Here's my plan for my studying this summer:

Class: I have a 15 credit 2nd year Japanese class this summer, it's 4.5 hours/day + 3-4 hours of studying every day.

Kanji: Study "Remembering the Kanji" combination with this site (obviously).

Japanese media: Listen to Japanese music to and from school, while studying, etc. Watch at least 1 episode of a J-Drama every day.

Learning Sentences: alljapaneseallthetime.com method of SRS with sentences. I'm still not exactly sure how to do this, but I like the idea of learning real sentences to get a feel for the language. Grab sentences from the Japanese media and also from "Read Real Japanese" books as I see fit.

Talking to Japanese people: I go to Mariners games a lot, and since Ichiro plays here, it attracts a lot of Japanese tourists, particularly groups of female exchange students, so they're around my age. Often they don't speak English so I have 1st grader-style conversations in Japanese with them.

In the Fall I'll go to my university's Japanese Student Association meetings and make some Japanese friends.


How does this sound? Comprehensive enough?

Sounds pretty comprehensive, but make sure you don't try for too much all at once and get burned out.
As for learning sentences, I would go solely with sentences related to the material you are learning in your class, for now at least.
I've personally never really found listening to music or watching dramas to be terribly useful for actually learning anything, but hey, you've gotta have some fun.

I see the risk of burning out there too.
I find that often in the beginnin of something new, I have seemingly infinite energy for it but turning the flame too hot will just burn it out too soon..
I have given myself goals with learning Japanese that I couldn't live up to in the long run and it doesn't really encourage you..

My advice would be; study as comprehensively as you feel you can at the time, but don't blame yourself if you cant keep the pace next week. Take it easier and pick up some pace again when you feel like it.

Life is good at throwing unforseen obsticles at your studying.
It's supposed to keep staying fun! =P

Zarxrax Wrote:Sounds pretty comprehensive, but make sure you don't try for too much all at once and get burned out.
As for learning sentences, I would go solely with sentences related to the material you are learning in your class, for now at least.
I've personally never really found listening to music or watching dramas to be terribly useful for actually learning anything, but hey, you've gotta have some fun.

Thanks for the advice.
I try to listen for sentences and words that I know or pick up useful phrases in dramas, and I try to sing along to songs in the car to help my pace, but generally they're just for enjoyment. I've been enjoying Japanese media at least as much as what I was watching and listening to before.

alantin Wrote:I see the risk of burning out there too.
I find that often in the beginnin of something new, I have seemingly infinite energy for it but turning the flame too hot will just burn it out too soon..
I have given myself goals with learning Japanese that I couldn't live up to in the long run and it doesn't really encourage you..

My advice would be; study as comprehensively as you feel you can at the time, but don't blame yourself if you cant keep the pace next week. Take it easier and pick up some pace again when you feel like it.

Life is good at throwing unforseen obsticles at your studying.
It's supposed to keep staying fun! =P

Oh, it's not the beginning, I've studied Japanese for a while now but only recently have been enthusiastic about learning it. It's fun! And I think the different aspects keep good variety.

I have to respectfully disagree about the sources of sentences, if you do the sentence method. I've used sentences both from artificial sources, like textbooks, which are designed for foreign learners, and authentic sources, like dramas/manga/conversations with japanese people - and there is no substitute for authentic sources. If you want a natural feel for the language, and if you want to learn how to speak with a natural flow, and not like a textbook, you can't replace real sources. Where possible, find your sentences from sources meant for Japanese readers/speakers, not for foreign learners, which often have unnatural structures.

Zarxrax Wrote:I've personally never really found listening to music or watching dramas to be terribly useful for actually learning anything, but hey, you've gotta have some fun.

The usefulness of just having random Japanese on in the background isn't apparent until it 'clicks.' It takes a while to get there, but you aren't going to get there at all if you don't listen to anything. And yea, its fun

timcampbell Wrote:I have to respectfully disagree about the sources of sentences, if you do the sentence method. I've used sentences both from artificial sources, like textbooks, which are designed for foreign learners, and authentic sources, like dramas/manga/conversations with japanese people - and there is no substitute for authentic sources. If you want a natural feel for the language, and if you want to learn how to speak with a natural flow, and not like a textbook, you can't replace real sources. Where possible, find your sentences from sources meant for Japanese readers/speakers, not for foreign learners, which often have unnatural structures.

