Cool. Thanks everyone. Looking at dropping out of something like Silverspoon halfway through was a bit daunting because when it's all laid out in a programme like that, and you're not figuring out how to make it work, it's hard to imagine being able to put a plan together on your own.

egoplant: Overthinking methods. Yes. Totally agree. Right now I'm very much inclined to use resources that don't cost an inordinate amount of money, and that I've never heard anything bad about: Tae Kim is a good start.

Ok I'll get to it. If this doesn't work I'll assume I have brain damage and maybe just take up kanji calligraphy, seeing as I'm pretty damn good at writing them now after doing five years of reps. It's quite therapeutic when you get the stroke orders correct, as you've probably all realised.

Just out of curiosity, what exactly does the AJATT plan entail? Isn't a pretty straightforward method? Isn't the point of it that you aren't supposed to use a plan?

egoplant Wrote:Just out of curiosity, what exactly does the AJATT plan entail? Isn't a pretty straightforward method? Isn't the point of it that you aren't supposed to use a plan?

It's basically the content of the site atomised. It just gives you stuff to do for which you get points and level up. It removes the need to wonder what you should be doing, what's best to be doing at any given stage. It basically absolves responsibility for your progress to the system.

It appealed to me because I was always second-guessing myself as to how to study. And I'm sure it works very well for some people, even me if I actually finished it, but right now I'm not feeling my progress justifies the cost.

As it says, repeatedly all over AJATT, you don't need any of the stuff he sells. But if you want someone to just tell you what to do (e.g. do 90 seconds of kanji reps, do 3 minutes of sentence reps, start a podcast) then it does exactly that.

egoplant Wrote:EDIT: I should also mention that you should read for comprehension in my opinion, as in try to comprehend every single sentence. Every character is put there for a reason, they are not random, and they all have meaning (unless it is someone screaming or something). I think for me at least that was one of the things that made the biggest impact on my reading. Everything has meaning. Don't just skip a sentence because you get the gist of it because you know a couple nouns, try and actually fully comprehend all of the grammar being used. It takes a while at first, but it will help in the long run instead of just ignoring it. You can use the example sentence search on jisho and alc to search for similar grammar patterns with English translations if you get stuck.

I always wonder about this. Its the opposite of what I think so called experts like Krashen say. It seems like going through stages of increasing understanding might actually be better.

I think there's a big difference not getting to 100% comprehension because there's grammar you don't understand and not getting to 100% comprehension because there's a word you don't understand. If the sentence is "The horse was eaten by Peter," you definitely don't want to misunderstand it as "The horse ate Peter" -- but if the horse ate こそう and you don't know what that is, well, you can just sort of slot it in the category of "things that horses eat" and move on. I suspect Krashen would say that if you're running into a situation where you're not understanding what you're reading because of grammar, you need to read something easier, but if it's because of vocabulary then you're fine -- as long as the vocabulary gap is fairly small.

The point of extensive reading is that if you can read something and understand 95% of it, then you might still need to look up two or three words a page to get to 100% -- and at that point, your time is better spend just *reading* than trying to get to 100%. (This does not necessarily apply if you are reading text online where you can get the dictionary definition simply by mousing over the word -- but for print books, even if you've got an electronic dictionary, the lookup can take you out of the flow of what you're reading.)

I dont think Krashen ever made a distinction between grammar and vocab with respect to comprehensibility.

For me I would look up the words I dont know because I dont see how else you are going to learn them but the details of grammar seem like something you can pick it up from context.

AJATT isn't just about listening to a bunch of Japanese all the time and magically understanding the language people... the most important part of AJATT is the sentences/MDCs (whichever you wanna do), and actively trying to understand EVERY word in the sentence whilst understanding the sentences as a whole. Yeah it's supposed to be fun, but that doesn't mean you're not going to have to think critically and try to discern things that may not make sense at first...

I'm curious, how did things turn out a month later..did you ever start to get more motivated?

After reading through these posts there is one thing that wasnt mentioned much that I think may or may not be helpful.

If you can afford it, you might benefit from formal study in the form of Japanese classes such as those at a local university (or private tutoring if classes arent your thing). I've read AJATT and while I agree with a lot of what he says, and the core philosophy of the site, I never was quite on board with his strong dislike for classes. I've been taking Japanese for the past year and a half at college and while I do wish at times things went faster, overall it has been an enjoyable experience. The first semester in particular was key, introducing the basics in a way that really stuck with me, and giving me a solid foundation in basic grammar and pronunciation, something that I felt was invaluable, and that it seemed like you didn't do as much studying with. After the first semester I felt that there was a bit less value to it, but I still feel like it's worth my time. It also gives a bit more structure to my studies, something it seems like you didnt have. I have a bit of the same issue, I can't commit to AJATT full time, so structure really helps me. Class forces me to commit about an hour or so of active studying per day, no matter what. At this point, I can understand the gist of anime without subs (so I might not get what the long monologues are about, but the shorter conversations I can probably understand).
That being said, it does cost money, which is something you said you didnt want to spend much of. But still, at least a semester might benefit you.

