smartazjb0y Wrote:Just a quick question: I'm currently still doing RTK, I just started yesterday and I'm up to frame 25. How would I use 2001KO along with this? I took a look at the ebook, and I know what it is, but how would I use it to learn readings and etc. AFAIK, the order of the kanji are different in RTK and 2001KO.

Well, it may be difficult to explain, but we have a variant of RTK called RTK Lite. In RTK Lite, you can use either the group of Kanji that's based off JLPT 4, 3 and 2 (about 1200 kanji) or the Kanji based off 2001KO (again, about 1200 kanji). Basic idea is you learn what's considered the minimum amount of Kanji necessary then move onto vocabulary and grammar.

RTK Lite might take about 100 to 150 study hours while RTK would take about 200 to 300 study hours. That 100 to 200 study hours you "save" can then be applied early on to 300 to 500 grammar sentences (Such as Tae Kim) and 500 to 1000 vocabulary sentences (Such as 2001KO sentences sorted by the nifty program by Thurd and Cangy).

But I recommend do these in definite "chunks". So do Kanji with RTK, learn basic and essential grammar via Tae Kim (about 350 sentences), then learn about 1000 of the Core 2k and 6k vocabulary (preferably sorted with the same program they used on 2001KO).

By this time, you have invested about 300 to 400 study hours. That's equivalent of a 6 or 8 semester hour of college. Something tells me you'll be WAY ahead of anyone that just did the college classes though.

I'll offer some advice for learning Japanese, as I think it differs from the majority of replies you'll get on this forum.

I started studying the language about a year and a half ago, started RTK about 9 months ago (only cracked down seriously on it within the past 1.5 months doing 25-50 kanji per day though), and I feel that I'm at a reasonable level for the amount of time I've spent.

I started with Jordan's "Japanese: The Spoken Language" which, looking back on it, was a great series of books, though sadly they're entirely romanized. People have mentioned that textbook Japanese is a sterile sort of formula that uses Japanese words, but doesn't actually exist in the wild and I wholeheartedly agree. With the possible exception of this textbook. In the time since I've finished reading JSL, I've had an opportunity to read some of the Yookoso and Genki series and I've been really surprised with how retardedly dumbed down the sentence structures in the dialogue are.

Unlike some others here, I learned the kana from rote memorization of a chart I made up and hung on my wall. Took me about 3-4 hours to be able to recognize them all, three days to be able to write in hiragana without having to glance at my chart and a week to write in katakana without the chart. For a supplement textbook that's written in Japanese I used (and am still using) Nagara's "Japanese For Everybody."

Most important is constant exposure to the spoken language. Whether it's by watching samurai movies, anime, J-soap operas (drama), or simply watching whatever Japanese TV shows you can get playing through Keyhole, the more the better. I think English subtitles do help in the beginning stages, but eventually you absolutely must turn them off. The more exposure like this, at every level, the better. You will find yourself learning vocabulary from context, subconsciously, and what's more, you will learn how to use that vocabulary simultaneously. One of the dangers of learning vocabulary from a list is that Japanese words simply don't translate to English. There is no 1:1 ratio because the definitions themselves are different between the languages.

Just as important as listening practice is speaking practice. I got a lot of mileage out of Pimsleur's audio course because it set up audio-only situations to practice speaking, but after about a year of study, I've got to confess, my speaking ability was sadly lacking. I've only recently gotten a Japanese conversation partner which has already helped greatly, though it's hard to set up conversations covering all the situations I might run into in Japan. Ultimately I think immersion would be best for speaking practice, but without that you've got to put forth the effort to speak the language even when there's nobody around to respond. Speaking is not about recalling vocabulary from memory and using mathematical formulae to conjugate verbs. Speaking is about developing good speaking habits, and you can't do that if you don't actually speak.

Sentence mining is important. Just as you want to learn vocabulary from context, it's also important to learn grammar from context. And it doesn't have to be from the written language either. Take a sentence you hear in one of your movies/animes, try to translate it, and if you can't then save it for later. Even in the beginning stages, you can just pull sentences out of your textbook or out of books like The Japan Times' "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar." I hung a huge blank poster on my wall and am slowly filling it in with sentence structures as I learn them. A big whiteboard is also helpful for this.

