Hello world,

I just finished RTK and am excited about starting KO2001. Bought the books and acquired the anki deck.

My question is this:
The deck is set up with Japanese phrases shown first, and upon reveal there is the audio + furigana. Now I am used to my RTK deck in which I saw the English keyword first and recreated the kanji before revealing.
How do you guys use this deck? Should I simply be reading and/or pronouncing each card, or should I be writing it as well?

I realize that not using English phrases first would be better for getting your feet wet for native material, but it feels like something is lacking in terms of having to recall and produce as was done with RTK.

Does this allow you to recreate these phrases, or simply to recognize them and understand? I feel that seeing a sentence and understanding it is very different from thinking of the idea you want to express and conjuring it up yourself, which is what is lacking in this deck.

Any thoughts from those who are working on / have completed KO2001 would be greatly appreciated!

It allows you to read and understand. You will be able to recreate bits and pieces of it but sparingly. It's designed to boost reading and listening comprehension.

I've recently finished it *phew* and I'm going to be moving on to working on my speaking through using sub2srs with dorama. IMO the sentences in KO aren't exactly suited to casual speech. You'd sound wooden as all hell if you only spoke like that compared to casual native sounding speech.

I'm not sure where your grammar is at, but if you don't have a good grasp of grammar I don't suggest doing KO right after RTK.

Some people might write it out, and I guess you could do that if you want the pratice, but what I assume most people did/are doing is reading the japanese and learning the english meaning and the japanese reading for the kanji.

mezbup Wrote:I've recently finished it *phew* and I'm going to be moving on to working on my speaking through using sub2srs with dorama.

How long did this take you? And how much time were you devoting to it to finish it in the time that you did?
Also, were you writing the phrases down each time? I find that writing them helps a lot because you need to think a little more to recreate it on your own when not looking explicitly at the phrase.
However, this is also dramatically more time-consuming. Is this worth the effort, or should one try to breeze through it and move onto production later?

I noticed that the way I was studying RTK evolved a lot as I got deeper into it, certain nuances and little details that made it faster and more efficient. Any words on SRSing KO2001 after having already climbed that hill?

mezbup Wrote:IMO the sentences in KO aren't exactly suited to casual speech. You'd sound wooden as all hell if you only spoke like that compared to casual native sounding speech.

I'm going to a Japanese university next year, and would like to not sound like a piece of wood. Should I be worrying about this now or is it most efficient to just take this route than try to force myself to be native when I'm clearly not at that level?

Many thanks!

elanlan Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:I've recently finished it *phew* and I'm going to be moving on to working on my speaking through using sub2srs with dorama.

How long did this take you? And how much time were you devoting to it to finish it in the time that you did?
Also, were you writing the phrases down each time? I find that writing them helps a lot because you need to think a little more to recreate it on your own when not looking explicitly at the phrase.
However, this is also dramatically more time-consuming. Is this worth the effort, or should one try to breeze through it and move onto production later?

I noticed that the way I was studying RTK evolved a lot as I got deeper into it, certain nuances and little details that made it faster and more efficient. Any words on SRSing KO2001 after having already climbed that hill?

mezbup Wrote:IMO the sentences in KO aren't exactly suited to casual speech. You'd sound wooden as all hell if you only spoke like that compared to casual native sounding speech.

I'm going to a Japanese university next year, and would like to not sound like a piece of wood. Should I be worrying about this now or is it most efficient to just take this route than try to force myself to be native when I'm clearly not at that level?

Many thanks!

It took me 2.5months at varying paces and one or two little breaks along the way. It's safe to just assume an average pace of 100 cards a day. If I were to write everything out, It would have taken me 6 months or so and I would have not had the patience for it nor do I think it's even necessary.

Personally, I'm working on production through using KanKen DS3. Seeing as I have to be able to write all the kanji and words from memory plus know things like stroke order, count and okurigana it's great for getting me up to speed on being able to write not just kanji but whole words from memory.

I know exactly what you mean about refining your study methods especially nearing the end of a crusade. Best advice for KO is, go through a bit of tae kim before hand just so you know what's going on. Second up and this is the most important... If you're doing 100 cards a day, first, disable the audio side of the deck and learn to read 100 new sentences, review them straight away. Next day, do all your reviews before adding new cards, by now you will be used to hearing these sentences you studied. Now it's time to turn off the reading side of the deck and go over the audio cards from yesterdays 100 sentences. What you'll find is every second day study is MUCH faster. You wind up with less reviews aswell and at absolutely no detriment to your learning.

In my experience, written output becomes MUCH easier and faster to acquire when you have good reading ability. I'll be honest, there isn't much sense in doing written production for a word that you're just learning to read. Instead, learn to read to a decent level and then tackle production because ultimately it will save you an ASSload of time and effort.

If you wanna up your speaking ability I suggest mining from dramas and such. That sort of thing will become much more accessable after completing KO2001. I'd also recommend working through Kanzen Master 2kyuu after finishing KO. It's choc full of grammar that will really flesh out you're knowledge and enable you to understand a wide variety of things.

This is the base to learn from I'm just finishing up establishing for myself

Just a quick question, how big is the KO2001 deck?

CerpinTaxt Wrote:Just a quick question, how big is the KO2001 deck?

~6200 cards. So 3100 sentences.

How is the audio? I've only been using the text from the spreadsheets.

mezbup Wrote:It took me 2.5months at varying paces and one or two little breaks along the way. It's safe to just assume an average pace of 100 cards a day. If I were to write everything out, It would have taken me 6 months or so and I would have not had the patience for it nor do I think it's even necessary.

