Hello,

i'm new here, this is a great forum with lots of helpful threads!

I just wanted to ask some of the more experienced japanese learners for some advice, as in how could I possible optimize my approach.

I learned the kana using Remember the Kana and basic grammar using the michel thomas method. I suppose it's much better than something like pimsleur because it doesn't just drill phrases but explains the basic grammar / markers to you. From what I've seen it's similar to Genki in some ways.

Right now I'm
- learning 15-20 kanji every day w/ RTK. I'm around 300 learned.
- listening to michel thomas advanced japanese lessons
- reading japanese graded readers level 1. (amazing, I recognize quite a few Kanji, how cool is that!)
- using Anki daily to repeat the learned Kanji.

I'm not sure what else I can do. With Anki vocab decks I'm encountering the problem that lots of Kanji are being used which I do not yet know. Also, I'm sceptical about learning vocab out of context. Isn't reading actual japanese material much more effective? After all that's also how I developed my English language skill.

Also I'm not sure about the subject of intense immersion. How good is listening to japanese (as in anime or j-drama) if I can't understand 90% of what is being said. I understand this is a controversial subject. I'd be very thankful for your perspective.

Also since I'm personally learning much more effectively with audio as opposed to textbooks, can anyonre recommend audio lessons once I've finished the Michel Thomas lessons?
Is japanesepod101 any good?

ありがとうございます！

Hi Maxwell777, welcome to the forum

I would recommend starting the Core6k (i.e. Nukemarine's i+1 deck with native audio) at a leisurely pace, with sentence + furigana on the front of the card and everything else on the back (by editing the card template).

This will give you a sneak preview of upcoming kanji (hopefully making them easier when they come up in RTK) and start you on the long road to reading the kana proficiently.

Read each card aloud, then listen to the audio on the back & check your pronunciation, failing the card if you feel unsatisfied with it.

When you fancy doing a bit more, learn the meaning of the highlighted word in each sentence *only*. By all means read the rest of the sentence for the kana practice but don't bother with the other words and most especially don't waste time trying to figure out the grammar from a position of near-zero knowledge.

And the English translation is not your friend. As a means of figuring out the grammar or even the highlighted word it is often worse than useless - i.e. positively misleading. It might even be best to leave it off the card altogether.

Hello.

Dont rush, lest you feel overwhelmed by the amount of review later on. As long as you can keep the pace, that s fine, but if it start eating too much time, focus more on reviewing, and less on learning to write new character. It s going to take time, a lot of time anyway.

I started with 10 a day, then 30 during a 2 week holiday, then 20. Around 1300 i had too much to review. I'm still reviewing 15 new kanji a day for wich i have a story, but did not "learn yet", and i m trying to find 10 good story a day. It gets difficult after a while, plus most of the time i have to change the keyword itself as i find those that Heisig propose are ill chosen and too similar to what he already used.

I'm reading stuff with furigna, usually stuff i already knows the story about, so recognising the kanji i know how to write make understanding the word more easy. This is what i like to most. I m nearly sure to hit a new word i know how to write some part of whenever i read something.

Reading Nhk easy web site + rikaichan plugin gives the same experience.

I m also listening to nhk news every morning, and most of the time i have no idea at all what they are talking about. But after a while, i started to pick some words (they kept mentionning 安倍総理大臣 so i ended up understanding who it was after a time :-) ). I guess it cannot hurt.

Good luck :-)

I decide to listen to podcasts depending on whether it's nice to listen to, not my level of comprehension. When I choose dramas I try to make sure I can follow and enjoy the story rather than looking to understand all of the dialogue. Listening to material at natural speed may not seem like progress while you're doing it but if you do it enough you can certainly ace any listening test at a slower speed if that's one of your goals. It's a bit like how the best long distance runners train at high altitude so they're used to an extreme struggle for oxygen, so when they're back down on the more forgiving track, they can just keep running without running out of breath.

As for japanesepod101; I found their stuff sort of interesting and educational but I couldn't bring myself to get a subscription, which is essential to get the most out of their huge library of content, when I could listen to native podcasts for free if I was only brave enough to try.

Despite what I said about not choosing content for comprehension, I do have some methods of improving comprehension There's one thing I like to do with dramas which is just the right mix of active listening, studying and passive listening:

1. Watch an episode of a drama (I get mine from here http://doramax264.com/) that's interesting and you can follow the general story (without any subs - if there are subs, cover them up like this http://japaneselevelup.com/block-those-s...subtitles/)

2. Get the transcript of that episode from http://dramanote.com and save it as a .txt file

3. Make sure you have the reading plugin yomichan(https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/934748696) and the Japanese Example Sentences plugin (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2413435972) installed in Anki.

