Nukemarine Wrote:6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?

++Constantly playing ripped audio. Trying to read manga, websites, Harry Potter for now. Need to watch more dramas, but it's difficult with my current living conditions.++

I rip four episodes per drama to and randomly play on my iPod (about 80 episodes total). I also read a lot of dramanote scripts now in a similar fashion (sheets mixed up for random page each time). Impossible to say active listening, though passively it's at about 120 hours/week if not more.

I was never very good with math, but this number implies that you sleep a maximum of 6 hours and fifty minutes per day and are being exposed to the language nonstop from the minute you wake up to the minute you fall asleep, all day, every day. That's quite impressive considering that I, as a semi-monolingual English speaker, am not even exposed to my native language for that much time in the week!

pm215 Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:wasting time BSing my way through pseudoscientific arguments based on flights of fancy

...is that an admission that you're trolling in the other thread o_O?

#1 reason I still suck at Japanese: I'm too lazy to consistently do any of these things with Anki and subs2srs or anything else... Maybe next year :-)

hehe, Depends on what you mean by trolling. I never lie or say things I don't believe to be both true (even if subjectively, but never without *some* concrete support ^_^) and helpful for you know, the benefit of the human race, because I'm altruistic and amazing like that.

jajaaan Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?
Impossible to say active listening, though passively it's at about 120 hours/week if not more.

I was never very good with math, but this number implies that you sleep a maximum of 6 hours and fifty minutes per day and are being exposed to the language nonstop from the minute you wake up to the minute you fall asleep, all day, every day. That's quite impressive considering that I, as a semi-monolingual English speaker, am not even exposed to my native language for that much time in the week!

My bad, I had put in "if you include sleep time" to avoid misinterpretation but must have erased it during editing. I don't get much passive exposure at work, though being able to play my iPod helps. But yeah, the instant I'm back in my room, till I get back to work I pretty much have 60 hours worth Japanese streaming on my iPod.

There's a good reason for this: I'm deployed to a "Combat Zone" (only because Somalia is 10 miles away, but no one's really shot at us yet). With that, it's difficult to leave base (ie, get distracted by going out with friends to random bars and restaurants) so it's easier to find time to do one's hobby. Some people's hobbies are drinking till the base bar closes, XBox, Poker, Soccer, Smoking, etc. My hobby just happens to be learning Japanese.

Too ashamed to post my stats here, but might as well throw a summary progress report out -

An unplanned trip to AK this summer for work, with no ipod, computer, or time really sabotaged my progress. Added up to 2.5 months of j-nothing, followed by about a month and a half just to relearn what I had lost. That adds up to 4 months of no progress.

But the last few months have been decent, and I am steadily gaining steam, refining methods, and noticing improvements. Every month I feel like I'm understanding things more naturally, and am more and more motivated.

The best thing to develop was establishing language exchange. I meet with a Japanese friend for 5 hours a week, and get to practice speaking, and ask a ton of nuance questions. Even though I SUCK, I can see how speaking is a super important addition to all the rest of the things I'm doing, and is the most fun part of it all.

1. How many facts (production and recognition are only 1 fact) do you have in your SRS not including RTK?
In my kanji deck, besides RTK 1+3 I have 49.
Vocab deck: 7636
I have some other decks but they are ideas on hold or remnants of disliked methods.

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?

Sentences are on the answer side of the vocab…..they come from a variety of sources: some are from movies, keyhole tv, drama scripts, blogs, games, google ect. Every once in a while I get a sentence from alc but I try to avoid doing that.

3. Do you do production (audio/hiragana to kanji) and/or recognition (kanji to reaning) or something else? Is there an order (eg production and then recognition)?

Recognition at the moment. I had a deck with production at one point but decided to focus on reading first; listening focus will come once I feel my reading abilities progressed enough (keyhole tv has been helping me enough that I might not even need to go back and deal with production cards…only time will tell if this is true of course).

4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.

Nothing that can really be considered special….while reviewing I have keyhole tv playing in the background, which keeps the part of my brain that would normally get irritated with reviewing hundreds of vocab cards, occupied. With the kana words (or bikkuri words, onomatopoeia, ect.) likeどきっとif I can’t get a feeling for it after a few reps I come up with a small story for it (or I find it used in an interesting context such as http://portal.nifty.com/cs/catalog/porta...1013110970
and import the picture and sentence).

5. How many cards on average do you add to your deck per day? Or if life is getting in the way of this, once things settle down how many do you intend to add per day?

According the almighty anki I’ve averaged 137 over the 1.8 months (most of them I just imported from smart.fm though) I’ve been using the deck. Generally I unsuspend/add anywhere from 100-300 cards. Maximum: 500 get unsuspended.

