Ok I'm sure you guys remember me from that 5 month thing I wrote a while back. Well I'm back and I'll tell you what my progress has been like, what are my strengths/weaknesses in japanese. And what can I do to progress even further. Constructive criticism is welcome.

Strengths(What I can do at the moment)
-Watch anime(90%+ understanding)
-Dramas/movies(80% understanding)
-News(With transcripts 80%+)
-Music(This varies because I have trouble hearing the words they are saying. But if I do have the transcript for the song, the lyrics. I can understand 90%+ of it.)
-Kanji writings-I can pretty much write any kanji I SEE without much effort.
-Readings-I checked how much Kanji readings I know at the moment, online it says 1800-1900. I can estimate it's probably little over 1850.
-Can go to websites for news,commercial sites,youtube,google, regular sites and navigate with ease.
-Can play Japanese games/read/understand dialogue 85%+ of the time. Only a few words may cause my understanding to go down but thanks to srsing a lot of kanji words. It's so much easier than like 5 months ago.

Weakness
-When it comes to writing I CAN write any kanji I see most of the time, expect those really rare ones. But I can still write them but at a much slower pace than the usual common kanji you see daily.
-Readings(Flow). I can read pretty well, but not at a fast flow. My pace is pretty good but it can use work in this section. I still occasional screw up the readings due to different contexts. (Readings you don't see often)
-Speaking, alright still lacking, it's nothing to do with understanding. It's more just practicing speaking with native speakers for large amounts of time to improve this to the next level.
-Writing kanji from memory(completely from memory). I'm working on this one by doing kana to kanji production cards for sentences/vocab in my production deck.
-Understanding is good but I want to be able to read/understand more kanji than joyo kanji. I want to focus on readings for Japanese names. I know it's not as important but I lack in this section. It's improving as I do srs names nowadays but I believe it just needs more time to improve this one. Ultimate goal for next 2 years is 4000+ kanji.

Ways of improving beyond:
-More srsing
-Variety of immersion/lots of reading.
-More writing
-More speaking (To improve this, get more immersion from dramas,etc. Listen to podcasts on random conversations,etc)
-What I'm going to do and am doing way more nowadays. Is incorporating monolingual look-ups for kanji I don't know.)
-For my srs I want to include songs/audio with it to spice things up/improve my listening skills for songs.
-Switch/do everything in japanese if possible(I mean on my computer,msn,web pages,etc)-I started this just a few weeks ago and it feels awesome.)
-I studied grammar from tae kim/particles such as の,を,は,etc(What I did was not to regurgitate it, but to understand why it's there. This simply matter of understanding can bring your Japanese understanding to the next level)
-P.S. my vocab deck includes the JLPT level 1-4. so that's how my vocab deck is 30,000. Plus studying grammar via sentences/vocab and particles.

A few of you asked me to take JLPT level 2 and 1. I haven't gotten around to it(Kept postponing it but I spent way more time on Japanese than on the JLPT site), but a lot of people are telling me not to worry about it. People say that I should just improve in Japanese and not worry about tests that test for Japanese ability.
I agree with this, I don't think there is anything wrong with JLPT but when I do go to japan I don't think people will care about my JLPT score but rather my ability to use Japanese in speaking,writing,communication,understanding,etc.

3 main decks I use are production,vocab,sentences. I use to have way more but I find that this is much faster to handle and blaze through the reps daily.

Stats are:
Production deckv2
単語帳の統計
単語帳が作成された時期：1.6 ヶ月 前
カードの合計数： 7693
ファクトの合計数： 6295

カードの成熟度
復習期間の長いカード: 3835 (49.9%)
復習期間の短いカード: 1288 (16.7%)
まだ見ていないカード 2570 (33.4%)
平均間隔 48.0 日間

カードの状態
学習中のカード: 7693 (100.0%)
無効にしたカード： 0 (0.0%)
保留のカード： 0 (0.0%)

カードの易しさ
最低難易度： 2.42
平均難易度： 2.77
最大難易度： 3.09

Sentence deck:

単語帳の統計
単語帳が作成された時期：10.0 ヶ月 前
カードの合計数： 23592
ファクトの合計数： 23583

カードの成熟度
復習期間の長いカード: 15023 (63.7%)
復習期間の短いカード: 5929 (25.1%)
まだ見ていないカード 2640 (11.2%)
平均間隔 51.0 日間

カードの状態
学習中のカード: 23591 (100.0%)
無効にしたカード： 0 (0.0%)
保留のカード： 1 (0.0%)

