I had a huge 日本語 binge for three months last winter over in the land of the rising sun; did RTK 1, got 1000 sentences into Anki and was progressing pretty well. After getting back home I think I'd burned myself out and after a few weeks I stopped all my reviews and completely stopped doing any study and now it feels like I've forgotten everything that I learned. It can be pretty hard to get motivated in England, because there isn't much Japanese language or culture about and I'm not much of a fan of Japanese films or music, but I love Japanese people, I think that they are brilliant. However, last week I decided to get started again, which was a pretty daunting task because I have over 3,500 cards in Anki and 2,500 have expired.

Anyway, I realised that last time I went way overboard on 漢字, probably spending over 80% of my learning time over those three months on 漢字, and far too little on vocab and grammar. I'm not saying that it was a bad thing, but definitely RTK turned me into a 漢字オタク (my guess is that I'm not the only one!) and completely skewed my learning focus; considering how much time I spent studying, my ability to communicate was probably (definitely) much less than that of someone who had just concentrated on communication skills. I suppose the point is that knowing a lot of 漢字 is virtually useless by itself; I mean, it's fun, maybe impressive, and can be a bit helpful as it gives you the reading ability of something like a 2 year old, so you can kind of get the gist of things, but that's it. But now I realise the real importance of doing it and drilling it in with an SRS because after going back to my sentence deck, although my recall of the 漢字 meanings is nowhere near as good as it was a few weeks after finishing RTK, my ability to recognise and read Japanese words has really surprised me and it seems like they are all sitting there at the back of my mind ready to go. Now I definitely couldn't write them very well and I probably couldn't go from keyword to 漢字 with much success, but neither of those skills are very useful in the real world; the meanings of the 漢字 are generally much more complicated than a single keyword, compound readings often cannot be inferred from the meanings of the individual 漢字 and most writing is now done on a computer: what is useful though is being able to recognise the 漢字 to read them and RTK seems to have made the foundation for that.

Having a deck of sentences in Anki sitting there ready to go means that reviewing everything I knew is incredibly easy and efficient. So I suppose my point of this is that although RTK + sentences + SRS does sometimes seem like it is a huge amount of work with relatively little reward, I feel like it has proved itself to me, at least so far as retention and creating an incredibly solid foundation for learning Japanese. However, I don't think I will bother doing any more 漢字 reviews; I'm going to reinforce them this time by learning them the "right" way around. If I'm ever in the position of needing to write Japanese at some point in the future I can always load up my old 漢字 deck and grind it out.

I had a similar experience. I think that too much focus on 漢字 can really be detrimental. When you finish, chances are, you rushed to the finish line... your reviews are huge... and you find that you don't suddenly know Japanese. I think it's useful... but I feel as if it is better to balance things out a bit. Now, I'm slowly easing back into study and finding that I don't feel like doing the stack of 1200 kanji waiting to be reviewed in my SRS. Instead, I'm trying to have fun. Watching dramas I like and writing don't words I keep hearing, but don't understand. Fun is the only way I can see myself continuing. No more military type Japanese learning. Leads to burn-out (aka lack of fun) too quickly.

Something similar happened to me, but I started reviewing the kanji again.
Since I already finished RTK before, this time I am doing it differently:

a) I'm only adding the kanji that I need at present, i.e. kanji that I have in my sentences. There's no need to "catch them all". I also don't try to pick sentences to cover all the kanji; that's going about it backwards I think. I add the words I want to learn, and add the kanji for those.

b) I don't have a schedule or routine for adding X amount of kanji per day; I just add some whenever I feel like it. I'm already just fine working with sentences. At this point RTK is complimentary rather than a prerequisite for something else.

Going through RTK kanji again is very fast, so I find that it doesn't take much time. I also find that kanji reviews are like a refreshing break compared to sentences .

Edit: By doing (a) all the kanji in your RTK deck are in your sentences so they won't feel like you're just learning kanji for kanji's sake.

vosmiura Wrote:a) I'm only adding the kanji that I need at present, i.e. kanji that I have in my sentences. There's no need to "catch them all". I also don't try to pick sentences to cover all the kanji; that's going about it backwards I think. I add the words I want to learn, and add the kanji for those.

