hey guys, I did a write up of something that I've been meaning to do for ages! Slowly getting round to writing up and posting my strategies I used to get fluent so I can share my wisdom with the greater community.

Anyways, this is a post about how and why people screw up learning vocab by doing it far too slow and what you can do to learn it succeed where they failed. Check it out on my site.

http://supernewsoftware.com/tenthousandwords.php

[s0apgun]

Nice post, I too have recently come to this conclusion. I've been doing 33 new vocab a day to average out to 1,000 words a month. At 2000 words right now, 6000 by june, and 10,000 before the years out. I truly hope to have the same success as you have had so thanks for the motivation. On average it takes me 60-70 minutes in Anki per day to do 33 new words and ~100 reviews.

why doesn't this website have a like button? nice post. I totally agree... I don't think I was moving fast enough in the past... now that I have time to do so in my life, I'm studying as many words and immersing as much as i can. 12hrs of japanese a day really brings your level up fast^^

Great post, mezbup.

Really puts perspective on how accessible language is with modern technology.

Motivating post!

Curious - did you ever have a hard time with the sounds? By this I mean - confusing them. I seem to do this a bit if I do a lot of words per day. I see the kanji, know what it means, but throw down a く instead of a き - or some such mix-up. I have even wondered about creating some kind of nmemonic for the Hiragana, just to anchor some of the problematic words, but not sure if this would be worth it. Mind you it doesn't happen for many words, but it is enough of an issue that I question how many I might want to take on per day. Maybe this is a challenge specific to me, or maybe others can relate (suggestions welcome of course!). Japanese just has so many words that sound alike - or close to other words. I'm wondering if doing many words per day gets one adapted to this kind of pace, and the brain compensates (?).

I am also curious - how long did you spend in your morning and evening session?

80% retention? That is pretty bad. If you put in some actual effort into reading and stuff, you shouldn't be getting something that low. I add 45~ cards per day with a retention of 95%. That would be 15.6k (16.4k) words learned in a year, and I put only 2 hours a day into studying. I didn't even learn kanji beforehand. You're putting more effort then most people, but it's still too low imo. If you learn jouyou kanji beforehand, you can easily do 100 vocabulary per day with a 90% retention rate at 2-3 hours a day of study, which is 33k (36.5k) words in a year, but you also have to figure in a few months for learning the kanji. I find it hard to believe some people don't have that much free time in a day.

[Zgarbas]

I think it's a bit unrealistic. I mean, it sounds cool and mathematically logical and all, and is ok as a goal, but once you get past a few thousand words it's not so easy to add that many new ones per day. I got core6k done in ~9 months but after that I got into a big slump because most new words were harder to memorize (either unusual readings, suddenly new kanjis, sounds were too similar to something else, sheer burnout, whatnot). Exceptions exist, such as katakana words and related words (e.g. learning 手洗い after knowing 手&洗う), but technically they don't count as separate words.
I've heard of people that went through core 10k in a year, sure, but going through 10k words and actually retaining everything, and also getting subtle differences not so much.

Also, don't use English as a comparison. English is much more vocab-heavy than other languages and I don't know how the number of common lexemes apply to Japanese. (really should get into that one day).

It's cool to have high goals, but have them too high and you're setting yourself up for disappoint.

There is also a big difference in just memorizing translations of words (which is what I assume you mean by 35 words a day) and actually learning definitions of words.

Memorizing 10,000 translations of words doesn't get you much. I've heard of a couple people that have powered through Core10k but still have trouble reading newspapers and books.

Really memorizing 10,000 words is much harder. You would be hard-pressed to do 10,000 in a year. Especially since you'll eventually be up around 400-500 reviews a day (unless you grade yourself too easy).

Quote:If you learn jouyou kanji beforehand, you can easily do 100 vocabulary per day with a 90% retention rate at 2-3 hours a day of study, which is 33k (36.5k) words in a year, but you also have to figure in a few months for learning the kanji.

Good luck with that. I'll be interested in hearing from you in a year (if you're even alive, lol).

