I feel pretty qualified to comment on all of this. I did Cornell's FALCON program for a year, and now I am in Japan. I have been here for 9 months now.

The textbook we used was called JSL: Japanese the Spoken Language, and it was absolutely awesome. The ENTIRE thing is based on conversation memorization and drill sentences that pertain to real-life social situations that you will encounter in Japan.

There is audio and video available for the textbook, and all of the examples are proper, frequently heard Japanese, spoken/acted by real native Japanese speakers.

It worked. Really well. (One drawback that many people mention is the fact that it uses romanji, but if we are talking about learning to speak and not so much about the writing yet, then this is the way to go.)

HOWEVER, there are drawbacks to this method.
1. real Japanese is not romanji. (Although this can be solved by picking up supplementary reading books like JWL, or Reading Japanese).
2. lack of vocabulary
3. KANJI!! (and how it doesn't stick in your brain!!)

2　and 3 are the real problems. 3 is kind of solved with Remembering the Kanji. I have learned new words because of RTK, which I think is so cool. But the problem with RTK is that it's not just a kanji problem. It's also a vocabulary problem.

And I think the way to get around this is to practice reading to Japanese audio (without studying the Kanji). You would have 1 or more translations of the text (less literal vs. more literal depending on your Level) in addition to the real Japanese text.
This is where I think some sort of sentence reading exercise on the web would be invaluable.

We'd get the new words, and we get to see how they're used naturally.

If you were to make something primitive.. say of the first chapter of Reading Japanese or... of some newspaper articles using certain kanji... something that would review not just vocabulary but vocabulary in context (in Laettner fashion, or something cool like that), then you could have a smash hit on your hands. Books are annoying because you have to review them and know where to review and so on. It'd be much easier to do this stuff on software.

People in the educational market suck at making software. やってみたら?

Though eventually I will be using the sentence method for learning vocabulary/grammar in context I will need to wait until I have finished RTK1. I would like to memorize the JLPT vocabulary until then, which at my level (3) shouldn't be too difficult.

I'm using Anki as a review tool and was wondering the best way to go about learning the JLPT list. Should I study with Kana and add Kanji when I have learned them or just wait until I have finished RTK1? If I do study with kana, a lot of words have multiple meanings or are the same but with different kanji, should I just stick to unambiguous words for now? Also, should I just review nouns for now and save adjectives,verbs, etc. for sentences?

I read somewhere on these forums a method of studying vocab lists before entering them into an SRS, I can't find it now, but I'll try to do my best to paraphrase from memory
1. go through the target list and define each word in your head
2. go through the target list and compare your andwer to the correct answer in the next column
3. cover the target word and quiz yourself from the translated word to the target word, writing down your answers in a third column
4. enter into SRS

vosmiura Wrote:I just wanted to add that I too am just trying to learn vocab out of context, using JLPT lists as a guide. This is because I'm trying to bulk up on vocab, rather than build fluency. On a typical day I add 50 new words, but sometimes more. It all depends on their ease and familiarity, and I always go for the low hanging fruit on any given day.

Are you following the advice above or have you devised a more efficient method? Also, how do you review in an SRS, if at all, from native to japanese or vice-versa?

snozle, my vocab reviews are mostly native to Japanese in my SRS. I less frequently do a pass in the other direction just on paper lists.

My reasoning is that its much easier to go from Japanese to native; if you do that all the time you will learn to recognise the words in Japanese, but it'll be hard to recall them when you need to use them. Reviewing from English to Japanese makes it an active recall, which has a stronger effect on your memory. Its also not much problem going the other way, similar to the way we review RTK.

The occasional pass from J->E is just to improve comprehension speed.

What I review J->E are things like positionals or things that have too many translations from E->J. I try to avoid this where I can by including info in the question like humble/polite, or including a sample phrase in either Japanese or English, whichever will suffice to get to the desired answer.

The effectiveness probably works kind of like this: Nouns > Adverbs > Adjectives > Verbs > Others. So nouns will be least ambiguous, then adjectives and so on. I still find it effective to review most verbs in RTK4&3 though. There are some that are too similar, like "raise" or "hang" or "give" kind of verbs there are 3 or 4 ways of saying them. Do them J->E.

