Blahah Wrote:Still got the subs on, but it's helping me get my head around grammar in a useful way.

English subs? You would probably do better for yourself with no subs at all than with subs in your native language. I thought I learned a lot of basics watching subbed anime. However, I've learned that things like 大丈夫, 逃げろ, 動け, and the likes can be picked up through context alone (from dabbling with other languages).

Working 55 hours and going to school... you probably want to maximize what you get out of your study time. If you like to watch anime with the subs I recommend getting both subbed and raw episodes of an anime. Once you have both versions watch the subbed version of an episode once and then watch the raw version over and over. Then watched the subbed version again, and watch the raw version over and over. Do this until you've mastered the vocabulary and grammar in a group of episodes. Sample other series/episodes when you get bored, but make sure to come back.

If the series has softsubs (srt, vob, etc), you can use subs2srs and anki to accomplish a similar result.

Came to Japan 2 1/2 years ago with no interest in learning Japanese. Began studying 2 years ago. Found Anki 15 months ago. Found Heisig 1 year ago...

At 1 year:
Speaking - Zero

Reading - I had a smattering of kanji knowledge, learned mostly from those White Rabbit flash cards. But actually reading something was out of my grasp.

Writing - Could write about... 40? kanji from memory. Hmm, maybe less.

Listening - I would often hold a weird two way conversation with this woman at work, where I'd speak English and she'd speak Japanese. I could sorta understand what she was saying, in the context of our conversation. (i.e. very, very low ability)

Now (at year 2):
Speaking: 8 months ago, I started dating a Japanese girl that doesn't speak English and my ability here skyrocketted. These days, I feel confident talking to anyone... even if my ability is lacking, I can fall back on easy patterns to explain myself in simpler terms. I'm rarely at a loss for words. I feel speaking is my strongest point now - but maybe that's because it's the most rewarding for me.

Reading: Read Death Note 8 months ago after finishing Heisig, and it wasn't that difficult. My problem here is that I don't have enough stuff I -WANT- to read badly enough to go through the trouble of reading it. Anyways, I can read drama subs and such fast enough to keep up, get through my bills, read some magazines (especially about baseball, my vocab there is extensive. heh), and such. Enough to get by, but novels and newspapers are still too much to tackle.

Listening: 1 on 1 conversations are pretty easy, as I can ask for clarification and they're dumbed down for me. Listening to two or more native speakers is really frustrating, but that's obvious. I can watch most dramas without subs and follow the plot, but more enjoyable with subs. I can also generally understand the news. And I'm especially good at those stupid variety shows where people go around eating all sorts of different things and people in a studio watch them. My girlfriend loves those shows, so I have to watch them a loooot.

Writing: Hardest ability to know where I'm at. Redoing Heisig with on-reading Japanese keywords upped my active writing ability a LOT (as well as reading). I can probably write words containing the most common 800 kanji without much problem at all. I write my to-do lists and notes at work in Japanese for practical practice.

Goals - Another 2 years in Japan, then I'm giving it (Japan and studying Japanese) up. By that time, I sincerely expect to be rather fluent.

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My first year was a complete waste. It was so inefficient and difficult - I almost quit studying. Anki and Heisig REALLY made me feel like fluency was attainable and since then I've found a large supply of great resources on the internet. Wish I had them from the beginning.

captal Wrote:When I started I thought it would be cool to learn a 2nd language, now it's this... monster that I'm in the middle of.

And I couldn't agree with this more.

My first year of learning Japanese, I learned it while living in Japan, so I learned a TON. I didn't find RtK, Anki and such until after I got back. I took JLPT2 after that one year, so that's a pretty good indication of how good I got. Of course, it should be noted that because I had lived in Japan for so long, the listening part of JLPT2 was a breeze. Kanji was the toughest part. Now that I have Anki and RtK, I think both kanji and vocab would be very simple, but my conversational and listening skill hasn't improved all that much.

勉強時間：
８月ですかな。(３０３日だけ)。たぶん、８時間から１２時間までを勉強します。例えば、｢CORE6000のANKIのdeck」は３９９時間を使います。単語所４冊があります。全部の勉強時間側からない。たぶん、７００時間はANKIをつかいました。

読書：
たぶん、私の読解力は中級レベルです。漫画は、デスノートやブリーチやナルトなどは大丈夫ですが、辞書を要ります。いま、５本を読みました。毎月に１本から２本までを読みますから、１年、辞書が要らないのはこの事が欲しいです。

文章：
いま、私は１００番目の日記の行動しました。もちろん、手紙やメモなども書きました。私のレベルは分からない。この文章を見てください。これは私のレベルです。

自筆を見てください：


聞き取り：
５０％分かりますけど、日本人の早口は２０％が分かりません。でも、聞き取りは私の長所です。ニュースとか、アニメとか、ワイドショーとか、問題ないと思います。たぶん、６０％分かったでしょうので、字幕は便利ですね。

話力:
簡単の文は大丈夫ですけど、複雑な文は駄目だ。でも、日本語の考えが少しできます。

流暢：
これは私の不得意です。もう簡単の文はオッケーだけど、本当に複雑な文が遅いです。

単語：
３０００から４０００までだけを知ります。

英訳: (English Translation)

Study time:
8 months, I think. 303 days actually. I study about 8-12 hours per day (sort of including sleep listening time - lol.) An example is that I have clocked up 400 odd hours on the core6000. I have 4 decks right now and they probably total 700 anki hours. I did RTK, which had some insane hours on it too (200+ - a few 12 hour days in there).

Reading:
Probably intermediate level. I've read a few things and it was ok, but I need a dictionary. Right now, I've read about 5 books. Each month I read about 1-2 books. In a year I shouldn't need a dictionary (I hope).

Writing:
I've written over 100 journal articles and a fair amount of memos and notes. I have no idea what my level is, but judge for yourself.

Handwriting:
Just have a look. I scrawled this out when I was half asleep at Starbucks one day. Katakana is still a pain in the arse.

Listening comprehension:
About 50% of everything, but native speakers can be tough to understand (maybe like 20% understanding when they don't dumb it down a bit). TV has subtitles. This is good.

Speaking:
Easy sentences (as you can see) are easy. Complex stuff is something I don't have the grammar for, but I can think basic stuff in Japanese (sometimes I have to translate back to English, lol.)

Fluency:
I'm slow. It's a fact. Easy stuff is ok, but I said どぞよろしく (nice to meet you) when I meant よろしくおねがいします just last week (this is something I know pretty well). Mistakes like that piss me off.

Vocabulary:
I'm half way through the core6000 plus I read a lot and SRS that. I want to SRS my diaries, but I'm too busy. We'll see how we go.

What I have to pass on:
It's all about hours living in Japanese. If you can find more ways to do it then you'll learn the language. Do what fits you find your way. I spent over 4 months studying pretty inefficiently. Probably the last 4 have been fairly good, but only lately have I started to figure out how studying actually works (how to study grammar, vocabulary, how to read, how to write, etc.) It's all a process, so do your best and figure what works for you out.

Future:
High Japanese proficiency in all but speaking in 1 more year. Native level in everything in 2 more years. Just gotta keep working hard.

No editing or proof reading done guys, so that's my Japanese level straight off the cuff (similar to real life, I guess.)

Lol, looking over my handwriting sample. That's me at my worst. I was pretty exhausted at the time (lol, as I am right now).

It's funny, the more I learn, the more I realize how long it will all take to master >_<

The more I learn, the more I realize how much easier it is getting gradually.