NightSky Wrote:I think particularly after 10k and when you have been cramming vocab a while, there aren't any other vocabulary sources out there anymore since everything else is aimed at the less advanced learner. Someone with that level of vocabulary is expected to learn by themselves, as they should be able to do of course. But what I think it also means is that it actually becomes really difficult to spend too much time in Anki anyway, because it actually becomes difficult *finding* enough new vocabulary to cram into it every day to keep your reviews nearly as high. Which is a good thing for sure!

After finishing Core 10k, I took a few months break from reviewing new vocabulary. From reading a good number of light novels and using yomichan/rikaichan I was able to amass another 5000 words. I just about finished going through about 1,000 of those. Those programs make it a lot easier to add vocabulary. Though I agree that if you don't have a stored up database of words, you have to keep reading at a fast pace to keep at a good anki rate (I like to do 33 new words a day.)

PotbellyPig Wrote:

NightSky Wrote:I think particularly after 10k and when you have been cramming vocab a while, there aren't any other vocabulary sources out there anymore since everything else is aimed at the less advanced learner. Someone with that level of vocabulary is expected to learn by themselves, as they should be able to do of course. But what I think it also means is that it actually becomes really difficult to spend too much time in Anki anyway, because it actually becomes difficult *finding* enough new vocabulary to cram into it every day to keep your reviews nearly as high. Which is a good thing for sure!

After finishing Core 10k, I took a few months break from reviewing new vocabulary. From reading a good number of light novels and using yomichan/rikaichan I was able to amass another 5000 words. I just about finished going through about 1,000 of those. Those programs make it a lot easier to add vocabulary. Though I agree that if you don't have a stored up database of words, you have to keep reading at a fast pace to keep at a good anki rate (I like to do 33 new words a day.)

Where did you find light novels you could read using rikaichan? I've never come across many good books I could easily read in a webpage.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated =)

NightSky Wrote:

PotbellyPig Wrote:

NightSky Wrote:I think particularly after 10k and when you have been cramming vocab a while, there aren't any other vocabulary sources out there anymore since everything else is aimed at the less advanced learner. Someone with that level of vocabulary is expected to learn by themselves, as they should be able to do of course. But what I think it also means is that it actually becomes really difficult to spend too much time in Anki anyway, because it actually becomes difficult *finding* enough new vocabulary to cram into it every day to keep your reviews nearly as high. Which is a good thing for sure!

After finishing Core 10k, I took a few months break from reviewing new vocabulary. From reading a good number of light novels and using yomichan/rikaichan I was able to amass another 5000 words. I just about finished going through about 1,000 of those. Those programs make it a lot easier to add vocabulary. Though I agree that if you don't have a stored up database of words, you have to keep reading at a fast pace to keep at a good anki rate (I like to do 33 new words a day.)

Where did you find light novels you could read using rikaichan? I've never come across many good books I could easily read in a webpage.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated =)

Well you can sometims find .txt files on the internet for a series but that can be rare and only for some popular series. And it is book piracy if that is a concern. The more work intensive methd is to get the images of the pages. They are easy to find on the internet but is again piracy. I, a lot of times, import the light novels, break the spine and scan them using a Fuji Scansnap sheet scanner. You can produce good images this way. You want decent images because I OCR them afterwords using Real Reader Lite 8.0 (free to try for 2 weeks and about $30 for an electronic key afterwards). You can use images from the internet if they are decent quality. You can here and there get a wrong character interpreted but I think it works well. I create the txt file and then load it into yomichan/rikasama. It takes a little work to OCR the pages but it's worth it in the end because you can easily create anki cards now without even thinking about it.

Done. Started in the spring of this year at around 5 cards a day, slowly increasing to my final speed of 35/day (thanks goes to Mezbup for the number and motivation). Cards are done in recognition mode, reading the sentences aloud.

I'll borrow a bit of uisukii's format for the rest of the post.

[Core deck used]
Updated Core 6k deck uploaded by frony0

[primary textbooks/grammar resources used]
- Remembering the Kanji 1 & 3
- Genki 1 & 2
- An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese
- 中級から上級への日本語 ("Authentic Japanese" from Japan Times)
- Japanese Core Words and Phrases (from Kodansha)

[how it has improved your Japanese]
Overall it's improved my Japanese media consumption. Before starting Core, my vocab was somewhere between 1,000-2,000. I felt I was able to do a lot with the little I knew, now I feel even more so. To list a few highlights:

News Web Easy is officially easy:
I have to be careful here because I recall one or two accounts of people who still had trouble comprehending News Web Easy after completing Core 6k. I think it's just a matter of getting in there and reading it. I've been reading it daily since last December. Three articles a day. I've got to thank thurd (if he's still lurking these forums) for helping me get into the habit with his 1-month challenge. Most articles I find myself mostly only using Rikaichan on city names, real names, or the occasional non-Core word. On Sundays (when NHK Easy has no new articles), I read the normal NHK news feed. I think from here on out I'll switch to reading the normal feed daily as I feel it will be more beneficial at this point.

