Hi everyone!
I haven't been posting that much lately, sorry about that
I posted a sound-clip of my Japanese (http://chirb.it/kxn99p) the other day, resulting in some forum-members asking me to write about how I study Japanese. I really didn't want to do it, because I was afraid of looking like a "Mr. Know-it-all" when it comes to language learning. However, I've tried and failed a lot when it comes to learning in general, so I thought that maybe - just maybe - some of my experiences and ideas could be of some sort of help.
First off, both my English and Japanese are still a work in progress. I still struggle with them both, but I do feel that I've made good progress, especially during the last two years that I've been studying Japanese.

A quick "background story":
- I've been studying Japanese since August 2009 (not including RTK).
- The first thing I did after RTK was learning hiragana / katakana.
- Then I went through the first half of Tae Kim's grammar guide, got bored and stopped.
- After that, I worked REALLY hard on the KO2001 books and finished inputting them into Anki within a couple of months.
- I added all the sentences from Kanzen Master 2級 after that.
- Christmas 2009 - Started using Subs2SRS to mine sentences from variety shows (especially London Hearts)
- Summer 2010 - Stopped adding sentences, started adding single words only.
- September 2010 - June 2011 - Worked as a volunteer in Japan. Did not study much (added around 4-5000 words during that year), but my friends were all Japanese.

What I'm doing now:
- Adding 30 words a day.
- Working on N1 grammar
- Learning Japanese names
- KO2001 Production (single words, not sentences)

Additional info:
- I've been listening to Japanese non-stop for two years (iPod <3)
- TV, movies, games, books - all media has been, and still is, Japanese only.
- I hardly spoke Japanese the first year.

I don't want to go through the last two years in detail (but please ask if you have any questions!), but I want to talk about some topics that I think are really, really important.

Practice / Study:
I'm a musician. I've been playing the drums since I was 9, and I worked as a pro musician for one year after high-school (that really, really sucked, but that's a different story )
Anyway, one thing I learned from practicing the drums was:
Practice a lot. Practice every day. Practice does not make perfect - perfect practice makes perfect.
What I mean is - you have to put in the time. Every day. It makes everything easier. It becomes a habit, you feel yourself improving, and motivation follows.
BUT do not fool yourself by saying "I've been studying for 8 hours today! I will become awesome in Japanese". Hours mean nothing, if it's time wasted.
Why do you study Japanese? To be able to talk and function as an adult in Japan? If so, you have to study in order to do just that. If you spend every day studying extremely rare kanji, words you never hear, know twenty words for "sword" but can't hold a basic conversation, then you are, in my humble opinion, wasting your time.

Work hard in the beginning:
The first 6 months are hard, very hard. It doesn't have to be boring or painful (I had a blast! ), but you won't understand much and it will take a long time to learn new things. I remember spending up to 8 hours every day during the first 3 months. Nowadays I hardly study more than 2 hours (not including reviews) and still make great progress.
It's not a linear process, it gets easier. Keep this in your head during the beginner-phase - it'll pay off later

Accent:
I tried to write about how to develop good pronunciation in a language, but then I figured it would be so much easier to just make a video about it. I rarely speak English nowadays, so I'm pretty rusty, but if you're interested in the topic, please take a look and tell what you think

All in all - I really don't feel that I've been studying in a very different way compared to all the other hardworking guys on this forum. I've been studying hard every day, kept on doing it, and had fun during the process. I always focus on 「doing stuff」 instead of 「thinking about how it should be done」. New language learning books, games, software, methods... all that stuff is good, but look at it this way:
A friend of mine owns over 20 guitars, a lot of amps and all kinds of DVDs, books etc.
His skills? REALLY bad.
Another friend of mine rents a violin. He owns a couple of CDs and two instruction books given to him by his teacher.
When I heard him play I cried. It was just amazing.

There you have it. Some random thoughts about language learning, music and life in general. Please ask me if you have any questions. Like I said, I'm a student, just like you guys. All I know is based on what worked for me and what didn't.
I hope this can be of some sort of help or inspiration, but if it's not... then, well, I tried

I feel ripped off--you look nothing like your avatar.

Nice post!

hey Zorlee!

Great post!!!

i really love the comparison with music about the melodies of a language... it really is spot on i think!!!

p.s. wtf!?! i listened to Hold meg, se meg... すばらしい！！ another thing you've become amazing at in such a short time!!!

btw, my new cat also loves it... i played it twice & she came into the room to listen both times.

Glad you did it! Your video, while interesting to follow, was rather difficult to understand.

