Counter Productive Production.

Tobberoth Wrote:

ghinzdra Wrote:And here I was , pondering about exposing my brand new 3 level media strategy.
I guess on this one we really disagree Tobberoth
just a question :what does SRSing mean for you? how do you feel about it ?how much time do you spend on japanese each day , how much time are alloted to SRSing , how much time to live media ?

SRS is an augmented memory. You learn something, usually by means of dictionary, and you want to remember it. Before I had an SRS, I often read Japanese stuff and used Rikaichan or just a dictionary, to understand it. When I ran across it a week later, I had to redo it. All SRS really does for me, is make sure I never forget what I learn. It's like I'm adding the dictionary I always needed to my brain, so I don't need it when I'm exposing myself to Japanese sources. While I find there are benefits to being exposed to grammar and sentences from real contexts, I really think that the massive and most important factor is simply to increase vocabulary. SRS let's you easily learn over 20 new words a day. By traditional studies, you'd be happy if you learned 1 or 2. Grammar, you can learn by exposure, by reading books and rules on grammar, conjugation tables. This works, and it's actually quite effective. In 6 months, I learned basic Japanese conversation to fluency using conjugation tables. SRS requires less effort and is a more fun way to learn it, but comparing the effectiveness over time, I don't think it's THAT big of a difference, not compared to the HUGE difference in expansion of vocabulary.

I spend a few hours on Japanese a day, 1 or 2, sometimes more. I allot the time I need to SRS, It has precedence over normal exposure for me. I review all my expired cards every day and I usually add 20 new sentences, sometimes from structured material, sometimes from mining. Normal Japanese exposure however, I don't even allot time to. I do it when I feel like it. Watch an anime, see an episode of london hearts, read a chapter in a book or manga. I'm not doing AJATT, I'm doing Japanese When I Feel Like It. I noticed early that exposure, while vital to language learning, is ineffective. Two hours of Japanese exposure gives me almost just as much effect as 10 hours, so I've removed all of the forced exposure, it just makes Japanese seem like a chore. I find that exposure only reinforces learning anyway. You learn tons of words and grammar, then you see them used and you understand how and why those things are used. If you don't know what you're being exposed to, you learn almost nothing, especially not at my level. My approach is: Use SRS to learn vocab and the meaning of grammar structures. When the stuff has been in your SRS for a while so it starts to feel comfortable, be exposed to it in various media. I do not believe one can turn this approach around. You have to learn the things before you are exposed to them for the exposure to have any effect. I don't think you learn new words from the exposure, you just internalize the words you already know.

Sorry for that really long post But it was a lot of questions.

actually I used to write WAY longer post....
pretty clear .
except for 2 points
- how much time do you spend on SRSing?
with on average 1-2 hours of japanese a day you review all your stuff and you add 20 sentences ? how much reviews do you do a day ? how much cards do you have in your deck? with 2 hours you still have time to do something else ?
- how would you assess your skills ?
spoken hearing reading writing , give an example of what you can do and what you cannot. How much books have you read ,spead reading on average, how much written vocabulary do you assume to possess , and so on...

Sorry if I m a bit inquisitive here .... but as I said here I thought that there was an unstoppable movement toward more medias , more audio , more immersion... especially when nuke , nestor and I reached very close conclusion without any kind of debate . And you take the very opposite direction .So I m extremely curious.
It s like the Iversen method you know...First time I read about it I thought I got it wrong ,that I missed a point .Even now no matter how hard I think about it I cannot keep but thinking there is something wrong with the SRS if we re compelled to do that . Still some people here seem to use it in parallel with the SRS and with some success.

Anyway what I m trying to awkwardly point out is the variety of language method , and how little we still don t know about languages....
So very interested in your experience.