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do you get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?
No one speaks Japanese in my area so I don’t get exposure that way, but I have keyhole tv on a good portion of the day almost every day to try to make up for that. Average would probably be somewhere around 7-10 hours of keyhole on mostly as background noise. My ipod is in Japanese (got rid of all but a handful of English songs), firefox is in Japanese (thus so is facebook, youtube, smart.fm, ect), my ds is in Japanese, anki’s in Japanese, tried to switch my instant messenger to Japanese but couldn’t get it to work, my ps2 is modded to play Japanese games….my thinkpad’s operating system would be in Japanese if not for worrying about technical issues.

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.
It’s hard to really label exactly where I’m at but reading is probably somewhere between high intermediate to advanced. On the flip side, my speaking level is far below my reading level.

Reading:
Some blogs/articles/manga/ect I can understand easily and only need to learn a few new words but it depends on what it’s about. If it’s outside of my area of interest (such as news) then unsurprisingly, it’s harder.
listening:
Just yesterday, I listened to a 45 minute program on keyhole tv about three of the fastest groups of kids who sprint as a large group with their feet tied together (it was actually fun to watch) and understood all but a few words of that.
My girl was easy except for some sections that were business related (I only watched the first episode). Understood enough of JIN to know what was going on but still need a long way to go before I feel comfortable with it.
I don’t use English subs anymore.
Talk shows still generally seem the hardest (though every once in a while an easy
one will come on and I’ll understand a good portion). News is getting easier [especially the weather section] but it’s still no walk in the park.
Fast paced songs are starting to become more understandable. Outside of speaking speed, as long as a song isn’t extremely abstract and doesn’t use archaic words then I generally can understand a good portion of it.
Speaking:
Noone here speaks Japanese so my speaking is embarrassingly poor. I’m only a freshman in college and can’t study abroad until junior/senior year so I’m in no rush to perfect that skill.
Writing:
Same as speaking, though once I can understand a significant portion of everything I’ll focus on this next with Lang-8.

So from best to worst: Reading, listening, writing, speaking.

8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?

Yes, finally found a learning style which fits the way I learn. I’m enjoying being able to make fast enough progress that I notice it.

9. Are you satisfied with your level?
No

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?
Native level speaking, writing, understanding ect. I want a career that relates to interpreting/translating Japanese, English and later mandarin (air force linguistics, if I get lucky maybe a translator for Disney, ect.). so I need (and want) to get to native level .

11. How confident are you of getting there?
I will. Either that or die of old age trying.

12. From when you started RTK, aside from your process evolving bit by bit, are there any major things you would do again differently if you could?

Would of used the stories on this site right away [when I couldn't come up with a decent story myself] rather than learning the first few hundred with heisig’s first volume (nothing against him, I obviously love the method its just stories here ‘click’ better). Besides that, no.

13. How long have you been studying? Can you give a rough breakdown of how you spent that time?
(warning rough breakdown turned into semi-detailed wall of text)

Started attempting at age 13 (18 now). Would learn for a few weeks to a month but would get frustrated so I never got too far (jlpt 3 level?). Still was enough to get As in 3 concurrent college level Japanese courses starting when I was 16 (took them at college so I wouldn’t have to take Spanish). Before I could take Japanese classes I used Rosetta Stone, but overall it wasn’t much help. Tried getting a pen pal, wrote a few emails back and forth but then we both lost interest. The classes frustrated me further because even though I did very well in the class, I had a hard time understanding Japanese in real context.
At some point I had tried a few pages of RTK and didn’t like it, same with anki. After reading the stories here I got inspired and decided to give them both another go. Now I can’t imagine learning without them.

May/ June:

Started RTK around late May, early June? Started listening to Keyhole tv (though not nearly as often as I do now).

August:
Finished RTK 1.
Tried out a version of the kanji town method. I had gotten to around 1500 cards unsuspended and got frustrated with the deck so I suspended it.(the method does work, I just added too much at once.) At the same time I had started on kanji town, I slowly started working on RTK 3.
Lots of experimentation around this time but I’ll spare you the details.
Tried KO2001 sentences (decided not to do this)
October-november
-Sometime around (late?) October I started my vocab (with context) deck.
-Finished RTK3 in late November.
-Finished KO around 20 days after starting (though it took longer for it all to sink in of course).
-Added Core list’s words began reading j-j dictionaries when possible with the rikai pop-up dictionaries help.

December:
- focusing mostly on native material now.
-Using a J-J dictionary. It’s rare for me to need rikai’s help now.
-Going to import level 1 and 2 JLPT words so during lazy days I can still learn more vocabulary.
December 11th:- finished the rest of Core 6000

Throughout this whole time I have been reading native material, listening to native material and every once in a while, playing games in Japanese.

I'll post my stats soon.

