IM ON A MOTHA FUCKIN BOAT!!


sry...

kyotokanji Wrote:Does anybody have any tips for vocab memorisation? the system that linkword langauges uses can only be applied to the first 1000 or so words and falls apart after that I think.

Have you tried Iversen's method?

Use this method along with VocabuLearn Japanese (strongly recommended.) There are three levels (3 audio CDs), and three accompanying books. It's perfect for Iversen's method.

Where are you from? Are you Indian?

kyotokanji,

How much Japanese input are you getting? Most of the stuff you mention seems to be speaking practice which is good, but you won't become really good this way.

What are your interests? I am interested in language, language learning, societal systems (eg communism, socialism), I also enjoy fiction novels. I read a lot on these and I love it. It is fascinating. Every sentence gives me new information. I want to understand it completely.

Do you like western TV? because Japanese anime and manga have a lot of variety. You can probably find stuff you like in Japanese.

Do you like the news?

I think you need to find way to enjoy studying Japanese. You need to want to expose yourself and to understand. Or, your girlfriend could study English and you could speak to her in English?

Bouncing off what Thora said about learning vocab....
For me my ipod is essential. All my mined sentences have ripped audio, and I drill them in my ipod, throughout the day. I organize them in playlists, so new unfamiliar sentences can be played exclusively, and usually do about 50 sentences in a playlist (I'm adding 10 sentences a day). I edit the playlists as I go, and "SRS" my listening intuitively.

Between that, and anki, it seems to go a long way for internalizing things so I can pick it out "in the wild".

I must say, you are in a fantastic environment to take it to the next level(s), and if you truly want to learn it you will (even if it's boring). If you can, grit your teeth, get to work, and recognize the amazing opportunity afforded to you by your surroundings!

cloudstrife543 Wrote:IM ON A MOTHA FUCKIN BOAT!!


sry...

Just make sure not to F@#$ any mermaid. They got all sort of VD, what with all the sailors the f@#$ (figuratively and literally).

Ironically, one of the greatest rap songs ever made is a parody of the entire industry.

TaylorSan Wrote:Bouncing off what Thora said about learning vocab....
For me my ipod is essential. All my mined sentences have ripped audio, and I drill them in my ipod, throughout the day. I organize them in playlists, so new unfamiliar sentences can be played exclusively, and usually do about 50 sentences in a playlist (I'm adding 10 sentences a day). I edit the playlists as I go, and "SRS" my listening intuitively.

You elitists and your EYE pots. You might as well recommend someone hop into their stretch limo, drive to local librarium, and... access the internet.

LOL!

More AJATT heresy, and I am not even doing the AJATT method but I do stop by the site every once and a while for one of Khatz' pep talks, no matter how over the top they are they do usually succeed in helping me find motivation and remind me of why I am doing what I am doing.

And it sounds like kyotokanji, you too, could use a bit of a boost, you post reminded me of an article I just read over at the AJATT blog:

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...”-syndrome

And hey things could be worse, after all, you're in a beautiful city with a life that you do seem to enjoy even if you don't enjoy the language so much. Things could be worse. Not too patronizing I hope!

Cheers and Banzai!

kyotokanji, I am in the same boat. Passed JLPT 3 about nine years ago. Lived in Japan for 2 years. My wife is japanese. We are married for 3 years and speak japanese to each other everyday. I had lot of business trips to Japan during last 2 years. Yet, I always thought that japanese is just a tool and never had any ambition to master japanese (never felt particular necessity). But few monthes ago, due to several reasons (including, economic crisis) I had to quit my job, search for another and quit once again several monthes later. Suddenly, I had an idea that I can take a major break from being an ordinary salaryman and invest all my free time to japanese studies (I still think it is a "tool", but mastering that tool gives you all kind of advantages: self-esteem, career opportunities and so on). Next thing I did - I ordered RTK book.
I set myself a goal to pass JLPT 1 next year. Clearly defined objectives are helping me not to lose motivation.
I think that you are on the right path. Doing RTK ("nearly completing it") shows your determination. Good luck!

ahibba Wrote:

kyotokanji Wrote:Does anybody have any tips for vocab memorisation? the system that linkword langauges uses can only be applied to the first 1000 or so words and falls apart after that I think.

