I feel like I'm doing something wrong...

I study for about 2-3 hours a day (of those 1.5-2 of actual studying)
and I get through about 1 page of Tae Kim a day.
I do about 50 cards a day + I add about 10.

I've read some other people do several pages a day and zoom through all of Tae Kim in a week or something like that. And then they're adding 200 sentences a day from KO2001.
But for me it's a struggle to just remember the vocab on one page... Maybe I don't have a good system for remembering words? Is there some trick? (method of loci?) because I just read and write them over and over till I remember them.

It just feels like I'm doing something wrong; and that I should be moving along a lot quicker. Is the forum just giving me a false impression?

I'm about on page 30 (finishing up the Essential Grammar), and I've been at this for about 2 months.
I also stopped doing RTK after finish that last summer. It just started to seem like a waist of about an hour a day. I'd rather spend that on learning vocab and grammar.

I just wanted to make sure I'd "doing it right" and that I'm spending my time wisely (for example I did the Pimsleur thing for about 1 years before finding RTK and that all more or less went to waist)

Thanks in advance,
PS: What should I do once I finish Tae Kim?

Is English your native language. If not, then Tae Kim could be difficult if you're reading it in English. Fortunately that guide has been translated into a few languages.

Let's talk Initial Study/Initial Review/Review.

Initial Study: How are you studying Tae Kim? Do you read the chapter all the way through? Are you doing exercises that he has for the first few chapters?

Initial Review: How do you do that first review in Anki? Some like to hit "hard" so it comes up quick. Some write down the sentence (ok, that's me). Also, how do you design your cards? Is it Kana to Kanji, Kanji to reading, Clozed deletion?

Reviews: For every other review in Anki, how do you do it? Do you write out the sentence each time, do you type it out. How do you mark questions wrong.

Reason I ask these is some people are tougher with their flashcards than others. Some write out the sentence, some do kana to kanji, some type out the answers, some do cloze deletions, some just do recognition. Each will have it's own pros and cons and change the speed of initial and subsequent reviews.

Also, some just read through Tae Kim and don't put anything in Anki.

My suggestion for remembering words is to use visualization. Fiction is good, TV is good, because you can get a picture in your head of the word you're trying to remember, but even if you're not at that level -- you say ひこうき, and you imagine sitting on a plane. You imagine your legs hurting because there's no leg room. You read a magazine. You look out the window at the clouds. ひこうき. Make up some sentences in Japanese and visualize those. It helps if they're silly or dramatic, but just make use of the grammar and vocabulary that you already have.

georgative Wrote:I study for about 2-3 hours a day (of those 1.5-2 of actual studying)
and I get through about 1 page of Tae Kim a day.
I do about 50 cards a day + I add about 10.

I've read some other people do several pages a day and zoom through all of Tae Kim in a week or something like that. And then they're adding 200 sentences a day from KO2001.

Don't take the numbers posted here to seriously, as I don't think there are representative in any way. Its only natural that people which make really good or especially extraordinary progress want to show off a little bit while people doing not so good usually don't post their numbers at all (as they are often intimidated by the big numbers).

Another thread was just resurrected about people studying 10 hours a day. That might be how some of them do it :p
But seriously, don't try to compare yourself to others because there are too many variables that you don't know. They could indeed be spending absolutely insane amounts of time each day studying. Maybe they had already taken Japanese classes before doing tae kim, so they knew most of the grammar points and could speed through it. Maybe They have lived in Japan for a year or two, and then decided to begin formally studying.

What you can worry about is, is what you are doing working for you? Are you making progress? Does it seem to be pretty decent, considering the time you are putting in? Everyone goes through phases where they find that something that they are doing isn't working well for them, and they need to change things up. Experiment. Try things out. If you don't like the way you are doing something, do it differently. If certain kinds of cards are taking you a long time to review, think about how you can change them so they will be quicker.
Just DON'T fall into the trap of making everything incredibly easy on yourself and then pretend that you are learning more than you actually are.

