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Take a deep breath- what you're experiencing is normal. Output significantly lags input for most everyone I've talked to about studying language. Nearly every time I listen to something in Japanese there are moments where I think- wow I completely understood that but I never would have thought of saying it that way. There are grammar points I understand when I hear them but I don't know how to use them correctly. As for particles- they're hard- you're going to make tons of mistakes before ingraining which particles are used with which verbs, etc. I know I do.

I wish I could absorb as quickly as you are- to say that you hate srsing because it's become to easy too quickly is amazing. I know we've all heard it a million times, but I think if you keep doing things you enjoy it will come. Just keep marching one day at a time- what you've done in such a short amount of time is really amazing- think back to how much you knew a month, 6 months and a year ago and you'll realize how much you've learned and improved.

Could you give an example of a few sentences you did wrong, so we can know what grammar you're having trouble with output wise? By understanding the grammar, do you mean just the meaning the grammar conveys, or also the exceptions, rules, and finer details of the grammar?

An example of what I mean: it wouldn't be sufficient to have in your mind a basic understanding such as "から＝because" "ので=because" or "時=when" と=when" since all of those grammar parts are very different in their use of synonyms, and they have to be understood more deeply in order to use in the right contexts and sentence patterns.

If it's something similar to that that you're talking about, where you understand whatever grammar it is, but just don't know the finer details to using it correctly, then definitely reading grammar books would be beneficial! The series of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese grammar explains things well enough to know how to use them correctly. After that you just have to get into the habit of always correctly using the grammar points, particles, etc.

Grammar isn't about exposure and output so much as correct exposure and output, after all Once you make a habit of using things correctly, it will become second nature to you.

Hopefully I understood the issue properly?

I say don't worry about it too much. I used to get large amounts of correction when I wrote on lang-8. Eventually the numbers drop. Then you start seeing more blue and less red. Then if you don't post for a while the red will increase again, and the cycle will continue.

I think a good way to build up better sentence construction would be to do scriptorium.

I started on simple sentences from here:

http://hukumusume.com/douwa/pc/jap/01/01.htm

I did one story a day, for a while, then moved on to books. I made a lot of progress while doing this, but stopped (cause it's time consuming as heck and I's lazy).

Honestly, grammar reviews helped me a lot with this (in addition to practice, of course). My belief is that the deeper your understanding of the grammar rules are, the more sense everything makes and the less likely you are to make mistakes. I think especially if you are making mistakes in writing production, where you have time to go back and think and revise, you may need something more than just exposure and practice.

Well, I'm not sure if you meant to do it or not, but 「助けて」 means something like, "rescue/save me." It doesn't quite mean the general type of "help." This is a common mistake that a lot of beginners make because of learning this word as "help."

If this is a sign of the types of mistakes you make, then I think it results from a lack of precise understanding. In which case, I would suggest you try to brush over the stuff that is deemed unnatural. I think you'll find it's easier to deepen meanings than to learn them from scratch.

IceCream Wrote:@kazelee: ahh shoulda done RTK after all!!
:o there's a difference between red and blue?!? i correct people's english in them depending on my mood...

0.0

The standard most use is red for a correction - blue for a suggestion. There are some who do only blue or only red and make no suggestions and offer no advice and... their corrections tend to be of little help.

Another suggestion is to take the corrected sentences or sentence structures and try to incorporate them into your next post. Usually you'll get it wrong again (or maybe just me), but it'll help you refine the structure you're trying to use.

I don't know actually. I've heard good things about Making Sense of Japanese with Jay Rubin, but other than that, it's about researching new things you learn and things you get corrected on.

I know it is a pain, but it will help the Japanese reader if you included the English translation for each sentence. With just the Japanese version, your sentences may be grammatically correct but not express what you really wanted to say. It could throw the reader off for the rest of the journal and get you corrections that aren't warranted. I see this often when an English native speaker doesn't read the Japanese sentence first and so changes a correct sentence into an incorrect one. It is kind of awkward leaving a note that the previous correction was wrong.
I hate to say this because it is a harsh (and not always correct) statement, but I wish users from India, Singapore and the Philippines would stop making corrections on English journals as well :/

IceCream, you're one of the fastest learners on this forum. I've told you that many times before but be patient. There is really no point in making a new topic every 3 weeks about how you're desperate about your lack of progress.