I always read this thread title as "Where you at?" and giggle. I mean chuckle.

fightswumbrellas Wrote:-Finished KO around 20 days after starting (though it took longer for it all to sink in of course).

Wow. I must be the slowest person ever to do the KO deck- I've been going through it for 8 months. I've done over 26k reviews and still have over 2000 cards I haven't seen.

I just don't understand these sprints through 6200 cards. Twenty days means 310 new cards a day, not including any reviews. If you listen to the audio it averages to almost 20 seconds per card, 3 cards a minute.

I should also say I have my deck set up to show me failed cards 8 hours later, and I don't like to pile up more than 30-40 failed cards, so I end up doing somewhere between 100-200 reviews a day and then move on to other study. Though the last two months I haven't been able to work up the motivation to study much so I've been slower than I was the first six months.

Note: I haven't done RTK

1. How many facts (production and recognition are only 1 fact) do you have in your SRS?

about 3000 going back to red - あか

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?

now JLPT 2 vocab. Sentences from dramas, manga, things I hear anywhere.

3. Do you do production (audio/hiragana to kanji) and/or recognition (kanji to meaning) or something else? Is there an order (eg production and then recognition)?

vocab is e - j and back
sentences only recognition
for kanji I use　漢検DS3


4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.

No

5. How many cards on average do you add to you deck per day? Or if life is getting in the way of this, once things settle down how many do you intend to add per day?

I write stuff down in a book and add it when I have time. I often learn it before I enter it if I have time on the train etc.

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?

Prob about 3-4 hours a day

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.

My level is about N3. All skills are about the same I guess. I can say all of the things I can understand, if not very eloquently.

8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?

Kind of, you always want to do better tho.

9. Are you satisfied with your level?

No.

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?

Be able to hang out with my Japanese friends in a big group and be able to understand / respond properly. One on one is kinda OK but big groups are really difficult at the mo.

11. How confident are you of getting there?

Dunno, I'm pretty confident of getting almost there.

12. From when you started adding items to your SRS, aside from your process evolving bit by bit, are there any major things you would do again differently if you could?

No, unless I didn't have to work.

13. How long have you been studying? Can you give a rough breakdown of how you spent that time?

Nearly 2 hrs, working full time most of the time.

Did みんなの日本語１＆２
Did JLPT3
made friends
watched lots of dramas
Only recently really bothered with kanji recently and now learning level 7 of the kanken.

1. How many facts (production and recognition are only 1 fact) do you have in your SRS not including RTK?
I've added about 460 sentences to my sentence deck. I have no idea how many facts that is.

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?

I get almost all of my sentences from textbooks right now since I'm at such a low level. If I run into something in the wild that catches my attention then I add that too. I just like the streamed lined efficiency of them at my level.

3. Do you do production (audio/hiragana to kanji) and/or recognition (kanji to reaning) or something else? Is there an order (eg production and then recognition)?

all of the senteces that I add have been learned from audio drills. I never add a sentence from a text book unless I have practiced it several times with audio. That way, when I actually review the sentence I can learn the kanji for the sentence that I have already learned through previous drills. In other words, I primarily work with speaking drill and just add them to my srs so that I can easily remember what I have been studying.

4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.

I always read the sentence out loud. Again, this is because the sentences that I am adding come straight from audio material. I learn the words and grammar through context and then add them into the SRS to learn how to read. Spoken language before written language. (I mean, I love RTK but I prefer speaking to people rather than reading books at the moment)

5. How many cards on average do you add to your deck per day? Or if life is getting in the way of this, once things settle down how many do you intend to add per day?

I usually add somewhere between 15 to 45 cards a day. It depends if I am putting response sentences on the back side of the card. E.g.

Front

行きますか

Back

will you go?

ｑ：ええ、今日は行きますけど、あすは行きません。

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do you get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?

I work at a public Middle school in Japan so everyday I go into work I'm surrounded by students and teachers speaking Japanese for at least 7 hours a day. The problem is that I teach English so when In class or lesson planning I have to break immersion and speak in English. At home my wife is Japanese so she and I sometimes talk in Japanese (the more I learn the more we are talking...go figure) but since our relationship has been built in English its hard to just switch to Japanese overnight. Since I live in Japan I would say I'm lucky to have such a great immersion environment without having to really put much effort into it!

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.
Let's put it this way. I can speak effortlessly when it comes to stuff that I know. Even if people are talking about things I know a little bit about I can usually follow along. But the problem is that my vocabulary and grammar is very very limited at this point (I'm almost done with my beginner text books...) I normally understand about 30% of what's not spoken to me, i.e. if i listen in on other people's conversations, and I understand about 50% of conversation I actually have with other people since when I talk with others I can use gestures and they use gestures and can try to say the same thing in multiple ways.