Early on when your vocabulary is very small, using artificial sources can give you more learnable sentences, and therefore you can speed up your vocabulary growth. Once your Japanese gets good enough that you can understand a fair amount of authentic Japanese, it's clearly time to leave the dictionary/textbook sentences behind.

All techniques and study methods aside, I think what matters most is that you truly and thoroughly love Japanese and Japanese culture. If at the core that passion is there, you`ll get up and go on with your studies no matter how many times you fail. What helped me a lot was having clear and above all fun goals to strive for. Is there anybody who`s Japanese skills you look up too? What would you need to do in order to become like him/her? One of the later stage goals for me that worked really well was to pick up a Japanese newspaper and being able to read everything. That really made me want to drill all those Joyo kanji!

Just learn in whatever way feels comfortable.

My suggestion would be to finish Heisig first.

That way, you'll be able to read sentences much more easily. And you can starting reading books/manga while you are watching anime/drama/TV. A great feature of some manga is that they write the pronunciation for EVERY kanji on EVERY page. You'll learn pronunciation super fast that way and you'll already know what the kanji means. So your vocabulary will build very quickly.

Anyway, good luck with whatever you do.

timcampbell Wrote:I have to respectfully disagree about the sources of sentences, if you do the sentence method. I've used sentences both from artificial sources, like textbooks, which are designed for foreign learners, and authentic sources, like dramas/manga/conversations with japanese people - and there is no substitute for authentic sources. If you want a natural feel for the language, and if you want to learn how to speak with a natural flow, and not like a textbook, you can't replace real sources. Where possible, find your sentences from sources meant for Japanese readers/speakers, not for foreign learners, which often have unnatural structures.

While that may be true, I was more concerned about his time constraints. From what he said, he's basically got to spend close to 8 hours a day in class or studying for the class. Doing sentences from the class = studying for the class, so its a way to keep from piling on more work. Don't forget he's also got to do RTK on top of all this, so there might not even be enough time in the day for his RTK studies :p

Wow, thanks everyone for the input!! I'll definitely some of these suggestions to use.

So nobody thinks that any part of my plan is useless or bad or anything? That's good, I guess I'll just keep it up, then...

Since you mentioned you were unsure how to do sentences AJATT style, I'll tell you how I do them. It's not necessarily the best way for you, but it's a starting point.

Stage 1: Basic vocabulary/grammar. I used vocabulary lists to find about a thousand basic words and simply did the traditional "Spanish class" method of having English on one side, Japanese on the other (I did these cards both ways, J->E and E->J). More specifically... at this stage, I clumped both the kanji and the hiragana both on the J side, even on J->E cards. I even used romaji sometimes, but I highly disrecommend that now. I also made grammar flashcards, eg. Q: "Past tense of a ぶ verb" A: "ぶ　--> んだ"


Stage 2: Basic sentences. I started making sentence flashcards, mostly using sentences from Tae Kim's Guide (http://www.guidetojapanese.org/). The question side would contain the sentence, the answer side would contain readings of the words, and a translation. When a sentence contained new words (which was almost always), I'd add another J-E/E-J pair for that word.


Stage 3: Intermediate sentences and clean-up. In this stage sentences are added in bulk (avg. at least 25 a day), mostly from Yahoo辞書. Grammar cards from Stage 1 are deleted as they show up. E->J cards are from stages 1 and 2 are deleted as they show up. With J->E cards, the reading is moved from the Question side to the Answer side; the English translation is turned into invisible text (see appendix below). In a few cases, I replaced the English translation with a picture or row of pictures, but I stopped this as it was just sooo much effort. Old stage 2 sentences are modified so the translation is invisible (see appendix below). With new words in a sentence, rather than make a J-E card for that word with no context, I'd search for more sentences with that word. Eg. a new sentence has the word 女王, which I don't know, then I'll add some other sentences that also have 女王.