I sort of agree with this, but remember, those who want to pass JLPT need examples for each kanji simply to raise their chances in the kanji part (where basically knowing kanji use gives you an amazing ability to make educated guesses).

Yeah, test strategy is another thing. I am aiming for JLPT2 so I am adding sentences that cover that vocab, and at the same time the kanji. I have about 90% of the JLPT2 kanji in my RTK deck, and will probably soon have all of them.

sethg Wrote:No more military type Japanese learning. Leads to burn-out (aka lack of fun) too quickly.

That quote has been sitting in my head for the last few hours since I read it, you've definitely hit the nail on the head there for me. For all of the high powered motivation that people get from this excellent site and the AJATT method, which is definitely a very positive thing, there is the flip side to it which kind of turns learning Japanese into a military affair that can only be done by total dedication to the cause; threads like "100 kanji per day," and so on and so forth. Now I'm not saying anything against that mentality because I was as bad as anyone, doing 70+ day in day out along with the 200+ reviews, I was killing myself over those kanji, and now I'm really glad that I did. Moreover, I'm convinced that the Heisig method is the right way to learn kanji. But at the same time I would urge some level of caution to someone else about to embark on RTK. If someone designed a way of learning the kanji in a "sensible" order so that they could be learned by leveraging visual memory whilst simultaneously using a good proportion of those kanji and developing vocabulary and grammar I think that level of balance would be much more beneicial and productive.

My guess would be that it might be better to get acquainted with the primitives first and then as far as possible to make stories for the kanji that one needs on an as is basis. So kanji learning is natural and auxilliary to the language itself. As vosmiura says

vosmiura Wrote:There's no need to "catch them all".

And it's totally true. By the time I left Japan one of my Japanese friends said that I should enter some kind of kanji competition with all the kanji that I knew, and not only could I read them, but there were a lot of kanji that I could write from memory that many Japanese people couldn't. But fundamentally it was a bit ridiculous because for all that, ordering a マクドナルドバーガー tested my Japanese to the limits! I think the AJATT guy says something similar on his site about if you want to know about Japanese ask a Japanese person, if you want to know about kanji ask me (obviously minus the bit about struggling to order マクドナルド)

So I suppose that the time I have had off has been good for me because it has given me some perspective and it has taught me the importance of having fun, balance and productivity rather than ポケットモンスターのバッジを集めている!

Hey man, with that attitude, you're NEVER going to pass JLPT1 in 3 months.

Tobberoth Wrote:Hey man, with that attitude, you're NEVER going to pass JLPT1 in 3 months.

laughs out loud: it's true, I'd be over the moon if I could do JLPT in 10 years. Anyway I'm only learning Japanese so I can say insulting things about people on the tube in front of them to girlfriend.

Edit: Actually I was thinking Tobberoth, you have been a regular here for a long time now and I suppose that means that you have been studying Japanese fairly regularly for most of that time, do you have a link to a page describing your experiences of learning the language? I would be very interested to know about how you have approached it, how you have kept motivated and what you consider your major milestones to have been (if you are the kind of person who thinks about thinkgs like that).

bandwidthjunkie Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:Hey man, with that attitude, you're NEVER going to pass JLPT1 in 3 months.

laughs out loud: it's true, I'd be over the moon if I could do JLPT in 10 years. Anyway I'm only learning Japanese so I can say insulting things about people on the tube in front of them to girlfriend.

Edit: Actually I was thinking Tobberoth, you have been a regular here for a long time now and I suppose that means that you have been studying Japanese fairly regularly for most of that time, do you have a link to a page describing your experiences of learning the language? I would be very interested to know about how you have approached it, how you have kept motivated and what you consider your major milestones to have been (if you are the kind of person who thinks about thinkgs like that).

Heh, I actually have no such thing... I didn't really think about discussing learning Japanese etc before I came to this site... and when I came here, I found lots of people who had been blogging since they started, such as alyks and mentat_kgs. I simply didn't feel I had much to bring since I had already passed JLPT2 months ago when I came to this site.

If you want to know about my experiences though, feel free to send me a mail with questions and I'd be happy to share.

It was that very thinking that had me last year suggest a "RTK Lite" version which soon came to being. The idea being you can build a baseline of 1000 kanji, move onto to basic grammar, then move onto basic vocabulary.

