Hello,

So I'm not much a poster here but I pretty much believe that I read almost half of this entire forum
I'm here trying to seek advice on what steps to take.

My background:
I did RTK until 500 kanjis and I'm not thinking, at this moment, to finish.
When watching japanese dramas I always try to have two subtitles (in english and japanese), not sure if it's helping a lot without sub2srs.
What I've been doing lately is SRS Core 2k, which I know is not an answer for grammar problems but sometimes it's the only thing I'm able to do after my stressful job. Any tips on how anyone manages to do anything productive after arriving from work also helpful On the weekends (or holidays, like today) I try to do more real studying.
One of my problems is also researching too many ways to learn, read every method instead of studying, it's one of the things I'm trying to get rid of. Better not study at all than wasting my time reading all available methods.

What happened this morning:
I tried to read one of Chokochoko texts (N5), while I can comprehend most of the words there the meaning of the phrase it's mostly made up, trying to bind all the different words together and figuring out a meaning. This happens to me multiple times when trying to read. I guess what has been said, not good.
I believe I can understand simple phrases but when I try to follow a paragraph of text (unless it's separate by short very simple phrases) I get confused.

So I definitely have a problem here and reading tae kim guide or japanese the manga way is not helping, nothing really sticks in the practical world.

What's your advice on this? How to train myself? My main goal at this moment is comprehension. Perhaps what's missing is a workbook, like in school, to repeat multiple times small variations of the same thing. I also thought about having some classes online, I'm self-learning since the beginning. The classes might help me to advance faster.
Thank you

kassia Wrote:What's your advice on this? How to train myself? My main goal at this moment is comprehension. Perhaps what's missing is a workbook, like in school, to repeat multiple times small variations of the same thing. I also thought about having some classes online, I'm self-learning since the beginning. The classes might help me to advance faster.
Thank you

I'm working through this book at present. It's a great book because it explains everything clearly and you can get plenty of practice depending on how you use the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Reading-W...ing+martin

There are 35 lessons introducting all of the (back then) 881 elementary school kanji as well as around 2,000 drill sentences.

I like the fact that everything is also given in romaji so that, as the authors state, you can, for practice, look at the romaji and re-write the passage in kanji and kana. To help with this, the romaji transcriptions of the lessons indicate kanji in block capitals.

In the first three lessons alone I've learned a ton of grammar points I didn't know before.

Just an intro to me, I am taking an exam similar to N3 this May and my strongest area is listening, my weakest being reading because I left behind kanji study for almost a year outside of words I have studied from dramas and my textbook, but I can read some manga and the blog of my favourite band.

Okay, let me give you some advice for each area.

Kanji: Keep going with kanji or your weakness will annoy you when you are at my stage. But, I understand how kanji learning can be tiresome especially if you have a difficult job. So set yourself a slow but steady target like 20-30 a week, rather than 10-30 a day as usually is done, and stick to it.

Vocabulary: The Core 2k is a good idea but I didn't like it very much. I wanted to learn from material that I really wanted to understand, and moved on to subs2srs. I create cards with only Japanese subtitles, because the English ones are usually awful translation that I can't trust, use the anki add on "Morphman 3" to sort the cards so that cards where I have only one unknown come first, and look up and type in the meaning and reading for that one word as the card comes up as new. Then review. I think doing the Core 2k will really help you if you like it more than I did but I really don't see the point in 6k when you will have much more fun with subs2srs, and making studying fun is important if you find your job demotivates you from studying. Plus the things that interest you are the things that are most relevant to study because that is what you need to be able to talk about to have rich conversations.

Grammar: I have used Tae Kim's Grammar Guide (not Complete Guide), Japanese for Everyone, and a bit of Genki II. I don't like Genki much, I really like JFE though and Tae Kim's Guide is really nice too, but JFE has more vocab and example sentences and an ongoing story, which helps me because I really like a bit of context. You don't need to do exercises, I can see that would definitely be too much after your job and I never did them anyway. If you want to you can do a couple targeted at grammar points you struggle with when you have time.

Anyway, there are premade decks on ankiweb.net/shared/decks for Genki, Japanese for Everyone and Tae Kim. Find ones with all the example sentences from your book of choice in and use it to remember the grammar after reading the relevant chapter. You won't learn the grammar immediately, but you shouldn't forget it like your saying you do. I love the Tae Kim Cloze decks, they're very good for grammar, but as I said, I prefer having more vocab and context with JFE so I use the JFE deck. The JFE has English on the front, Japanese on the back so I flipped it because translating a whole sentence into Japanese is not worth doing. It's difficult and isn't really how you should be thinking when speaking, so doesn't even help with that (when speaking you want to be starting your thoughts in Japanese, not English, right?).