I think I differ from the majority of posters here as I can't stand using SRS programs. Don't get me wrong, I love the concept, but staring at my computer screen for too long, one of two things start to happen. Either I get distracted and doodle around on some forum or other (like I'm doing now), spending hours on something I could have done in 20 minutes, or I simply get a headache from the computer screen itself. Also, I don't like having a computer and a notebook on my desk (I have to twist uncomfortably in my chair). For kanji, I just do paper flash cards, which I think can be organized perfectly fine below the 1000 card level, and with reasonable effort from 1000-2000, as long as you're diligent with reviews and know when you can remove a card from your most active deck. It forces me to focus on writing, and as a result, my handwriting has improved to the point where the writing of kanji I know is more a matter of habit than conscious thought.

For vocabulary, I keep newly-learned words in a notebook which I occasionally go back to, and try to practice writing with them. Review of vocabulary is a weak-point for me, and one reason why I only love the concept of SRS, even if it's too much of a headache to use it practically. This is also why I've beefed up on my RTK schedule recently, so I can gain access to the written Japanese language and thus review vocabulary more easily in the context of whatever I read. Time will tell how that works out...

I'm currently taking a class (fulfilling a language requirement at my uni) and I can say that it's not all that helpful. As the author of the AJATT blog points out, listening to Jenny from Vermont saying OH-hay-OH-go-ZAY-mass-OO does not help you practice your Japanese. Also, the teacher tends to over-pronounce words, speak incredibly slowly, and use very unnatural intonation patterns for the sake of teaching, which is also unhelpful. That said, it is helpful to have a native speaker right there to correct your stupid mistakes (we all will make these due to the lack of a 1:1 correspondence in definitions between Japanese and English), though if you can find a conversation partner, this may be less of an issue. In any case, a year of JPN courses is the minimum requirement to study abroad in Japan, so that's my excuse. Also, as someone pointed out, it's helpful to make English-speaking friends who are also interested in studying the language. Nothing has ever been a better motivator for me personally than trying to compete with another person in regards to knowledge.

OK, what do you mean by RTK Lite? Is it a list of kanji, a program, or what? I don't use SRS besides the one on this site, so I don't really know what you mean.

Also, I see a lot of hate against Textbooks, but from experience, I learn better from textbooks, at least just to start out. Maybe after a little bit of studying from the textbook, I'll go on to sentence mining or other methods suggested.

My main problem with textbooks, even though I have used them a great deal, is the way they space out grammar points and pack in vocabulary such that, if you were to follow them lesson-by-lesson (particularly if you're just starting out), you would learn way more words than you'd know what to do with. Most textbooks focus too much on ultra-simple declarative sentences and yes/no questions, which are rarely used in real conversation in any language, much less a language like Japanese, where it's standard practice for people to obfuscate their opinions under layers of ambiguity and formality. You learn the more useful stuff much later on under the heading of "advanced grammar" even though it's just another part of the essential grammar you need to even get by in a real conversation. So while it's possible to skip ahead through a textbook learning all the grammar points at once, there's actually a site that's compiled all these essential bits of information which I'm sure most of us have gotten a lot of use out of called Tae Kim's Japanese Guide to Japanese Grammar. http://www.guidetojapanese.org

I still like Jorden's "Japanese: The Spoken Language," though; and sentence mining, while it sounds like dirty work, can be something as simple as watching a subtitled anime, pausing it when you get to a phrase you'd like to learn, then going back and listening carefully for how the words are used to create meaning. At the beginning stage, you can learn a whole lot about particle usage, as well as how interjections are used, without really trying.

I dunno, maybe I'm just not really good, but after finishing RTK1 I was absolutely not prepared for smart.fm (and I assume KO2001)

I mean just look at the very first sentence
運動会で一位になったよ。

うんどうかい で <b> いち </b> い に なった よ 。

I have NO idea whatsoever what that means. Sure I can write the kanji and the kana/ Maybe I can even pronounce it. But how are you supposed to start from scratch and understand that? You can't even really look up each element in a dictionary? I mean with enough effort I could probably dissect it. But I'm reading people are putting in a hundred (!!) words a day, which seems absolutely insane to me (unless this is all you do all day). I'm happy if I just get 20 vocab words a day. Maybe I'm not memorizing correctly... but I can't get more words than that to stick in my head.

Now I'm trying to do Tae Kim first, and that seems to be going great (though unfortunately it's mostly vocab lists =( ) and I can recognize particles and stuff, which is nice. Maybe once I'm done I'll be able to understand that sentence.