In the beginning, learning vocab takes TIME! I remember spending as much as 3 (!) hours on 8-10 sentences. You have to get used to remembering vocab, which is completely different from RTK, so don't stress it.
Personally I used mnemonics in the beginning (mini-stories made within 5-10 secs), that would last until the first review, since I was so used to the RTK thinking. Give that a shot if it's really hard to remember vocab at the moment.
If you just stick to it, you'll get better at it, and when you get better at it, you can add, say, 20 sentences in the time it took you to add 10. Don't stress it!

Personally, I started out by doing half of Tae Kim's guide, and then started KO. I struggled hard with adding 20 sentences a day, but I stuck with it. I was not able to remember more than one new word per sentence, so I made several cards per sentence. After 300-400 cards (ish), I felt much more comfortable, and was able to up my pace AND remember more than one new word per sentence. Persistency is key, in the beginning more than anything.

And regarding how many cards one adds per day is just really about how much time one puts into it. I remember doing the last 2500 sentences of KO2001 at 100-a-day, and that was cool back then, to get a fast boost. Now I add 30 sentences a day, since I don't want to spend 8-10 hours adding/reviewing, and I'm more than happy with that! =)

PS: It's your choice, but I do NOT recommend to stop reviewing RTK, if you're not doing something else to remain your production-skill. I just started a KO2001 production deck, and now I realize how incredibly helpful RTK was, and still is.

Here's what's working for me. It is important to note that besides some extremely basic conversations with my girlfriend and other Japanese friends (which probably led to a vocab of about 200-300 words), I had no real foundation of vocab before beginning Tae Kim:

1. Read through a single section of Tae Kim, and then add the flashcards for that section (I use nukemarine's pre-made deck). Let me emphasize that this first reading does not aim for 100% comprehension but simply a general overview. The first reading is to gives an initial "feel" for the grammar pattern. Reviewing the grammar later on with flashcards is generally enough to establish a firm grasp of the grammar pattern.

2. When reviewing does not lead to a full understanding of the grammar pattern, I re-read the relevant section. I do this immediately after I stumble on a flashcard that is giving me trouble.

For vocab, I just brute force through recognition sentence cards. If I can't immediately read a sentence, I fail it. After failing the card, I either practice the sentence as a whole or practice isolated "problem words", which are one or two words in a sentence that are the only elements I don't understand. Typically, I'm able to get the sentence correct after 1-3 reviews. This works much more quickly than mnemonics for me.

I did tae Kim at about a page a day for half of it then after that I just read over the rest. KO helped to really enforce it. I did KO at an average rate of 100 sentences a day but for the first little while I tried it at 200 and it tore me a new one. So moral of the story is keep to a pace that won't fry your brain

vocab can sometimes be a downright pain but the firmer your grasp on reading kanji, the easier it becomes to remember vocab. Just chuck the word into Anki and it will take care of it for you. Even If you fail it a couple of times eventually it will stick. Happens to me too but yeah, as you develop a firmer grasp on reading kanji it will come to you a bit easier.

Thanks for all the feedback. Looks like I'm doing okay then

I'm using Nukemarine's deck. I usually add the cards as I go along the page, but I generally don't remember most of them the next day (I fail about 1/2 of them). So on what I do then is I take all the vocab I didn't know and I write it down on a sheet of paper. I carry the sheet of paper around all day and I try to read over it between classes or while I have a spare minute. The only way I know of really remembering the words is just reading them over them and over and sorta making "tricks" as I go along.
ex:決める, the first kanji I know means decide (from RTK) and it sorta looks like a "き", so I can remember it's kimeru.

I also started recently writing a lot of the stuff out. I actually really enjoy writing the kanji, and it seems to help me remember the readings.. but like Nukemarine points out, it might not be a good investment of my time.

My problem isn't generally remembering the grammar or remembering the meaning of the words. It almost always boils down to remembering the hiragana. Maybe I should be saying more of it out loud? Do you think that would help? I'll also make an effort to hit "hard" a little less and see if that helps (it could make things worse, since I'll end up "reseting" cards more often).