カードの易しさ
最低難易度： 1.30
平均難易度： 2.10
最大難易度： 3.11

Lastly vocab deck:
単語帳の統計
単語帳が作成された時期：4.5 ヶ月 前
カードの合計数： 30144
ファクトの合計数： 29655

カードの成熟度
復習期間の長いカード: 11910 (39.5%)
復習期間の短いカード: 9334 (31.0%)
まだ見ていないカード 8900 (29.5%)
平均間隔 34.4 日間

カードの状態
学習中のカード: 30144 (100.0%)
無効にしたカード： 0 (0.0%)
保留のカード： 0 (0.0%)

カードの易しさ
最低難易度： 1.46
平均難易度： 2.48
最大難易度： 2.96

Lastly, what do you guys advise I do now? I always thought to myself, I can do more than this, there should be ways of improving beyond this. I remember in the beginning when I kept telling myself I should be doing more. But when I look at what I do now, it is quite a lot. But I keep telling myself I could be doing more. Is there anything else I can do to improve? any strategies? techniques?,etc
Thanks for taking the time to read my long post.

Forgot to include RTK1+3, took me 3 months. Don't count it as real Japanese cuz I did nothing but kanji. I remember I did it half-way but my computer got formatted, so did it again. Recently, like last month I re-did RTK1+3 to see if i could remember the kanji well. I could, so I won't be ever going back to RTK books, maybe for Chinese later down the road but not now.

For my decks. vocab I've done 22,000+ so far.
sentence deck i've done 20,000+
production deck i've done-5000+ so far.

Damn. You're fluent already?

It took me a full year.

I think what you can be doing less of it worrying about the statistics. Because that is one of the most impressive data sets I've ever seen. Especially in a 10-11 month span.

Even if those cards are all simple you're doing more than enough.

kazelee Wrote:Damn. You're fluent already?

It took me a full year.

I think what you can be doing less of it worrying about the statistics. Because that is one of the most impressive data sets I've ever seen. Especially in a 10-11 month span.

Even if those cards are all simple you're doing more than enough.

LOL no I'm not fluent, not even close. Unno maybe it's my definition of fluency that has me thinking I'm nowhere near as good as I can be.
I'll believe I'm fluent when I can watch almost anything in japanese and understand 90%+ of it with ease. Can read a book(any book, even the harder ones with more obscure vocab with 90% ease)
-Speak with a flow/small or no mistakes in it. 90% of the time.
-Write kanji from memory/with little/no trouble 90% of the time.
One thing i know i need more of is, more reading/more speaking practice. Those are the most essential I need.

So how is it, in 300 days, you have roughly 30000 vocab and 20000 sentences?
If I am not mistaken, that is on average 100 new vocab and 66 new sentences per day.

I would be having a very good day if I could do 40 new vocab and 20 sentences. I have the time to do more and have tried, but my memory seems to stop working if I go past 40. Tell me your secrets, grass.

It sucks being 3 times slower than you.

sikieiki Wrote:So how is it, in 300 days, you have roughly 30000 vocab and 20000 sentences?
If I am not mistaken, that is on average 100 new vocab and 66 new sentences per day.

I would be having a very good day if I could do 40 new vocab and 20 sentences. I have the time to do more and have tried, but my memory seems to stop working if I go past 40. Tell me your secrets, grass.

It sucks being 3 times slower than you.

Pre-made decks! I added up to 9000(sentence deck) on my own then I got lazy and started added pre-made ones that I've found useful on the anki site/smart.fm.
Also i have 30,000 in my vocab deck but i've only down 20,000 so far.
I don't do anything special, but i've been noticing that I have gotten used to Japanese a lot, I mean a lot. When I started srsing, and most people they aren't used to the srs/japanese. So the memory lacks even more than usual. But aside from that, I just rate it accordingly. I don't rate myself hard, only when I feel like it. I used to rate myself hard but not anymore.
I've found that it is good, as it goes over grammar,etc,vocab,etc. As long as you understand it, it's all good.

How much time are you spending a day on this?

ta12121 Wrote:

sikieiki Wrote:So how is it, in 300 days, you have roughly 30000 vocab and 20000 sentences?
If I am not mistaken, that is on average 100 new vocab and 66 new sentences per day.

I would be having a very good day if I could do 40 new vocab and 20 sentences. I have the time to do more and have tried, but my memory seems to stop working if I go past 40. Tell me your secrets, grass.

It sucks being 3 times slower than you.

