I finished reading all 23 volumes of ヒカルの碁　

Had dinner with 3 Japanese natives and 2 other guys from 漢字倶楽部　that speak flueeeeent (as all shit) Japanese. Japanese was used 3/4 of the time over like 3 hours! It was such an awesome time and I was so surprised at the mount of conversation I could make and understand (so jealous of the others fluency though!). Deeeeefinitely see how these study methods are paying off.

Just yesterday I finished (as in "added the last cards of") my textbook blitz that began in July of last year and consisted of Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication, KO2001, KM2Kyuu, and Kanji In Context. Took me from sub-JLPT4 level to a point where I'm fairly comfortable navigating my way through native material (written...listening comprehension is still pretty terrible. Also of course I have to refer to a dictionary quite a bit). I learned a lot, but at this point I'll be fine if I never use another textbook sentence again

Going to just review for a week or 2 to let reviews cool down and try to finish up FFXIII, and then probably try to improve my aforementioned terrible listening skills, and increase my vocabulary at the same time.

Blank Wrote:Just yesterday I finished (as in "added the last cards of") my textbook blitz that began in July of last year and consisted of Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication, KO2001, KM2Kyuu, and Kanji In Context. Took me from sub-JLPT4 level to a point where I'm fairly comfortable navigating my way through native material (written...listening comprehension is still pretty terrible. Also of course I have to refer to a dictionary quite a bit). I learned a lot, but at this point I'll be fine if I never use another textbook sentence again

Going to just review for a week or 2 to let reviews cool down and try to finish up FFXIII, and then probably try to improve my aforementioned terrible listening skills, and increase my vocabulary at the same time.

Congratulations. In what order were those done?

TheVinster Wrote:Congratulations. In what order were those done?

Thanks! I did them in the listed order, JSPEC -> KO2001 -> KM2 -> KIC. Going into it I had done the equivalent of RTK, and knew the very basics of grammar from some classes. I started reading native material as soon as it was feasible and not totally frustrating; this point for me came sometime during KO2001. I found all these books to be quite useful and would recommend them to anyone who's at about my level.

Finally finished Core 2000!!!

For those interested combined (most duplicates removed) vocabulary for:
JLPT4+JLPT3+Core2000 = around 2250
JLPT4+JLPT3 = around 1450
JLPT4 = around 700

So if you're a beginner just start at the bottom and go up. Gives a nice sense of achievement and a very good basic vocabulary.

thurd Wrote:Finally finished Core 2000!!!

For those interested combined (most duplicates removed) vocabulary for:
JLPT4+JLPT3+Core2000 = around 2250
JLPT4+JLPT3 = around 1450
JLPT4 = around 700

So if you're a beginner just start at the bottom and go up. Gives a nice sense of achievement and a very good basic vocabulary.

Congrats! I'm working on the sorted Core2k right now, and it's going smoothly. About how many sentences did you do a day? What do you plan to do next?

vileru Wrote:Congrats! I'm working on the sorted Core2k right now, and it's going smoothly. About how many sentences did you do a day? What do you plan to do next?

I just did vocab, it works better for me. I did it in a little over a month and tried to maintain a steady 100 words/day pace which I failed Now I'm going to change my method and slow down so that I get more time to learn in other ways than SRS.

@thurd

Did you do sentences already before core2k or did you just jump straight into vocab?

Read over 1000 pages of manga over the past few days. It's manga, so that's nowhere near 1000 pages of actual text, but its still nice to have finally rebooted my immersion environment properly

vileru Wrote:@thurd

Did you do sentences already before core2k or did you just jump straight into vocab?

I did around 700 sentences from KO2001 (sorted by kanji frequency) but it made me hate SRS & learning Japanese. After reading positive things from a couple of people on this forum about pure vocab decks I decided to try JLPT4 vocab from smart.fm.

I figured since I did some sentences most vocab should be known to me and I can push for something like 100 words/day. My assumptions were wrong and a LOT of really BASIC vocabulary was completely new to me, that made me think about what I was really learning from sentences and was it worth it. I ditched KO2001 and started JLPT3. Contrary to what I've read around here both lists have very simple and useful vocabulary that's much more important than what I've acquired through KO2001.

