So, what was the most influential discovery or method or whatever this year of your Japanese studies?

Probably the true realization that I'm now good enough at Japanese to read without any aid... and that this actively makes me much better. Sure, I've tried reading before and sure I've learned things before... but it wasn't until very recently that I realised I'm now good enough to completely dispose of any dictionary and just READ. (Finishing remembering the kanji was instrumental to this, it gives me almost a 30% chance to understand a word without ever having seen it before... it also makes reading kanji-heavy texts much more fun.)

I will still study grammar from time to time, I will still learn vocabulary from SRS... but I now know that simply spending time reading my manga etc which I can finally enjoy for real WILL make my Japanese that much better. I've blasted through the first volume of School Rumble without any problem and I'll say I understood probably 90% almost perfectly. Of the rest, I learned some of it, didn't learn some of it. Some things I put into the SRS, some things I didn't. But it doesn't matter. I spent little time doing it, it was great fun and it taught me a lot. I've ordered more books from my girlfriend and will buy some myself later.

I'm going with Tobberoth here. I realized I could read an actual full blown novel in Japanese and follow along with it. So for me it's also that I realized I can read Japanese.

I started RTK at the beginning of June this year knowing no kanji and being an intermediate speaker of Japanese. In 7 months I finished RTK, learnt the reading of about 1000 kanji which resulted in my vocab skyrocketting (thanks KO) and learnt a heap of grammar. I did really well on the JLPT level 2 and am confident to pass. I learnt about 4 times more than I did in my previous year in Japan.

I also have become able to use a J-J dictionary without sweating.

I can watch anime and dramas and understand 95% of it.

I can't read a full blown Japanese novel yet, but I am working my way through 海辺のカフカ (the protagonist is 15 years old, so it's not super difficult). The fact that I can do this without going insane from looking up words and kanji is something I am proud of.

That I can write 2000 han characters.

That I read 3 Japanese sentences without any aid. (not that great, but I never thought that I'd be able to do that in a million years as a child).

+ SRSs, AJATT and Unschooling.

Squintox Wrote:not that great, but I never thought that I'd be able to do that in a million years as a child

I think that sums up.
This year I discovered I could even learn Japanese, if I made the effort.

iKnow is the top of my list.

readthekanji.com is second.

Beyond that... Just various forums (like this) that I found and enjoy.

1. Finding out about RevTK
2. Finding out about AJATT through this forum
3. Got motivated enough to give Heisig another try after giving up quite some time ago
4. Finally hitting the 2042 mark.
5. Thanks to all of the above: Actually being able to enjoy - and to a large part understand - movies and television in Japanese

Evil_Dragon Wrote:1. Finding out about RevTK
2. Finding out about AJATT through this forum
3. Got motivated enough to give Heisig another try after giving up quite some time ago
4. Finally hitting the 2042 mark.
5. Thanks to all of the above: Actually being able to enjoy - and to a large part understand - movies and television in Japanese

Completing RtK made you understand movies and television?

There's definitely something missing from your post

I'd say iKnow is on my best of 2008 list, but it's still got a lot of room for improvement.

The one of the most influential thing on my studies this year was realizing that the majority of classroom methods (said majority), don't help as much as they should.

I was one of those people who thought by showing up to class and doing the assignments that the language would suddenly manifest itself within the deep corners of my mind and suddenly I would know language. I studied french for 4+ years getting good marks and picked up very little. My listening abilities were abismal. LOL

So while learning Japanese I forewent the vocab list, grammar, translate, attempt to output when you know very little (sometimes I did output; naughty me) approach, and just bought a couple of books in Japanese. I started to follow these methods while listening to insane amounts of audio.

http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/...study.html

I can now read this without too much difficulty.

http://hukumusume.com/douwa/pc/jap/01/01.htm

That's progress baby. LOL.

I guess, in a way, the single most influential thing for me was finding this site here:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/l...guage.html

It led me to Heisig, which led me to this site, which led my to AJATT, Shadowing, iKnow, and a plethera of informational sources.

kazelee Wrote:I can now read this without too much difficulty.

http://hukumusume.com/douwa/pc/jap/01/01.htm

That's progress baby. LOL.

I guess, in a way, the single most influential thing for me was finding this site here:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/l...guage.html

It led me to Heisig, which led me to this site, which led my to AJATT, Shadowing, iKnow, and a plethera of informational sources.