The other thing you should be doing while doing this is exposing yourself to as much Japanese as possible. I definitely think you watching dramas is helpful even without subs2srs, but a little bit oof subs2srs will help. You should aim for an episode every day, replacing any English TV time. Use Japanese subtitles not English (you can rewatch with English subtitles if you want to and have time, but watching with English subtitles can sort of override the Japanese with your memory of the English, which will be stronger) and aim to enjoy and follow the story, not understand every word. Put the first episode into subs2srs and only add another episode if you finish that quickly, because you'll want to be moving on to your next drama series; doing the subs2srs will start to increase that word-by-word understanding in the background. Making dramas/anime part of your real study routine and working towards understanding them will motivate you and hopefully make you feel more like studying after your busy job. Books are a bit too much at this stage; you can enjoy the visuals of a show without fully understanding the speech but you can't read a book if you can't read the words. That said, manga are pretty visual.

So to help you stop researching and start doing, I'll summarise that in 4 goals for you this week:

1. Remember the grammar from chapter 1 of NAME
2. Do 70 new core 2k cards
3. Watch and understand the story of 7 episodes of the drama/anime NAME.
4. Learn 20 new Kanji

And in response to john555: the author is lying there is no use to romaji it hurts my eyes and now I know kana and kanji I can barely understand it and reading it aloud makes me revert back to slow English pronounciation. Please don't use resources that use lots of romaji. JFE gives you a romji boost in thte first chapter (and maybe the second, can't remember), but holding on any longer is not good. The first thing I did after learning kana was read an entire volume of Naruto. Going through a friendly textbook in kana is nothing compared to that.

Here is my (opinionated) take on how to efficiently learn Japanese in the light of recent experience:

- Get hold of Nukemarine's i+1 ordering of the Core 6k, plus a decent kanji deck. This is unfortunately not as easy as it used to be.

- Configure both decks with a very low starting ease (e.g. 150%) and lots of new/lapse reviews. This is to increase passive exposure to the sentences, and reduce the pain of the kanji deck.

- Initially configure the core 6k cards with basically everything Japanese on the front (j-sentence + j-word + furigana + audio) - i.e. purely passive repetition. Do cards like this for a week or two, then edit the card template to move first the audio and then the furigana to the back. Initially pass cards if you manage to repeat the audio without screwing it up too much, then gradually raise the bar on what you consider a pass. Focus on getting the meaning of the highlighted word only, not the whole sentence. Don't waste time trying to solve puzzles with half the pieces missing.

- Configure the kanji cards as kanji -> meaning. You don't have to remember the exact keyword, just getting the meaning in the right ballpark is enough. Unsuspend kanji cards as they come up in the 6k deck. Mentally associate the kanji with their meanings in any way that works. Breaking down into components is effective but overkill in many cases - save it for the ones that fail to stick by brute force. Use koohii.com to find out the components & get ideas for imagery etc.

- A valuable skill that learning Japanese has taught me is the toleration of vagueness, i.e. being satisfied with getting things roughly right and moving on from things half understood. Reviewing kanji -> (rough) meaning would be a good way to exercise this skill early on. Being vague about an answer is fine - it's being certain about a wrong answer that you need to be wary of.

- After the first 1000 or so core sentences (and not before), read the bits of Tae Kim's grammar guide that seem relevant and start thinking about the grammar in the sentences. Start by simply identifying the grammar points in each sentence, and only later attempt full-sentence comprehension. You can't build a house with bricks made of jello.

- Always suspend cards you don't like & save them for later - they will seem much easier in time so it's just inefficient to struggle with them too soon. This applies to basically everything. Language proficiency is a question of familiarity, which just takes time - there are no shortcuts.

- Be sure to take full advantage of NHK News Easy, as it is pretty much the only source of beginner-friendly Japanese readily available in the wild.

- Even the easiest manga etc is unfortunately full of colloquial contractions, making it unsuitable for beginners. Many of the contractions can be intuited once the rest is secure, and become obvious with a peek at a grammar guide. Attempting this too soon is inefficient.

- Once you are confidently weaned off of high-quality teaching materials like the core6k then you can start making your own cards & reading random stuff etc.

HTH

@anotherJohn

Would like to (opinionatedly) argue against this a little, reinforcing the ideas I suggested:

1. John didn't really address grammar, just recommended a larger core deck. It's okay to say that you can pick grammar up but the core decks are just completely lacking in grammar. To pick grammar up you need to review example sentences or just be hardcore and read books with loads of grammar points in (not recommended).