4. Create a new deck in Anki for your cards with word, reading, meaning and examples feilds.

5. Go to Tools->Yomichan to open up Yomichan and then open your .txt file there and set your new deck as your default deck (Edit->preferences->Anki)

6. Go through the text pressing shift+click to look up unknown key words (not all unknown words - there's too many trust me, I tried) and then clicking beside the definitions to add them to your deck. This is basically instant vocab mining, slashing the time you waste on creating anki cards.

7. Study these cards that should have generated examples over the next week.

8. At the end of the week repeat this process with the next episode and rip the audio from the last episode using this http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/products/dvd...verter.htm to listen to for the next week passively to cement the new words in your mind and as a satisfying benchmark to your progress.

I've learnt more than 600 words like this so far and I must say, listening back to the audio track of the drama episode is the most satisfying thing ever. I much prefer this method to going through something generic like Core, and I'm sure you would too based on your concerns about Anki having a lack of context. Japanese is a lot harder to learn through raw reading than English because you can't even read any words unless you know the readings (unless you only read full-furigana manga, but that means you can't even read magazines or browse the web, which sucks), so Anki is really helpful.

As for kanji you don't know coming up in Anki, don't even worry. I just write out the word the first few times it comes up to get familiar with the Kanji and then you shouldn't have a problem unless you stress out about not knowing the specific meaning of that kanji. You don't need to know it. Knowing kanji meaning is for when you need to guess a word and you don't need to guess at something you're reviewing for the 50th time. If you don't write it out a few times though, it will just be a baffling block of lines that you'll never associate with a word, so make sure you do write it out.

anotherjohn Wrote:And the English translation is not your friend. As a means of figuring out the grammar or even the highlighted word it is often worse than useless - i.e. positively misleading. It might even be best to leave it off the card altogether.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Could you explain further?

ktcgx Wrote:

anotherjohn Wrote:And the English translation is not your friend. As a means of figuring out the grammar or even the highlighted word it is often worse than useless - i.e. positively misleading. It might even be best to leave it off the card altogether.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Could you explain further?

In the deck he recommended, the sentence translations aren't always accurate to the vocabulary or grammar used (this is the case for pretty much any translated sentence); it is recommended that you understand the structure of the sentence and not to base that understanding off of the translation for the sentence.

Basically, don't consider the sentence translations to be entirely accurate and, if you use them, only do so to confirm your basic understanding of the sentence; anotherjohn advises against using the sentence translations entirely, but I found them helpful in the beginning, as a way to check my basic understanding the first couple of times I saw the card.

Quote:It might even be best to leave it off the card altogether.

But aren't the word definitions even worse?

sholum Wrote:

ktcgx Wrote:

anotherjohn Wrote:And the English translation is not your friend. As a means of figuring out the grammar or even the highlighted word it is often worse than useless - i.e. positively misleading. It might even be best to leave it off the card altogether.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Could you explain further?

In the deck he recommended, the sentence translations aren't always accurate to the vocabulary or grammar used (this is the case for pretty much any translated sentence); it is recommended that you understand the structure of the sentence and not to base that understanding off of the translation for the sentence.

Basically, don't consider the sentence translations to be entirely accurate and, if you use them, only do so to confirm your basic understanding of the sentence; anotherjohn advises against using the sentence translations entirely, but I found them helpful in the beginning, as a way to check my basic understanding the first couple of times I saw the card.

If the deck is Nukemarine's, why is the translation so bad?

I use the 2k/6k/10k that someone else put up on this site, the main example sentence is usually pretty good, have only noticed a couple of examples when it's been off, but the algorithm that crawled for the other dozen example sentences is pretty hit and miss.

Maybe the OP should try Nayr's Core5k deck?

ktcgx Wrote:If the deck is Nukemarine's, why is the translation so bad?

I use the 2k/6k/10k that someone else put up on this site, the main example sentence is usually pretty good, have only noticed a couple of examples when it's been off, but the algorithm that crawled for the other dozen example sentences is pretty hit and miss.

Maybe the OP should try Nayr's Core5k deck?