And here are my questions:
What was it that you don't like?
How did you work with Kanzen Master?
How long has it taken you to finish L1 and L2 of KO2001?
How many hours per day have you been working on it?
How was your success / fail rate?

Why don't you have long hair, a beard, and pale face? j/k

@Norwegian guy, dude, you are amazing. Congrats and hope you keep getting better. Unfortunately your post is almost useless to me, I mean, everything you have described is not groundbreaking or eye-opener, basically it's the same advice from most people here or wherever that just or long-ago, reached that level in which they can already produce effective Japanese when their mouths open.

Don't get me wrong, I think you are genius, but after reading your post I am like, "um, alright, let's get back to whatever I was already doing to learn Japanese". You said "After that, I worked REALLY hard on the KO2001 books and finished inputting them into Anki within a couple of months." Maybe this is it? I don't know.

***

BTW, sorry I missed it when someone explained it, but do I exactly get from KO2001 if I already finished Kanji from RTK? And their site lists so many products, so hard to choose what you want/need. So 1998.

Love that video. Thanks.

mmhorii: I'm sorry! Please check out 上原ひろみ on youtube - her music is awesome!

Icecream: Long time no see! Thank you so much! I'd forgotten about that video, haha! =) How are you these days? I'm glad you've gotten a new cat - say hello from me

Nagareboshi: Sorry about that. The video was shot in one take, and I didn't have a script or anything, so I guess it got a bit messy. Regarding your questions:

What was it that you don't like?
Ehm... What? If you're talking about the video, then I guess it goes something like this:
In the beginning, when you don't know the natural intonation of the words / sentences, speak robot-ish + listen a lot. Don't speak with a lot of expression / ups-and-downs in the beginning - you're basically using your native language's intonation while speaking a foreign language. This will make you sound very unnatural, and you won't be understood very well.

How did you work with Kanzen Master?
I input all the sentences and highlighted the grammar. If I could understand it, I passed it. However, I work on N1 grammar nowadays, and I find close deletion much more efficient and would really recommend it. F.ex:
Question: この講義は専攻の「いかん...かかわらず」、全員受けてください。
Answer: この講義は専攻の「いかんにかかわらず」、全員受けてください。
You pass it if you understand the grammar point + can insert the missing parts.

How long has it taken you to finish L1 and L2 of KO2001?
With L1 and L2, I guess you mean book 1 and 2, right? I guess it took me a total of 1-2 months. I don't remember clearly, but according to one of my old posts (I had to look around to find it):
"I struggled in the beginning, but when I got up to frame 130-ish I got in a groove. From the 15th of September till now I´ve been doing 100 sentences a day, finishing book 2 in 15 days. (Blackmacros remains king! smile) It´s been tiring, but I was really motivated by the fast results!"

How many hours per day have you been working on it?
KO2001 or Japanese in general?
When I studied using KO2001 I just wanted to get through it, so I spent around 8 hours + a day including reviews.
Japanese in general - everywhere from 2-5 hours a day, including reviews.

How was your success / fail rate?
I really don't remember, because I never really focused on success / fail rate in Anki, but I just checked my decks now, and it's everywhere from 86-92% (mature cards).

bcrAn: I completely agree. It's nothing new! I told people to "not expect magic", because it's nothing special. But people wanted me to write about it, so I did
About the KO2001 books, check out their website: http://www.coscom.co.jp/ebook/e-2001kanji.html

How did you pick up all the readings so fast?

Finding time for 8 hours a day is not impossible if you kill everything else in your life besides work, which I don't mind doing, the problem is how to effectively use those 8 hours, I think that's harder than learning Japanese in itself.

I wouldn't recommend killing everything else in your life besides work
I was studying at a university at the time, and had a LOT of spare time. But you can do amazing things with only 1-2 hours a day.
If you're using Anki, I'd really recommend not doing all the reviews at the same time. Review, say 50 cards, then add 10, then review another 50 etc.
This will make things go faster, and you won't burn out

About the readings - it's REALLY hard in the beginning, but it gets easier. I remember spending 1-2 hours on only a couple (!) of sentences in the beginning, but after a while it got easier. A lot easier

Thanks

So you reached N1 level in ~3 years. Wow.

Zorlee Wrote:Nagareboshi: Sorry about that. The video was shot in one take, and I didn't have a script or anything, so I guess it got a bit messy. Regarding your questions:

What was it that you don't like?
Ehm... What? If you're talking about the video, then I guess it goes something like this:
In the beginning, when you don't know the natural intonation of the words / sentences, speak robot-ish + listen a lot. Don't speak with a lot of expression / ups-and-downs in the beginning - you're basically using your native language's intonation while speaking a foreign language. This will make you sound very unnatural, and you won't be understood very well.