There are lots of words that sound the same in J but mean different things, so you do them in E->J. Without knowing the Kanji, its hard to do J->E. The good news is you can start using your RTK knowledge before you've finished it.

For example, 建てる : たてる vs 立てる : たてる, you will learn these kanji early on in the book and the keyword directly relates to what they mean = one is "to build" and one "to stand (something) up". I think that the 1st 700 RTK kanji (which is where I'm at) covers almost 2/3 of JLPT4&3 kanji.

My technique is, first filter what I want to learn next from the lists... what feels good, or I've heard it, or starting to get a little familiar, or just I want to know it. I write everything down on a little whiteboard (in kana).

Then I do some drills on the list J->E until I get my whole list right. I use a method of a moving window over the list of about 10 words. If I get something wrong, I repeat it out loud, then move back 10 words and repeat from there. I do this until I've remembered every word in one full pass. Then I switch and do the same E->J.

Next I will wait some time (at least 1 hour) before repeating this process once more and after that enter the words into SuperMemo. SuperMemo adds the words in "Final Review" mode, which means it'll ask me to review them once before they go into the spacing process. I won't do the "Final Review" until the following day, and I'll score myself harshly. If I remembered the word overnight, it'll be on its way to long term memory by now. If not it'll go on my learning list again.

Crutches are frowned upon in context of romaji, but remember crutches are a good thing in memorization so give yourself some slack for example put your words in (japanese) alphabetical order when you're working on trying to remember them for more than 30 seconds . At this stage you're just trying to beat your brain into doing a little active recall to start the memory chain reaction.

vosmiura Wrote:snozle, my vocab reviews are mostly native to Japanese in my SRS. I less frequently do a pass in the other direction just on paper lists.

My reasoning is that its much easier to go from Japanese to native; if you do that all the time you will learn to recognise the words in Japanese, but it'll be hard to recall them when you need to use them. Reviewing from English to Japanese makes it an active recall, which has a stronger effect on your memory. Its also not much problem going the other way, similar to the way we review RTK.

The problem with going E>J (for me at least) is that you might get stuck in "translation mode." If you go from E>J while reviewing, you're going to go from E>J when you're speaking, which is a huge stumbling block if you want to be fluent in any language. I think it's best to go J>E until you can think in Japanese, then study J>J. This way you think "in Japanese" from the start and your output doesn't sound like a weird translation of English.

I use the method described at http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com where one puts sentences into an SRS. I read the sentence out loud, make sure I understand it, then write it down without refering to the screen. This has the benefit of active recall without the (IMO) major disadvantages of going mostly E>J (plus I get to work on my horrid handwriting).

uberstuber Wrote:

vosmiura Wrote:snozle, my vocab reviews are mostly native to Japanese in my SRS. I less frequently do a pass in the other direction just on paper lists.

My reasoning is that its much easier to go from Japanese to native; if you do that all the time you will learn to recognise the words in Japanese, but it'll be hard to recall them when you need to use them. Reviewing from English to Japanese makes it an active recall, which has a stronger effect on your memory. Its also not much problem going the other way, similar to the way we review RTK.

The problem with going E>J (for me at least) is that you might get stuck in "translation mode." If you go from E>J while reviewing, you're going to go from E>J when you're speaking, which is a huge stumbling block if you want to be fluent in any language. I think it's best to go J>E until you can think in Japanese, then study J>J. This way you think "in Japanese" from the start and your output doesn't sound like a weird translation of English.

I use the method described at http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com where one puts sentences into an SRS. I read the sentence out loud, make sure I understand it, then write it down without refering to the screen. This has the benefit of active recall without the (IMO) major disadvantages of going mostly E>J (plus I get to work on my horrid handwriting).

Did you already learn enough kanji to do that? Khatsumoto advises to finish RTK first.

I really don't find that I think E>J by doing this myself. Not anymore than studying J>E anyway. After a while I find the words internalise quite well.

Do you ever suffer from the fact that you can understand written Japanese, but you can't remember how to say what you want?