[Update]I've just checked lyrics to two songs I've been listening and I'm stunned by how many words I know/recognize. However, since vocabulary isn't everything I can't really understand much when reading (not to mention listening). Guess it's time to work on some grammar and phrases.[/Update]

I'm not kidding myself that I know all those words but its a start and I'll get there eventually. It's still much better than not knowing them at all.

blackmacros Wrote:Read over 1000 pages of manga over the past few days. It's manga, so that's nowhere near 1000 pages of actual text, but its still nice to have finally rebooted my immersion environment properly

Thats a lot!! Beats any SRS drills and is infinitely more fun, can't wait till I can use it efficiently.

9999 cards... feels like the next card has to be something.. special.

Evil_Dragon Wrote:9999 cards... feels like the next card has to be something.. special.

Yup, Anki is actually programmed to auto-destroy your decks when you add the 10'000th card. Have fun!

Codexus Wrote:

Evil_Dragon Wrote:9999 cards... feels like the next card has to be something.. special.

Yup, Anki is actually programmed to auto-destroy your decks when you add the 10'000th card. Have fun!

Gah! I knew it!

After feeling discouraged about my Japanese study I spoke with my older Japanese friend online. Turns out the whole time I spoke with him it was in Japanese. I didn't need to use English at all. So I felt all discouraged about my Japanese for nothing. He also linked me to some strange but funny anime movie.

Surprisingly, I rarely if ever write any journal entries or give any other output of Japanese. All I do is read and listen. When I was talking with my friend Japanese just came to me. I wasn't at a loss for words. And I noticed that my friend never once complimented my Japanese. *sighs*

Well, back to studying. I still got a long road ahead of me. *great sigh*

LegionOfDeicide Wrote:He also linked me to some strange but funny anime movie.

I didn't know that 釣りバカ had been adapted into anime

I seduc...errr conversed with a Japanese girl all day (in Japanese of course). My speaking is tonnes better than I thought.

LegionOfDeicide Wrote:And I noticed that my friend never once complimented my Japanese. *sighs*

That's a good thing, I think. Better than 上手ですね all the time

I stepped up a notch from Yotsuba to Naruto. Read about 500 pages in the past couple days. I'm trying to use manga as a primer into light novels, I hope that works out for me.

Also, about 5 weeks ago, I started a J-E (with the occasional J-J) vocabulary deck. I've got about 1500 cards in it now, and I like how it's working. Thanks to everyone who's been advocating them, you guys convinced me to do it!

And lastly, exchanged emails with my 11 year old cousin. I was able to understand everything she said... (probably because she was smart enough to dumb everything down for me) and she can understand me. For a while, my only reason to keep studying Japanese was, "Because if I stop, the past year would have been a big waste of time". But, my cousin gave me some new encouragement. That's what language is all about, communication.

JxPlugin says I can read just over 2000 kanji. *feels slightly proud*. Kinda doesn't mean shit though... numbers are just numbers. Vocab is plodding along, 5.5k and steadily climbing. Really feel like I'm powering on with it and making leaps and bounds in progress though.

IceCream Wrote:i was watching a program i watched before, & realised i can't turn off understanding the japanese i understand now, and just hear it as sounds again, now matter how much i try... (i think this'd still be different with a new person's voice, but, still,!!)

Funnily enough I had a moment like this recently. I downloaded the Rosetta Stone Mandarin pack (just for kicks), and when I started everything sounded so weird and alien - instantly I had a flashback to when I first used the Japanese version 13 months ago!

Of course the genie is now out of the bottle; there's no going back..

Last night I finished RTK2 音読み. I put the final installment of words into my SRS, a bit more than 4500 in total, and it feels real good.

Will take a quick look at the 訓読み portion chapters, but think my time will be better spent from now on reading as much as I can.

I was recently thinking about some sticky grammar that for a long time I only understood on a basic level, and suddenly they just 'clicked' on a deeper level. Almost like a transition from 'top-down' to 'bottom-up' processing.

7000 sentences and counting... See you guys in a month at 8k

Currently at 9786 sentences in my sentence deck. Feels good, almost to 10,000. Will be this week for sure.
In a few days, i'll post my update on my progress. I think i posted a thread about 5months into japanese, now it's been almost 8 months and damn have things improved.

Since this thread was revived, I guess I'll post.

Another "wave" of studying has began. Sentences deck? Oh, about 83 sentences from the wild.
Going through the Core series, KO2001 ordering. Finished 5 steps, only kept 230 sentences, a large amount only because I knew the word, but not the kanji.

Reading the となりのトトロ novel I got at book-off for 105yen, and ダーリンは外国人, because I'm my own little トニー in a few ways.

Trying to get subs2srs work how I want it to so I can go through 花より男子