[Zgarbas]

To be fair, he states on his site that he spent at least 4 hours per day on Japanese (and that all words were mined rather than pre-made) for 2 years.
3000+ hours would be a sufficient amount to do that many reviews and add native exposure and what not. Then again, 3000 hours doing pretty much anything in a language should be enough to get you to a good level. I wish I had that kind of dedication.

egoplant Wrote:80% retention? That is pretty bad. If you put in some actual effort into reading and stuff, you shouldn't be getting something that low. I add 45~ cards per day with a retention of 95%. That would be 15.6k (16.4k) words learned in a year, and I put only 2 hours a day into studying. I didn't even learn kanji beforehand. You're putting more effort then most people, but it's still too low imo. If you learn jouyou kanji beforehand, you can easily do 100 vocabulary per day with a 90% retention rate at 2-3 hours a day of study, which is 33k (36.5k) words in a year, but you also have to figure in a few months for learning the kanji. I find it hard to believe some people don't have that much free time in a day.

80% retention is a pretty good benchmark if you're also accounting for adding in new material. Retention naturally goes up over time through exposure in native material and Anki reps. So the more recent material is pulling the stats for the older material down a bit. I've got my Anki decks separated out a bit between new material and old material. Old material tends to get around 85-95% retention while the new material hovers around 80%. For the really old stuff, like stuff I first learned 6+ months ago, that stuff is all around 95%-100%.

Vocab also builds on itself. The more words you know the easier it becomes to learn new ones and the easier it becomes to remember the meanings of words you've learned before. It's almost like language skill happens in layers, and the newest layer doesn't solidify until there's another layer being put over the top of it. It's like stuff has to be pushed from short term memory to long term memory through learning new material.

80% should be the bare minimum for young, and 90% for mature cards. That isn't something you should aim for though. You should aim for 90% and 95% respectively. "new" cards don't really matter since people have different methods of adding them. It only starts mattering the day after you add the new cards.

partner55083777 Wrote:Good luck with that. I'll be interested in hearing from you in a year (if you're even alive, lol).

I said I add an average of 45 words per day, not 100, because I don't know the jouyou, so every 3rd word has a new kanji that I have never seen before which slows me down.


EDIT: Also while we're on the subject, what do you guys consider a word? For example are 郵便 and 郵便局 separate words?

egoplant Wrote:

partner55083777 Wrote:Good luck with that. I'll be interested in hearing from you in a year (if you're even alive, lol).

I said I add an average of 45 words per day, not 100, because I don't know the jouyou, so every 3rd word has a new kanji that I have never seen before which slows me down.

I was actually talking to the hypothetical person who would attempt 100 new words a day. That's just too much.

I actually think that even 45 words is also too much if you actually want to get anything out of those 10,000 words. I'll definitely be interested in hearing from you as well in a year. Especially if you have some quantifiable results (like if you take JLPT N1 in December).

If you have a lot of time and an iron will power, you might be able to do it. Barring that, I don't think you'll be able to keep up with 45 words a day. It would be cool if you could prove me wrong (especially if you passed N1).

Edit: You've been studying for 2 months now, right? What are you going to do when your reviews start piling up? Just spend more time studying?

I pretty much did the same thing, letting me hit 20k or so and finish most of the information theoretic component of Japanese language learning in about 2.5-3 years, which I always thank myself for. I think I did 1000 in a weekend once (not deep understanding, just rough meanings to aid in future recognition, which is all that is necessary IMO).

Too bad there's no fast track to actually sounding native in conversation... I just want to be on the same level as everyone else here (native Japaese) asap!

dizmox Wrote:I pretty much did the same thing, letting me hit 20k or so and finish most of the information theoretic component of Japanese language learning in about 2.5-3 years, which I always thank myself for. I think I did 1000 in a weekend once (not deep understanding, just rough meanings to aid in future recognition, which is all that is necessary IMO).

That's impressive. Assuming you did it all in about 1000 days, that means you added about 20 new cards a day, and you were studying on average 200-250 cards a day. Is this about right?

What did your cards look like? Did you delete easy cards?

I didn't stick to a consistent schedule... I first did core 6000 in about 4 months I think. Then I probably took a break for a while, then went through and finished learning the common words in the jdict (is this the right term?) corpus. I think for most of that part I was doing 50 words a day, but did 100 a day for a couple of weeks maybe. Probably had 200-400 reviews a day during that period, yeah. Probably learnt a few thousand words from elsewhere down the line too. Tried JLPT N1 after 1.5 years of learning Japanese and missed it by a few points, passed next time (albeit with a poor mark, since my actual ability was low then).