Now, one has a baseline to start mining sentences should one desire all the while adding kanji, vocabulary or grammar samples as they come to them. Or, one can go back to the rest of RTK, followed up by intermediate grammar and vocabulary.

Looking deeper at the idea, I think it's splitting the "systematic learning" material into 100 hour chunks. To me, 100 hours covers 1000 kanji or 1000 simple vocabulary sentences or 500 grammar sentences or just 500 mined sentences.

Now, for the systematic portions there's a reasonable end of the road for kanji (~3000) and grammar (~1500 with Tae Kim and KM). Vocabulary has a vague stop if you consider 10,000 words reasonable. Mined sentences have no real end but then it's not systematic.

Nukemarine Wrote:It was that very thinking that had me last year suggest a "RTK Lite" version which soon came to being. The idea being you can build a baseline of 1000 kanji, move onto to basic grammar, then move onto basic vocabulary.

Now, one has a baseline to start mining sentences should one desire all the while adding kanji, vocabulary or grammar samples as they come to them. Or, one can go back to the rest of RTK, followed up by intermediate grammar and vocabulary.

Looking deeper at the idea, I think it's splitting the "systematic learning" material into 100 hour chunks. To me, 100 hours covers 1000 kanji or 1000 simple vocabulary sentences or 500 grammar sentences or just 500 mined sentences.

Now, for the systematic portions there's a reasonable end of the road for kanji (~3000) and grammar (~1500 with Tae Kim and KM). Vocabulary has a vague stop if you consider 10,000 words reasonable. Mined sentences have no real end but then it's not systematic.

Nukemarine, I have wondered this for a long time, what is your japanese level, and how long did it take you to get there. Sounds like you've gone through a lot of the phases already.

But as far as the grammar goes do you really feel that tae kim+ KM really covers the vast majority of it? and only at 1500 sentences? really? If so, that's great.

BUMP-sorry, I need Nukemarine to answer this.

Yonosa Wrote:200+ reviews a day.... I could bore myself, with 200 reviews day, between my Japanese and Chinese learning, I regularly have 600+ reviews a day. Then again I am unemployed and a student. But anyways, 200 reviews only takes like 45 minutes, or an hour and a half at the most, So I don't think being exasperated over 1h 30m in the SRS a day is really that appropriate, if you can't justify 1h 30m in the SRS per day to achieve something more fulfilling than probably most of us have done in our lives, than just quit. It's not that difficult to squeeze 1h 30m even out of a busy person's life, I've worked fulltime before too, and all it seemed to do is provide to a reason not do anything productive with our personal time, quit the excuses or quit the method I say.

Well between learning new material, putting it into the SRS, reviewing that and then reviewing the old expired cards I was spending 6-8 hours per day on learning; that's a lot of time. I've done a PhD. and I can assure you that most PhD. students do a lot less work than that on a day to day basis. It is exactly your attitude of

Yonosa Wrote:So I don't think being exasperated over 1h 30m in the SRS a day is really that appropriate, if you can't justify 1h 30m in the SRS per day to achieve something more fulfilling than probably most of us have done in our lives, than just quit.

that I think comes from the SRSing mentallity and made me burn out and stop learning. Anyway my advice to you is not to keep on preaching the old dogma of "You must do 1000 cards per day, you must mine every sentence from X website, you must get 10000 cards in your SRS within 1 year..." Because it's all been said before and it is really rather dull.

In my opinion, the right amount for a person to do is an amount that they can happily integrate into their life and that they can maintain over the long term. That's not to say that there won't be points where one tries extra hard, or alternatively does nothing at all, but what I have learned from my time studying is that for me consistency and enjoyment is better than fervor.

bandwidthjunkie Wrote:

Yonosa Wrote:200+ reviews a day.... I could bore myself, with 200 reviews day, between my Japanese and Chinese learning, I regularly have 600+ reviews a day. Then again I am unemployed and a student. But anyways, 200 reviews only takes like 45 minutes, or an hour and a half at the most, So I don't think being exasperated over 1h 30m in the SRS a day is really that appropriate, if you can't justify 1h 30m in the SRS per day to achieve something more fulfilling than probably most of us have done in our lives, than just quit. It's not that difficult to squeeze 1h 30m even out of a busy person's life, I've worked fulltime before too, and all it seemed to do is provide to a reason not do anything productive with our personal time, quit the excuses or quit the method I say.