Stage 4: Advanced sentences, contexts, romaji dictation (experimental). In this stage, sentences are added not just from Yahoo辞書 and Tae Kim, but also Space ALC, and "real" Japanese (in my case, old SNES videogames like Chrono Trigger). For the "real" sentences, instead of putting an invisible translation, I put an invisible "context".
Example: Q: ああ。ケフカを倒し、平和な世界を取り戻す！！
A: <(Sabin, after Celes rescues the kid in Tzen)>倒す　【たおす】
平和　【へいわ】
取り戻す　【とりもどす】
Notice how in the example, I make no attempt at an English translation, but rather a context. Romaji dictation: I'm experimenting with this, it's a variation on the audio dictation. Basically, the "Q" side of the card has a sentence in romaji, with no spaces, the "は" particle is written "wa", the "を" particle is written "o", the "へ" particle is written "e", and the "answer" is the sentence in Japanese, and you try and write it based on just the "romaji soup".
Another technique I invented in this stage is what I call WWWJDIC mining. It's known that the actual Tanaka Corpus is flawed so I don't use that, however, if you just enter a word in kanji, you'll get lots of actual entries using that word, and the entries themselves at least require peer review (just don't add ones which say "User submitted, awaiting review"). This WWWJDIC mining lets you get lots of clauses involving your word extremely fast. For example if you're adding 情報, search for it in WWWJDIC and get some clauses like...
安全情報 【あんぜんじょうほう】 (n) safety information; safety bulletin
遺伝情報 【いでんじょうほう】 (n) genetic information
会社情報 【かいしゃじょうほう】 (n) corporate information
各情報 【かくじょうほう】 (n) all information
These are a really excellent supplement to the sentences, they're short and numerous and really good for learning readings, they'll also help you learn the evil elusive 連濁.
EDIT: By the time you reach stage 4, you'll be finding you "know" new words as you encounter them even if you never saw them before. Because they're made up of kanji you've seen in a dozen different words. This is when the kanji start to become really nice and you say, "Gee I'm glad Japanese uses kanji instead of an icky, primitive *alphabet*!"

APPENDIX

Using invisible text. I dunno how or if this works on other SRS's besides Mnemosyne. But it should work on any SRS that parses html. It's a neat trick I discovered, to make invisible text, just enclose it in <" ">. Mnemosyne will parse it as html, but it's meaningless so it becomes blank. You only see it when you click "edit card". So it lets you make translations and notes invisible unless you actually need them. Very useful for entering the "Japanese Trance" where you see no English and think no English for long stretches at a time.

Here's how I did the sentence method. I got the Assimil 'Japanese With Ease' course and went along with that, basically reading a lesson a day and then adding the sentences to Anki(10-15 a day). That gave me like 900 something sentences, after that I look up words I come across in Kenkyuusha and grab an example sentence I like.

snispilbor Wrote:Since you mentioned you were unsure how to do sentences AJATT style, I'll tell you how I do them. It's not necessarily the best way for you, but it's a starting point....

Wow... that is so helpful, thank you very much!!

If you use Anki, you can save a lot of time moving translations and such around by just creating extra fields for each "fact." That way, you can change card models extremely easily when you want to change what you're learning.

So, for example:

Sentence Field: 子供が道路で遊ぶのは危険だ。
E Translation Field: It is dangerous for children to play in the street.
Reading Field: こどもがどうろであそぶのはきけんだ。
Vocab/Reading Field: 道路 どうろ/ 危険 きけん
Vocab/E Translation Field: Street / Dangerous

Or however else you want to do it. I don't use the vocab fields-- they were just examples of what you can add if you want to in Anki.

I just go Sentence-> Reading and Reading-> Sentence. I stick in the E translation field as well, and I add the readings of whatever vocab I'm focusing on in the E translation field for now.

If you're learning grammar, you might want to add a grammar explanation field.

Why so many fields? Because you can omit ones you don't need anymore from your deck pretty easily. Again, just edit the card models. That way, you only need to enter a sentence in once.

Also, Anki has a nice feature that automatically breaks down your sentence full of kanji into a kana reading. (Well, sort of. You have to delete the extra readings sometimes.)