My cards were just the vocabulary in Kanji question -> English meaning answer (I ended up creating another deck and went through half a kanken book later for writing practice). I deleted or lost my core 6000 deck at some point, but other than that I haven't deleted cards.

It's kind of long ago so I don't remember exactly... the exact numbers aren't important anyway. Just learn as much as you have time for and complete the SRS stage of learning as soon as possible.

partner55083777 Wrote:

egoplant Wrote:

partner55083777 Wrote:Good luck with that. I'll be interested in hearing from you in a year (if you're even alive, lol).

I said I add an average of 45 words per day, not 100, because I don't know the jouyou, so every 3rd word has a new kanji that I have never seen before which slows me down.

I was actually talking to the hypothetical person who would attempt 100 new words a day. That's just too much.

I actually think that even 45 words is also too much if you actually want to get anything out of those 10,000 words. I'll definitely be interested in hearing from you as well in a year. Especially if you have some quantifiable results (like if you take JLPT N1 in December).

If you have a lot of time and an iron will power, you might be able to do it. Barring that, I don't think you'll be able to keep up with 45 words a day. It would be cool if you could prove me wrong (especially if you passed N1).

Edit: You've been studying for 2 months now, right? What are you going to do when your reviews start piling up? Just spend more time studying?

What makes you think my reviews will start piling up? I am still doing 200-300 reviews per day. At the most I would say it might reach 400, which is still not too bad.

After finishing core6k (I'm still reviewing it, I didn't delete it or what not after accomplishing it naturally) I was focusin on adding words through Rikai-sama. That was really the deal -- like this I could add 25 words a day and felt comfortable by it. There were days I could add even more, because I recognised the words I added at that day were too easy and more could be stuffed into my memory. But per average I added 25 cards. I think 35 would be a bit overkill for me, but why not trying it?

I'm reading Japanese novels, too, and the only difficulty I have is grammar and long sentences with unknown structures.

I feel like, by reading more my brain associates the sound of words more with their kanji and whenever I listen to Japanese (audio) now, I feel my brain is getting faster at the "hearing" -> "kanji" -> "meaning" converting process lol My brain is wierd I feel.

[Zgarbas]

i did 50 per day in my prime, and not all new terms were exactly new (so lots of words were marked easy the first time i saw them)... then i started getting 500+ reviews per day in addition to the new terms being actually new. then i understood why people add 20 new items per day...
same for the sentence deck. once i hit doajg i went from adding 50 per day to 10....

Nobody can ever calculate the available time of another person's life. Also, just because a person has free time, it doesn't mean they aren't completely drained out by a rough day at work etc. 35/words a day seems like a reasonable goal though. The biggest question you would have to ask yourself is if you want to be fluent in a few years or 10 years.

Zgarbas Wrote:same for the sentence deck. once i hit doajg i went from adding 50 per day to 10....

What's a "doajg"?

And adding a word to Anki is not the same as learning it. A language is much, much more than words.

Stian Wrote:

Zgarbas Wrote:same for the sentence deck. once i hit doajg i went from adding 50 per day to 10....

What's a "doajg"?

"A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar"

Rayath Wrote:"A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar"

Thank you. Looking at it now - brilliant ressource.

Stian Wrote:

Rayath Wrote:"A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar"

Thank you. Looking at it now - brilliant ressource.

Just so you know, there are three parts to it (A Dictionary Of Beginner Japanese Grammar, ~ Intermediate ~, ~ Advanced ~). These ones in English and 日本語文型辞典 in Japanese are the best books on grammar out there.

I dunno, I find a lot more than 35/day is possible even in the long run if you use a vocab deck and are quick on the reviews. I mostly go for a rough understanding and leave it to actual input to really internalize nuance, etc. Three seconds/review makes for 20 reviews/min, or about 200 in a standard 10 min Anki timebox. I also do a few things like spending way more time on initial learning now; allows me to increase retention and space my reviews out further which I'm pretty sure makes it a net win.