Pre-made decks! I added up to 9000(sentence deck) on my own then I got lazy and started added pre-made ones that I've found useful on the anki site/smart.fm.
Also i have 30,000 in my vocab deck but i've only down 20,000 so far.
I don't do anything special, but i've been noticing that I have gotten used to Japanese a lot, I mean a lot. When I started srsing, and most people they aren't used to the srs/japanese. So the memory lacks even more than usual. But aside from that, I just rate it accordingly. I don't rate myself hard, only when I feel like it. I used to rate myself hard but not anymore.

The thing is, I am using pre-made decks... well, at least the kore (core6k) set. It only has 6 thousand though, so I am not sure where you are getting that many pre-made sentences. In any case, I think you are doing fine, but what do I know?

dizmox Wrote:How much time are you spending a day on this?

My reps each day from 1-2 hours. Immersion is 80% of the day. To be honest, immersion works in so many levels. It's easy and it works. Immersion in terms of listening,reading subtitles in Japanese. Reading,writing,speaking,etc. I believe that this/srs is the key to fluency or at least on the road to getting there.

sikieiki Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:

sikieiki Wrote:So how is it, in 300 days, you have roughly 30000 vocab and 20000 sentences?
If I am not mistaken, that is on average 100 new vocab and 66 new sentences per day.

I would be having a very good day if I could do 40 new vocab and 20 sentences. I have the time to do more and have tried, but my memory seems to stop working if I go past 40. Tell me your secrets, grass.

It sucks being 3 times slower than you.

Pre-made decks! I added up to 9000(sentence deck) on my own then I got lazy and started added pre-made ones that I've found useful on the anki site/smart.fm.
Also i have 30,000 in my vocab deck but i've only down 20,000 so far.
I don't do anything special, but i've been noticing that I have gotten used to Japanese a lot, I mean a lot. When I started srsing, and most people they aren't used to the srs/japanese. So the memory lacks even more than usual. But aside from that, I just rate it accordingly. I don't rate myself hard, only when I feel like it. I used to rate myself hard but not anymore.

The thing is, I am using pre-made decks... well, at least the kore (core6k) set. It only has 6 thousand though, so I am not sure where you are getting that many pre-made sentences. In any case, I think you are doing fine, but what do I know?

I also got some random vocab from smart.fm that was interesting. I don't know exactly where I got everything from, as I kept adding from left to right. To be honest the amount doesn't matter, go small, then increase slowly. 10 a day was so much for me in the beginning, then it went to 20,50,60,100,etc,etc. It's a breeze nowadays since I've adapted to japanese. I love kanji,love the spoken language,written langauge. That only is my motivation to continue more and eventually get fluent.

I'm curious to see your results on something measurable like the JLPT.

Hmm, I started about the same time as you, but just got to about 10k vocab within that time (though now I've lost track since I deleted my sentence deck long ago), so I'm a little jealous. But I guess that progress is natural if you have all that time.

Right now I'm at the "studied all the JLPT1 textbook material" stage but I need a lot more practice to get to where you are.

Forgive me for any errors in this post, it's 4am and I'm half asleep...

dizmox Wrote:Hmm, I started about the same time as you so, but just got to about 10k vocab within that time (though now I've lost track since I deleted my sentence deck long ago), so I'm a little jealous. But I guess that's progress if natural if you have all that time.

Well I used to work part-time but that was a temporary job, still looking for work. Since i'm still waiting for some places to call back,etc applying online,in person,etc. So i've spent all this time in japanese. Even when I was in school this year, i spent a lot of time in japanese. But although at that time. I believe that it's all a matter of time, immersion,srsing and dedication to become fluent.

Womacks23 Wrote:I'm curious to see your results on something measurable like the JLPT.

I'll eventually take it, but I guess i'm just started to get incline to just improve in japanese a lot than worry about the JLPT.

Just wondering if you study grammar and all that fun stuff.

sikieiki Wrote:Just wondering if you study grammar and all that fun stuff.

I recommend you study grammar but just to understand not to just copy what you see. Grammar can get so boring, so spice it up with stuff you like, random vocab, anime,manga,etc J-games(yes Final fantasy games in full Japanese !!!)

ta12121 Wrote:I'll eventually take it, but I guess i'm just started to get incline to just improve in japanese a lot than worry about the JLPT.

Yes, going towards Japanese as opposed to the JLPT is good in terms of language learning.

But if you're curious about your 10-month progress, quit wasting time posting Anki statistics on here and take a practice test. Everything you need is online. You'll get a much better idea of your level than us here just being "wow you have large anki decks"

Plus, instead of saying "90% of anime and drama I watch" you'll be able to say "I got xx% on a JLPTx practice test, so that's about my level"

Asriel Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:I'll eventually take it, but I guess i'm just started to get incline to just improve in japanese a lot than worry about the JLPT.