Have you tried Iversen's method?

Use this method along with VocabuLearn Japanese (strongly recommended.) There are three levels (3 audio CDs), and three accompanying books. It's perfect for Iversen's method.

Where are you from? Are you Indian?

Thanks for the recommendation, i've already got those vocabulearn CDs in all three levels so i should get my head down with those. The only reservations I have with those is that it teaches the same number of verbs as nouns and adjectives. Surely you need less verbs than nouns? A sentence contains more nouns than verbs, so I think there is a lack of proportion. Maybe i'm just being picky though. Also, the voice of the English speaker irritates me but that's just me I think. I've tried using them before but with luck so I should do them again.

I am from England but i've always loved Indian classical music.

LazyNomad Wrote:kyotokanji, I am in the same boat. Passed JLPT 3 about nine years ago. Lived in Japan for 2 years. My wife is japanese. We are married for 3 years and speak japanese to each other everyday. I had lot of business trips to Japan during last 2 years. Yet, I always thought that japanese is just a tool and never had any ambition to master japanese (never felt particular necessity). But few monthes ago, due to several reasons (including, economic crisis) I had to quit my job, search for another and quit once again several monthes later. Suddenly, I had an idea that I can take a major break from being an ordinary salaryman and invest all my free time to japanese studies (I still think it is a "tool", but mastering that tool gives you all kind of advantages: self-esteem, career opportunities and so on). Next thing I did - I ordered RTK book.
I set myself a goal to pass JLPT 1 next year. Clearly defined objectives are helping me not to lose motivation.
I think that you are on the right path. Doing RTK ("nearly completing it") shows your determination. Good luck!

Good to find someone in a similar situation than me, cheers. Good luck with going for the JLPT 1 next year. I'm aiming for JLPT in the Summer next year, that gives me a year. I may do it this year as a test run to see how it goes.

Careful there, things can move fast.
my girlfriend became my wife, but luckily we met (and stayed) in the States.
What made it easy was her English is outstanding and Japanese only became an interest to me after years (10+) of exposure and a longing to understand her roots. Good luck!

To Ahibba, what exactly is Iverson's method? I had a look on a link that you gave on another thread and it was rather vague. I couldn't quite see what the essence of the method is. What can be done with these lists? How do you go about remembering from these lists? Isn't making lists just a very standard approach?

Also, to jmkeralis, thanks for that. In some respects i'm an auditory learner. I did the whole of pimsleur German a while ago and it stuck very nicely. i am hoping that learning kanji mixed with audio should help. That's why i've got "Breaking into Japanese Literature", it has mp3s on the website you see. The stories are all so dark though.

fyi There's also Japanese Classical Literature at Bedtime (early 20th century stuff too) with audio and text (or links to). (A generous reading contribution to say the least.)

kyotokanji Wrote:To Ahibba, what exactly is Iverson's method? I had a look on a link that you gave on another thread and it was rather vague. I couldn't quite see what the essence of the method is. What can be done with these lists? How do you go about remembering from these lists? Isn't making lists just a very standard approach?

I knew about it many years ago, but I only discovered its effectiveness last year. I thought it was traditional and not worth trying.

It is very effective for visual learners. But I think it will help auditory learners as well.

Visual learners like Iversen himself and I, can learn up to 300 words a day. Auditory learners can learn up to 100. But I recommend you to start with 30 words/day.

The guy in Languagegeek.net says: "When I first read about the method in the How To Learn Any Language forums, I thought it sounded pretty awful. But after trying it, I must say - it seems to work."