2. Core is taken from newspapers so unless you want to mainly read newspapers, doing all 6k is a bit of a waste of time. Obviously these words are common but the ones that will come up in most media are in the 2k and then creating your own deck after that will actually allow you to learn the vocab you need I your own unique life. The OP obviously enjoys dramas, and news vocab won't be useful for that. The simple 2k words will come up over and over again and the words relevant to dramas, everyday life and the specific subject matter in each drama are better learned in context with subs2srs, plus these sort of words are more likely to be useful in news than news words are to be in other contexts. Your memory also works better when presented with stories and imagery and proper context, something that won't be given by lengthy study of core decks. Doing the 6k slowly in the background shouldn't be a problem (though I started doing the Tanuki Ultima deck which has Japanese definitions and is therefore far more useful to me because it is training me to think in Japanese. Sounds hard but if you sort the definition field in morphman it's suprisingly easy with a basis like 2k) but it should never be your main strategy.

3. By watching and studying with dramas you will learn the contractions quickly which will help you both in real life Japanese situations, because that's how people really speak, and in reading manga. In that case stuff like Yotsubato! and Doraemon which use minimal vocab will be great reading practice. Also don't forget about Graded Readers even though they're expensive. Reading from one source all the time no matter whether your interested (or if it's interesting, since news can run dry) is not very motivational.

4. Making your own cards with subs2srs, yomichan etc. is not a complex process that requires a basis of 6,000 words. That's what a dictionary is for. You simply have subs2srs make cards in bulk for you, have morhpman sort them so you have one unknown per sentence, which is simple after a basis of the 2k most common words which cover a much larger percentage than the extra in 6k, and you look up each word as the card comes up for learning, and review. It does require an understanding of grammar though, which as I said should be gained from a beginner's textbook and maybe some N3 and N2 textbooks down the road if you still feel lacking.

Hi Helena, allow me to opinionatedly retort

1. I don't mean to suggest learning grammar passively, just that it's much easier to read a grammar guide after gaining some basic vocab & familiarity with kana. I first read Tae Kim before starting core6k in the mistaken belief that this would somehow make learning vocab easier. I read it again after ~2k cards and got so much more out of it that the first reading just seemed like a waste of time.

2. I fully accept that not all of the vocab in core6k is vital (I'm looking at you, 師走), but even 'newsy' terms introduce useful kanji readings, which are beneficial in any context. The core6k seemed to me by far the most effective way to progress at that tender stage. I certainly didn't feel qualified to make my own learning materials.

3. Listening to native-speed audio in dramas/anime etc provides useful passive exposure and provides an enjoyable complement to other studies, but I dispute whether this is an efficient way to learn in and of itself.

4. I've watched 1-2 eps of anime (occasionally much more) every day for well over 2 years now. Back when I was doing the core6k it still sounded like a sea of gibberish with the odd recogniseable word or conjugation here and there. An hour spent making a subs2srs deck would be better spent adding 50 cards from core while they are there to add imo, though I accept that may not be to everyone's taste.

Helena4 Wrote:2. Core is taken from newspapers so unless you want to mainly read newspapers, doing all 6k is a bit of a waste of time.

I think you underestimate how common the word in 6k are, there's stuff like 入れ物, 雨降り in there. You also seem to underestimate how time consuming making cards is, especially if you want an example sentence for your vocabulary word. Especially when you think advanced learners venture in the area of 20k+ vocabulary. I certainly don't want to waste time making 20 thousand cards (granted I already did waste time making a 9k deck for after core 10k, but it was from a good word list so I did it fairly quick, and so far I haven't regretted it). I can understand people making this case for 10k since the deck is a bit messy, but core 6k is sound imho (though it will probably be a thing of the past soon).

@Eratik

Those words though... are too easy. I knew what they were and their readings instantly and I know I have no cards for them. Those shouldn't be words that would cause you difficulty when making your own cards. And as I said, my subs2srs system has 3 simple steps, 2 of which are automated:

1. Have subs2srs make a whole deck of about 600 cards for me using videos and Japanese subtitles.
2. Have morphman sort these into the right sentences for me to learn first.
3. Start going through 20 new cards in anki, adding definitions from jisho.org simply copying and pasting as each card is presented to me, not in bulk before I start studying. Then review.

Once you have morphman set up, step one takes about 5 mins and step 3 about 30 mins. That is not a lot of time.

