I'm certainly not in rush to learn Japanese, but it's defintely my main focus right now so I ensure it takes up most of my day.

I see alot of time management for people with not much free time, but what do you do when you have it in abundance? I'm 'studying' all day, I don't really get the urge to do anything else except go for a walk maybe and go to work when I have to. I just want to keep learning. I don't really get stressed out, anything my brain is feeling is surely the result of learning a new language in the first place, it must be screaming "why you do this? english good!"

My question is : with so much free time, should I be bumping up the number of Kanji I study for longer rather than memorising the ones I do multiple times?

I've been studying for a short while, using RTK then a few hours later using anki -_- it's fun now, but I figured it will get tiresome eventually when I could be doing something more useful. I'm doing the studying on heisig's grouping of the kanji in lessons, i'm looking forward to the day when I get to do 130, seriously. I feel doing it twice makes me more secure in my knowledge, i'm only on 52 right now but I could skim over the characters and think of the keyword near instantly. But is it neccessary?

My general plan for now was to learn the Kanji by lesson, see how I do manage 50+ and go from there. I'm still working on learning the Kana in the meantime too, it's well annoying hearing a sound and thinking of the phonetic spelling rather than the character!

too much time for me, too much time is a double-edged sword. There was one holiday where I tried to do all these "projects" - learn Japanese, "master" shogi, or Go, and I just ended up doing nothing and feeling depressed.

But then, when you fill your free time up with other things, other activities, your "projects" will feel more empowered than if you were to just sit there doing the projects all day. I always find, if you're busy, there's a little more drive to do it, if you still have the free time available.

I'd say don't ramp up how many kanji you learn per day by a massive amount. Sooner or later you will get sick of it. It's happened to me twice. The first time, I ended up with a failed stack of 200 cards. Second time, a failed stack of 800, which I've only just a minute ago got down to 200, after some serious days work and getting back into it.

Go at a leisurely pace, and remember, the only thing that matters is that you're having fun, doing it because you want to. As soon as that stops, shut off the computer and do something else.

studying all day is fine, but beware of burnout. Make sure you do something fun and relaxing in order to maintain your sanity, in japanese or not.

burnout only happens when you´re doing stupid crap

I would set up a few different "projects." Perhaps Kanji, Kana, Something Else (vocab/grammar)?, and then something completely unrelated to Japanese.

Then i would utilize the (10+2)*5 ... time management ... thing ...
http://www.lifeclever.com/structured-pro...-meridian/
There's a lot more on google than just that for it too.
You could also change it to something like (15+5)*3
Or really anything that suits you.

When I went through RtK, I vaguely recall a mad rush during Spring Break. I did 50-200 per day for like 3-5 days. It's hazy.
I had fun doing them all. I had wonderful retention for a few days, but once the days between reviews started growing, my review piles would get bigger.

Having been in the same situation for over a year my best advice is to pick a pace that is comfortable and be consistent with it every single day. I like the number 35 - you wind up learning 1000 of something per month. It's quick but not stressful.

Learning the kanji by lesson stops being useful at around the 500 mark. It's better to choose a set daily goal, like mezbup said. Don't start doing 100+ kanji a day, because if you miss even one day, reviews will pile up and become unbearable.

Learning the kanji twice is a waste of time, and makes them more difficult to recall later. Learn them one day, then review them in Anki the next. Don't go over the same kanji in the book unless you fail it.

You mentioned skimming the kanji and thinking of the keyword; don't do that. You're trying to remember the kanji, not the keywords. You already know all of the keywords. Always go from keyword to kanji, and not the other way around.

vgambit Wrote:Learn them one day, then review them in Anki the next. Don't go over the same kanji in the book unless you fail it.

You mentioned skimming the kanji and thinking of the keyword; don't do that. You're trying to remember the kanji, not the keywords. You already know all of the keywords. Always go from keyword to kanji, and not the other way around.

By skimming I mean looking at Japanese text, not flashcards though if thats what you meant. My story for 'decameron' is a roughly 'days bound together etc', when I see day within bound thats what I think. It'd seem impossible not to encounter the Kanji i've just learnt and evoke some sort of vague meaning from it. I'd think that was the point, especially when they are turned into primitives.. But then i'm new to this!


