Good Afternoon Koohii members, My names David. Nice to meet you.

Short of brief introductions I will try to keep my needs and concerns brief and concise.

My New Years Resolution? Become fluent in Japanese by the end of 2015

My Progress? Not sure yet, I guess I KNOW 250+ Kanji and can pick up a few conversational sentences.

My Problem? I fear that my study methods and habits are not as optimal as they can be.

Do not get me wrong, I implement Japanese in my life EVERYDAY, Podcasts, Videos , Anime , you name it and its all in Japanese. Granted I have only been "Studying" since the year started so I'm not even 60 days in but besides the fact I just hope I am not off to a slow start.

HERE IS MY ROUTINE:
Anki - I have 8 Decks that I review ( Assimil with ease volume 1 , Core 10Kv4 , Cowboy Bebop Subs2SRS , Heisigs RTK 6th , Japanese Core 2000 Step 01 , Kanji JLPT N5 , Kanji Damage , Nayr's Core 5000 )

IN REGARDS TO MY ANKI DECK; Do I have too many decks? Are the Core 2000 decks in the Core 10k? Is Nayr's needed if I am doing 10k? Should I stick with Both Kanji Decks or just one? Am I missing a crucial Anki deck that would help me? ALSO, Should I and is it possible to merge all my decks together into one deck or is that very counter productive?

Attached is my Graph and progress of ALL decks.



Please, I am open to ANY and all suggestions.

David053090 Wrote:Do I have too many decks?

I think so, yeah. Like you mentioned the core 2k stuff is probably in the core 10k stuff, I'm not sure about the details of that actual deck though. If you're going to do RTK then you probably don't need the extra kanji specific decks.

Also as more general advice I would aim for something more concrete than being fluent. This forum has had a lot of discussions about the definition of fluency and it seems to come down to personal opinion and even then it's a pretty abstract concept. Also depending on your personality it might end up being a goal that you never feel like you achieve.

Something like being able to enjoy native material without translations by the end of the year is, in my opinion, a more attainable goal.

I'd also consider doing RTK in isolation before hitting the other stuff really hard. I'd also say learning another language is more of a marathon than a race, it can be very hard to keep your motivation up after you reach the intermediate level. Figuring out how to keep yourself from burning out will be important.

Good luck and stuff like that.

I see, thank you.

The people who make the core 2k and 10k are the same people right?
I also have a Nayrs 5000 which I THINK has different cards but all in all seem very similar. Cutting both of those out and just sticking to the 10K would be nice I guess. Would you suggest I do this?

And I understand that "fluency" is very subjective and varies from person to person. My idea of fluency is reading a newspaper essentially. My drive to learn the language is at the utmost high as I do nothing else with my time but study the language.

David053090 Wrote:The people who make the core 2k and 10k are the same people right?

10k is an extension from the 2k/6k stuff. Nayr's deck is another deck based on the same idea of most common words, I'm not sure how much they overlap but I would assume a decent amount. I would suggest cutting out one or the other yeah.

Also I would suggest somewhere much further down the line, where is up to you, that you create your own deck for words you find in native material that you want to learn. Oh and you probably want to add in some grammar study, there's plenty of suggestions on this forum about books to use for that.

As already mentioned, your core decks overlap - core 10k includes core 6k includes core 2k. Other frequency-based vocabulary (like Nayr) will naturally include mostly the same words since frequency lists have mostly the same words in mostly the same order.

Also, your kanji decks are redundant. Choose a kanji method - Heisig is obviously popular on this site since it is based on Heisig's books, so many people would advise using the RTK deck. Kanji Damage is another way of studying the kanji, and having not used it I won't say anything against it... however it's redundant with RTK.
Really, i would only have one vocab deck (probably core10k) and one kanji deck (probably RTK, and also, get the books to work through RTK properly and even if you're using Anki for RTK use this site's non-SRS features - that is the shared stories.)
You could keep the Cowboy Bebop deck if and only if you have the Cowboy Bebop Anime and plan to spend a lot of time watching it. It doesn't make sense to study the dialogue for a show you aren't watching.