When I was typing that, I thought I was addressing the OP...
I agree that the sentence translations are usually fairly accurate to the original sentence (the sentences aren't usually complicated enough to have ambiguous translations), but I see sentences where the translation, while accurate in meaning, isn't an accurate reflection of the Japanese grammar. This isn't so much a problem with the deck itself as it is with sentence translations in general; it's why Tae Kim's Guide and other resources often use a half-way translation (kinda like Yoda-speak) to more accurately express the grammar in an English friendly way.

Yes, the crawler didn't do too well on all the cards, though it's mostly those that are kana only or commonly part of an idiom.

While Nayr's Core5k is a good deck, I haven't experienced enough of it yet to recommend it; at the moment, I see it more as a good pre-made deck for listening practice with sentences.

Really, all I'm suggesting is that the OP not use the example sentences in a vocabulary deck as grammar instruction, since many translations will be inaccurate. There are better resources for grammar.

Ah, right. I just thought it was a bit strange that Nukemarine's would have been so inaccurate though, given it's basically where all beginners go

ktcgx Wrote:Ah, right. I just thought it was a bit strange that Nukemarine's would have been so inaccurate though, given it's basically where all beginners go

I don't believe Nukemarine actually wrote the translations himself, more that he's the one credited with assembling the information and cards into an i+1 format/order.

I know, but I mean, i guess I thought that it would have been checked.

ktcgx Wrote:I know, but I mean, i guess I thought that it would have been checked.

In case anyone cares, Core6k comes from this http://iKnow.jp from back when it used to be called http://smart.fm and the spreadsheet and audio was released under a creative commons license.

I could be wrong, but it seems the english translations aren't wrong per se. They just don't represent a one to one relationship with the Japanese words (yoda speak or hyperliteralization) the way some grammar treat translations. Core's translations are more of what you would say in english to convey the same information. While I agree with sholum that you wouldn't want to use the english translations to learn grammar, I don't see the english translations as problematic for confirming that you are understanding the Japanese sentences. I have heard that the core Japanese sentences may not reflect contemporary Japanese as well as the sentences in nayr's deck, but I can't comment on that.

yogert909 Wrote:While I agree with sholum that you wouldn't want to use the english translations to learn grammar, I don't see the english translations as problematic for confirming that you are understanding the Japanese sentences.

I agree with this. I just wanted to convey that part about the grammar not necessarily being one-to-one (if the graph of your sentence doesn't pass the horizontal and vertical line tests... wait, wrong subject).
I feel like I haven't been very articulate when writing, recently.

can't say it was my intention to spark such a lively discussion about core decks! lol
interesting info nonetheless.

thanks for your input,

anotherjohn, thanks for the tip of learning only the highlighted word. it's indeed difficult for some sentences to understand the whole of it.

nightbreak, (I think I know the kanji for your UN already definitely sound advice not rushing things. In fact I'm encountering my first wave of loss of motivation to learn kanji every day. Maybe I should just stick for 5 new a day for a little while until I find new motivation.
while I'd like to speak amazing japanese in a year from now, I've done enough instant gratification things in my life to understand that that's wishful thinking. Nonetheless I think I can make amazing progress in a year if I stay with it constantly.

Helena4, thanks for the very detailed description. I'd like to try out that approach later, I hope I can handle the technical difficulties as I don't find ANKI to be very intuitive (at least not the Android remake that I have).
In the meantime I have found an Anki deck for the first episode of Cowboy Bebop and it's fun! I don't think learning from anime is a bad idea as some suggest, as long as it's not the sole source of learning material.

ktcgx, sholum, thanks for adding to the discussion.


Noone has yet adressed my original question about immersion. Like I said, the concept of learning from being exposed to material that's way beyond one's level doesn't make much sense to me.
I'm grateful if anyone could elaborate on that.

Some (such as the AJATT blog), if I remember correctly, recommend a constant 24/7 of japanese audio in the background. Personally, I never did such a thing and when you can't even distinguish the sounds then I don't see it helping much.

However, I would say there is value in watching stuff you don't understand yet, as long as it's interesting. I can confidently say that the reason I can understand what people are saying (not perfectly, but much better than a year or two ago) is because I watched so much anime/drama/listened to music. Over time my ear got better at picking out the individual sounds, so that something that sounded slurred together before is understandable now. Meanwhile, I know others who sometimes struggle with comprehending speech at closer to native levels and speech patterns, who I don't think spent as much time listening.
That being said, I also haven't really shook my subtitle habit yet, so I still watch my stuff with the subs on, for a variety of reasons. One being that I'm too lazy to spend the extra minute to cover my screen, another being that I want to know what the story is about and I know I would miss that sometimes otherwise. So if you don't understand a lot yet you could do what I did and watch with subs, then play the matching game trying to match what you hear correctly to the sub below.
As far as songs, I don't really try to make sense of them too strictly because even in one's native language they often make absolutely no sense. If I understand the individual phrases it was a good day, with bonus points for picking up some new vocabulary
But again, that listening practice is very important, if only to get a good feel for the language, and more importantly, to train your ear to find out the sounds that are there.