Well between learning new material, putting it into the SRS, reviewing that and then reviewing the old expired cards I was spending 6-8 hours per day on learning; that's a lot of time. I've done a PhD. and I can assure you that most PhD. students do a lot less work than that on a day to day basis. It is exactly your attitude of

Yonosa Wrote:So I don't think being exasperated over 1h 30m in the SRS a day is really that appropriate, if you can't justify 1h 30m in the SRS per day to achieve something more fulfilling than probably most of us have done in our lives, than just quit.

that I think comes from the SRSing mentallity and made me burn out and stop learning. Anyway my advice to you is not to keep on preaching the old dogma of "You must do 1000 cards per day, you must mine every sentence from X website, you must get 10000 cards in your SRS within 1 year..." Because it's all been said before and it is really rather dull.

In my opinion, the right amount for a person to do is an amount that they can happily integrate into their life and that they can maintain over the long term. That's not to say that there won't be points where one tries extra hard, or alternatively does nothing at all, but what I have learned from my time studying is that for me consistency and enjoyment is better than fervor.

Well yeah, for the most part, I am just trying to say, do as much as you can that you feel comfortable with, don't see yourself short that sort of thing, not do what I am doing. I don't have a must do number for sentences per day though, often I'll do 100, some times Ill do 50, sometime Ill do 35, I don't dictate stuff to myself, but everyday, I do as much as I know can be done within the allotted time. I just think some of the people who quit their SRS maybe didn't get to the point where they can really begin to see it working. I am a huge fan, and I enjoy every minute spent with my srs, as boring and unbearable as it is to others, just knowing oh there's one more sentence/word/kanji/hanzi that I know, is pretty fulfilling I think, plus I get my big cup of green tea and just go at it, and occasionaly I srs and walk on my treadmill at the same time. Spice your SRS a bit and it can be quite fun, also, I try to not SRS in the same place all the time, move around if possible, don't feel restricted by the SRS(I guess if you have a desktop it's a bit harder but...) anyways, you get the idea.

Well I did the SRSing pretty religiously for about three and a half months and by the point I took a break I had learned RTK1 and minna no nihongo 1 very thoroughly, much much better than if I had been trying to manage my own studying. I'm not saying that SRSing isn't a good way of learning, far from it I definitely agree that it is a great way of learning. However, by it's very nature it is pretty repetitive and although often it is quite pleasurable, it can become something of a chore, especially after you have been on a bit of a bender over the weekend and then on Monday morning you have 600 odd cards waiting for you. I suppose it imposes discipline on its user and I'm definitely not the most disciplined person in the world (if only I could find an SRS for physical excersise). But different people enjoy different things, for example millions of people love World of Warcraft, but I personally found it really dull and repetitive.

I agree that variety can help and sometimes I go to a coffee shop to get a change of environment. I suppose my main issue is that the SRS can start to take over one's life.

For me the way I feel about SRSing varies from day to day depending on my state of mind. Some days it goes smooth, I feel very happy and motivated doing the repetitions. Some days it feels like it just can't end soon enough.

Overall I think you need to find a good balance of adding cards so that on your bad days, or when you have something to do that stops you from reviewing for a few days, you don't crash and burn.

I also found it useful to really learn things before I add them to the SRS. Before I add a sentence I drill the c#ap out of any new vocab first and then by the time I start SRS I usually fail next to no new or young cards. Before that I used to fail some new sentences 5~10 times before they stuck.

Yonosa Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:It was that very thinking that had me last year suggest a "RTK Lite" version which soon came to being. The idea being you can build a baseline of 1000 kanji, move onto to basic grammar, then move onto basic vocabulary.

Now, one has a baseline to start mining sentences should one desire all the while adding kanji, vocabulary or grammar samples as they come to them. Or, one can go back to the rest of RTK, followed up by intermediate grammar and vocabulary.

Looking deeper at the idea, I think it's splitting the "systematic learning" material into 100 hour chunks. To me, 100 hours covers 1000 kanji or 1000 simple vocabulary sentences or 500 grammar sentences or just 500 mined sentences.

Now, for the systematic portions there's a reasonable end of the road for kanji (~3000) and grammar (~1500 with Tae Kim and KM). Vocabulary has a vague stop if you consider 10,000 words reasonable. Mined sentences have no real end but then it's not systematic.