What about an output deck? Find things you know are correct, put English on the front of the card and the Japanese sentence on the back. I've started doing this and it's great for outputting a sentence you know is correct. I haven't added to much to this deck (sadly) because I'm drowning in other study.

It's really quite surprising though that when I haven't seen a card in a while when I try to output the sentence something about it was wrong and it leaves me going... oh... time to start again. Then it gets all the way to maturity again and by this time the pattern seems to be stuck in there.

Hang in there, you're doing so well!

Codexus Wrote:IceCream, you're one of the fastest learners on this forum. I've told you that many times before but be patient. There is really no point in making a new topic every 3 weeks about how you're desperate about your lack of progress.

Yes, but what happens when her cocaine supplier gets busted? Let her be until then.

I don't know about the English -> Japanese sentence output deck. I think you'd have to have a very specific question side to make it work well.

Smackle Wrote:I don't know about the English -> Japanese sentence output deck. I think you'd have to have a very specific question side to make it work well.

It works fine. Infact it works well. Yeah, there are lots of ways to say things and sometimes that gets in the way of a card working particularly well but what I do is so long as all the main grammar elements and words we're correct I'll pass it. Say for instance the answer ends in　でしょう but I say だろう there's no reason to fail cos the rest is right and that's fine.

An interesting thing i've noticed about it is if you have a sentence in the deck and then you come across another way of saying it in the wild you really have an AHA! moment. Then that way of saying it also tends to stick with you.

Like I said, I really haven't put much into this deck yet (only 80 sentences) but so far it's helped me out being able to say certain things with confidence when I need to say them. Also during conversation if I have an 言いたいこと言えない moment then I do my best and afterwards ask 正しい言い方を教えてください！Then make a note of it and put it in my deck later

I also take sentences from native sources and generally remember the context they came from.

I've also started ripping audio sentences from dorama while i'm watching it and then looping them until I can say it along with the actor. Sub2Srs is good but too time consuming for me so I just use audacity and if a good sentence comes up while i'm watching then I grab it and make an MP3 of it. I usually start with the previous characters line as a queue so that I can say the whole line when the actor speaks it. I've onlyyyy just started doing this but it's working quite well.

If I weren't buried under KanKen study (curses) I'd be focusing on this method hardcore.

IceCream Wrote:um... i'm really not sure what my problem is by this point, but i'm truly starting to worry.

[...]

*Post cute Japanese articles no one would believe were written by a Brit girl who knew zero Japanese 10 months ago*

You're kidding, right?

I know how every other sentence in your lang-8 posts gets corrected and how you worry about grammar when you see a bunch of red/blue corrections on your journal. But do you realize readers are enjoying your funny stories and lively writing style? You have a unique personality in Japanese, and people love it. So you get more corrections than other learners.

There are many learners on lang-8 and this forum whose Japanese is much better and sophisticated in a grammatical sense. They sure have much wider vocabularies than yours. But who would have guessed a native English speaker who had started learning Japanese from scratch would entertain native speakers by her unique writing style and funny stories in 10 months?

When you write in Japanese, you sound like a 4 years old Japanese IceCream equipped with ridiculous maturity and knowledge about the world. When Japanese people compliment your average learner, they mean their Japanese is good because they make less grammatical errors and use advanced words. When Japanese people compliment your Japanese, they mean they enjoyed your posts. Sometimes your sentences don't make sense, and readers are like, "Ahaha, IceCream is getting exited!" Sometimes I read a comment in Japanese on your journal and, after reading a few sentences, I suddenly realize it's not a post from a Japanese girl when I run into an ungrammatical sentence. Oh, it's IceCream's own reply! When your Japanese sounds natural, it's soooo natural.

Of course, it's obvious your grammar is still shaky. The Japanese text you posted in this thread has tons of grammatical errors too. But it's also obvious you have learned something quite important that many learners haven't after years of intense study.

It does seem like it's too early for you to focus on output. But if you really want to refine your writing/speaking now, there are tons of textbooks and stuff you can take advantage of to improve your grammar. Some members of this forum are experts when it comes to grammar books. You can't go wrong if you use highly recommended and popular stuff among those experts. But please stay IceCream. I mean, you have a unique writing style like you do in English. It'd be sad if you start speaking like a run-of-the-mill advanced learner.