Anyways.. maybe I got a little sidetracked. But I just don't think RTK -> KO2001 is realistic

And if somebody could explain to me how they do 100 sentences a day... I would like to know your voodoo.

georgative Wrote:I dunno, maybe I'm just not really good, but after finishing RTK1 I was absolutely not prepared for smart.fm (and I assume KO2001)

I mean just look at the very first sentence
運動会で一位になったよ。

うんどうかい で <b> いち </b> い に なった よ 。

I have NO idea whatsoever what that means. Sure I can write the kanji and the kana/ Maybe I can even pronounce it. But how are you supposed to start from scratch and understand that? You can't even really look up each element in a dictionary? I mean with enough effort I could probably dissect it. But I'm reading people are putting in a hundred (!!) words a day, which seems absolutely insane to me (unless this is all you do all day). I'm happy if I just get 20 vocab words a day. Maybe I'm not memorizing correctly... but I can't get more words than that to stick in my head.

Now I'm trying to do Tae Kim first, and that seems to be going great (though unfortunately it's mostly vocab lists =( ) and I can recognize particles and stuff, which is nice. Maybe once I'm done I'll be able to understand that sentence.

Anyways.. maybe I got a little sidetracked. But I just don't think RTK -> KO2001 is realistic

And if somebody could explain to me how they do 100 sentences a day... I would like to know your voodoo.

Have you read something like tae kims guide? If grammer is your problem, go take a read of it. If it isn't, then just bite the bullet and look up those words. If you can, try and search smart.fm or Yahoo!辞書 for some simpler example sentences. Yeah, it'll be slow to begin with, but it'll get much easier when you know more of the common words. When I had just finished Tae Kims I went straight into trying to play FF9 in Japanese. It probably took me about 20 minutes per sentence back then...

jajaaan Wrote:My main problem with textbooks, even though I have used them a great deal, is the way they space out grammar points and pack in vocabulary such that, if you were to follow them lesson-by-lesson (particularly if you're just starting out), you would learn way more words than you'd know what to do with.

Isn't that just the way language is? I know that I've found all the way along that grammar is relatively simple and there's not all that much of it, whereas vocabulary is a huge mountain to climb. Textbooks are just trying to maintain a balance... I started out with textbooks and (small, ie 1 or 2 student) classes, and I think they're a fine way to get started and get a solid foundation in basic stuff.

georgative Wrote:I dunno, maybe I'm just not really good, but after finishing RTK1 I was absolutely not prepared for smart.fm (and I assume KO2001)

No, I think KO is completely the wrong thing if all you've done is RTK1. The target audience for KO is people who've taken a fairly traditional route through learning Japanese -- they've studied basic through to lower intermediate grammar and vocabulary with mostly kana, and so KO is trying to teach the kanji on top of that (ie it assumes that you wouldn't have much trouble with the sentences if they weren't in kanji). What you want is something that teaches you basic grammar and vocabulary...

georgative Wrote:But how are you supposed to start from scratch and understand that?

You are not. You need some introduction to Japanese first. Tae-Kim can fulfill that role or you can just go to the local bookstore and buy a few books. The important thing at first is that you just get used to Japanese. You need to understand how the language works without getting too much into details. You shouldn't care about remembering words at this point. Just let your curiosity guide you and enjoy that awesome feeling of discovering a new language for at least a few weeks.

georgative Wrote:I'm happy if I just get 20 vocab words a day.
[...]
And if somebody could explain to me how they do 100 sentences a day... I would like to know your voodoo.

Some people just study all day long, some exaggerate, others have an awesome memory but mostly they just burn out after a few weeks when they can't keep up with their reviews anymore. Just don't compare yourself with what people post on the internet.

20 new words a day is already really fast. It's 7300 words a year. Within 3 years you'll have over 20'000 words! The important thing is to continue steadily every day. But you probably shouldn't worry about that now.

I don't know where people get the idea that one could go from RTK to KO2001 with out grammar-its a bad idea.

zazen666 Wrote:I don't know where people get the idea that one could go from RTK to KO2001 with out grammar-its a bad idea.

Thats why I propose RTK -> Tae Kim (one thorough reading up to&including essential grammar) -> KO2001|2001KO .

I did it and I can handle KO2001 (its just more natural this way) pretty well, struggling only with really hard sentences.

To the OP: first concentrate on RTK, it looks like a chore but it really helps. Don't try to mix it with something like sentences etc. focus purely on kanji and you will be thankful later. Its just so much easier remembering new vocab based on kanji which meaning you already know. It took me 2 months to be done with RTK, you should do better

It's fun to observe your progress based on real experiences, try looking at some posters, funny pictures etc. with kanji on them when you're at around 500, 1000 or 1500 kanji. At first you will recognize only a few kanji, when you're around half you will see an improvement, at 3/4 you'll just miss a few of them. When you're done you will rarely see anything new to you!! It all shows you that this whole process is a finite thing, after you approach high enough level you stop seeing kanji as an obstacle and begin using it for your benefit.