I think I will try the sentence technique to see if it works for me.

uberstuber Wrote:The problem with going E>J (for me at least) is that you might get stuck in "translation mode." If you go from E>J while reviewing, you're going to go from E>J when you're speaking, which is a huge stumbling block if you want to be fluent in any language. I think it's best to go J>E until you can think in Japanese, then study J>J. This way you think "in Japanese" from the start and your output doesn't sound like a weird translation of English.

Agree. Another problem is that when you go for Level 1, you end up with a stack that contains, for example, 5-10 different words to express 'plan, intention'. Unless you find a unique English equivalent for each of them (as Heisig did for his characters), you'll be hardly pressed to differentiate between them when doing E->J reviews...

Some thoughts based on my 3 years in Japan and 10 months or so using an SRS (1800 J-E/1800 E-J cards):

I don't think that E-J is as bad as people make it out to be. The English (or whatever your native tongue is) is there to convey an idea, not so that you learn a connection from word x in English to word y in Japanese. I've never found myself being unable to produce some Japanese in conversation just because I didn't have a specific English word in mind.

J-J is a nice idea, but until your Japanese is very good, you'll either make mistakes writing the Japanese description yourself, or end up with overly long or not well defined dictionary descriptions lifted from the dictionary. Consider you want to learn the word "kirin". In English you can just enter "giraffe". If you look up 大辞林, 広辞苑,　or 新明解 you'll find that the definitions are not useful for studying at all. You'll just end up wasting a lot of time reading the definition to decide what word you're supposed to be remembering.

For those of you who selectively review only in one direction, I don't really think that's a good idea, either. If you come across two words that translate the same in English, consider trying to learn how to define the differences between the words. Sometimes all it amounts to is a difference in politeness, 漢語 vs 和語 etc, but often there's a bit more to it.

For studying nouns and simple adjectives/adverbs, a single English word as a question and answer will suffice. For the more complicated stuff where the way to use it isn't immediately obvious, these days I'm leaning towards learning full sentences or phrases instead. Note you should still be trying to produce the full sentences from a prompt (be it your native language or a Japanese cue). Reading the sentence and then trying to say/copy it without looking at it is better than nothing, but it's not testing your long term memory at all, and thus I really wouldn't recommend it.

Snozle: I think you're stuck on the idea that you shouldn't learn any kanji outside of RTK. Learn the kanji for words that you're studying from the start - it'll save you a lot of time in the long run. You don't need to study writing it if you throw it in Anki - you can save that step for after you've finished RTK. Trying to learn based on only kana or a subset of words which don't conflict with other words sounds like more trouble than it's worth.

vosmiura Wrote:Did you already learn enough kanji to do that? Khatsumoto advises to finish RTK first.

I really don't find that I think E>J by doing this myself. Not anymore than studying J>E anyway. After a while I find the words internalise quite well.

Do you ever suffer from the fact that you can understand written Japanese, but you can't remember how to say what you want?

Before I started RTK I knew about 500 kanji and their ON/KUN yomi, so with my current ~1400 kanji in RTK I can get by for a large amount of sentences.

When I used to do a lot of E>J in a classroom environment, I almost always found myself translating when I wanted to speak, which made me stumble a lot, and sound bad anyway. Quite a few of my classmates had the same experience. That's great that it doesn't happen to you.

When I forget how to say what I want it usually occurs with fairly recent vocabulary (anything within 1-2 months) or vocabulary that's fairly uncommon (for my level anyways). My active vocabulary is a lot smaller than my passive vocabulary, but I'm using it correctly, which is the most important thing about a language IMO.

resolve Wrote:J-J is a nice idea, but until your Japanese is very good, you'll either make mistakes writing the Japanese description yourself, or end up with overly long or not well defined dictionary descriptions lifted from the dictionary.

It is important to not jump to J-J early, I'm not there yet. For cases like Giraffe, J-J really doesn't make sense, that's a good point.

resolve Wrote:For studying nouns and simple adjectives/adverbs, a single English word as a question and answer will suffice.

The lack of this kind of review is one of the flaws of Khatsumoto's method I think. Sometimes the sentence's context can give away a simple word that you wouldn't have been able to remember in a sentence that you didn't understand.
In my SRS I have a category for straight up vocab and one for sentences, which sort of combines the strength of both.