You need a grammar method - Anki decks are great for vocab building but terrible for learning the structure of the language. Genki is popular. I used Minna no Nihongo because that's what my college had. The website http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/ (Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese) is a pretty good free resource that can be used instead of or in addition to a textbook.

You should certainly go through all of Erin's Challenge - https://www.erin.ne.jp/ .
The grammar lessons are weak, but the skits provide very natural Japanese for excellent listening practice. The site makes a great complement to any textbook course. Although you define fluency as 'reading the newspaper', it's very important not to neglect the spoken language. It's very difficult to read if you can't 'hear' the words in your mind as you read - subvocalizing is a natural and indispensible part of reading, and if you don't know how the language sounds you can't do it.

Since 'reading the newspaper' is specifically your goal, I recommend you check out http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/ (NHK News Easy) - news in Japanese simplified for learners. Once you can read the 'easy' version smoothly, you can follow the links and try the regular article. Because of the importance of becoming familiar with the spoken language, do make a point of watching the video even though it uses language from the regular article and not the exact same words as the 'Easy' version.

[Zgarbas]

First of all, there is no right or wrong answer. What I would suggest is keep:
Core 10Kv4 , Cowboy Bebop Subs2SRS, Kanji JLPT N5 (or better yet a 2000 kanji deck sorted by levels, and you suspend the ones past N5, then unsuspend them as you advance... it's more sustainable)... maybe keep the Heisig one if you're doing the book&method (otherside it's a waste of time).
+ get a textbook, any beginner textbook (minna no nihongo or genki), and add its deck to the bunch.
+ Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, and the attached deck. Take your time with it.

I personally don't learn kanjis very well with anki and used the basic kanji book + anki to review.... but kanjibox helped me more .

Personally, I prefer having multiple decks as it is easier for me to fragment my time. The usual argument for one-deck-suits-all is that since you begin associating the deck with the sets of vocabulary it makes it easier for you to guess content based on the deck... For me, having that many cards to do in one deck is offtutting and kills my motivation. You figure it out as you go.

Since you seem really dedicated to the cause, I'd also suggest paid programs if you can afford them. iKnow does wonders with core6k(I much prefer it to anki), and maybe some online lessons (perhaps to go with that there textbook?).

As previously mentioned, NHK easy and Erin's challenge are invaluable lessons for beginners =). I hope you're also familiar with yomi-chan (the anki add-on) and rikai-sama (the browser add-on), which should be your new waifus.

Good luck!

David053090 Wrote:My New Years Resolution? Become fluent in Japanese by the end of 2015
...
Please, I am open to ANY and all suggestions.

Hi David, nice to meet you, and welcome to the forum. I recommend considering rewriting your goal as a SMART goal. Basically, I think that "fluent" is a pretty vague word - so as things stand now you won't know if you hit or goal early, miss it by a little, or miss it by a lot.

A while ago I posted links to my favorite language self-assessment, the ILR system:

1. ILR Speaking Self Assessment
2. ILR Listening Self Assessment
3. ILR Reading Self Assessment
4. ILR Writing Scale Description

If you change your goal to "get as far as I can in all the four ILR categories by the end of the year", or "get thru level 2 of all of them", then you'll have a better chance of really being able to know how close your are in a meaningful way.

Also, are you familiar with the JLPT? It's the most widely used certification for Japanese Language Proficiency. If you want to play the "get good at Japanese" game then you should consider signing up for the exam in December, and possibly the summer as well if it's offered where you live. The test has some notable weaknesses to: namely, speaking and writing are not on it. So if you focus exclusively on JLPT then you will probably wind up being lopsided in your language ability (i.e. much stronger at listening and reading than writing and speaking).

Good luck at hitting your goal!