know, going "Ka, ki, ku, ke, ko" to whatever native speaking audio you can find and doing comparison via audio recording - the audio says "ka..." you say "ka, ki, ku...") I wouldn't have done much reading beyond what I enjoyed and no writing at all. I would have done transcripted audio for listening with reading it back outloud and adding vocab to my list of sentences (textbooks are your friend in the beginning). After I got good at that, I would just record stuff and cherry pick whatever I understood but didn't know. I might even make listening cards (or I could just splice a few Mp3s together, but that is getting technical where it is not really needed). I would seek out native speakers to talk to early. And that's about it.

------

Thanks for reading all that. I feel like I'm probably posting this for egotistical reasons, so I probably won't come back. I do think its sort of nice to have this up though. Three very different methods and a lot of lessons later, it's a very different way I have come to. Maybe that helps. I hope so.

Just had a quick read through above. One thing I can say from my and other's studies is this: You can speak way more than you are. (Edit: Most guys get good over here when they decide to go out and actually speak to people. I think its just the speaking mixed with feedback that does the trick. The first can be handled easily enough by itself.)

Average speaking for me per day: 1.5 hours.

That's 10.5 hours a week, 42 hours a month, 504 hours a year. If I am being honest with myself, I probably speak in English (back home) about:

4 hours total a day.

That is 28 hours a week, 112 hours a month, 1,344 hours a year. (This doesn't include thoughts, which would probably double or triple the count.)

This is why I tell almost everyone I meet who seems serious (because I really do feel it is the answer in many ways) is SPEAK TO YOURSELF. Most people are just afraid of what people will think of them or the judgements they put on themselves - even though they are alone in their bathroom with no one in the house and the neighbors out). I think that fear is fine. Be afraid, but realize you have a responsibilty to yourself to make this happen. If you spoke four hours a day then you would be great a Japanese. Anything is possible. Just stop blocking yourself (the only one in your way is YOU.)

I wish everyone luck.

@Cranks11111

Thanks for this tip.. I guess this will help me a lot as a beginner..

Taelia Wrote:I gotta drop this here, I just found out http://www.lang-8.com and it's boosted my japanese reading and writing skills immensely!

I suggest you start it no matter how much of a beginner you are.

I agree! (Although I haven't been writing much recently...) But I browse a lot of entries already corrected and that helps a lot with grammar. I then take the corrected sentence as a "base" pattern then formulate my own sentence to help the grammar stick.

Okay, so my study method is subject to wild variations depending on the position of the Moon in the sky/day of the week, but here's what I'm doing right now

Did up to 1370 in RTK
Immerse as much as I can (school days 6+ hours, weekends 10+)
Core 2k Anki deck (normal one, so kill me :p)
Tae Kim Nukemarine Anki for grammar (going through this slowly, will hurry up in Summer)


My plan is to continue doing Core 2k and immersing then making my own vocab/sentence deck for native material. I'll continue using Tae Kim, and finish RTK in summer. (currently in RTK review hell T-T)
Keep in mind I've been studying about a week so don't take anything I've said here to heart!
EDIT: Okay, so I've changed my study plan. Again.
Now I will be adding sentences from Genki on top of the rest. I'm going to have a lot of time in the summer, so I think this is doable.

Sounds good @Hirakana. I hope you really enjoy that native material when you get there. Is that what you mean (your mood and what you are enjoying) or do you really base your studies on the position of the moon and stars? It was a full moon last night. Does that mean I will study well?

When you say 6+ hours on a school day, does that mean you are doing Anki on your phone during lunch, hallway, study hall, etc. or is it all crunched into your evenings? When I was in grade school I spent all my free time listening to music, reading about music, playing music...so I'm curious how it would work if I were dilligently pursuing auto-didactic language acquisition.

Keep up the good work, kid!

tashippy Wrote:When you say 6+ hours on a school day, does that mean you are doing Anki on your phone during lunch, hallway, study hall, etc.

What I meant is 6+ hours spent immersing. I probably use Anki for 1-2 hours a day.
Thanks for the encouragment, tashippy!

This doesn't really belong anywhere so I just thought I'd just say here, but it does have something to do w/ how I'm studying

Core2k/6k English translations can really blur the meaning/focus/ambiguity of basic phrases. I think the English sentences can cause a great deal of frustration when trying to comprehend many of the more complex/less simple Japanese sentences on a meaningful level. In fact I feel like core2k/6k is better used to grade farmiliarity of grammar rather than vocabulary, because words can always be looked up but focusing on the meaning of sentences will pinpoint what you don't know. For me I feel like that needs to be constantly tested and developed before actively trying to memorise vocab. This is a simple example, and I don't claim to know everything that the English translations in core can't provide, but..

土曜日の夜はクラブに行きます。
I'm going to a club Saturday night.

日曜日は図書館に行きます。
I go to the library on Sundays.

I know it would be silly to make several/all possible translations of sentences with some ambiguity, but doesn't this say a lot about what's missing from basic grammar guides? This is a paper from 1998! This isn't new information:

http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~hasega.../time.html

So the -ru marker can refer to habitual action too, among many other things...

I really don't know why this stuff isn't talked about at the very beginning of grammar guides :/ otherwise you'd HAVE to formulate a very artificial learning path that spans a great length of time and have to gradually introduce each interpretation one-by-one, or at least something to that effect. I don't think learners should be spoon-fed in this way, bc it's ain't very good food for the mind. I hope it isn't because it's obvious information to everyone else, and I lack basic deduction skills ;(

I'm going through core2k/6k at 100 cards a day, grading my performance primarily by sentence recognition, and vocab production as secondary

Front: image, sentence audio, clozed sentence text w/ furigana
(Task: understand the grammar of the sentence, write down the missing word if I can)
Back: image, word audio, sentence audio, sentence text w/ furigana

I hope to have gone through core6k in 2 months, and I guess I'll make another post by then assuming I don't keep changing my mind, something I'm now trying to prevent rather than encourage Dx

Recently this has been my daily setup
coreplus: 18 new (recognition)
+(anything i'm willing to mine - cloze deletion)

For people starting out or are currently going through rtk, I suggest learning 20 or less new kanji a day because reviews span across many months, maybe a few years.

Not entirely relevant, but... @Animosophy, in regards to Core translations, what I am currently doing with Core10K (have multiple Core10k decks, modified for a different purpose) is replacing their vocabulary word translations with gWaei (on Linux- pretty sure it uses EDICT) entries. For example:

分かる was translated as simply "understand", whereas it has been modified to:
分かる
v5r,vi
(1) to understand/to comprehend/to grasp/to see/to get/to follow
(2) to become clear/to be known/to be discovered/to be realized/to be realised/to be found out

It can help differentiate and provide a more accurate guideline for production aspects (although production isn't entirely popular around here).

It doesn't really help with the standard sentence translations used in the Core, though. It isn't much of a solution, but I tend to use it merely as a rough guideline; deriving a deeper sense of comprehension through particle association and tense (thanks for that link, btw: ***** oarsome).