"Until we got to the party, and one of the teachers tells me that I'll give the speech in about ten minutes as soon as the last of the homeroom teachers comes. So I was like "WHAAAT!? That mofo was serious!?"

*Hangs medal around your neck* (-____-)\ I salute your superior Japanese skills.

So today, I took part in a provincial speech contest under the beginner category. I won and now I'm going to Canadian nationals in Calgary,Alberta. I'm on such an energy high right now. This totally makes me believe that hard work can achieve dreams.

Hit 14k vocab!

@blazen: well done on the speech comp!!

mezbup Wrote:Hit 14k vocab!

Wow this must feel nice!

Finally tired of Core2000 sentences (same 3 grammar points over and over again), so today I switched to KO2001.

Already encountered a use of passive verb and few other unusual grammar points. First 20 sentences have been 1/3 easy (could read em straight off), 1/3 understood grammar but contained new vocab, and 1/3 were "WTF does that mean?"

Also in Windows I switched to using Meiryo font for Firefox and Anki. WOW what a difference, it's *almost* as nice as the J-fonts on Mac-OSX.

Learned about 240 words in one day (about 4 hours of studying). Retained 99% of them after 24 hours and 95% after 72 hours (The retention tests being the only time I've reviewed these words since the day I learned them). I'm still waiting to see what I've retained over a week (this Saturday), but so far it's been a great success!

jettyke Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:Hit 14k vocab!

Wow this must feel nice!

sweet

ta12121 Wrote:

jettyke Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:Hit 14k vocab!

Wow this must feel nice!

sweet

Winning!

KMDES Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:

jettyke Wrote:Wow this must feel nice!

sweet

Winning!

cool to be winning

ta12121 Wrote:

KMDES Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:sweet

Winning!

cool to be winning

Must be all the tiger's blood he's got in him.

KMDES Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:

KMDES Wrote:Winning!

cool to be winning

Must be all the tiger's blood he's got in him.

lol

KMDES Wrote:Learned about 240 words in one day (about 4 hours of studying). Retained 99% of them after 24 hours and 95% after 72 hours (The retention tests being the only time I've reviewed these words since the day I learned them). I'm still waiting to see what I've retained over a week (this Saturday), but so far it's been a great success!

jeez, 240 in a day? Were these your first 240 ever or are you at an advanced level?

It's not my first 240, and I'm somewhat (debatably) advanced level, but probably would be much better if I had used effective studying earlier in life. What I've been doing is reading a bunch of books on memory and how the brain works and developing a system that I coud use to learn Japanese. The current system I'm testing has a theoretical limit of learning 900 new words in a day, providing motivation can be maintained for an entire day (rate of 1 word/minute learning + reviews). I'm testing what my retention rate is with various time frames and checking to see what would be the best time frame for myself for retention. If I can keep a retention of rate of above 90% after a whole week, I will consider it at least a possible success as I have yet to test the upper reaches of the limitaton (900 words per day) as I have not found evidence of an a technical upper limit for amount of items memorized in a day, which should be attainable as there are people able to memorize over 100 words in 15 minutes and probably could maintain them through SRS.

So how do you work on those words to remember them and later how did you test yourself on that retention?

I'm really curious since I'll have tons of free time soon and finally can put my learning into overdrive. I'm up for 240 words a day

I use a multisensory approach to the intial learning. This involves most or all of these things, creating a story in my head, writing out the word (if kanji, I write the kanji then the reading), saying the reading/word out loud and trying to repeat the word in my head while doing all these. Each word only take about 5-25 seonds to do this. Taking too long is a bad thing in the initial memorization. Ater I have done this I go and look at the word again, and make sure I can remember everything I need to remember.

Of course this is the first step, so the whole procedure is a tons bits more complicated. As for testing, intial testing involves me putting my hand in front of the answers and see if I can guess it correctly (as I haven't found anything effective enough to set up in under 5 seconds yet.). As for longer time based etsting (1 day, 3 day etc) I take all the words that had survived the day, and I use the excel sheet I had them on as an import into Anki. I set the leech to 1, and any I can't answer correctly get leeched.

I haven't even explained my scratch pads, the times when I review or even the timers yet. Basically, this post might turn into a damn article, but needless to say, that's the jist of what I initially do and how I test if I'm correct. Regardless, it takes a huge amount of effort (like anything worth doing takes) and your mileage may vary if you choose to do the whole method (I just touched the surface in this post) as I'm the only one who's tested this so far.

If you're still interested, I can list a few more details of the experiement I am working on.

And yes, it gets much more complicated.

thurd Wrote:So how do you work on those words to remember them and later how did you test yourself on that retention?