Reading:
I just started my sentence deck about 2 months ago and my reading is very very basic. I know small amounts of actual kanji but the kanji I do know I know really really well. Reading is my weakest area at the moment.

listening:
This is one of my strongest areas. I can really differentiate between words when I'm listening to people speak, but because I'm still a novice at this point its really hard for me to get into anything too deep. The words I have learned through my audio drills are very very clear. When I get lucky and people use lots of words that I know I feel great. Like I said, I can understand about 30% of what people are saying when I listen in on their conversations. I blame about 60% of my incomprehension to not understandin grammar and the other 10% to poor listening skills.

Speaking:
This is the other strong area that I have. I mean, if you closed your eyes and listened to me speak you wouldn't think I was Japanese, but you might think that I know more Japanese than I actually do. I attribute my pronunciation to my audio drills. Lots of Japanese think my pronunciation is good, I just need more vocab!!!!


Writing:
I write all my RTK reivews by hand so it looks good I guess. I don't actually write out my sentences when I review srs mainly because I am just trying to move as quickly as possible to get out of this beginner rut. I'm so close to getting to the "intermediate" phase that I can taste it!

So from best to worst: Listening, speaking, writing, reading.

8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?

I am satisfied with my progress, but I wish that I worked a bit harder. I do all of my work at work and when I come home I usually relax. I mean, i'm always around Japanese but if I did more active studying I could be at a more advanced level much sooner!

9. Are you satisfied with your level?
I am satisfied that I can understand much more than I could 1 year ago, but until I can read a newspaper or a book I won't be satisfied. I can have simple conversations but I would also like to effortlessly talk about most anything. And if I don't know about a topic I would like to have the other people teach me without thinking that I'm just an ignorant foreigner (say if I asked you to tell me about hegemony or something)

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?
I would like to be a professor of Japanese Religions so I need to be able to be quite good at Japanese. However if I can't get into a decent Ph.D program then I just want to be able to read a Japanese newspaper and be able to hold indepth conversations with Japanese people.

11. How confident are you of getting there?
Pretty confident. It may take a few more years but I will get there.

12. From when you started RTK, aside from your process evolving bit by bit, are there any major things you would do again differently if you could?

If I knew of this site I would have used it from the beginning for the story section. That probably could have saved me a month or two of time. I'm still at the fetal beginnings of Japanese so I can't really comment on this too much.

13. How long have you been studying? Can you give a rough breakdown of how you spent that time?

This is a tricky question but I would like to do it justice by not actually saying how many years I've been studying but how much time I have been studying.

I took my first Japanese class when I was a sophomore in college (that was 5 years ago) I took 4 semester of Japanese in college. However if we actually calculated the amount of time that I "studied" in college we come to a very pitiful and regretful aproximate amount of 250 hours... Can you believe it? 250 hours...So basically I learned nearly nothing. I stopped Japanese for a while while I finished my degree. I got married to a Japanese woman and then started studying again. Now I'm in Japan and I study at least 2-4 hours a day. It's been this way for about a year now. So I'm a beginner but I'm nearly intermediate. At the rate I'm going though I feel that I will reach my goals in about 3 years tops.

8.8 months of srs sentences and a few months of srs vocab while doing this. I have 6 decks currently(Yes 6 but two of them I plan on merging so in total it's only 4 decks.
1 vocab, 1 sentence, 1 production, 1 kanji(contains kana,katakana-fied words that i may practice,easily,etc)

1. How many facts do you have in your SRS?

Vocab deck contains 19,000 words(3000 idioms which I haven't done, although some are in my sentence deck). I only have done 7000+ of this so far in a few months.

Sentence deck contains 14900+ sentences plus various other stuff in there, some vocab from a long time ago,etc. I have done 12000+ of this in 8.8 months.

Kanji deck, contains 3007+ (P.S. doing this again,so I'll delete the old one and put the new one/kana in them and slowly add kanji up till 6000+ in 2 years or so. Slowly is better for this case as it won't decrease but it isn't a bad thing to work on more meanings. Someone here said you might as well go up to 6300+ kanji(I.e. all the kanji a computer has). So i'll aim for that and pretty much not learn any more in terms of meanings for that stuff.


Production deck isn't large(yet). I'm experimenting with kana to kanji sentences/vocab/definitions. Going so far can write kanji easily, distinction readings correctly in context and can write pretty fast now.

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?

some from the dictionary,j-dramas,anime,manga,news,new sites, new scripts, youtube,google, movies, novels, more websites. I add basically what I find that I can't read or have trouble writing(important stuff in terms of writing, i.e. dates,numbers,etc,etc)

3. Do you do production (audio/hiragana to kanji) and/or recognition (kanji to meaning) or something else? Is there an order (eg production and then recognition)?

