Yeah he obviously doesn't get that:

When you prepared for the N2 you learned a LOT and that will get you to N2. And how is it a waste to for textbooks to learn a language? What does he spend money on WoW subscriptions? He's probably insecure in his accomplishments and feels the need to put you down.

I've already had more than 200 expired flashcards to review but during all this month, I was not able to make my review every day more than 5 days in the row.
And something is just making fun of me : the ridiculous number of kanji I've to learn to finish RTK1 : 64.
I don't want to add these kanji with such a big pile of expired flashcards. It has been a month since I stopped to add flashcards.

I think i'm in a kind of vicious circle TT : I'm fighting to do all my expired cards, i review 4 days in a row, I stopped to review one, two or three days, my expired kanji explodes...

Any ideas to kill my pervy circle ?

Just pass all your cards. You're effectively spreading out the catch up throughout the coming months, which means you'll not even notice your doing it. Obviously you'll forget more of them but it's less destructive than just constantly failing to catch up with your reviews.

kainzero Wrote:"I saw you order pizza. I thought you studied Japanese? You're not doing it properly. You don't say はい softly, you say it really loudly. はい！はい！はい！はい！ That's what they do in Japan. They say everything loudly." He then walked around saying はい at full volume.

Sorry to respond to such an old post, but your dad sounds like a bombastic buffoon.

Edit: I don't think I've ever heard a bad remark about me studying Japanese, and I've been studying it for 6-7 years now. Playful quips once in a while about how I'm going to marry a Japanese girl some day, but I don't necessarily disagree with that

I like Japanese because it makes me seem unapproachable. My wife thinks I'm a exotic sex machine who can get any girl or guy I want. So learning, speaking and reading Japanese in public makes her pretty comfortable.

It discourages me how Japanese schoolgirls are plain compared to 2D.

dizmox Wrote:It discourages me how Japanese schoolgirls are plain compared to 2D.

Just watch anime less

Stuff like 辛い(からい)と辛い(つらい), 床（ゆか）と床（とこ） and so on, discourages me =(

here's a whole bunch of them
http://alfalfa.livedoor.biz/archives/51060100.html

Es2Kay Wrote:Stuff like 辛い(からい)と辛い(つらい), 床（ゆか）と床（とこ） and so on, discourages me =(

here's a whole bunch of them
http://alfalfa.livedoor.biz/archives/51060100.html

からい、つらい　are easy!! you will get used to them. It's logical which is which.

also とこ is used FE in 寝床　to make it slightly easier.

It's weird how after you get married to a Japanese person that all of the discouragement questioning just kind of stops. Apparently I finally have a good enough excuse to be learning the language.

The thing is I have 2 spare hours at college so I use them to RTK as those days I have almost no time at all for RTK. Now what discourages me is the glares i get from passerby's when they see my notebook full of kanji.
I seriously hate the thought that they might be thinking "oh, look at that weeabo"
My friends and family are really open-minded though . And my girlfriend is in the japanese course with me

Hashiriya Wrote:It's weird how after you get married to a Japanese person that all of the discouragement questioning just kind of stops. Apparently I finally have a good enough excuse to be learning the language.

You are married, and want to talk? Even though you don't have to?
Didn't your father pull you aside and explain the perks of married life?

Anki is so 面倒くさい

Especially when you go away for a week or so and your reviews build up to ~800...

Had a discussion with someone about Japanese, and they argue me that they are right about it. Their source... A friend who had taken basically Japanese 101... Sadly my speaking is nil and therefore my opinion as a self-learner is worthless(because my sources are from media and therefore inferior to the correctness of all textbooks)...

It was something extremely basic...

SendaiDan Wrote:Anki is so 面倒くさい

Especially when you go away for a week or so and your reviews build up to ~800...

i went away for a few weeks and my reviews built up to 2000

~800?

I have that many reviews daily, and I have a good 2, 000 vocab I've accumulated that I'm still slowly trying to feed in.

thecite Wrote:~800?