In my experience, written output becomes MUCH easier and faster to acquire when you have good reading ability. I'll be honest, there isn't much sense in doing written production for a word that you're just learning to read. Instead, learn to read to a decent level and then tackle production because ultimately it will save you an ASSload of time and effort.

Exactly what I was looking for. Great post, thank you!

Grinkers Wrote:How is the audio? I've only been using the text from the spreadsheets.

I only just started, but the audio is excellent. I would pronounce a card myself, and would be surprised as to how differently a native would say the sentence. I'm expecting this to be very helpful.

I've had the CD for quite a while now, but somehow didn't know there was an Anki deck with the sentences and Audio. I'm looking forward to studying from it.

wccrawford Wrote:I've had the CD for quite a while now, but somehow didn't know there was an Anki deck with the sentences and Audio. I'm looking forward to studying from it.

Pre-made anki decks = such a timesaver.

mezbup Wrote:

CerpinTaxt Wrote:Just a quick question, how big is the KO2001 deck?

~6200 cards. So 3100 sentences.

Hmm, i only get 3100 cards to show up on the KO2001 deck i downloaded from here, what am I missing?

CerpinTaxt Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:

CerpinTaxt Wrote:Just a quick question, how big is the KO2001 deck?

~6200 cards. So 3100 sentences.

Hmm, i only get 3100 cards to show up on the KO2001 deck i downloaded from here, what am I missing?

How big was the file you dl'ed? The deck containing audio is about... 300 ~ 400mb?

Yeah, it's 333mb with parts 1-3.

which deck are you referring to? a link? i had finished 900 kanji on smart.fm`s KO2001 lists awhile back... studied out of a children`s monolingual dictionary for awhile... now for the last month i have decided to go back through KO2001 on Anki.. this time learning how to actually write all the kanji... it`s going really well so far... i have hopes of finishing up the whole 2001 kanji this time and then going to study from a full dictionary made for adults such as yahoo辞書 or something along the lines that i can copy and paste a lot of crap into Anki without having to type it out as I was before.

Seeing as how 3100 is exactly half of 6200, maybe it was shortened from both recognition and production to just production, or something like that.

Hashiriya Wrote:which deck are you referring to? a link?

The anki deck ahibba (sp?) posted awhile back, but seeing as how the smart.fm list is done and the one I have isn't working I can just migrate to that when I've finished RTK. I've been unsure of whether I should actually go through KO2001 or not because even without it I know enough to read manga and websites, albeit with a dictionary handy and some mild grammar look up. Maybe I should just learn from native resources after RTK? But then again there is the whole vocab wall so I'm not sure. I thought KO2001 would be the best thing for that.

Does it say you have 3100 suspended or inactive? Check your inactive tags to make sure that both sides of the deck are active.

mezbup Wrote:Does it say you have 3100 suspended or inactive? Check your inactive tags to make sure that both sides of the deck are active.

Actually, the deck I have is exactly 3104 cards. Now I'm curious.

Hashiriya Wrote:which deck are you referring to? a link? i had finished 900 kanji on smart.fm`s KO2001 lists awhile back... studied out of a children`s monolingual dictionary for awhile... now for the last month i have decided to go back through KO2001 on Anki.. this time learning how to actually write all the kanji... it`s going really well so far... i have hopes of finishing up the whole 2001 kanji this time and then going to study from a full dictionary made for adults such as yahoo辞書 or something along the lines that i can copy and paste a lot of crap into Anki without having to type it out as I was before.

Have you finished RTK already? I don't know about learning kanji from KO2001, I thought it would be better suited for reading comprehension/listening comprehension. I would suggest you finish RTK first.

Also, I don't want to cause more trouble by posting links and having this thread taken down. To my understanding a thread like existed already but was removed.

Im pretty curious too. PM me the link you dl'ed your deck from and i'll see if it's the same place I got mine from. Cos the deck I have is roughly 6200 cards.

I found the audio deck. The audio seems a little slow, but not horrible. I'll be done with KO2001 in about a week or so, and I actually knew most of the words already through listening/speaking. I'm trying to decide if I should bother with the audio cards...

For those of you using the audio cards, do you have them mixed in with the text cards? Do you continue reviewing them long-term? And lastly, was it helpful?

I'm leaning towards not using it. I went through 50 random cards, and was able to listen to 100% of them the first playing, so I probably won't get much out of it.

Grinkers Wrote:I found the audio deck. The audio seems a little slow, but not horrible. I'll be done with KO2001 in about a week or so, and I actually knew most of the words already through listening/speaking. I'm trying to decide if I should bother with the audio cards...

For those of you using the audio cards, do you have them mixed in with the text cards? Do you continue reviewing them long-term? And lastly, was it helpful?

I'm leaning towards not using it. I went through 50 random cards, and was able to listen to 100% of them the first playing, so I probably won't get much out of it.

Sounds like you don't really need it. It was fairly helpful to me i'd say. I got a lot out of it in terms of being able to process basic speech and recognize the words I was learning by ear.

Listening is one of my weakest points right now, so I expect the 2001ko audio to do me a lot of good. (If I can keep myself going at it, that is.)

I decided to do the audio cards, but do it just like I did KO2001. About 20%~ are hard for me (new kanji, new way of using it, never heard it, etc), so I make an initial interval normal. For the other 80% I just start off the initial interval at 14 days, and click easy each time. The great thing with SRS is I can send the easy stuff in pre-made decks off into mature cards in less than a minute (of reviewing time)!

I wish I knew about RTK, KO2001, and especially SRSing earlier...