For immersion, my recommendation is to do things that are interesting, noting more, nothing less. I read a lot of things I couldn't really understand, just because it was fun (games, VNs, manga, LNs, news, whatever). I didn't really listen to anything except music and the voice acting of some games until recently; I do recommend doing listening practice though: my listening ability has improved quite a bit already and I've only been bothering with it for about a month now.

As for AJATT-styled, 24/7/365 listening to all the things you can't understand even while you're trying to read all the things you don't understand... I don't recommend it. I watched subbed anime for years before being any good at Japanese; try as I may, I couldn't pay attention to the audio long enough to learn more than the usual stuff.
Of course, I definitely recommend listening to things that are enjoyable (music or whatever) while you're doing a mindless task or lazing around, but only do it because it's nice, not because you have to listen all the time. The main benefit I got out of all that early listening was an ear for pronunciation, which is important, but it doesn't require constant exposure.

thanks mc962 and sholum - sorry for the late reply, been busy studying japanese

mc962, thanks, well I guess I'm quite good with picking up individual sounds of japanese, up to a certain speed that is.
I've been listening to japanese for many years (mostly through anime of course), so I guess a got a feel for it.
Well, I tried listening to Anime or J-Drama without subs for some time. I understood nothing at all except random words. However, when having subs on I'm oftentimes able to successfully match the spoken words with its english counterparts. I even had minor epiphany's as in "hey 行けません" must mean something like "can't go", I see." and verified it lateron with TaeKim. So I definitely wouldn't say this appraoch is worthless like some say.

sholum, I'm glad to hear you also think applying AJATT 24/7 with material you don't understand is a good idea. This concept makes absolutely no sense on closer examination, at least in my opinion. To me it just sounds like what people want to hear "just listen to japanese all the time, and you'll have it down within a year, nothing else required". (except RTK which that guy also recommends.) Certainly helps sell the material I guess.

Well, here's some of the challenges I'm facing right now, maybe some people want to share their insights on this.

- RTK: I'm at 520 Kanji now. I don't know how some people can do RTK1 in 3 months only, it will certainly take me longer. 6 more months at the current pace. I do my reviews every day and have what I consider a very good retention rate.
However, I notice that while in the beginning I was very excited about learning new Kanji every day, I somewhat lost that motivation. I try to do 10 new Kanji per day now, but a have brief periods of a few days where I only do reviews. You guys have a similar experience?

- learning vocab: I created a deck where I put in new vocabulary I encountered using hiragana. However, I'm only partially successful in memorizing new vocab this way - out of context. I'm starting to think it's maybe not so effective. Some people on this board recommended learning vocab out of context to aquire more words.
I notice that's I'm much better in remembering the spelling of words in conjunction with Kanji, as is the case with core2k or with graded readers.
should I probably skip the "learn single words using hiragana only step" due to it being not so effective?

What I start to realize is that learning at least all the Kanji from RTK1 is absolutely crucial for learning even spoken japanese as it might really speed up learning new vocab.

- With TaeKim, I'm in the mid of essential grammar, which I know to some extent because I went through the Michel Thomas japanese method. Tae Kim seems great and very straightforward, but I find it also quite exhausting because it's so picked with info and it's sometimes a little dry (well it's a grammar book after all, not Tae Kim's fault whatsoever). But I intend to go through the whole thing, I guess noone who did regretted having done so?

- Genki 1 seems alright, but the whole "Mary goes to college" thing bores me a little, because it's not so relevant for me, as I'm in my early/mid thirties.

- Japanese graded readers by white rabbit press seem to help, as it encompasses lots of repetition. Did anyone work through all the levels of this one, I think there are 10 or so - Was it worth the effort?

Well as a final thought I'd like to say it's amazing when you learn japanese for like 4-5 hours straight, then go home, watch an anime like Ghost in the Shell SAC and understand goose egg. :p

Yeah, I know it's naive to expect anything else, especially with such an anime, thank you