Video Games are playable:
Of course, gaming in Japanese can be done a lot sooner. I've been doing 98% of my gaming in Japanese since completing RTK last summer. What I really mean is that gaming has become a lot more enjoyable, due to text-heavy games taking a lot less effort to play than before.

Some games I'm playing lately include Pokemon Yellow and Brave Fencer Musashiden (for my nostalgia gaming fix). I've also been playing some newer games like 不思議の国の冒険酒場　(Adventure Bar of Wonderland--official translation of the title). While there's still a lot that flies over my head, I understand a lot as well, and definitely understand more than enough to have fun, which is the point I'm trying to make here.

Other recent gaming "successes" include the demos of Dream C Club (thanks PS Plus!) and Disorder 6. I felt like I understood quite a bit of both games (especially Dream C Club), and would like to tackle the full versions of both someday (hopefully with a way higher vocab count).

Online reading material is easier to comprehend:
I do a lot of blog reading on the phone when I'm out of the house. Gigazine probably gets the most read time during these moments. Nowadays I can crunch through multiple articles (I only read the RSS previews in Feedly) in a short amount of time. One thing I like to do is to make a game out of how many blog articles I can read from Feedly while I'm stuck in a phone call at work.

Other forms of media/listening comprehension:
I've been listening to Japanese music for a pretty long time. A little over a decade at this point. I'm not at the point of understanding songs on the first listen yet, but every now and then an entire line or chorus can be found entering the ears and being understood perfectly. With a lyric sheet and a bit of pondering, songs become a lot more comprehensible (decent translation is still way out of my level, though).

At this point I still haven't plunged completely into the world of Manga and Light Novels (or full novels). My current experience is with the first two volumes of Yotsubato (with help from the Living Japanese reading pack). Every now and then I'll poke my head in to test the waters with a page or two of an unread manga. With cb's new OCR Manga Reader out for Android now I hope to at least increase my manga reading in the future.

Listening comprehension overall is still fuzzy. I'll go between moments of understanding everything, understanding nothing, or just picking out key words. Reading is a lot easier because I can take my time and think about the sentence. That luxury is usually lost when it comes to listening. For now I'm just going to keep on listening daily, maybe eventually employing some of the tricks I've seen in other threads (massive repetition, subs2srs, etc.)

[future Japanese study plans/goals]
First on the to-do list is to take a well-earned week off from new Anki cards. As for future study, I've got Core 10k imported and ready to go. Knowing that it won't take that long to complete makes it the logical next step for me. The Grammar workbooks for N2 and N1 of 完全マスター (JLPT Kanzen Master) are in the mail right now. I might do them alongside 10k, or maybe afterward.

I'll post again in a few months when I'm done with Core 10k. For now I'll just spend a few days enjoying Japanese... and maybe getting a bit of sleep (can never get too much of that).

I finished core 2k!

Well, core 2k review, actually. It took me exactly 2 weeks, of course there was a lot I already knew very well in it but I have to admit I had forgotten more than I would have thought. That's what happens when you stop studying for a few years... ^^"

Well, now core 6k. I never quite finished it completely and a lot of what I saw of it I'm sure I've quite thoroughly forgotten. So I most likely won't be able to continue doing 1000 words a week

[RawToast]

Quote:Done. Started in the spring of this year

Quote:Well, core 2k review, actually. It took me exactly 2 weeks

Those are both very, very fast!

hirata Wrote:Done. Started in the spring of this year at around 5 cards a day, slowly increasing to my final speed of 35/day (thanks goes to Mezbup for the number and motivation).

Giving that method a go myself at the moment - 30/day (typically 8/day) for one step of Nukemarine's guide. I am sure the reviews would kill me if I tried it for the rest of http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=10466

Congratulations Hirata & Codexus!

I find it amusing how at least 3 people on this thread have already credited Mezbup for that thread being some good motivation. Well... I guess it IS Motivation (1)101(1)

That was a really terrible, obtuse joke
(Look at the thread url's ID number)

I am the worst person.

5200 out of Core 6k.
Ah, finishing it is going to take me more time than expected :/

Did you hit a snag, Pmnox?

zurisu Wrote:Did you hit a snag, Pmnox?

I've been having trouble keeping up with 600-700 reviews a day :/

Now it's 5300/6000 xD

I believe in you! Hang in there!!!

Finished 2K last Friday, and I started in June. I added on average 15/20 words per day, production. I could have finished quicker but was splitting time with Grammar resources and only could dedicate more time to it once I hit 1000 or so.

At this speed my reviews averaged about ~60 a day, my retention in general being around the 90% mark, which I am satisfied with.

I started studying in general roughly a year ago so this was a nice milestone to hit (did RTK1, Genki 1+2, ~half of Tae Kim). I'll have our first kid to worry about next month too and have no idea how much time I will be able to study.