Nukemarine, I have wondered this for a long time, what is your japanese level, and how long did it take you to get there. Sounds like you've gone through a lot of the phases already.

But as far as the grammar goes do you really feel that tae kim+ KM really covers the vast majority of it? and only at 1500 sentences? really? If so, that's great.

I started RTK back in July 2007, averaging I hope 1 to 2 hours of self study time per day (recently trying to up it to three hours). I honestly do not know what my level is, but it's not too high in my opinion. For now, I can only give raw numbers: 90% review rate over 2550 RTK (recognition and writing), 2500 vocabulary words from iKnow (dictation and reading), and the 750 from Tae Kim excluding advanced. I also pseudo translated 2 tv episodes (of the 1200 lines, I used 500 thus far in Anki). Basically it doesn't tell you jack shit. With a such slow study pace, the SRS has definitely preserved all the effort I've been putting in though. My reading level feels strong, though I do lean heavily on RTK at times.

Like Nonpoint and others point out, I've been here quite a while and am not fluent. So, like I've warned in the past, take my advice with a grain of salt. By 1500 sentences grammar, I'm just adding the 850 of Tae Kim with the KM sentences (around 650 to 750 I think). I have no clue if that's enough for self sustainability, but it seems like it. Besides, there's got to be a point where the benefit of systematic study goes beyond learning Japanese to use in your life (my purpose) into learning Japanese to teach and research it (MS or PhD's purpose).

And yes, I've gone through a few sub-phases in Japanese. And yes, I tend to over analyze everything way too freaking much. I've done that in many things (paper RPG's, Sega games, Aikido, Go, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Babylon 5, CrossFit, Running, Runescape, Math, Sex, Atheism, Instructor, Electronics) which means you'll see stuff I've written covering the spectrum. Oddly enough, Japanese seems to have held my attention the longest.

Nukemarine Wrote:

Yonosa Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:It was that very thinking that had me last year suggest a "RTK Lite" version which soon came to being. The idea being you can build a baseline of 1000 kanji, move onto to basic grammar, then move onto basic vocabulary.

Now, one has a baseline to start mining sentences should one desire all the while adding kanji, vocabulary or grammar samples as they come to them. Or, one can go back to the rest of RTK, followed up by intermediate grammar and vocabulary.

Looking deeper at the idea, I think it's splitting the "systematic learning" material into 100 hour chunks. To me, 100 hours covers 1000 kanji or 1000 simple vocabulary sentences or 500 grammar sentences or just 500 mined sentences.

Now, for the systematic portions there's a reasonable end of the road for kanji (~3000) and grammar (~1500 with Tae Kim and KM). Vocabulary has a vague stop if you consider 10,000 words reasonable. Mined sentences have no real end but then it's not systematic.

Nukemarine, I have wondered this for a long time, what is your japanese level, and how long did it take you to get there. Sounds like you've gone through a lot of the phases already.

But as far as the grammar goes do you really feel that tae kim+ KM really covers the vast majority of it? and only at 1500 sentences? really? If so, that's great.

I started RTK back in July 2007, averaging I hope 1 to 2 hours of self study time per day (recently trying to up it to three hours). I honestly do not know what my level is, but it's not too high in my opinion. For now, I can only give raw numbers: 90% review rate over 2550 RTK (recognition and writing), 2500 vocabulary words from iKnow (dictation and reading), and the 750 from Tae Kim excluding advanced. I also pseudo translated 2 tv episodes (of the 1200 lines, I used 500 thus far in Anki). Basically it doesn't tell you jack shit. With a such slow study pace, the SRS has definitely preserved all the effort I've been putting in though. My reading level feels strong, though I do lean heavily on RTK at times.

Like Nonpoint and others point out, I've been here quite a while and am not fluent. So, like I've warned in the past, take my advice with a grain of salt. By 1500 sentences grammar, I'm just adding the 850 of Tae Kim with the KM sentences (around 650 to 750 I think). I have no clue if that's enough for self sustainability, but it seems like it. Besides, there's got to be a point where the benefit of systematic study goes beyond learning Japanese to use in your life (my purpose) into learning Japanese to teach and research it (MS or PhD's purpose).