One key thing about the classes, it needs to be fun. I took Latin in high school and it bored me to exhaustion (I actually had fun trying to wake up my neighbor who would never stay awake past 5 minutes, it was guaranteed that neither of us were paying attention). But my classes in college are fun, the students are engaged, and the teachers are energetic, want to help us, and are all native speakers. It's a joy at the end of the day to go to my Japanese class, and homework rarely feels like too much of a chore (not ideal, but it's better than Physics, and I can often feel things sinking in after the exercises. I believe that AJATT was against the type of boring and useless classes, but I don't think that he ever tried with more entertaining classes.

3 more things:
1) Get a good electronic dictionary, preferably one that can go on a mobile device like an ipod. I use the Midori app ($5-$10 in the itunes store) and it's been invaluable for quick look up and doesnt require me to switch to another tab and wait for the page to load, it's instantaneous and in my opinion decent for a dictionary.
2) http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/ <== This is a site that I found on another post a few days ago, from what I can see it's like a kids version of NHK news and most of the kanji are with furigana. Combined with a good dictionary app and you can probably get the gist of the news article.
3) Subs, while a bit of a crutch later on, can be fairly useful in the beginning. There are a bunch of words that I learned the approximate meaning for because I kept hearing them and finally matched them to the sub I saw. It's not perfect, but can be a useful way to acquire vocab if you just don't get any of it. Plus, I tend to enjoy media more when I actually get what's going on

To me at this point, I know I don't have enough vocab to completely understand what's going on like I do with English (i'm also still going through RTK 1, so I'm putting a fair amount of energy into that at the moment). But I'm often satisfied with understanding the gist of what's going on the conversation, after all communication of ideas is a key bit of language. If I can understand that my Japanese speaking friends "A" and "B" had a great time in New York last week, then that gives me a little burst of joy as I know what they are talking about...that's more than I could probably say for myself a few months ago. I get even more excited when I can understand exactly what they are saying. I'm not yet satisfied with my language ability, but I'm more or less happy with where I am now. And I do think that a good language class might be worth your time if only to just give you a solid foundation to build on.

**One last thing, I promise. Take a look at this books:
Japanese the Manga Way- sort of textbookish, using manga to teach you. It's pretty good at teaching stuff that some of the more formal textbooks like Genki sort of gloss over, such as the type of informal language you might see more in Manga
A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (and intermediate and advanced when the time comes)- a pretty decent reference book that gets recommended a lot
and finally some sort of book devoted to particles, which could also be used as a reference book- I got All About Particles:A Handbook of Japanese Function Words , havent started looking through it yet, but something to explain all the particles might be helpful instead of trying to puzzle them out yourself

mc962 thanks for that advice. I haven't checked this thread for a while as you can see. Apologies.

In answer to your points; I'm not sure I'm more motivated at the moment, but I am less demotivated, if that makes sense. Doing stuff in Japanese is not actually a pain as it was becoming when I was doing SilverSpoon and RTK reps every day. When I do Japanese now it's because I want to, not because some web page is telling me I have to. I know that is how I should have been doing SilverSpoon all along, and when there were tasks that I didn't like I should have just subbed them out for something similar but more appealing, but that's not how it worked out for me. Also five years of RTK reps was really more of a chore than anything. Whenever I missed a day for travel or whatever, knowing that I'd have over 100 to do the next day was always nagging away. At one point I had over 1,000 reps to do, and I did get it back to zero, but overall as I felt like I was forgetting them as fast as I remembered them it all felt like wasted effort. So stopping that has been a breath of fresh air.

Instead I've been slowly working through Tae Kim's Grammar Guide. It's great. Each page is short, self-contained lesson. I read the explanation once, don't worry too much about remembering it and the make flashcards in Surusu with all the example sentences and conversations. Then I review the cards. By the time I've got through the whole thing I'll have a huge number of new cards.

I have at iPhone dictionary called 'imiwa?'. I think it used to be called 'Kotoba'. Anyway it's free and I've been using it for years. I used to have a Nintendo DS with the Japanese dictionary, the name of which I forget now. That was great, but more for advanced/native speakers. Also having to fire up the DS every time you want to look a word up is generally too slow.

I have All About Particles and have made many sentences in Surusu with examples from that. Basic Connections is another, similar book that I have used in the same way. I thought I had a dictionary of Japanese grammar, but I can't see it on the shelf right now, so I guess not. I'll see how I go after finishing Tae Kim's guide, but that's probably a good idea.

I'm wary of classes, due to past experience. If they're too slow and/or boring they are beyond useless, like your Latin class. I literally just switch off. A private tutor is probably a much better idea, so I'll look into that. Conversation exchanges have also been a waste of time for me. I spend most of the time teaching the Japanese person English, because they're invariably better at English than I am at Japanese, so it's easier for me to teach them than for them to teach me. That sounds backwards, but I did it for a few months and that was my experience. Even under the best of circumstances you have to put in two hours of time for every one hour of Japanese learning.

Apart from that I've been watching some new animes. Hajime no Ippo is amazing, Space Dandy is daft, but fairly watchable, and I need to watch a few more Hunter x Hunter to see if it's worth sticking with.

I already have NHK Easy bookmarked - I just need to actually visit more often.

My advice would be to take an extended break from studying, and just stick with listening to music and watching stuff you actually enjoy, for a while. Use English subs if you don't enjoy something without them. Try and find easy materials you actually enjoy, to read, as well.

Or at least reduce the time you spend studying to a fraction of the time you spend doing things you enjoy in Japanese.

That's kind of what I'm doing, without dropping the ball completely.