No need to be! Great video, and a plus that it is not scripted. We have a saying here in Austria: "Einfach reden wie einem der Schnabel gewachsen ist." I don't know if this is an accurate translation, but "Just say what you have on your mind without further thinking" comes close to it. The only difficulty I had was to undestand what you were talking about for the first couple of minutes. Then it became clear, when you started comparing the sound of language to music, very interesting analogy.

Zorlee Wrote:How long has it taken you to finish L1 and L2 of KO2001?
With L1 and L2, I guess you mean book 1 and 2, right? I guess it took me a total of 1-2 months. I don't remember clearly, but according to one of my old posts (I had to look around to find it):
"I struggled in the beginning, but when I got up to frame 130-ish I got in a groove. From the 15th of September till now I´ve been doing 100 sentences a day, finishing book 2 in 15 days. (Blackmacros remains king! smile) It´s been tiring, but I was really motivated by the fast results!"

Impressive! I mean both in this time, is incredible! The reason why I call it Levels is because I have the Audio Book, and on the frontpage it says "Level 1, Level 2, Level 3," and there is also Level 4 now. But that is a different story.

Zorlee Wrote:How many hours per day have you been working on it?
KO2001 or Japanese in general?
When I studied using KO2001 I just wanted to get through it, so I spent around 8 hours + a day including reviews.
Japanese in general - everywhere from 2-5 hours a day, including reviews.

I know what you mean. It is sort of like a second RTK. And I really only meant to ask how long per day you've been working with KO.

Zorlee Wrote:I told people to "not expect magic", because it's nothing special.

Inspiration is like magic, a wonderful thing, when you are able to find it. So, thank you for answering my questions.

bcrAn Wrote:Thanks

So you reached N1 level in ~3 years. Wow.

I don't know if I'm missing something, but didn't he say he started in August 2009? That would 2 years. Now, he does say that he started Rtk earlier, so we don't know when he actually started. He also spent 10 months in Japan out of the 24 during which he studied, so this a significant detail.

Your video could be useful to some, but I encourage you to reorganize it and record it again. As it is, it's all over the place and your examples are rather unclear. The musical notes you give after もし、例えばな have nothing to do with what you just said.

I do have a question for you though. I think you'd agree that you are rather apt at copying language rhythmic patterns. The most difficult aspect of Japanese pronunciation is no doubt pitch accent, imho. You had the opportunity of being exposed to Japanese all day for 10 months straight, but how much of the pitch accent would you have learned had you not had this opportunity?

I don't want to derail the thread, but you also play the ocarina ;O;

AlexandreC Wrote:I do have a question for you though. I think you'd agree that you are rather apt at copying language rhythmic patterns. The most difficult aspect of Japanese pronunciation is no doubt pitch accent, imho. You had the opportunity of being exposed to Japanese all day for 10 months straight, but how much of the pitch accent would you have learned had you not had this opportunity?

Living in Japan really helped my pronunciation, there's no doubt about that. But I think you can get really, really good without ever going to Japan (Mezbup did this! He kicks ass at Japanese, and went on his first trip to Japan AFTER doing N1).
The biggest advantage of living in Japan for me was that it really helped my listening comprehension. Listening to podcasts all day is great, but when you're in a conversation you're expected to answer back. You always have to focus and if you don't understand what's being said you're screwed.

@Zorlee, I'm glad you efforts have paid off and you've enjoyed the ride! Your video, with the sound examples and gestures, gets the points across much more effectively than text would have. Nice of you to take the time when asked to share your views.

I'm really curious about the language/music/brain connections. Anyone sharing this interest might enjoy the books _This is Your Brain on Music_ and _Musicophilia_.

@Alexandre. My understanding is that difficulty of pitch and rhythm has a lot to do with the individual and the influence of L1 (in addition to age and input.) Individuals vary in their ability to listen and mimic. An eg of L1 influence is a learner being less likely to notice differences in sound duration if their L1 doesn't use such distinctions for meaning. And it's not uncommon for learners (regardless of L1) to have some trouble perceiving and/or producing Japanese long vowels and double consonants correctly or to otherwise vary duration unnaturally.

Good to hear more stories of people succeeding with learning Japanese, keep up the good work! I do remember the first few months of learning Japanese was so hard but I like how you mentioned how you didn't use any new methods, all the methods are pretty much the same as the people use on this forum.