This puts me at about N4. I have yet to seriously sit down with a manga or other significant amount of native material. I feel in general that it won't be very productive at this stage. At some point I will have to stop adding new cards and just do it, as in general the amount of understanding I am adding with just Anki has diminishing returns. I'm expecting that to be around ~4K and completing Tae Kim.

Grammar right now is probably my weakest point, as more complex sentences with multiple clauses really fly over my head. Not having reading material in any meaningful amount that is interesting, challenging, but doable at this stage is......frustrating. Core sentences are a piece of cake, but not really representative. I intend to focus on Grammar (wrapping up essential/special Tae Kim and JTMW) for the next few weeks. Will get back on Core once I can, or once my addiction to add new words each day takes it's toll, whichever happens first.

[RawToast]

zurisu Wrote:I find it amusing how at least 3 people on this thread have already credited Mezbup for that thread being some good motivation. Well... I guess it IS Motivation (1)101(1)

I am the worst person.

親父ギャグ

Quote:しかし - however

I would recommend adding this to anki ASAP for anyone thinking of reading NHK News Easy. It's not in Core and Rikaisama doesn't rate it as very common, but I found it to be in the majority of articles.

RawToast Wrote:

Quote:しかし - however

I would recommend adding this to anki ASAP for anyone thinking of reading anything ever.

FTFY. 232 million results on google.

RawToast Wrote:

Quote:しかし - however

I would recommend adding this to anki ASAP for anyone thinking of reading NHK News Easy. It's not in Core and Rikaisama doesn't rate it as very common, but I found it to be in the majority of articles.

It's not? Wow. Without putting しかし into an SRS system, I must have heard and it and read it hundreds of times by now. Seems odd that it isn't part of the Core list.

Some may argue it is more Grammar than vocab hence the exclusion.

Fair enough. It's all words to me, whether they serve as a grammatical function with a special label or not. Though I can understand (now that you've pointed it out) why it would appear in something like the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series and not the Core common words list.

zurisu Wrote:I believe in you! Hang in there!!!

Thanks man. The end is near. 380 words left xD 5620 / 6000 xD

Does everyone have 6000 cards in their core6k deck? Mine has 5999. Although this probably isn't the case, I like to think that しかし is the missing card.

I just passed 4000/6000 and it feels good. I have a feeling that the last 1/3 will be the easiest!

AHEM, pmnox, I think it's time you post here again, ね!

blueshift Wrote:Does everyone have 6000 cards in their core6k deck? Mine has 5999. Although this probably isn't the case, I like to think that しかし is the missing card.

I just passed 4000/6000 and it feels good. I have a feeling that the last 1/3 will be the easiest!

I used Nukemarine's deck and only had 5,999 as well. しかし、 that is a fine headcanon. I'm glad we're creating Anki deck-based headcanons. This is a wonderful age we live in.

Congrats on your success so far! Keep going!!

blueshift Wrote:Does everyone have 6000 cards in their core6k deck? Mine has 5999.

zurisu Wrote:I used Nukemarine's deck and only had 5,999 as well.

Yeah, it's missing the last card, as frony0 pointed out and Nukemarine confirmed. This is the card that's missing:

Code:

Vocabulary_Kanji = 生ずる
Vocabulary_Furigana = 生[しょう]ずる
    Vocabulary_Kana = しょうずる
Vocabulary_English = arise, occur
   Vocabulary_Audio = [sound:41b786da0c235b88ecb3cc7e97b68a7d.mp3]
     Vocabulary_Pos = Verb
            Caution =
         Expression = 想定外の問題が<b>生じた</b>の。
            Reading = 想定外[そうてい がい]の 問題[もんだい]が <b>生[しょう]じた</b> の。
      Sentence_Kana = そうてい がい の もんだい が <b>しょうじた </b>の。
   Sentence_English = An unexpected problem arose.
    Sentence_Clozed = 想定外[そうてい がい]の 問題[もんだい]が<b>（　）</b> の。
     Sentence_Audio = [sound:31a25150179f3c257fda2ed74a6a26a5.mp3]
     Sentence_Image =
              Notes = Core 6000 Step 12 - 500b
         Core_Index = 6000
Optimized_VocIndex = N/A
Optimized_SentIndex = N/A

I finished Core2k today. I also started it today. 1671 mature cards (easy interval: 60 days), 343 young+learn. 162 minutes studied (average for days studied: 163 minutes/day), 3011 reviews so far, average answer time 3.2s.

Looks like that one day 60 days from now is gonna be fun.

Haych Wrote:Looks like that one day 60 days from now is gonna be fun.

Anki balances them. Only 188 reviews on that day; 204 on day 64 is the highest (other than tomorrow).

Vempele Wrote:I finished Core2k today. I also started it today. 1671 mature cards (easy interval: 60 days), 343 young+learn. 162 minutes studied (average for days studied: 163 minutes/day), 3011 reviews so far, average answer time 3.2s.

How can they become mature in a single day?