I think the same thing will apply to learning reading.

georgative Wrote:I dunno, maybe I'm just not really good, but after finishing RTK1 I was absolutely not prepared for smart.fm (and I assume KO2001)

I mean just look at the very first sentence

Okay. Core 2000 Step 1: http://smart.fm/goals/19053/content#sentences

それはとてもいい話しだ。
それ　は　とても　いい　はなし　だ。
That's a really nice story.

Quote:運動会で一位になったよ。
うんどうかい で <b> いち </b> い に なった よ 。

Oh.

Kanji Odyssey. Ouch.

Quote:I have NO idea whatsoever what that means. ... But I'm reading people are putting in a hundred (!!) words a day, which seems absolutely insane to me (unless this is all you do all day).

Woah, woah, woah. Don't freak out because you suck at first. Everyone sucks at first. I sucked at first (more on that below). New sentences get a lot easier once you have more knowledge. Starting out with Core2000 is tough, and in my opinion, KO is much harder. Eventually, you really do reach a point where sentences like that become easy.

Quote:I'm happy if I just get 20 vocab words a day. Maybe I'm not memorizing correctly... but I can't get more words than that to stick in my head.

Well, if you're memorizing "words" you're probably not memorizing correctly. While there's nothing wrong with studying single word sentences (the Japanese language has a special affinity for single-word-sentences), you should only do so if that word makes sense as a single sentence. Since you won't be able to tell on your own early on, make that rule "only study single word sentences when you encounter single word sentences."

Quote:Now I'm trying to do Tae Kim first, and that seems to be going great (though unfortunately it's mostly vocab lists =( )

Oh, yes, the verb lists. Those suck because Japanese verbs simply don't match up well with English ones. Heck, 入る and 入れる are both usually translated as "in" or "into" which aren't even verbs! Now, with experience, you can gain a gut feeling for the difference between 下がる (lower)、下げる、(lower)、低い(lower)、and 下(lower), but doing that requires meeting each of them in context.

Quote:Anyways.. maybe I got a little sidetracked. But I just don't think RTK -> KO2001 is realistic

Yeah, me too. Yes, RTK -> KO2001 is rather unrealistic. Actually, RTK -> any sentences is unrealistic. It's all unrealistic, and let me talk about that below.

Quote:And if somebody could explain to me how they do 100 sentences a day... I would like to know your voodoo.

No voodoo. Just time. 100 sentences a day would be about two and a half hours for me. However, that would be very hard to sustain. I usually do about 25 to 35 a day, maybe as many as 50 if I'm really on a roll. That takes about 45 minutes of anki-time. It would be very difficult to start with that, I did 10 minutes a day, then 20, then 30, then 30 plus whatever I feel like doing (my current pace).

So, how do you really make the transition from RTK to sentences? First, you accept that it's unreasonable. This took me a while, I spent a lot of time just treading water on RTK reviews trying to come up with a good mnemonic system for sentences. After a couple of weeks of going nowhere that (!) I decided to at least do a little bit of Core2000 (so I'd at least be "moving forward") and spend the rest of my time sulking.

I figured if I'm gonna be sulky about how hard Japanese is, I should at least do it watching Japanese TV. Really stupid cartoons, so I don't feel bad about missing the dialogue. Well, what do you know? Core2000 started to stick, I started to hear words from it in my audio, and slowly, my motivation grew. Unreasonable. Purely emotional. But it works.

That was about two months ago. Just recently, something very encouraging happened. I noticed my lack of Japanese skill is really starting to get irritating: imagine listening to dialogue like this: "At least promise me that *ksssshhhh*." What promise? Darn it, I want to know!

Which is good, since it's encouraging me to rewind and listen closely with a dictionary. Which is to say, I'm back on track. When you get stuck, and you will get stuck, the trick is to just tread water, delete hard SRS cards, and indulge in insultingly dumb entertainment.

I'm sure it won't win me any 'language teacher life coach' awards, but that's my two cents.