Zorlee-
I'm a musician as well and I think I get what you mean when you liken language to music. I think the same thing every time I hear someone using a perfectly natural Japanese sentence with a perfectly unnatural (for Japanese) American rhythm. In fact, one of the reasons I chose to study Japanese was because I liked the sound and the rhythm of the language and I focused hard on accent in the beginning to assure that I didn't make many of those mistakes myself.

I also share the "forget method, do work" idea you seem to have. I studied for a year at uni and got sick of it- then stole inspiration from here and there and worked hard for 2 years to make Japanese a part of myself, rather than to insistently ask it (Japanese) how I should learn and why it makes sense as it does. I then took N1 as my first JLPT experience, expecting (and, as I later learned, succeeding to obtain) the equivalent of an A or B- after all, if you've made Japanese a part of yourself then N1 is just what you experience regularly, right? Native Japanese. But that, apparently, is not the norm (I didn't know this) and people who I thought knew just as much as me, upon asking about their test results, failed or made barely-passing grades. There's plenty of people just bad at taking tests but that doesn't include *everyone* I know.. (I hope). It turns out that many of them got caught up on method, or on the intricate workings of Japanese, rather than using and taking Japanese into themselves as a natural process. Seeing this, I feel that the problem is that a focus on method can also lead to a "studying about studying" mindset which can further lead to a "studying about Japanese" mindset and it's all downhill from there. Why aren't we making A's and B's on language proficiency tests? Why can we pass with just over 50%? After all, the JLPT N1 simply says "Congratulations, you can compete with middle school graduates." - How do I calculate 50% of a middle school graduate and why is that important?
Knowledge about Japanese doesn't seem to be helping most of us.

That was more long-winded and mildly abrasive than I meant it to be..
Anyway, I like that the gist of your post is "Don't focus on method, we all know what to do, focus on effort."
I would reword it as "Don't worry about how you study Japanese, worry about whether or not you're successfully making it a part of yourself."
It's not what you know, it's what you've experienced?

「習うより慣れよ」

That sounds good, and I'm happy that you have worked consistently hard to get to where you are!

I'm a musician and I often hear that supposedly musicians are good at getting accents right. Could be true though. After all, we are the people who are always listening - and always communicating with sound...

About your method - which seems to look like everybody's method (i.e. "normal") - the pianist Horowitz was famous for having better octaves than everybody else, but when someone heard him practising them, he said "he just practises them the same as everybody else"!

So I wonder what the key thing is that makes people progress. Certainly it is: Will, wanting, fun, also organisation, system (to some extent), and plenty of material to practise with. That's what I think. Maybe though, there is some magic ingredient too?

Well done!

Zorlee Wrote:mmhorii: I'm sorry! Please check out 上原ひろみ on youtube - her music is awesome!

She should be a Living National Treasure of Japan--too bad they don't give those to jazz musicians. Monster chops!

Where can you find subs for variety shows? For example, I really like Shabekuri 007 so I'd love to mine that.

Thanks for sharing your story

Zorlee Wrote:- September 2010 - June 2011 - Worked as a volunteer in Japan. Did not study much (added around 4-5000 words during that year), but my friends were all Japanese.

This is the key imo, and what makes your study 'method' different to others on the forum.

caivano Wrote:Thanks for sharing your story

Zorlee Wrote:- September 2010 - June 2011 - Worked as a volunteer in Japan. Did not study much (added around 4-5000 words during that year), but my friends were all Japanese.

This is the key imo, and what makes your study 'method' different to others on the forum.

Exactly. Almost half of your learning time was spent in Japan. I don't mean to diminish your accomplishment, but your stay has a lot more weight than the rest of your method.

@zorlee:

Another musician here ;-) Seems this forum is populated by musikants, atomic physicists, computer scientists and the occasional mortician... And all variations/combinations thereof.

I was just curious about your volunteering experience in Japan, which I think was the key to your impressive progress.

Could you please elaborate on that experience, namely what you were doing, what agency brought you there, and how were you able to pay for food and lodging? Or perhaps they were taking care of that in exchange for your work?

louischa Wrote:Could you please elaborate on that experience, namely what you were doing, what agency brought you there, and how were you able to pay for food and lodging? Or perhaps they were taking care of that in exchange for your work?

+1

I don't think the stay diminishes anything, volunteering in a foreign country for 10 months is an accomplishment in itself.

i'm sure Zorlee became even more awesome while he was in Japan, but i gotta say, he was definately already awesome before he left!!!

If you check out his Lang-8 from around that time you'll find zillions of natives complimenting him, and you can read how natural he sounded for himself.

So, i dunno if the key is going to Japan, though that's bound to have helped his speaking... i think most of it is just consistent hard work, like he says...