I'm really curious since I'll have tons of free time soon and finally can put my learning into overdrive. I'm up for 240 words a day

I did 500 a day for 2 days, then 250 a day for the next 5 days, but promptly got sick of it (adding them into anki took forever each day, more than memorisation). I think it's a matter of willpower rather than mental ability once you're at a level where just looking at the kanji makes it obvious what the meaning and reading is really. I think if you have all day and don't have to waste time on inputting into your deck, it wouldn't be a stretch to memorise 2000 or so with a 80-90% retention rate if you were fluent with kanji, though of course no one could keep this up.

As to how to do it, just input into Anki, start reviewing, keep pressing "soon" until the cards have entered your short term memory, then press hard. Then review as normal later. That's all.

Nowadays I'm just sticking at a lazy pace of 50 a day (while reading/looking at example sentences, so no one complains at me for being obsessed about numbers/learning words out of context) till I'm at a native level of vocabulary.

dizmox Wrote:

thurd Wrote:So how do you work on those words to remember them and later how did you test yourself on that retention?

I'm really curious since I'll have tons of free time soon and finally can put my learning into overdrive. I'm up for 240 words a day

I did 500 a day for 2 days, then 250 a day for the next 5 days, but promptly got sick of it (adding them into anki took forever each day, more than memorisation). I think it's a matter of willpower rather than mental ability once you're at a level where just looking at the kanji makes it obvious what the meaning and reading is really. I think if you have all day and don't have to waste time on inputting into your deck, it wouldn't be a stretch to memorise 2000 or so with a 80-90% retention rate if you were fluent with kanji, though of course no one could keep this up.

Nowadays I'm just sticking at a lazy pace of 50 a day (while reading/looking at example sentences, so no one complains at me for being obsessed about numbers/learning words out of context) till I'm at a native level of vocabulary.

50 a day is how much cards I'm adding to my vocab each day. I believe slow pace like this will eventually lead to a high level of kanji ability. I used to do 100 per day but got sick of it. Now I 50 for my vocab deck, 20 for my production deck and 10 for my sentence deck.so 80 per day. But lucky since it's spread out, it doesn't feel hard to do at all.

A lot of what I've been researching suggests that amount being learned is not the problem, it's things like motivation, timing, sleep problems and not letting memories survive that are really the problems. For instance, I imagine a lot of people don't review what they learne immediately before going to bed increasing the chance of the memory surviving until REM sleep (as REM could possibly be the best memorizing technique for humans). I have no data to prove people studying kanji don't review before bed, ut I haven't heard of anyone mentioning it. And motivation plays a huge factor. Who wants to review a huge list of 300 words when they could go watch TV or something? I sure don't.

KMDES Wrote:A lot of what I've been researching suggests that amount being learned is not the problem, it's things like motivation, timing, sleep problems and not letting memories survive that are really the problems. For instance, I imagine a lot of people don't review what they learne immediately before going to bed increasing the chance of the memory surviving until REM sleep (as REM could possibly be the best memorizing technique for humans). I have no data to prove people studying kanji don't review before bed, ut I haven't heard of anyone mentioning it. And motivation plays a huge factor. Who wants to review a huge list of 300 words when they could go watch TV or something? I sure don't.

If its not a problem, maybe you could post your whole method in Users study methods thread so we can all enjoy it

I don't know if your whole regime is for me (I don't write kanji at all, I barely get by with hiragana) but some things are worth borrowing (story, speaking out loud, "visualizing").

I'll see what I can do. I haven't formulated the best retention strategy (or may have, but haven't tested to see if it's the best) and there's still a ton of variables to go through... But maybe this will be a good way to get feedback as my biology certainly biases the process yo my physiology.

KMDES Wrote:I'll see what I can do. I haven't formulated the best retention strategy (or may have, but haven't tested to see if it's the best) and there's still a ton of variables to go through... But maybe this will be a good way to get feedback as my biology certainly biases the process yo my physiology.

definitely want to hear what you have to say when your done formulating your retention strategy.

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid130010

Here's what I got so far. Consider this version 1.

I just watched that 'wrist cutter G' video from 'Tokyo gore police' movie
and understood all the sentences,
even though they're simple its a little achievement : )

KMDES Wrote:http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid130010

Here's what I got so far. Consider this version 1.

Man it's such a long post.. It's too hard to read it. Wish there was an easier explanation to this than a text version

jettyke Wrote:

KMDES Wrote:http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid130010

Here's what I got so far. Consider this version 1.

Man it's such a long post.. It's too hard to read it. Wish there was an easier explanation to this than a text version

lol