Using yomichan with transcipts like I used to took a lot longer I must say. And so would creating cards from books, but that's why I said reading should come later, because to have a good reading experience you want much fewer unknowns than when watching dramas.

I also didn't say you couldn't use premade decks, but they shouldn't be the focus of your study. When they become the focus of your study, it starts to be like your putting off fun for another day when you're better, and once you have a vocab of 2,000+, that's not an attitude you need. Firstly it can get boring and secondly it can lead to an unbalanced attitude to learning Japanese. What I mean is, it will lead you to spend too much time studying learner's materials and not enough time getting used to the authentic language, and to actually justify that by telling yourself you're not ready, and feeling like the OP did that watching the things you want to understand, that you should be striving to understand, may be a waste of time. I believe this is what happens to the many people on this forum who post about their listening being too behind. My listening has always been ahead. And I agree about the 10k.

Also, in terms of time commitment for making 20k cards, I feel like you shoudln't need to make 20k. Even at this stage there are plenty of words I know that have never gone through my anki and that once I get over 15k, I'll need to be using anki less and less because I'll be able to read enough that words should start to be learned from context alone. Bearing in mind my textbook says it have 2,000 words and if I completed core 2000 that's another 2000, that's 11k words to make. Not much more than your 9k. But what I'm actually doing is. My textbook, 2,000 and Tanuki Ultimate slowly in the background to my own deck (as I said, more to help me get into using Japanese definitions than just for vocab), about 6,000 so that's 7k cards to make.

@john

1. I see your point there, and it makes me feel less guilty about how much I've spread out my going through Japanese for Everyone. I feel it's more because of my exposure to a lot of Japanese speech than vocab cards that I've been able to fly through it on my returns though. But I pointed out the lack of grammar advice in your post just because the OP brought up a point about grammar.

2. I didn't feel qualified when I was trying to translate whole sentences for my subs2srs ages ago, but now I have only one word to look up per sentence it's a no-brainer. All you need to look up a word effectively is a context you understand, so you don't choose the wrong meaning for the situation, and a grasp of grammar so that there is no grammar stopping you from understanding, cos you can't look up grammar definitively. Don't you feel qualified to use a dictionary?

3. It's not passive if you subs2srs it. It's also not passive if you relisten to it multiple times. Rip the audio off the video and play it in the car, on your ipod etc. These are all things your doing to interact with it. And native-speed is real speed. Don't get me wrong I think Japanesepod101 is quite helpful if you pick the right seasons, but you should always be listening to native speed audio. You can't get used to it if you don't listen to it. What you need to do is listen to it multiple times to catch what you missed.

4. It takes about 5 mins to make the deck without definitions and looking up the single words quickly using copy and paste is something you can do while studying the new cards and takes less than a minute for each card. Obviously going through 6k words will give you results, but this will give you results faster. When I was doing the more time consuming method of finding unknown words for transcripts, I started the my first drama I studied properly, Mother, and found almost 400 unknown words in episode 1 and then only about 100 in episode 3, because the words were completely relevant. And after studying each episode I relistened to it and saw my understanding skyrocket. Hopefully by actually completing 2k unlike me you wouldn't get 400 in the first episode because some of those were quite simple, but you see what I'm saying. And yeah doing 50 cards from core is not to my taste, 2k really burned me out, I much prefer real context (this scientifically helps everyone's memory tbh) and fast real results. But surely if you ask anyone, "Do you want to understand that drama now or in a year?", they'll say now.

I must say it always scares me a bit when I hear people talk about massive Anki decks many years into learning Japanese.

I really hope I am not using Anki in a few years' time. Surely the aim is to build a sufficient base of understanding that one starts to learn more naturally.

I think there may be a slight divide here between people who see Japanese as a "subject" for learning and people who see it as the language they are "moving into" and study really as the gangplank onto the ship, not the ship itself.

I am not saying one approach is better than the other. I think they are different ways of looking at the language, and perhaps for different purposes.

People who take the first approach, I think tend to move into using Japanese (rather than studying it) very early (probably too early from a purely pedagogical point of view but it is what we need to do, it is what we live for). Study methods are just the handholds we need to get us where we are going, but we aren't waiting to go there. We are living in Japanese now, however rudimentarily. Study isn't preparation for some future. It is the rope we are using to help us get up the mountain we are already on.

It's clear that a lot of people don't like this approach, and that is fine. I don't think anyone is saying "this is what you should do". It is just a particular approach and (at least for me) a particular heart-relationship with Japanese.

I definitely think the reason I disagree with 6k decks is because I only want to study until I understand. Once I understand I want to read and listen and watch and speak to my hearts content. I don't want to study until I think I will understand and try and estimate that figure to be 20k and so I must study 20k cards.