I knew of the above story before but I had never read it in Japanese, thanks for the link! Simple language but I still had to look up two words for readings: 元旦 and 大将 so thanks for teaching me two new compounds as well

I checked the other site and it seemed nice until I ran into "Pronounciation" in the Japanese page. "Japanese pronunciation is dead easy, all the sounds are perfectly natural for the native English speaker, the only new sound is the Japanese R which is nothing like an English R and involves tapping your tongue just behind your teeth, similar to the English L." That is a flat out lie. English people can't pronounce Japanese vowels correctly which is why we get "nayrooooooto". It might be easy to learn, i don't know, buy saying it's perfectly natural to English speakers is a HUGE stretch.

Tobberoth Wrote:

kazelee Wrote:I can now read this without too much difficulty.

http://hukumusume.com/douwa/pc/jap/01/01.htm

That's progress baby. LOL.

I guess, in a way, the single most influential thing for me was finding this site here:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/l...guage.html

It led me to Heisig, which led me to this site, which led my to AJATT, Shadowing, iKnow, and a plethera of informational sources.

I knew of the above story before but I had never read it in Japanese, thanks for the link! Simple language but I still had to look up two words for readings: 元旦 and 大将 so thanks for teaching me two new compounds as well

You're welcome.

Tobberoth Wrote:I checked the other site and it seemed nice until I ran into "Pronounciation" in the Japanese page. "Japanese pronunciation is dead easy....

The title of the page has the most value to me. The choice I made is the reason I am here right now.

It's almost 2009 . . . I was really hoping to finish RTK1, but I have 142 characters left to go and only half an hour. Nevertheless, this book and site have been great for improving my reading speed and accuracy.

Harry Potter (in Japanese) was a great find for me this year. I started volume 1 in mid-October and I'm now almost 300 pages into volume 5. It's fun to be enjoying reading Japanese in my spare time. The reinforcement of my "real" study has been helpful, too.

Happy New Year!

I'm with the OP. RTK, 10,000 sentences - an SRS like Anki just makes it all so much more efficient.

Happy New Year!

Tobberoth Wrote:Completing RtK made you understand movies and television?

There's definitely something missing from your post

AJATT <----


Watching Downtown shows all the time definately helps a lot.

AJATT was my greatest discovery. Without it, I would have never found RtK. Can't wait to use Khatz' method.

お久しぶりです！　(Yikes, I haven't posted for over 18 months!)

I could virtually repeat nest0r's OP. Anki was the discovery of the year for me. I'd lost the will to continue with RTK1 (about halfway through), and I think in part the thought of even looking at Supermemo again was enough to stop me from getting back into it. Anki was like fresh air, and with a Heisig deck ready to run out of the box, 天来 as it were.

Almost simultaneously I discovered AJATT which encouraged me even more to get through RTK as a first step. Now, I don't want to go on about AJATT too much here, and I fear I don't have the temperament and energy (well, I'm no youngster either) for creating my own immersive environment and everything else that Khatz' system requires, BUT I've found his site incredibly encouraging, and to the small extent that I've been able to take his advice (so far) I've already seen improvements. I've been studying—and sucking at—Japanese for a long time, and I would say that I've never made such rapid progress.

I also agree with the mentions of iKnow. It's significantly different in approach to any language learning site that I've seen and its interactive nature makes the learner much less passive (than, say, Japanesepod101). I've started it from scratch, but the approach is fresh enough not to feel like I'm doing nothing but rehash old ground. I'm also interested to see how it progresses and how well it works in the longer term.

Well that's it from me for now.

A Happy New Year to everyone!

Well, the first three I count as they're much different than last year:

I like how Anki constantly improved this year.

I like all the suggestions put up on the AJATT blog.

I like how RevTK has stayed a mature forum. An honest question: Is there another mature forum dedicated to learning Japanese?

Oh, and iKnow has been a great discovery.

2008 was a great year for my Japanese studies.
My 'best of' will come as no surprise...

Iknow has been fantastic for increasing my vocab and I've really enjoyed it's interface.
Anki is indispensable
This site was and will remain a daily ritual, not just for kanji review but for this forum.
Thanks to everyone who posted new ideas and discoveries. I don't think I would be as far along without the help from the RevTK members!

My best Japanese language moment of 08 would be....
Going on a big family vacation with my brothers in laws (very nice old couple in there 70's, from Osaka) I only met them once before, 4 years ago, before any Jp study.
I was the only non Japanese able to speak with both of them for two weeks straight without any English at all. (Mind you, there was definitely times where there were some creative hand gestures and pointing going on, but none the less...) 2 weeks, no English.
At the end of the Holiday I'm sure that they were glad to get away from me