In my production deck yes I have this, some in my sentence deck/vocab deck. But at my level of Japanese I can say it properly easily without the aid of audio(some Japanese people say I can say Japanese just like they do(i.e. native-level), although I doubt I'm good(just yet))

4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.

Nop, maybe dictionary look-ups,etc but nothing much. I usual do kanji to kana readings for reading wise and production i do kana to kanji wise. I try to prioritize what i srs for importance for writing I srs essential stuff. But soon I will start srsing heavily on conversation-wise Japanese. I'm getting into the habit of leaving dictionary look-ups in words I don't get, not for recognition just for more-depth understanding in full japanese no english.

5. How many cards on average do you add to you deck per day? Or if life is getting in the way of this, once things settle down how many do you intend to add per day?
To be honest this varies a lot. Some days I do nothing but review and immersion/reading a lot/listening a lot/watching a lot. When I do add it's usual 100 or 50. If my reviews are high I keep it to 20-35 cards per day to keep a steady rate of new cards

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?
Constantly if possible, whenever I'm on my computer it's nothing but japanese majority of the time. I plan on getting a 160gb classic ipod and stuff that sucker with pure japanese songs,drama's,anything in japanese for immersion. Plus trying to buy a stock load of novels to read on the bus as immersion since I take the bus to school and obviously back home which takes around 30mins-1 hr+ depending. That's basically the only time I'm not immersed unless i'm outside with friends,family or have work,etc,etc. Other than that my media is full japanese.


7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.

Understanding is high/reading as well. Speaking is imporinv but if I devote my full resources into focusing/studying/practicing I can get that speaking to a solid level. My writing is good, I can write any kanji easily,etc. As for writing in full japanese, that will take more time and practice/srsing to get that skill high.

8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?

Pretty happy actually, never thought I could get this far. Understand anime easily 90% of the time, read manga easily, watch drama's with ease, it's not hard sure some phrases might puzzle me but majority of the stuff I can understand with no problem. Reading sites is not hard anymore at all. News is becoming way easier since I srs a lot of kanji-oriented vocab/sentences. With the script in hand for news I can understand a great portion without the need of a dictionary(still use a dictionary for stuff but it's decreasing since I use my vocab deck). What I want to do is dedicate more time to reading/writing/speaking. Writing maybe 5-10 journals(not a page, a paragraph or so) and practice speaking via at school,skype,japanese friends, japanese culture centres,conversational classes,etc. There is many places to practice and get my conversation level to a good level. Techniques are the same as most people are using on this forum, just a bit more srs I guess.

9. Are you satisfied with your level?

Nop, because I believe I can get to a high level now.

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?

Native-level abilities in all skills(i know this word varies between people, native-like abilities? which types of natives? I would say university/college students like me but at japanese schools. That's the best place to compare yourself with in terms of japanese or whatever age group/other factors that you want to compare yourself to in terms of learning japanese)
Same.

11. How confident are you of getting there?

Confident,If I keep going at it and putting the hours in there is nothing I can't do no matter what the heck other people say(mean nothing by this, but I get fed up when people say there is no way you can get native-level like abilities)

12. From when you started adding items to your SRS, aside from your process evolving bit by bit, are there any major things you would do again differently if you could?

Not really, maybe go monolingual earlier or so or practice speaking in the earlier stages but I don't see why I can't get that skill to advanced level, then semi-fluent then fluent.

13. How long have you been studying? Can you give a rough breakdown of how you spent that time?
This varies in the beginning it was 1-3+ hours. Yea that is a lot of time to spend srsing. But after the months as I got used to japanese it decreased but it varies on days. Now I can srs for 45-1.30 hours easily daily without much effort and it's fun. I'd say in the beginning this was really diffcult cuz I wasn't used to japanese at all. But now I feel confident in srsing and the effectiveness of it. (Randomly recently I could visual kanji-fied sentences easily when I was doing my cpr course for my work, which was in english by the way, just something i randomly doodled on paper while on break)



P.S. have any of you guys have friends tell them, your becoming "japanaese" i.e. you spend a lot of time on it. Not to be nerdish or what not, I do spend quite a deal of time on this, but I constantly have to use my computer anyways. But ironically unno why they say this. I don't dress or use chopsticks,etc. But recently I actually enjoyed being called that, cuz I think this is linked to the fact I've been reading novels/news site in Japanese,etc while in front of them.

Also it took me 3 months to do RTK, since that;s not "Real" Japanese learning I don't count it anymore.

Also if there is any grammar mistakes(or several, which I guarantee there are I'm sorry. Just kinda lazy in english nowadays, Japanese is a priority now.