Perhaps its about being mathematically or creatively minded. I do Maths as one of my 4 subjects for British A-levels (exams taken at 18 years old) but I suck at it so bad. I don't think posotively about Maths like I do with Japanese because if I don't know it, it's just wrong. Whereas in Japanese, if I don't know some of the words in something, my understanding is still arbitrary and so I never feel like I need to reach a number of knowns before enjoying Japanese. If I was more mathematically minded perhaps I would see those unknowns more like numbers stacking up against me that need to be solved before I can enjoy something. However... even if that is how someone thinks, I believe they should try and change that for the sake of your language learning, because language learning is not a mathematical skill.

I must say that none of the polyglots I know of online say when they are asked about how they learn languages "I learn the 6k most common words and THEN I'm ready" or "I work through a beginner, intermediate and then advanced textbook and THEN I'm ready". To mention a few, Luca (can't remember his last name, it's long and italian) says that he translates things he wants to understand back and forth from his target language. When he first learnt English, he read a book much above his level and looked up all the words and then jumped into speaking with his tutor (a bit crazy). Steve Kaufman reads a beginners book, learns some simple vocab, starts reading and listening using simple material and then as soon as he is able, jumps into reading and listening to the native material that interests him most, learning vocab from there, mostly from context, also using some srs. He begins speaking when he has the chance to go to the country or with a native online tutor when he feels his understanding is up but stresses learning vocab first from interesting native content, and listening lots, otherwise you won't understand the native speakers. Benny Lewis learns the most common 1,000 words using srs etc. and then drops himself into the country to speak to people. Out of those I agree with the Steve Kaufman approach the most, though I don't avoid srs as much as he tries to.

@Helena4
I can't really comment about your method, after all we all study differently. I'm just saying core 6k is useful even if you don't mainly read newspapers, however you feel about the deck.

Helena4 Wrote:Those words though... are too easy. I knew what they were and their readings instantly and I know I have no cards for them. Those shouldn't be words that would cause you difficulty when making your own cards.

So you instantly knew how to read 雨降り without needing to study it with a boring flashcard - that's good to hear, and way better than me because I must admit that I hesitated one that despite it being in core.

Do you know these words too?

雨宿り taking shelter from rain
雨垂れ raindrops
雨水 rain water
雨漏り roof leak
雨戸 sliding storm shutter
雨具 rain gear
雨模様 signs of rain
雨雲 rain cloud

EratiK Wrote:@Helena4
I can't really comment about your method, after all we all study differently. I'm just saying core 6k is useful even if you don't mainly read newspapers, however you feel about the deck.

I'm sure it is. I'm positive. I just think that if you aren't just reading newspapers you'd be better served by spending your time on vocab from what you actually do want to read/listen to. That doesn't mean its not useful, just not necessarily efficient, but if you really can't deal with making cards then use it.

@anotherjohn

I got the 3rd and last. Should've got the 6th.... Just I was thinking about stationary because i was srsing stationary shop which has that kanji in. The reason I got 雨降り so easily is because it immediately reminds me of 雨が降る, a simple beginner phrase, and if you take "rain falls" and try to make it into a noun you automatically get "rainfall". The reading is even the same. Similar logic with the others I knew in that. The ones I couldn't get were due to kanji I haven't actively studied so am not comfortable with. That's why I reccomeendend OP keep studying kanji like I didn't.

雨降り is pretty self-evident I would have thought. If we know 雨が降る/っている (it's raining) and we know that 降り is probably the noun-form of 降る it is pretty clear that unless the word is an oddity (and some are) it will mean rainfall.

A lot of words work like this and sometimes I Ankify them to remind me of the usage, often I don't. As one has more and more of one's total incoming language content in Japanese (that is my aim) these things should consolidate naturally.

I do know some of the others but if I didn't, and of the ones I don't, I think they are mostly pretty evident if you see them written (though one might not catch them spoken - which would be my main reason for Anki-ing any of them).

雨宿り I learned from となりのトトロ, my second Japanese subtitled anime that I ploughed through when I was still on Genki 1. At the time it was not at all evident and I just "learned" it. Now it would be evident. 宿り is lodging or sheltering, so with 雨 as its modifier, it is pretty clear.

雨垂れ I didn't know and would not have guessed. I think of 垂れる as mostly "hanging" like drooping flowers or lowering clouds, so a drop wouldn't have been my first guess. However in context I might have understood it if the context were clear enough, and in context is where words actually live.