I have that many reviews daily, and I have a good 2, 000 vocab I've accumulated that I'm still slowly trying to feed in.

Whoa I have no idea how you have the motivation to keep at it. I start to get frustrated and annoyed when my reviews are at 100/day I'm dreading the couple of hours it's gonna take me to go through my reviews. I even get to a point where I put in 0 energy and just half heartedly click 'good' just to get rid of the card for a few days/weeks/months.

But unfortunately Anki does it job well, so しょうがない。

I do the reviews in public places, like on the bus, at the library etc, where I feel a bit of pressure to get it done. If it try to do them at home it's pretty hopeless.

It's actually been getting pretty good lately, I head into town on the bus to go to the library, and by the end of the 45 minute bus trip I've finished 80% of them.

Guess I'll post this here. Not as much demotivation as it is frustration.

My background:

Self studied for a little over 2 years before moving to Japan. I was able to pass the old JLPT3 (N4) practice tests before leaving.

Moved to Japan on a student Visa as sort of a mini-retirement. Entered ISI language school not because I really wanted to go to a language school, but because I wanted to be able to stay in the country for a while without having to work. Regardless I get 4hrs per day 5 days a week of near constant Japanese so it can't hurt right?

The demotivation? It has been 9 months, I've moved up class levels as fast as possible at school (meaning I'm passing tests and not some slacker), and I actually do a fairly decent job of keeping away from foreigners.......and yet I still can't come close to passing an N2 practice test and my listening is still horrible.

I know this sounds crazy, but I almost feel as if school slowed me down in some ways. When I started school I wasn't placed in the complete beginner classes, but I still was placed in a level where I'd seen all of the grammar before. In fact I'm still ahead even now. You would think that would have done nothing but cemented by grammar, and in some ways it helped, but in other ways I think it caused conflicts.

It's almost as if I was at the point where all I really needed to be doing was just reading and listening to real material as much as possible, and that the time I've spent going over material I've already seen was sort of wasted time. I mean yes I've improved in the material I've been over again, but I wonder how much more I would have improved if I had spent even a fraction of those 4hrs per day just reading books instead of getting burned out on boring workbook drills?

For a language school I really think mine is probably on of the better ones around based on everything I hear, but as crazy as it sounds I almost think it is better for people who start at the complete bottom and that for people who already have made good self study progress that it might just get in the way.

Oh well.

@activeaero

What are you doing outside of the language school? It sounds like you have lots of free time to do your own studying if you want to read and listen to native material.

There's a big gap between N4 and N2 so it may just be that you're aiming too high. Have you tried any N3 level stuff?

pudding cat Wrote:@activeaero

What are you doing outside of the language school? It sounds like you have lots of free time to do your own studying if you want to read and listen to native material.

There's a big gap between N4 and N2 so it may just be that you're aiming too high. Have you tried any N3 level stuff?

I study daily on my own, usually trying to ignore the school material as much as possible unless I have a test coming up, but I know school just burns me out to where I could be studying more. And by studying more I mean just reading real books. You do 4hrs of text book style material every day plus a few hundred cards of Anki and sometimes the last thing you want to do is keep reading, even for enjoyment, as enjoyment at this level still requires a good bit of effort haha.

Don't get my wrong I'm not saying I'm not improving. I am. I'm also having a blast living in Tokyo. I'm simply venting because I thought I would have progressed a lot further than I have in these past 9 months and I think it is because school, even a pretty good one, can actually get in the way of someone who already has a well established "routine" .

The problem is that you end up studying the same things in class that you've already studied on your own, right? If that's the case then I'd think hard about what will complement your classwork and and what's likely to overlap.

I've no idea what you actually do in your classes, but here are some ideas:

1. Reading - I think this should be a higher priority than SRSing. Even though what you do in school isn't as efficient as anki, you're already doing hours of active study everyday, so you'll probably get more from doing some reading than from additional study, especially if you end up repeating the same material.