And yes, I've gone through a few sub-phases in Japanese. And yes, I tend to over analyze everything way too freaking much. I've done that in many things (paper RPG's, Sega games, Aikido, Go, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Babylon 5, CrossFit, Running, Runescape, Math, Sex, Atheism, Instructor, Electronics) which means you'll see stuff I've written covering the spectrum. Oddly enough, Japanese seems to have held my attention the longest.

I think starting another topic would be appropriate. " Is anyone here Fluent? how long did it take, and what method did you use?" thread

Yonosa Wrote:So I don't think being exasperated over 1h 30m in the SRS a day is really that appropriate, if you can't justify 1h 30m in the SRS per day to achieve something more fulfilling than probably most of us have done in our lives, than just quit.

Some of us don't find SRSing as easy to tackle or as fun, that doesn't mean we should quit Japanese. I can probably count the number of times I've reviewed via SRS for more than an hour and a half in a given day on one hand- I take that back- I don't need any hands. It's 0. Japanese isn't an SRS- I'll take my nights out at the bar and my days at the beach with my Japanese volleyball friends over SRSing any day of the week. I don't learn from an SRS like I do from actually experiencing something, and I've always been that way.

Why do so many people have this attitude? That an SRS is the end all and be all of language learning? It is definitely a great tool, but the point of language is communication, not pressing the spacebar. And one definitely shouldn't quit just because they don't like SRSing- after all, people learned languages before the SRS came about.

Yonosa Wrote:I think starting another topic would be appropriate. " Is anyone here Fluent? how long did it take, and what method did you use?" thread

Did I mention I've been here awhile? Here's one I started last year with all of one reply.

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=991

I don't think many of us here think we're fluent (well, maybe Aijin and Magamo, but I have my doubts).

Nukemarine Wrote:

Yonosa Wrote:I think starting another topic would be appropriate. " Is anyone here Fluent? how long did it take, and what method did you use?" thread

Did I mention I've been here awhile? Here's one I started last year with all of one reply.

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=991

I don't think many of us here think we're fluent (well, maybe Aijin and Magamo, but I have my doubts).

Yeah, a new thread is probably appropriate since that one was so long ago.

captal Wrote:

Yonosa Wrote:So I don't think being exasperated over 1h 30m in the SRS a day is really that appropriate, if you can't justify 1h 30m in the SRS per day to achieve something more fulfilling than probably most of us have done in our lives, than just quit.

Some of us don't find SRSing as easy to tackle or as fun, that doesn't mean we should quit Japanese. I can probably count the number of times I've reviewed via SRS for more than an hour and a half in a given day on one hand- I take that back- I don't need any hands. It's 0. Japanese isn't an SRS- I'll take my nights out at the bar and my days at the beach with my Japanese volleyball friends over SRSing any day of the week. I don't learn from an SRS like I do from actually experiencing something, and I've always been that way.

Why do so many people have this attitude? That an SRS is the end all and be all of language learning? It is definitely a great tool, but the point of language is communication, not pressing the spacebar. And one definitely shouldn't quit just because they don't like SRSing- after all, people learned languages before the SRS came about.

SRS is the end of all of efficient knowledge retention at the moment. I feel that strongly about it, also, I can probably guarantee that spending a lot of hours in the SRS at the beginning will pay off later on. For instance covering 400 grammar points in one month, seems better than covering what maybe? 50 or 100? I think grabbing at the basics of a language quickly is not only beneficial, but it allows you to reach the enjoyable "I know whats going on and can explain what i don't and understand things explained to me" phase. You don't have to believe me outright, I can be a case study, I post fairly often here so just check on me a year down the road, and we cam compare notes iight?

captal Wrote:

Yonosa Wrote:So I don't think being exasperated over 1h 30m in the SRS a day is really that appropriate, if you can't justify 1h 30m in the SRS per day to achieve something more fulfilling than probably most of us have done in our lives, than just quit.

Some of us don't find SRSing as easy to tackle or as fun, that doesn't mean we should quit Japanese. I can probably count the number of times I've reviewed via SRS for more than an hour and a half in a given day on one hand- I take that back- I don't need any hands. It's 0. Japanese isn't an SRS- I'll take my nights out at the bar and my days at the beach with my Japanese volleyball friends over SRSing any day of the week. I don't learn from an SRS like I do from actually experiencing something, and I've always been that way.