As you already know from the number of corrections you get from native speakers in each lang-8 post, I also think your grammar needs work. But I'd like to see you learn grammar you think is necessary to be yourself rather than cast yourself in the I-should-talk-like-this-because-they-said-so mold.

You might think that your progress on grammar is lagging. You might worry because some people say 1~2 years of immersion is enough to reach fluency. Well, I guess you might not pass for a native speaker on the phone at the 18 months mark. But it's a ludicrous story in the first place. Besides, your learning speed is definitely faster than the average leaner by an order of magnitude. I don't think you should worry about your progress at all.

Anyway, here are some videos of Japanese learners who seem to have developed pretty good output skills without learning grammar much:

This LingQ guy's spoken Japanese (in his videos) is very good, though it's not as amazing as some other super fluent guys. But he says he speaks 10 languages...

This girl is amazing. This video is about a year old, but in her recent video she said she can't pass JLPT1 (or maybe 2. I forgot.). She sounds like she has been living in Japan for a looong time. I can pick up on some non-nativeness in her speech, but it's also true that she often sounds like a native speaker who speaks a minor dialect.

So at least some people didn't need much grammar learning to achieve high level fluency (in their videos). Maybe you don't need to worry about your grammar too much.

This thread makes me want to try lang-8 again. I tried it once when I was like 2 months in my Japanese studies, but always freaked out when correcting somebody else's posts because I was worried I might make a mistake..

I think at this point, it's woth stepping back and considering how language actually works. The kinds of output decks some members have suggested seem like a waste of time and energy to me. It's not worth remembering how to say whole sentences verbatim as translations of 'equivalent' japanese sentences. Most of the time there is no equivalent, and there is certainly no complete set of sentence pairs that will prepare you for every sentence you'll ever need to say or understand.

The way I see it now is, understanding/saying sentences perfectly in context is the end result of mastery of all the lower order skills involved in language learning. Don't worry that you can't speak perfectly yet and instead take this realisation as evidence that there are basics that you still need to master and start changing what you're adding to the SRS to reflect what you need to learn. As far as i'm concerned, the SRS system may actually run counter to the sentence method as most people use it. This is because by using the SRS, you may come to recognise the sentence pairs by memory rather than by truly understanding the vocabulary and underlying grammar which should be your goal.

This goes for input and output. Use real world native sources as your sentence SRS, because rather than re-exposing you to exact sentences, it will expose you to reoccurring patterns. Use the srs to learn the finite, vocab, grammar rules, verb conjugation etc, instead of trying to rote memorize 10,000 sentences or whatever. Not that that won't work in the long run, it's just really inefficient in my opinion. If your output is lagging (which is completely normal), find out where your mistakes are and then make cards designed to taget them. For example, if you're having problems with transitive/intransitive verbs, then get in the habit of noting whether a verb is transitive or intransitive when it shows up in a vocab deck. Fail yourself if you get it wrong. If you have trouble conjugating passive/causative verbs, drill it.


I haven't used lang8 before but I can see some potential problems with the system as I uderstand it from reading this thread. There is often no way of knowing what a language learner is actually trying to say so quite often corrections will communicate something different from the writers actual intention. The writer may not know this and incorrectly equate the corrected sentence with their intended meaning. Grammatical subtleties are not necessarily communicated to the learner in the absence of further explanation.

Those offering corrections most likely do not have a thorough understanding of learners' native languages or have any experience teaching their language to foreign learners. They likely have no understanding of why learners make they mistakes they do or why certain grammatical aspects of their native language are difficult for learners. Because I teach Japanese kids English everyday (including correcting their writing) trust me when I say that the most important thing to being able to help students is understanding them.

風's note: Added line breaks.

Really good post, nadiatims.

I would also caution against using output decks. I think it's a bad idea to be encouraging yourself to translate from English when you speak or write in Japanese (or in any other foreign language).

nadiatims Wrote:It's not worth remembering how to say whole sentences verbatim as translations of 'equivalent' japanese sentences. Most of the time there is no equivalent, and there is certainly no complete set of sentence pairs that will prepare you for every sentence you'll ever need to say or understand.
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It's less about memorizing sentences and more about acquiring patterns. I'm sure you can use drills to accomplish the same thing though. Adding sentences to an Input deck doesn't do too much from a speaking point of view but to an output deck it's a decent tool in building the mental corpus of sentences that we model our speech on when we use language spontaneously. Building up knowledge on the correct usage of patterns is the goal and not really "to collect every sentence you'll ever need to say".