1. How many facts (production and recognition are only 1 fact) do you have in your SRS not including RTK?

Right now I'm just using a couple of pre-made decks -- the Core 2000 sentence deck, and a Core 2000 vocab deck. Er, I guess that's 4000 facts? Not quite sure.

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?

Haven't put my own in yet. Would appreciate any advice on how to get started, as Core 2000 is going too slowly for my taste.

3. Do you do production (audio/hiragana to kanji) and/or recognition (kanji to reaning) or something else? Is there an order (eg production and then recognition)?

I do both. If a sentence appears in kanji, I do recognition, and I make myself read it out loud and check for meaning. But half my sentences appear in kana only, and right now I'm making myself hand-write out some or all of the sentence. I might do the whole sentence if it's short; I might just do the kanji if it's long. Either way, I make myself produce okuriugana, because I still have trouble remembering where the kanji stops and the kana begin. Eventually I imagine I'll switch to typing out answers for recognition, but for now I like practicing my handwriting -- in fact, my kana-writing needs more practice than my kanji-writing.

4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.

As I said, I treat my sentences as dictation if they appear in kana.

5. How many cards on average do you add to your deck per day? Or if life is getting in the way of this, once things settle down how many do you intend to add per day?

25 per deck right now, or 50 all told, per day. I also have a Spanish deck.

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do you get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?

I'm obsessed; I spend hours every day reading, studying, SRSing. But for all that, I don't spend nearly enough time reading primary-source stuff or listening to media.

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.

Writing: I've finished RTK, which has improved my writing by a quantum leap. Heck, I couldn't hand-write at all before RTK. In fact, RTK is really what has jump-started my study of Japanese. So I can take dictation now, with sentences I know. But I'm still a relative beginner, which means I can only create simple passages of my own.

Reading: Still a beginner, but improving. I've done Genki 1 and some of Genki 2, plus a couple of other intro texts and Tae Kim, so I have a basic grasp of grammar. I want to focus on vocab now. Today I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to read three chapters of a Ran-Ma manga, albeit with constant dictionary help. But I have a long way to go. Still on Step 1 of Core 2000, which (as I said) goes way too slowly for my taste. I've ordered KO2001 to step up the pace.

Speaking: I'm a beginner, and I need to spend some time with a native speaker. One of my oldest friends is a native speaker, but I'm having trouble tracking her down. But my main goal is reading; I don't plan to live in Japan, but I want to read Japanese for professional reasons, and for fun.

Understanding: Likewise, I'm a beginner.

8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?

I was delighted to get through RTK 1 in a couple months, but I'm a bit frustrated that my sentence-study is progressing slowly right now. I have the time and energy to move much faster, I think.

9. Are you satisfied with your level?

Nope!

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?

My top priority is to read comfortably. It'd be nice to understand spoken Japanese too, for media and video games. Speaking and writing are lower priorities for me, though of course I'd love to become proficient at both.

11. How confident are you of getting there?

Hmm, not sure. It's a tough language. But I'm already light-years ahead of where I was a few months ago. I think it's do-able. I have the time to make it work, I think.

12. From when you started RTK, aside from your process evolving bit by bit, are there any major things you would do again differently if you could?

I wish I'd started RTK much earlier. I have floundered with Japanese self-study off and on for years; I'd always get stuck at kanji, feel my eyes glaze over as I tried to memorize characters in the order presented in Genki etc., and lose motivation. RTK really kick-started me.

13. How long have you been studying? Can you give a rough breakdown of how you spent that time? (new question)

First fussed with the language 15 years ago, on a trip to Japan. Abandoned it, then started again about 3 years ago, using Genki et al. Again struggled. Picked up RTK 1 early this year and since then have been utterly obsessed.

IceCream Wrote:@ta12121: おめでとう！！！：） that's wicked!! i'm thinking of getting back into learning again, & wondered if you'd mind answering a few extra questions?
1. do you use audio on any of your cards or are they just reading cards?
2. if they are just reading, do you find you miss words you should know when you're listening? (well, everyone does, but i mean more so than things you've learnt with audio)
3. when i did a ton of cards a day, i found that the level to which i was really absorbing stuff went down. Whereas if i did less cards in a day, i'd feel a lot more comfortable with them. Have you experienced this, and if so, does it stop, or do you just accustom yourself to that?
4. given the amount you've learnt in such a short time, don't you find that many of your cards are just way too easy to bother reviewing nowadays? Do you delete cards, or just keep them?
5. have you studied or srsed any grammar?