I've been studying and reviewing in the same day, and I just realised what Asriel means in overdoing the same thing, basically i'll be reviewing the ones I think I know really well less and less and it'll come back and kick my ass. I have to admit that over 4 days now i'm probably feeling too confident (even if they are just primitive meanings) and want to 'push it to the limit' so to speak. Anki consumed my Kanji deck (should've saved) so i'm only doing it once now on this site. And vinniram is right, with too much time means you just use time, and not think how it's used. Cheers for the replys guys, getting started is naturally the biggest hurdle in language. I'm edging onto doing 35 a day, studying then waiting til the next day, studying etc

The only SRS related things i've read is 'Just use it everyday', is there some theory in regards to studying, then waiting to review what you studied the next day? I know it's easier to recall things within the same day, but then repetition is also how you remember things. I'd think that seeing something repeatedly does literally drill it into your mind no matter what.

There is such a thing as the law of diminishing returns. Basically what it means is after a while time/effort and results lose their linear correlation. This explains why children who grow up bilingual don't seem to have seriously impaired language ability despite perhaps having spent maybe half the time learning each language, or why Japanese people can work ridiculous hours while not out competing the rest of the world. Also consider that the brain needs to time to absorb the information. Think of it like exercising, muscles grow while you rest.

nadiatims Wrote:There is such a thing as the law of diminishing returns. Basically what it means is after a while time/effort and results lose their linear correlation. This explains why children who grow up bilingual don't seem to have seriously impaired language ability despite perhaps having spent maybe half the time learning each language, or why Japanese people can work ridiculous hours while not out competing the rest of the world. Also consider that the brain needs to time to absorb the information. Think of it like exercising, muscles grow while you rest.

This is a tangent and I agree with your point on diminished returns, but bilingually raised children usually do (in my experience) have an impairment in one of their languages. Usually it's the language that is only spoken at home. For the many Japanese nisei I know, that usually means that they have very poor kanji ability, a vocabulary lacking in 書き言葉, and difficulty with the more polite registers.

I know a few half kids in Japan and they have similarly impacted English.

nadiatims Wrote:There is such a thing as the law of diminishing returns. Basically what it means is after a while time/effort and results lose their linear correlation. This explains why children who grow up bilingual don't seem to have seriously impaired language ability despite perhaps having spent maybe half the time learning each language, or why Japanese people can work ridiculous hours while not out competing the rest of the world. Also consider that the brain needs to time to absorb the information. Think of it like exercising, muscles grow while you rest.

Is this law not effectively overcome by using an SRS? At least up to the point where you work all day long without getting any rest at all.

Asriel Wrote:I would set up a few different "projects." Perhaps Kanji, Kana, Something Else (vocab/grammar)?, and then something completely unrelated to Japanese.

Then i would utilize the (10+2)*5 ... time management ... thing ...
http://www.lifeclever.com/structured-pro...-meridian/
There's a lot more on google than just that for it too.
You could also change it to something like (15+5)*3
Or really anything that suits you.

When I went through RtK, I vaguely recall a mad rush during Spring Break. I did 50-200 per day for like 3-5 days. It's hazy.
I had fun doing them all. I had wonderful retention for a few days, but once the days between reviews started growing, my review piles would get bigger.

For people with Windows, I found this little program called Instant Boss 1.0.2 :
http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/downl..._software/

I agree with you jarvik. However the impairment is almost never serious. What I mean by that is that it's usually just vocabulary gaps that could easily be filled with a little exposure. I've taught quite a few half kids and returnee students, and they usually have amazingly perfect accents and native fluency. Maybe they have low vocabulary and are slow readers but their mastery of the fundamentals leads me to believe they could reach an academic level in their weaker language quite quickly.

@kame3
I doubt it. If anything SRS is more prone to diminishing returns than other forms of study. The human brain needs stimulus that an SRS cannot provide.

nadiatims Wrote:@kame3
I doubt it. If anything SRS is more prone to diminishing returns than other forms of study. The human brain needs stimulus that an SRS cannot provide.

Hmm I don't know. If my retention percentage remains at a high level even if I study longer, what is the problem? With SRS you actually know that you learn something and you can actually see the results (results in term of cards (=words/sentences) learned, of course not necessarily language ability)