2. Selective vocabulary building - I'm guessing you come across lots of words that seem unlikely to ever come up in your classes, but are still useful to you. Words that are common in subjects that interest you, or descriptive words that aren't important enough to make it in to a lesson, but are still common in books/dramas etc.

3. Slang and colloquial language - Maybe your classes do teach this, but if not it's something that will expand on what you do in class without wasting time repeating things.

Finally, I think you should discuss the problem with your teachers. You don't have to say the classes are too easy; just tell them that you do a lot of studying outside of lessons and so often find that you've already covered the work set in class. Ask if they can reccommend things for you to study that won't repeat what you do in class, or if they will allow you to move on to new material if you find you already know that day's lesson.

P.s.

activeaero Wrote:enjoyment at this level still requires a good bit of effort haha.

You'd be surprised actually. From what you've said you're already significantly more advanced than me. I recently took the the N5 practice test on the JLPT site, and it was excruciating. I did know the answers, but it was so slow I felt like gnawing my arm off.

This led me to start reading more just to improve the speed and ease with which I read, and I quickly found that if you find the right thing to read (easy enough with good content), it can be enjoyable and relaxing. People say it a lot, and I never listened, but the key is to forget about looking up words and just read what you can. If this makes you feel too lazy then just remember that reading practice and vocabulary acquisition are to seperate things, and you need two do both to get good.

I can't say that I've ever been discouraged, but neither have I been encouraged because no one knows I'm studying Japanese, not even my parents know, lol. I'm sure I'd get comments about being a geek though so it's not a bad thing.

In my family knowing a second, or in my case a third, language is unusual because we tend to have the typical "if you live in America learn English"attitude due to the fact that when my family immigrated here from Germany they did learn English and they have a hard time seeing why others can't do the same.

I think though that if someone ever asked me why I'm bothering to learn Japanese I'd probably say something like "so I can talk to people who aren't you."

And if they told me it was a waste of time I'd say " not as much of waste as talking to you," of course that would only be if I liked the person, if I don't know or care about I'm probably just going to write you off as an ignorant babboon not worth talking to. Why do you think I would care about your opinion? (I get these sorts of comments about other things that have nothing to do with languages and often nothing to do wih learning)

Life in junior high must be tough...

Splatted Wrote:1. Reading - I think this should be a higher priority than SRSing. Even though what you do in school isn't as efficient as anki, you're already doing hours of active study everyday, so you'll probably get more from doing some reading than from additional study, especially if you end up repeating the same material.

2. Selective vocabulary building - I'm guessing you come across lots of words that seem unlikely to ever come up in your classes, but are still useful to you. Words that are common in subjects that interest you, or descriptive words that aren't important enough to make it in to a lesson, but are still common in books/dramas etc.

3. Slang and colloquial language - Maybe your classes do teach this, but if not it's something that will expand on what you do in class without wasting time repeating things.

1. Yeah I know it should be a big priority, but vocabulary is still the biggest problem right now that is hindering everything else so I really don't want to slack off with my Anki deck right now. And I don't study the school material outside of class unless I just have to for test passing purposes. When I study after class it is always my "own" material. The issue is just that after 4hrs of day of traditional Japanese study my brain is sort of halfway "done" for the day and I find it harder to read than I would like. I still do it, but just not as much as when I was back in the states.

2. I never study the school's vocab, except to pass tests. None of it gets entered into Anki or anything. I only study from my own lists.

3. I'm easily one of the most advanced in this area. I hang out almost every weekend in the Golden Gai area of Shinjuku and one of my best friends does a bit of porn and is an SM queen so she and her friends have taught me quite well haha.


Keep in mind I wasn't really crying for help as there is really nothing major that can be done. It's just a simple case of "4hrs doing something not as productive for me takes 4hrs away that I could be doing more productive stuff". It is still working and I'm getting better, just not at the rate that I thought I would, that's all.