Iversen is a famous nonaglot, i.e. he speaks nine languages! and currently he study additional 8 languages!!

Iversen Wrote:To do this I have invented a more efficient way of using wordlists. Earlier when I had to learn a list of words I did the usual mistake of looking at each word pair (target - translation) in isolation, repeating it in my head X times until I thought I knew it - but that's wrong. Now I look at 5-7 word pairs at a time. I first write the target words in a column and run mentally through them to learn the translations. Only when I'm sure I know the translations for all the words I add a second column for the translations. Then I study this short list until I'm sure that I could write the original words from the translations, - and then I test this by covering the first column. Only when I actually do remember all the original words I proceed to writing the third column with the original words once again. With this method I can get through (and learn) around 100 new words in an hour. Then a couple of days later I read (and sometimes even write) the list through once more to fixate the words in my long-term memory.

I spend 2-3 hours every day on word lists of the two kinds I have described, so I get through (and learn) at least 200-300 words daily (in 2-3 languages). But the real number is far higher, partly because of derivations, but more importantly because of positive effect the memory training has on my intake of new words from reading and listening. I may sound like a preacher man when speaking about word lists, but I know that I wasted years on inefficient rote learning methods earlier in my life because nobody taught me to use word lists efficiently.

For more information:

http://natural-language-acquisition.blog...method.php

http://kanji4.us/language-learning/uploa...8JUN05.jpg

If your girlfriend is Japanese then that is the best learning tool there is if you have the self-discipline to try to make as much of your output as possible in Japanese and encourage her to correct your mistakes. It does take a lot of will power though. That was a goal of mine when living in Japan. It can kind of take something out of the just having fun part of a relationship being corrected for everything being said. Good practice for being married though

About the Iversen method...

interesting and definitely worth trying, thanks for posting!
( I wish I'd known about this in high school ... )

Though I'd guess that this might be rather suited for learning languages fast than learning like a native speaker. After all, there's absolutely no context to the words when only this method is used. You wouldn't know when and how to use these words.
But in combination with lots of immersion and anki... : D

saru_yo Wrote:Though I'd guess that this might be rather suited for learning languages fast than learning like a native speaker.

Do you mean learning your mother tongue?

It is suited for learning any language including the mother tongue.

saru_yo Wrote:After all, there's absolutely no context to the words when only this method is used. You wouldn't know when and how to use these words.

Iversen says:

"Which are the arguments against the methodical use of word lists in vocabulary learning?

One argument has been that languages are essentially idiomatic, and that learning single words therefore is worthless if not downright detrimental. There is a number of very common words in any language where word lists aren't the best method because they have too many grammatical and idiomatic quirks, - however you will meet these words so often that you will learn them even without the help of word lists. On the other hand most words have a welldefined semantic core use (or a limited number of well defined meanings), and for these words the word list method is a fast and reliable way to learn.

Another argument is that some people need a context to remember words. For these people the solution is to use word lists based on words culled from the books they read."

3-4 years ago, I got about 5000 English vocabulary words in 2 years just from reading magazines and watching TV 2-3 hours a day, so wordlists aren't critical to acquiring vocabulary, but the materials you can read with 2000 words are very limited, so plain old word lists may not be a bad idea.

masaman Wrote:3-4 years ago, I got about 5000 English vocabulary words in 2 years just from reading magazines and watching TV 2-3 hours a day, so wordlists aren't critical to acquiring vocabulary, but the materials you can read with 2000 words are very limited, so plain old word lists may not be a bad idea.

5000 words in 2 years?!

Yes, wordlists aren't necessary to learn vocabulary, but they are a fast and a reliable method to learn it. With Iversen method I can learn 5000 words in 20 days only, one hour/day!

masaman Wrote:but the materials you can read with 2000 words are very limited, so plain old word lists may not be a bad idea.

I've said before that one vocabulary estimator estimated my vocabulary to be around 2000 lemmas, but this is according to that estimator, namely this one.