Judging on what you guys are saying, it seems like this is something I'll eventually get over.

Thanks for the input =)

mezbup Wrote:Happens to me too but yeah, as you develop a firmer grasp on reading kanji it will come to you a bit easier.

That's what I hoping for! After a while the characters start to repeat and it's not so bad. Well except when it turns out it's a new reading haha =)

Heres a tip : Dont use KO2001. Not yet.

When you are just learning readings and all of a sudden sentence 3 is "円安で日本企業の輸出津が増えた” you are left with an empty feeling and it takes 4 days to learn the phrase - while it might help in the long run, you are killing your morale and it is not very fun.

What I am doing is core 2k instead. It has a much easier learning curve and typically theres one new reading per sentence.

Hmm i still haven't done kanji oddyessy completey. Although i do have that huge sentence pack for it and plus there anki deck. I will do them but at the moment nop.
I have a vocab+kanji+kanji+kana+sentence deck at the moment. I'll probably add 2 more decks one focusing on writing from memory and the other one containing all the kanji odyssey sentences. I think in my level i can easily blaze through them and understand them.

georgative Wrote:I also started recently writing a lot of the stuff out. I actually really enjoy writing the kanji, and it seems to help me remember the readings.. but like Nukemarine points out, it might not be a good investment of my time.

I've always studied everything (not just 日本語) by writing or drawing things out. There's something about the hand/eye/brain circuit that works for me, and when I study online I have to incorporate writing for it to be really effective. I know it doesn't work for everyone, but if it works for you I encourage you to stick with it.

I just wanted to post this here since I'm kind of frustrated today. I know some people (such as Zorlee) basically answered what I'm about to ask, but at that risk I'm going to go ahead anyway.

I'm just pissed off with my speed. I should be adding sentences like crazy, but the combination of not knowing the word, plus some mysterious grammar, is just driving me insane. I've finished RtK1, I'm reviewing the Core2000 sentences and RtK1 everyday, I'm watching dramas in Japanese with Japanese subtitles, and I'm listening to Japanese music. At this point I'm a bit afraid that none of this will click for me. I was just going through some Japanese subtitles for "My Girl" to make some sentences. I went in thinking that I could come out with a sufficient amount of new sentences, but I'm just so incredibly slow. I got 7 in about 45 minutes, and generally they're all simple sentences.

I pick out a sentence and use http://www.alc.co.jp/index.html to help me figure out the definitions, and cross-reference with the English translation. I honestly don't know what feedback or advice I want to hear, but anything to get me out of this slump would be appreciated. I think I'm taking it too hard on myself after having learned German in high school and never really getting anywhere. I want to make sentences with Japanese, I want to study, but I also want it to just happen. I don't know what to do, maybe I should just knock out KO2001 before making sentences.

TheVinster, you should go through tae kim's guide first (http://www.guidetoajapanese) so you have the grammar down and don't have to worry about that too much. If you need to cross-reference with the translation, that probably means your knowledge of the grammar is too shaky.

TheVinster Wrote:I'm just pissed off with my speed. I should be adding sentences like crazy, but the combination of not knowing the word, plus some mysterious grammar, is just driving me insane.

This sounds to me like the stuff you're looking at is just a notch or two too difficult for where you are at the moment. Particularly with grammar you don't know yet, I think it's very hard to really understand it if it's combined with new vocab -- there's just too much in the one sentence that's not properly pinned down.

I forgot to mention that I go through a page of Tae Kim everyday. I went through the first 3 sets (up until Advanced) then started from the beginning and am in the 2nd set of lessons again. I think maybe I'll just go through KO2001 Level 1 now, and I'm just trying to figure out if I want to make the sentences from straight out of the book, or use NukeMarine's Smart.FM lists and put them into Anki. The latter is definitely faster, but they aren't quite the same sentences so I'm not sure.