雨水 I know, and I think is evident (what else would it mean?) The only tricky bit is that あめ is あま here, but that usually happens with あめ in combinations so one gets used to that.

雨漏り: 漏り actually means "leak" (noun) and can be used figuratively as well (a secret getting out). So this is literally "rain leak". It might have the extended meaning of anything else leaking from a roof (on the grounds that a roof is where rain usually leaks from), or it might mean rain leaking from anywhere (not just a roof). These are my guesses, not information.

雨戸 I knew (possibly also from Totoro). It is fairly evident though and would be completely so in context (at least if you can see it). Again あめ becomes あま, a not-unexpected change and と is rendaku'd to ど, again a very frequent occurrence.

雨具 Yes, 具 is generally tools/equipment/furnishings. I didn't know it specifically but (again unless it had an unexpected special meaning) it is clear.

雨模様 I didn't know but could guess because I know 空模様 (literally the pattern of the sky = how the sky looks in the context of how the weather seems to be developing). Without knowing that it isn't very guessable, but that is how one's vocabulary builds, I think. One thing makes another thing more possible.

雨雲 is really obvious, of course. Rendaku'd 雲 is pretty predictable (though it isn't always easy to know when it will and won't happen)

These are interesting, I think because when people use figurese like 20,000 words I often wonder how many of them are actually derivative words like these that really aren't difficult to infer. And of course the more experience you have the more complex the words you can infer.

I am not trying to belittle the problem. There is a ton of vocabulary involved in learning Japanese and some of it is tough.

But a lot of inference becomes possible, and if one is living, at least partly, in Japanese a lot of these inferences can become near-reflexive and don't have to be specifically learned. Also one should never forget that only in dictionaries and learning materials do words exist in isolation. Otherwise they always have context which makes the inference much easier.

Currently I find doing this when hearing is much more difficult. When one can see the kanji one has a much better chance of understanding how the word works. So doing it by ear is my biggest challenge I would say.

CureDolly Wrote:I think there may be a slight divide here between people who see Japanese as a "subject" for learning and people who see it as the language they are "moving into" and study really as the gangplank onto the ship, not the ship itself.

I don't think this divide really exists. Some people find a big benefit out of anki and premade lists. Some people would rather learn words naturally or a mix of the two. Everybody should be exposing themselves to plenty of Japanese and enjoying native media as soon as they are able. I don't think anybody is suggesting otherwise.

I think most of the words in core6k are useful but there is a point in that the deck will have holes you need to fill when it comes to whatever you're into. There isn't really anything wrong with stopping at 2k and moving to your own deck but I do think it's a bit more work. Personal decks do have benefits plenty of benefits though, especially if you use pictures or scenes that were memorable.

EDIT: Oh also to the topic creator, I also suggest not giving up on RTK. I think learning words without that will be a lot harder than it needs to be.

CureDolly Wrote:雨水 I know, and I think is evident (what else would it mean?) The only tricky bit is that あめ is あま here, but that usually happens with あめ in combinations so one gets used to that.

I think that's his point: all of those compounds have 雨 read as あま instead of あめ.
Anyway, if you encounter a word you already know in a premade deck, just delete or suspend it.

As for one's approach to learning: people like different things.
One thing I hate: constantly stopping to look up words.
Another thing I hate: spending hours making cards for words that are already in Core or another premade deck.

I use Core decks and a couple subs2srs decks (would be more, but the number of shows I like that have subtitles available is incredibly small); I read grammar explanations and do practice problems; that's what I consider 'studying'.
That doesn't mean I don't read or watch things and learn from them; in fact, I've been learning a lot more from reading than Core, recently. But I don't rigorously study that, because that's just for fun (and would take effort to enter into Anki).

In other words, I read for fun, so I don't want to intentionally study while reading. I ignore most of the words I don't know, opting to look up only those words that bother me.

I also somewhat enjoy using Anki; I like numbers (and graphs) and watching them change in beneficial ways, so my reward for getting through my daily Anki session is seeing my due cards at zero and seeing the unseen cards number go down.
I do basic calculations to see how long it will take me to reach a goal at a certain rate, then I pick a good rate and try to reach the goal in that time. Considering how little time I spend on it per day (reviews and new cards together only take me about thirty minutes a day), it isn't something I dread to do.
That being said, I didn't enjoy it in the least when I was doing 60-100 new cards per day, but even on top of my other studies and other daily tasks, I find it easy to do about twenty per day. At twenty new cards per day, you can finish Core 6k in less than a year and do other things on top of it (like reading, watching anime, studying grammar, whatever).