Yes, going towards Japanese as opposed to the JLPT is good in terms of language learning.

But if you're curious about your 10-month progress, quit wasting time posting Anki statistics on here and take a practice test. Everything you need is online. You'll get a much better idea of your level than us here just being "wow you have large anki decks"

Plus, instead of saying "90% of anime and drama I watch" you'll be able to say "I got xx% on a JLPTx practice test, so that's about my level"

Well said. Let me get on it right now. Should post the JLPT 2 results tomorrow. Just gotta find the link first. So much bookmarks on here....

Where do you get news transcripts, by the way? I have a year before 就職活動 with only about a couple hours a day free to improve (on top of chatting with my girlfriend in Japanese), so I need to be pretty efficient.

At the moment my listening understanding is like

Slice of life anime/simple drama - 80%
News - negligible, it just goes too quickly and I'm not used to the vocabulary/style of language, so I guess newspaper reading practice/transcripts are needed first

which is kind of discouraging

I figured I'd do a 50:50 split between reading articles and watching the news, hopefully that should take care of things after one year.

dizmox Wrote:Where do you get news transcripts, by the way? I have a year before 就職活動 with only about a couple hours a day free to improve (on top of chatting with my girlfriend in Japanese), so I need to be pretty efficient.

At the moment my listening understanding is like

Slice of life anime/simple drama - 80%
News - negligible, it just goes too quickly and I'm not used to the vocabulary/style of language, so I guess newspaper reading practice/transcripts are needed first

which is kind of discouraging

I figured I'd do a 50:50 split between reading articles and watching the news, hopefully that should take care of things after one year.

I just get them from the news sites themselves they post transcripts under the video. You can copy them and post them on your srs of choice./break them down,etc.

I'm not the only one who clicked this thread thinking it'd be about a still-beginner learner asking at what level you were 10 months in, am I?

I can't help but wow. Wow.

Reviewed Wrote:I'm not the only one who clicked this thread thinking it'd be about a still-beginner learner asking at what level you were 10 months in, am I?

I can't help but wow. Wow.

I'm not good at all, not yet at least.

P.S. anyone mind giving me the JLPT past tests, there was a site that listed it, you could basically do it online it had a list for the past tests.(It could give you a grade right there after doing the reading/listening sections).

http://www.ngoilaibennhau.net/jatest/index_4.php

that is the link for online practice tests.

I think it is great what you have accomplished in a short time. I'm very skeptical though. Do you actually understand as much as you think you do? I'm not saying you don't, I just can't believe it without some proof. On the other hand if you are as good as you say then that's all that matters, not my opinion!

RisuMiso Wrote:http://www.ngoilaibennhau.net/jatest/index_4.php

that is the link for online practice tests.

I think it is great what you have accomplished in a short time. I'm very skeptical though. Do you actually understand as much as you think you do? I'm not saying you don't, I just can't believe it without some proof. On the other hand if you are as good as you say then that's all that matters, not my opinion!

Well, I think I do. There are some words where I'm 100% sure I know what it is. While there are some due to context I can understand. I believe that it's all about vocab, a lot of kanji. Eventually with this/immersion a lot/reading. You should be able to increase it.
I'm pretty confident I can understand it, like when I listen. I have a firm understanding of it. Although translating is a whole other skill. I can follow/understand subtitles and how they work now that I can understand majority of the japanese.

Doing JLPT level 2 right now.
Section
2006年度2級
文字・語彙
Will post results soon for this section

Results are 51/65. For this section.
Let me try the others.
What I found troubling was that, some of the things were listed in hiragana. So I had to double check my answers to see if it fits right. like I got an example one about うたがう>疑う
If i seen the kanji I would have immediately understand the answer easily. I guess that means I should really focus on hiragana words carefully now.

sikieiki Wrote:If I am not mistaken, that is on average 100 new vocab and 66 new sentences per day.

That is alot of material, especially when you consider each sentence will contain 1-3 new vocab words.

My technical question would be, how do you initally *learn* this new material when adding it to your deck? How long before you then test yourself on new cards (same day, next day), and how harsh are you at marking - do you fail the sentence if you can't sound out the reading of every single kanji word??

ta12121 Wrote:Constructive criticism is welcome.

You seem to mention your card stats and how long you have been studying (9.4 montsh...9.8 months etc etc) in every other post you make on this forum, and honestly I find it quite irksome. Yes you've come a long way and made excellent progress, but maybe time to show a little humility?