I think my real vocabulary is much higher than that. Another estimator says that my total English vocabulary is 13050.

In fact, most of my English vocabulary is passive, because I don't speak it nor write in it except in three forums (including this one.)

I think that is the reason behind the difference between the two estimators. The first one requires you to type the word from your active vocabulary, while the second one only test your recognition of the words.

Note: I didn't use Iversen method to learn English vocabulary because I'm satisfied with my current level. But I will use it next year when I start studying English. Now I'm busy with Japanese and other languages.

ahibba Wrote:I've said before that one vocabulary estimator estimated my vocabulary to be around 2000 lemmas, but this is according to that estimator, namely this one.

Yea, that's active vocabulary eh? But you are actually using vocabulary of a lot higher level in your post. You can check it here.
http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/bnc/

ahibba Wrote:I think my real vocabulary is much higher than that. Another estimator says that my total English vocabulary is 13050.

This one gave me 19050, and that sounds like a bit of an overestimation. I usually consider my passive vocabulary size to be around 15000 lemmas, which is something like an average US high-school student's. Of several estimators I tried, I think this one gave me the estimate that conforms to Nation's list above the best.
http://www.geocities.com/satyr37/vocab.html

ahibba Wrote:With Iversen method I can learn 5000 words in 20 days only, one hour/day!

I can probably memorize 250 today, so technically I can memorize 5000 in 20 days, but I forget half of what I memorize the next day, so in the second day, I have to first review that 250 and re-memorize 125 of them, only then I can start memorizing the next 250 words. Then the next next day would be 500 reviews and 200 re-memorizing plus 250 new ones, and so on. You may have a better memory than I do, but for me, it would get too hard in several days. SRS softwares like Anki optimize the review part, but still, from my past experience, 100 new words a day will get pretty tough in no time.

Plus, memorizing the translations of vocabulary words isn't my personal favorite. We have a lot of Japanese people who rote memorize Japanese translations of English words for collage entrance exams, and while it seems to help them read pretty advanced stuffs, their overall English abilities, especially writing and speaking skills, are usually not very good, so It's not my style of studying English.


Wait, I may be too lazy to study in any style anyway.

masaman Wrote:Wait, I may be too lazy to study in any style anyway.

I'll join you in this.

* QuackingShoe goes back to reading manga in Asianese.

No Manga for you until you remember they are Japanese. :mad::mad::mad:

lol

masaman Wrote:This one gave me 19050, and that sounds like a bit of an overestimation.

Yep, same here. A passive vocabulary of almost 20000 seems a bit much for a non-native speaker like me. Definately overestimated
Well at least it reminded me, that my study of the English language is far from finished.

...
*adds SRS items for "prolixity" and "nubile"*

masaman Wrote:Yea, that's active vocabulary eh? But you are actually using vocabulary of a lot higher level in your post. You can check it here.
http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/bnc/

Maybe I'm using vocabulary of a higher level, but that doesn't mean I know all the vocabulary in lower levels. For example, I answered 11 words only out of the 18 words in this test.

Quote:We have a lot of Japanese people who rote memorize Japanese translations of English words for collage entrance exams, and while it seems to help them read pretty advanced stuffs, their overall English abilities, especially writing and speaking skills, are usually not very good, so It's not my style of studying English.

I agree with you. Memorizing words is not everything. There are other skills, and memorization help you improve these skills.

Evil_Dragon Wrote:

masaman Wrote:This one gave me 19050, and that sounds like a bit of an overestimation.

Yep, same here. A passive vocabulary of almost 20000 seems a bit much for a non-native speaker like me. Definately overestimated
Well at least it reminded me, that my study of the English language is far from finished.

...
*adds SRS items for "prolixity" and "nubile"*

I won't put these words in my Anki but I have a strange feeling I'll remember nubile, but not prolixity. Yea, somehow.