Since I'm looking to pick a fight (yeah, it's a two-week old post, sorry):

hanzaisha Wrote:

bombpersons Wrote:The tried and tested route for newbies is as follows (assuming they already know kana):

1. Do RTK1
2. Do KO2001 (A book called 2001: Kanji Odyssey)

Thats some BS there, buddy... "The tried and tested route", more like the opinion of the vocal few in this forum. Really vocal ones with post counts so high one has to wonder if all they do is read and post ABOUT Japanese all day.

I'd like more data before telling ANYONE such and such is the right way.

**Snipped (some very useful information)**

Hmm, Bombperson has a joined 400 days ago and has a 789 post count (1.97 posts per day average). Hanzaisha joined 40 days ago and has a 10 post count (0.25 post per day average). Could it possibly be that people that are on this forum for longer than a month tend to build up a list of posts? Not to mention, if a person was involved in a sentence mining project, that would build up post counts pretty quick. This forum doesn't seem to have a tendency for encouraging high post counts (no levels awarded like most forums anyway), so I think those with high post counts are offering something along with it.

As for wanting more data: YOU HAVE IT! This forum has been around two years and has seen a large number of people pass through at different stages. It's anecdotal evidence, but that's the best type in this game. You have a large number of people that test out stuff, keep what works and discards what doesn't. That's why we have active threads to AJATT, KO2001, RTK, iKnow Core words, Tae Kim, UBJG, Kanzen Master, Subs2srs, etc. and next to none for Instant Immersion Japanese, Rosetta Stone, Japanese for Busy People, etc.

So when he said tried and tested, I think he meant it. It's not an opinion of vocal few, it's been guys coming on here asking for access to spreadsheets that required a hard dollar purchase of the books first. That gives a good conclusion that 2001KO and RTK and Kanzen Master are good bets.

Is RTK followed by KO2001 the only way? No, as others pointed out it seems better to put grammar sentences before vocabulary sentences. Heck, I recommend Core sentences over 2001KO myself (since they're free) with Tae Kim thrown in the middle. And to be honest, it's advice that more of what "I think" I would have done had I had access to the material 2 1/2 years ago and someone to help me a little with it.

It's an organic process that way. Just look at the thread about re-ordering the 2001KO sentences into an even more intuitive manner.

Sorry for the rant, as you did offer great advice at the end of the post. Carry on with normal Japanese learning.

@shihoro: That's weird. smart.fm asks for the answer in kana. One thing that could be the problem is if you try to enter the answer in kana directly using your system's input method instead of typing in romaji and letting smart.fm do the conversion? (It's probably something else but it's the only thing I can think of at the moment)

wildweathel Wrote:Just recently, something very encouraging happened. I noticed my lack of Japanese skill is really starting to get irritating: imagine listening to dialogue like this: "At least promise me that *ksssshhhh*." What promise? Darn it, I want to know!

Thats a really good story. Very motivating and fun.

Thanks for the very constructive reply wildweathel!

After the structured learning in RTK, japanese gets really scary b/c suddenly it (deceptively) feels like you haven't really learned anything..

btw. Nukemarine, thanks for your Tae Kim Anki. It really nicely put together and it's helping a lot. I really appreciate the work you put into it.

pm215 Wrote:

jajaaan Wrote:My main problem with textbooks, even though I have used them a great deal, is the way they space out grammar points and pack in vocabulary such that, if you were to follow them lesson-by-lesson (particularly if you're just starting out), you would learn way more words than you'd know what to do with.

Isn't that just the way language is? I know that I've found all the way along that grammar is relatively simple and there's not all that much of it, whereas vocabulary is a huge mountain to climb. Textbooks are just trying to maintain a balance... I started out with textbooks and (small, ie 1 or 2 student) classes, and I think they're a fine way to get started and get a solid foundation in basic stuff.

That's true to an extent, although I would not say that all grammars are equal or simple. Some are, in my opinion, much more intuitive (to my brain at least) than others; while others present obstacle upon obstacle for proper usage.

The way I went about studying Czech was fairly textbook/traditional (spoon-feeding the grammar bit-by-bit while continuing to learn vocabulary), and that worked for me. But Czech has a wide variety of declensions, genders and cases that don't come naturally to my English-speaking brain. Japanese, however, does not have word gender; there's only one declension for all nouns (if you count the particles as case inflections); all verbs, but two, are regular and inflect predictably; exceptions are few and far between; and so forth.

For me, I could sense this regularity early on and decided that following a textbook's schedule was too torturous. Vocabulary may be important, but if you can't use it to form anything besides declaratives and interrogatives, it seemed pretty useless. Plus, you can't just translate willy-nilly from English into Japanese. So I went with grammar first, learning only a key vocabulary until later on.