Though tbh the my best output study comes from listening to sentences ripped from dorama and being able to say it along with the actor. I find I can just say that stuff without having to think about it where as during reviews in the output deck sometimes it takes me a little while to think of how to say the sentence.

shirokuro Wrote:Really good post, nadiatims.

I would also caution against using output decks. I think it's a bad idea to be encouraging yourself to translate from English when you speak or write in Japanese (or in any other foreign language).

Is it really translating?

I ask this because the sentences are natural Japanese ones taking directly from a native source and then English itself is a translation yes BUT when doing a review it's not necessarily translating BACK to Japanese it's just using the English as a cue to output the particular idea in Japanese.

I've noticed something interesting in myself and a lot of other language learners and that is they don't translate or even need to when they know what they're talking about or are comfortable with a particular speech pattern. They do translate when they are trying to express a concept which they don't know how to output. It's really their only option at such a point and always (always) leads to an unnatural sounding sentence... but it's part of the journey, you can't output something correctly until you know how to say it obviously.

Anyways my point is no matter what, once you get comfortable with a certain pattern you don't NEED to "translate" in your head or anything, you just use it. Translation is a crutch for when you aren't comfortable with something and it automatically gets dropped at the point where you don't need it anymore.

In other words, I wouldn't worry about it. It's not like those who need crutches will never walk again.

It is direct translation, mezbup, even if the sentences were originally Japanese. I understand that the sentences you are studying this way are natural Japanese. What I think is problematic about output decks like these is that they encourage translating within your head, which I think is always harmful to encourage. As you said, this method of production is a crutch, and I think it can seriously hinder one's production skills and encourage bad habits.

shirokuro Wrote:It is direct translation, mezbup, even if the sentences were originally Japanese. I understand that the sentences you are studying this way are natural Japanese. What I think is problematic about output decks like these is that they encourage translating within your head, which I think is always harmful to encourage. As you said, this method of production is a crutch, and I think it can seriously hinder one's production skills and encourage bad habits.

Then you missed my point. Even if it is a crutch, you wind up discarding it after long anyway. Same as Heisigs "keywords" and the mnemonics in general.

I do hear what you're saying though and agree to some extent. Which is why I say the best way of training output that i've found is to listen to audio on repeat and talk along with it cos come output time it just flows.

What other ways do you recommend for training output?

mezbup Wrote:Then you missed my point. Even if it is a crutch, you wind up discarding it after long anyway. Same as Heisigs "keywords" and the mnemonics in general.

I didn't miss your point. My point was that it is, like you said, a crutch, and one that I believe can be seriously detrimental and in poor judgment to encourage.

I'm saying this because of my own experience with using this method to train production. When I was in fourth grade, I entered a program known as French Immersion. Except for English, all of my classes switched to being taught in French. All of the students in the program were supposed to speak in French as much as possible from the beginning. I believe that having to output from a very low level, at a point where I had to rely on translating from English to French in my head, really hurt my speaking and writing abilities and became a very hard habit to break. This is why I'm against using these kinds of output decks.

mezbup Wrote:What other ways do you recommend for training output?

I don't think I'm qualified to recommend any, which is why I haven't. I was simply cautioning others against a way that I'd used myself and had found seriously hampered my production abilities.

Just to weigh in on the current discussion, I don't think 'in-head translating' is quite as as damaging as its often made out to be.

I studied Indonesian for 5 years in highschool, and we did a lot of output practice from the very beginning, including speaking and writing practice (we wrote a LOT of letters haha). At first we had to rely on translating in our heads, but eventually you have to do that sort of stuff less and less as you grow more familiar with the language. I don't rely on it at all anymore.

And to sort of touch on IceCream's problem...I actually think that classes, while slow moving and boring, do (eventually) produce very good results in regards to output. I just got back from Bali, and even after a 2 year break from the language, I was still able to communicate fairly fluently (with conversations ranging in topic from directions to prostitutes ).

(I just thought I'd put in a good word for classes, since they are always copping so much flack on the forums...not that I'm actually recommending them as a solution for your problem; they're boring and lame )

@blackmacros

I don't know, the way I see it, classes/education systems need to be overhauled, and what they provide at present can mostly be duplicated/augmented/replaced with the kinds of resources we self-students are so up-to-date with.