For the reading cards it varies, whenever I can I will add audio. But it's not necessary as I can read it just fine. But I can see a huge advantage in hearing the audio in the srs. Since the srs spaces stuff for you to learn to read it/understand it(well if you break it down) the audio or the sounds associate will help your mind better distinct it. So I've been adding audio there if possible nowadays.
I do miss some words, but nowadays a lot of the vocab I'm srsing and sentences that contain kanji have simliar readings/meanings. So a lot of the times I guess the correct readings. And it is right, well most of the time. But the srs is there to correct it over time.
For adding a ton of cards it varies. Yes when I did it in the beginning I found that the things I was learning, the stuff in the past were getting kicked out if I haven't yet memorized the readings or understood them. So I find that reading outside the srs solidify this. Or just following subtitles. I like to read a lot outside the srs now. It helps so much in the flow of reading and understanding. Nowadays since I know almost all joyo kanji.(2042). Almost I would say 1700+, in a few months probably 2042+(this is pretty realistic as I want to do a lot of reading). Also honestly In the beginning I felt I was forgetting quite a lot. So I thought to myself what can I do outside the srs. I decided I'll aim to read 50 pages+ a day. This helps any readings in general.

Currently I'm doing core6000. I got like 2600 left. the sentences are easy for me. A few kanji readings I screw up on. Nothing to bothersome. A lot of people said that pre-made sentences aren't effective. But to be honest you need to start somewhere. As long as you understand the sentences as a whole/recognize kanji meanings/be able to read it fine. That what counts as it being learned. As for it being mastered I'd say writing it from memory can use it in a variety of context. So that's why I can learn a lot but not master a lot. As those things take a lot of time.

Lastly for grammar Yes I have around mid-way into learning the rest I read new sites,google,amazon,music sites,blog sites,etc A variety of stuff. I'm currently getting into the habit of listening to random speech podcasts. This is an amazing way to understand random speech japanese without any script. Which is like real life, no script. Grammer I went through tae-kim that's about it in terms of grammar. This summer I plan to review the basics in grammar. And practice speaking iin heavy amounts. Same with writing.

P.S. sorry for my grammar.

Immersion helps make connections to all my srsing. So nowadays I can actually learn just from listening.
Icecream you can do this too. It's all about putting the hours into it. No matter what the heck people say about you. Negative or positive. I haven't received any resistance in terms of learning japanese but I have had people tell me your becoming japanese. Which I found strange but from someone else view, they see me learning jaapnese a lot. I can't blame them. But I always say to them "So what? This applies the same with english, you speak english, you know english,etc You can call yourself canadian same with me. There is no reason why I can't call myself "japanese" or you calling me that"
Basically keep learning no matter what. You spend more time, the less time you'll take to master this language. Khatz site has provided motivation that I can do this. I read an article where this girl spent so much time studying japanese in all forms. And in 4 years or so her level of Japanese was that of a native. Even better at times. She spoke wayyy better than anyone studying in class for that amount of time.(Not saying classes are bad, but you can do the same amount of work on your own and more effective)

Haha, I love it. Everytime I consider putting my Japanese studies to an end, as there can't possibly be anything important left to learn, ta12121 writes about his progress and gets me all pumped up again.

Evil_Dragon Wrote:Haha, I love it. Everytime I consider putting my Japanese studies to an end, as there can't possibly be anything important left to learn, ta12121 writes about his progress and gets me all pumped up again.

no problem man. Personally I kept putting myself down(Negative as that sounds it's what actually made me work on it more). Like I kept criticizing myself for not being able to read kanji,etc understand news,etc. I just recently maybe 7 months or so into japanese I starting give myself a pat on the back. Now I don't ever want to criticize myself, it's never a good thing for anyone. Although in the beginning I had my doubts, like I felt not much improvement and is it really possible to become fluent in Japanese? Even the word fluent itself can get into a really deep debate. My japanese friend is like your level if good enough, why don't you just go to japan? I'm like lol you can't be serious? I suck. Your just being too nice. I'll be my own judge on my level.

My advice is keep going, there is a never ending route for learning. But at least there will be a time when your fluent or native-level. Other than that, you never stop. I have a feeling in a few years my decks will all be merged to one huge deck. Labeled japanese. But that will only be when I move onto mandarin Chinese.

Of course you suck, you've only been learning 8 months. Don't ever forget, Japanese people start studying kanji aged 5 and finish at 18 - plus they have a whole lifetime of immersion!

You shouldn't put yourself down, what's the rush? Stressing about learning makes it not fun, and if it's no fun what's the point..

aphasiac Wrote:Of course you suck, you've only been learning 8 months. Don't ever forget, Japanese people start studying kanji aged 5 and finish at 18 - plus they have a whole lifetime of immersion!

You shouldn't put yourself down, what's the rush? Stressing about learning makes it not fun, and if it's no fun what's the point..

I hear yea. it's heading towards 9 months soon. As for the kanji, it will take time but I can get that stuff up. The immersion yea of course, they have started when they where kids.