But yeah, I tried studying a book before, instead of just reading... I still haven't finished it, but I've read many manga, articles, and part of another novel in the mean time.


@OP
I found a tutor to be helpful recently (going for N1 this December), but I don't know if it'd be worth it right now (simply because I only recently decided to get tutoring); it's your money, though; a lot of people highly recommend JOI.

@sholum

This is pretty much what I would have said a few months ago. I distinctly remember writing something like this on this very forum. I really couldn't be bothered to make cards noatter how cool I felt subs2srs cards were, and when I did I slowed myself down too much by trying to learn every word in every episode of a drama before the next episode. (I think I mentioned the Mother drama earlier that I did that to).

I think the key is a bit of balance. Now I have set up subs2srs with morphman so that creating the cards does not take hours (setting up morphman was difficult though, but that's a one off task), I find much more enjoyment from this than doing 20 core a day. However, until I sort out my kanji problem and can read more smoothly, making cards from books is way too much effort for me. I really don't want to spend hours making cards either. I think that's a bit crazy. And as I say, by doing a few premDe decks in the background (my textbook deck and Tanuki Ultima) I can make up for this by getting my vocab from a few sources. I hope to keep doing ng this mixture through till August/September (also depends on when I finish my kanji) and then tackle reading. Also, I'm being more selective about which episodes in a drama I subs2srs because I want to get back to watching 1 a day, not waiting till I know all the words.

So what I recommend is that you do a premade deck of your textbook, because that will never be interesting, finish rtk while doing 2k, and then make your own cards in the most easy fast way possible and go through a premade deck in the background if you want (as I said, the fact that the Tanuki is teaching me the skill ofnthinking in Japanese and will get me used to Japanese definitions for when I'm advanced makes me think its more valuable than 6k, but its early days). But I don't think a premade deck should be your mainnthrust if you want fast results and a better memory aid.

Slightly off topic but I was surprised that 雨降り　was pronounced あまふり so I looked it up and it seems it is in fact あめふり.

http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/jn2/6733/m0u/

https://kotobank.jp/word/%E9%9B%A8%E9%99...%8A-427465

http://dic.search.yahoo.co.jp/search?ei=...ull&fr=dic

Hello,

Thank you so much for all the replies! Read through all of them today and I really appreciate all the help. It's interesting to see all the different opinions from people who already have been where I am right now.
I said 2k but I'm actually doing Core 6k. I'm using a deck that I found here on the forum after all the core decks were deleted (a long time ago I was using the normal core decks). I found out this week that if I do them in the morning it's easier than after work. After work I made myself do it, like a chore. In the morning is so much simpler I want to stick with 6k because it's a habit that I worked to acquire and it's what I do "in japanese" everyday. Even if I don't study at all I'm moving forward adding 20 more cards.

I'll try to read more, it's a little bit difficult for me but with some effort NHK News might help. Since reading and not understanding the context of something really kills my motivation, I'll try do subs2srs, I've dramas and animes that I'm interested in watching and it really helps there's a huge amount of japanese subtitles that I can use to help my study.

Regarding tutors, I'll hold off for a while and see what's my progress. I did the online mock test of N5 and it was not very difficult in my opinion. I'm going to try buy the examination test book just to help me practice more as well.

EratiK Wrote:

Helena4 Wrote:2. Core is taken from newspapers so unless you want to mainly read newspapers, doing all 6k is a bit of a waste of time.

I think you underestimate how common the word in 6k are, there's stuff like 入れ物, 雨降り in there. You also seem to underestimate how time consuming making cards is, especially if you want an example sentence for your vocabulary word. Especially when you think advanced learners venture in the area of 20k+ vocabulary. I certainly don't want to waste time making 20 thousand cards (granted I already did waste time making a 9k deck for after core 10k, but it was from a good word list so I did it fairly quick, and so far I haven't regretted it). I can understand people making this case for 10k since the deck is a bit messy, but core 6k is sound imho (though it will probably be a thing of the past soon).

Making cards is never a waste of time. That's the value of the SRS. It's being used most efficiently when done so.

ryuudou Wrote:

EratiK Wrote:

Helena4 Wrote:2. Core is taken from newspapers so unless you want to mainly read newspapers, doing all 6k is a bit of a waste of time.

I think you underestimate how common the word in 6k are, there's stuff like 入れ物, 雨降り in there. You also seem to underestimate how time consuming making cards is, especially if you want an example sentence for your vocabulary word. Especially when you think advanced learners venture in the area of 20k+ vocabulary. I certainly don't want to waste time making 20 thousand cards (granted I already did waste time making a 9k deck for after core 10k, but it was from a good word list so I did it fairly quick, and so far I haven't regretted it). I can understand people making this case for 10k since the deck is a bit messy, but core 6k is sound imho (though it will probably be a thing of the past soon).