Why do so many people have this attitude? That an SRS is the end all and be all of language learning? It is definitely a great tool, but the point of language is communication, not pressing the spacebar. And one definitely shouldn't quit just because they don't like SRSing- after all, people learned languages before the SRS came about.

Couldn't agree more, you'll never get the same kind of excitement from an SRS as you will from speaking real bad Japanese with a Japanese friend in a bar. A few months ago my gf came over to England and I took her to a rave, on the way back I insisted that we only spoke in Japanese (yep I was trashed); it was great, the driver didn't have a clue what we were saying and we were both really surprised how much I could say if I really tried. An SRS is a great tool, but it's a means to an end, not the end itself; sometimes it can be easy to forget that.

bandwidthjunkie Wrote:

captal Wrote:

Yonosa Wrote:So I don't think being exasperated over 1h 30m in the SRS a day is really that appropriate, if you can't justify 1h 30m in the SRS per day to achieve something more fulfilling than probably most of us have done in our lives, than just quit.

Some of us don't find SRSing as easy to tackle or as fun, that doesn't mean we should quit Japanese. I can probably count the number of times I've reviewed via SRS for more than an hour and a half in a given day on one hand- I take that back- I don't need any hands. It's 0. Japanese isn't an SRS- I'll take my nights out at the bar and my days at the beach with my Japanese volleyball friends over SRSing any day of the week. I don't learn from an SRS like I do from actually experiencing something, and I've always been that way.

Why do so many people have this attitude? That an SRS is the end all and be all of language learning? It is definitely a great tool, but the point of language is communication, not pressing the spacebar. And one definitely shouldn't quit just because they don't like SRSing- after all, people learned languages before the SRS came about.

Couldn't agree more, you'll never get the same kind of excitement from an SRS as you will from speaking real bad Japanese with a Japanese friend in a bar. A few months ago my gf came over to England and I took her to a rave, on the way back I insisted that we only spoke in Japanese (yep I was trashed); it was great, the driver didn't have a clue what we were saying and we were both really surprised how much I could say if I really tried. An SRS is a great tool, but it's a means to an end, not the end itself; sometimes it can be easy to forget that.

This post was just dumb, naturally it's not the end, I mean WhoTF thinks the SRS is the fun part, and who the f*&* here is learning Japanese so that they have an excuse to use an SRS, Noone of course... So why would you even say something this stupid.
Easy to forget that? no you seem to just like the sound of your words, because if you read that "sometimes it can be easy to forget that", really? really it can be easy to forget that? I mean I don't see how it can be easy to forget when an SRS in based on quantifying what we study, and our task if to learn a certain desired number of words/phrases/grammar styles... At the end of each review we can check the number of Kanji/Hanzi we can read, how many there are left to learn, how many words we need to know still, how many grammar styles, I mean we can even use frequency lists and give a pretty close estimate to how much of the given language we can understand, We can see pretty much all the statistics we need to and even estimate and END date.Easy to forget? I think the majority of the reason people here use SRS, is because it is easy to see that it's a "means to an end" since it makes knowledge a bit more quantifiable, and we can actually see how much we know, and I think If you ask most People on here I doubt that very many have forgotten it's a means to an end,Easy to Forget that? I couldn't see how. Also another great thing about an SRS is that it does opposite with the information we are learning, it helps us to REMEMBER.
馬鹿・・・

Use some reasoning next time and read over your post, before spitting that garbage out

Edit: Sorry for being mean about that though.

Good thread, I enjoy hearing everyones experiences learning japanese. Yonosa you contribute a lot of valuable insights, but you need to lighten up a bit, the guy just made a throw away comment about SRSs. Sometimes I think people on this forum take everything a bit too seriously.

The truth is tomorrow we might die in a traffic accident or something, that is why I always make sure I enjoy my japanese study. Yes at my current rate I'll never make JLPT1, but in truth I don't care, for me it is an interesting pasttime, something to spend a bit of time on other than work or other stuff that is going on in my life.

For most people I think trying to do AJATT or 8 hours a day of Heisig is probably going to suck your motivation due to all the other life experiences you are missing out on, boredom, and other factors. On the other hand if you really love spending all that time, I don't have an issue with it.

Good luck all.