As for the fun part. Of course I find it fun. I don't just do work all the time, I watch stuff I like, read stuff I like,etc. If I did nothing but srsing the whole day I'd go insane.

What I love the most is music, music in japanese is awesome. Espeically female singers, when I first heard songs in japanese, they sounded so beautiful even though I had no clue what the heck was going on. At least now I can understand it. and makes it more worthwhile

I break the srsing into breaks. So I watch stuff I like, do one deck, then do other stuff in japanese, then do another deck. Until I'm done.

ta12121 Wrote:Like I kept criticizing myself for not being able to read kanji,etc understand news,etc.

Yeah, that's what kept me from achieving any visible improvement for quite a long time. If it wasn't for "The Now Habit" (shameless plug) I'd probably still be beating up myself.

ta12121 Wrote:As for the fun part. Of course I find it fun. I don't just do work all the time, I watch stuff I like, read stuff I like,etc. If I did nothing but srsing the whole day I'd go insane.

Good man. You're making excellent progress, just keep at it.

I'm not just picking on you btw, I say this to anyone on here who tries to impose a strict time limit on their learning. They shouldn't, cos it ruins the fun! Plus most people on here who have tried to pack insane amounts of study into short time periods end up burning out..

ta12121 Wrote:What I love the most is music, music in japanese is awesome. Espeically female singers, when I first heard songs in japanese, they sounded so beautiful even though I had no clue what the heck was going on. At least now I can understand it. and makes it more worthwhile

Hey, yeh same! I love J-music - really obsessed with andymori and くるり right now! Wish I could understand the lyrics , can't wait for that time

Evil_Dragon Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:Like I kept criticizing myself for not being able to read kanji,etc understand news,etc.

Yeah, that's what kept me from achieving any visible improvement for quite a long time. If it wasn't for "The Now Habit" (shameless plug) I'd probably still be beating up myself.

Yea I don't keep beating myself up for Japanese anymore. I just enjoy it now way more since I can understand it.

aphasiac Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:As for the fun part. Of course I find it fun. I don't just do work all the time, I watch stuff I like, read stuff I like,etc. If I did nothing but srsing the whole day I'd go insane.

Good man. You're making excellent progress, just keep at it.

I'm not just picking on you btw, I say this to anyone on here who tries to impose a strict time limit on their learning. They shouldn't, cos it ruins the fun! Plus most people on here who have tried to pack insane amounts of study into short time periods end up burning out..

ta12121 Wrote:What I love the most is music, music in japanese is awesome. Espeically female singers, when I first heard songs in japanese, they sounded so beautiful even though I had no clue what the heck was going on. At least now I can understand it. and makes it more worthwhile

Hey, yeh same! I love J-music - really obsessed with andymori and くるり right now! Wish I could understand the lyrics , can't wait for that time

For the strict time thingy. I prefer doing it small breaks, so it can lead to smaller victories in my srs(i..e can understand the sentence fine and understand it). That way I can do all these srs cards easily.

core 6K is reinforcement and sometimes i forgot the kanji readings and so on. I use the srs every single day. I decided that there will be two times if possible in the day I srs one in the early part of the day and one before sleep time for all my decks.

17,000 words? not sure about that. Probably at least 10,000+ for sure. I'll aim for 30,000 words. That seems reasonable, or whatever I can't read I'll add into vocab/example sentence.

Thanks I'll look at the open courseware thread. I'll look for math/chem lectures. Maybe bio lectures but I don't really like that science.

What I found nowadays doing kana to kanji makes it so amazing. You memorize how to write it and the readings are etched into your mind like super glue! So definitely recommend people do a few srs items for this way. In the long-term you'll be writing with ease from memory.

P.S. for fun now I'm playing ff7,8,9 well not playing but looking at youtube videos and almost all those kanji I can recognize with ease. Thanks to vocab.

I hear yea. I still prefer kana to kanji. As for what to write/say it all depends on the situation. I think your talking about in-depth stuff in conversations. As for production in speech that's a whole different story. I'm also trying to find ways of improving it myself. But as for writing the kana to kanji model works well.

IceCream Wrote:@aphasiac: don't wait for the day you understand it, just find a copy of the lyrics, look the words up, and srs. This is how we roll

But but..I'm not good enough to read "real" untranslated media yet. Or am I..

Screw it, may as well try; I'm going to create a new deck tomorrow!

aphasiac Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:@aphasiac: don't wait for the day you understand it, just find a copy of the lyrics, look the words up, and srs. This is how we roll

But but..I'm not good enough to read "real" untranslated media yet. Or am I..

Screw it, may as well try; I'm going to create a new deck tomorrow!

It takes time but you'll be able to understnad japanese to japanese in any form. I prefer it in full japanese then translating nowadays.