Making cards is never a waste of time. That's the value of the SRS. It's being used most efficiently when done so.

The matter at hand here is whether it is a waste of time to make your own core 10k equivalent as a beginner (when premade decks exist). In my humble opinion the answer is yes. As a beginner I couldn't have imagined something more unappealing than making cards stacked on top on everything else I had to learn. Of course you're free to have a different opinion.

I found the Core decks to be useful as something that was habit-building, while still teaching me something that I needed to learn. After I started doing Core I saw that a lot of the words that I was learning in Core were also showing up in other similar situations, and that without Core I probably wouldn't have recognized the word the first time.
But the other really important thing that I am getting from Core, is the habit of reviewing vocabulary every day. I'm lazy, and prefer premade decks over taking the time to making my own. And I also don't often have the time to sit down and make my own decks. Having a big source of vocabulary that is "generally" useful, which I can review every day, is something that I like to have. And for those days when I don't have much time for something else, it gives me something to review that I don't mind doing even though it is going to be a long and difficult day because it is something I will do out of habit

EratiK Wrote:The matter at hand here is whether it is a waste of time to make your own core 10k equivalent as a beginner (when premade decks exist). In my humble opinion the answer is yes. As a beginner I couldn't have imagined something more unappealing than making cards stacked on top on everything else I had to learn. Of course you're free to have a different opinion.

Yeah, as a beginner, you don't know where to start with making cards, and you are NEVER going to find good i+1 sentences. Simple. It would be gruelling complete waste of time to make your own cards as a beginner. But I'm pretty sure someone who has gone through a beginner's course like Genki 1 and 2 or Japanese for Everyone or Tae Kim's Guide and has done Core 2k is not considered a beginner, but an intermediate learner. My opinion is that you should use a pre-made deck for your textbook and, if you are so inclined, use Core 2k to your advantage, but as an intermediate learner, premade matarial begins to have less and less value to you as you want to start learning what you want to know about for your practical use.

In your native language, you know the words you use in conversation, read in books and hear regularly. This means, there are some people who find reading a very high brow newspaper in their native language incredibly irritating, and come across a lot of words that seem to them unnecessarily flowery or just plain irrelevant to the rest of their lives. But, they can speak perfectly, understand everyone and read whatever magazine or whatever they like to read. In a second language, I think I'd rather focus on becoming a functional person like that than a high brow newspaper reader in my early stages.

For a concrete example, my favourite guitarist (Japanese) recently wrote a song about how she actually finds it rather difficult to read books:

(it wasn't a single and didn't have a real mv so the video's just sound). This at first struck me as sort of stupid, but she has never struck me as stupid in interviews. When she is asked a question, she speaks calmly at length and has a real opinion. I've even seen an interview where she referred to some obscure bit of Japanese History. Plus, she can read all the things she wants to read; she reads a lot of manga and plays a lot of rpgs. The song is about reading the things other people tell her to read. I can say for certain I would quite happily be like that in Japanese - able to read what I want to read and speak fluently. And the best way too achieve that is learn the vocab I want to learn and don't go near newspapers because I really don't care, and I don't think many people do until they are more advanced.

Helena4 Wrote:

EratiK Wrote:The matter at hand here is whether it is a waste of time to make your own core 10k equivalent as a beginner (when premade decks exist). In my humble opinion the answer is yes. As a beginner I couldn't have imagined something more unappealing than making cards stacked on top on everything else I had to learn. Of course you're free to have a different opinion.

Yeah, as a beginner, you don't know where to start with making cards, and you are NEVER going to find good i+1 sentences. Simple. It would be gruelling complete waste of time to make your own cards as a beginner.

You can easily start Genki as a complete beginner and get hundreds of i+1 sentences.

Dude READ THE FRICKIN POST! I literally cannot stand the fact that you read one line and then made a comment that was negated almost immediately. You don't even know how stupid that makes you look. Line 3 until the end of the first paragraph I ACTIVELY ENDORSE BEGINERS GOING THROUGH GENKI OR A SIMILAR COURSE. That statement you quoted was in fact me POINTING OUT THAT BEGINNERS CAN BEST FIND I+1 SENTENCES IN TEXTBOOKS. Omg please read, for god's sake.

I usually try not to get all caps and quite so violent in my writing but that really set me off, sorry.