Now I'm kind of interested. How do you study the initial cards and then review them later? That includes Kanji cards, Vocab cards, Grammar cards (if they exists), and your Sentence cards.

Reason I mention this: If you do Kanji cards as recognition only (kanji to meaning/keyword) then those are faster to do that production (meaning/keyword to kanji), but there is a trade off when one moves on to vocabulary.

Likewise, with vocabulary cards if you do "Kanji to meaning" then they're easier to do than "Kanji to kana/meaning" and especially "Kana to Kanji/meaning".

You noted this yourself with problem of kana only words during the JLPT mock test. RTK makes it a little easier to know the meaning of a word even though you can't pronounce it. However, the heavy use of kana on the test made it more difficult for you. Now, does that mean start doing more Kana to Kanji/Meaning for your vocabulary? Not sure. Still, with Anki it's no stretch to convert your "mature" cards to test Kana to Kanji/meaning and see how you fair. If you don't like the time it adds to your reviews, then switch back.

To everyone else: He did score a 51/65 on the first JLPT section after 10 or so months of general Japanese study. That's sounds pretty good to me.

Nukemarine Wrote:Now I'm kind of interested. How do you study the initial cards and then review them later? That includes Kanji cards, Vocab cards, Grammar cards (if they exists), and your Sentence cards.

Reason I mention this: If you do Kanji cards as recognition only (kanji to meaning/keyword) then those are faster to do that production (meaning/keyword to kanji), but there is a trade off when one moves on to vocabulary.

Likewise, with vocabulary cards if you do "Kanji to meaning" then they're easier to do than "Kanji to kana/meaning" and especially "Kana to Kanji/meaning".

You noted this yourself with problem of kana only words during the JLPT mock test. RTK makes it a little easier to know the meaning of a word even though you can't pronounce it. However, the heavy use of kana on the test made it more difficult for you. Now, does that mean start doing more Kana to Kanji/Meaning for your vocabulary? Not sure. Still, with Anki it's no stretch to convert your "mature" cards to test Kana to Kanji/meaning and see how you fair. If you don't like the time it adds to your reviews, then switch back.

To everyone else: He did score a 51/65 on the first JLPT section after 10 or so months of general Japanese study. That's sounds pretty good to me.

Well my set up is like this. Production deck where I wrote my RTK reviews/vocab/sentences. I do go from kana to kanji from this. I believe this deck will eventually strengthen from me going kana to kanji in terms of reading/kanji.

My vocab deck I go from kanji to readings and then a translation. Don't right anything hear, it's just done fast. I look at a card, give myself 5 seconds if I can't remember it by then I fail it and go onto the other one. If i could remember it, but it took some time I would just give it good. If I could blaze through it then I could give it easy no problem

My sentence deck. Goes from kanji to readings and then translation. I've started doing monolingual look-ups nowadays. This is especially worthwhile to do for a long time, as you'll eventually adapt to japanese so well it will become second nature(in terms of reading/recognizing/understanding kanji.

Grammar I did tae kim sentences, all of it. And I did that all about particles. I haven't really done any grammar outside of these. I might get grammar books in terms of basic grammar all the way to high level grammar. I believe this/monolingual look-ups for terms I don't get from dramas,news,kanji words can get me far in terms of understanding/reading.

IceCream Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:kk, got to watch out for next time. The stats I've posted where my decks. Some of which I haven't completed fully. Like 30,000+ vocab. I've only gotten down like 20,000 of them completed. Same applies to my sentence deck.
I'll watch out for what I say in the future about my stats.

no, the problem isn't with the 30,000 cards, it's with you saying you've done 20,000+ of them.
For vocab, half a month ago you said you had only done 10,000 cards. You also have 9000 young cards there. Plus 6000 more young cards in your sentences deck. I just don't see how these numbers add up, or are even possible if you are keeping up with reviews. My best guess would be that you have a huge pile of failed cards that you don't touch. Or else, these cards were seen then suspended, and you've unsuspended them for the purposes of these statistics. Either way, it doesn't make very fair statistics, imo.

A fairer set of statistics would not include these cards. So, you would say that you have studied 11,910 vocab words, and 15,023 sentences.
^those statistics are still awesome & impressive, yknow, you don't have to make it sound better than it is.

I'll post my stats soon. 5 mins or so.

Here are my stats for my sentence deck. I'll post my vocab/production deck in each different post. Ok i've got pictures for production/sentence deck. Now working on vocab deck. This may sound like a stupid question but how do I put my stats on this post

Took pictures for all my decks, all the stats as of today. So have it up soon.

IceCream Wrote:hey ta... um, in case i came off as harsh, i'm definately not calling you a liar!!! i don't think the stats you already posted aren't true... just that those 15K young cards (9K vocab, 6k sentences) are probably not all being reviewed, and it's a simple mistake around understanding the stats. If they are... you are truly a machine lol!!!

anyway, to post images you need to upload them somewhere first. You can do that with something like screencast.com, or flicker, and so on. Then to display them here, you get the web address for just that image, and put it in the middle of image tags like this: [url][/url]

http://www.screencast.com/users/ta121/fo...0e650d03e7
(I've included all my decks in this one, graphs/stats which is on the side of anki. Just zoom in (by clicking on it) to increase the size.

I hope this works(the link above). I didn't take it the wrong way at all. I believe it's all a matter of time before I become fluent(or at least I hope). I think my cards suggest that I'm just spending a lot of time on this.

I do follow AJATT a lot. But basically it's better to adapt and add your own way of srsing. Plus taking a variety of methods to help you increase your learning daily,weekly,monthly,etc.

Ta: Can you help me understand this a bit (sorry I didn't read all your posts)

How many decks do you have (lots of pictures to sort through) ?
How long ago did you start (ten months from beginner?)
How long do you review every day? (yes I know it's in the stats but you have to add some numbers)
Where do your cards come from (shared anki deck?)
Do you have time to do anything else ? (j/k)

Thanks

Those are some crazy decks. One thing doesn't seem right to me... 100% pass rate on everything? You're saying you do 3000+ reviews a day and don't fail/have never failed a single review?

Am I missing something?

shihoro Wrote:@ Icecream. You pretty well have been calling him a liar and have been persistent in exposing his presentation of stats. He is too nice to tell you this and will probably allow you a way out. Others have also been downright rude and pretty aggressive and should follow their own advice. Even the compliments are backhanded. By the way the remarks about learning humility as prep for Japan shows a misguided understanding of Japan. But that is another debate. Pretty patronising advice anyway. I doubt ta12121 would boast how quickly he learnt 12,000 words etc. He simply doesn't come across as boastful anyway. I have noticed how people like to pass personal comments on his posts.
I have found this thread pretty depressing.

@ ta12121. So far as I can see your only crime is over enthusiasm with a style that jars others (this does not make you wrong). My advice is don't put up your stats or offer up any proof. . Don't waste anymore time with this. Take the useful practical advice given and keep working. Keep offering practical advice when you have it. Your posts are among those I make sure I read. Other than this - don't get involved in this stuff any more. It is counterproductive.

If I can offer you concrete advice it would be to start concentrating on listening and speaking skills through real conversation. I have come across quite few graduates and JLPT 1 and 2s who simply do not speak well, so have my language exchange partner and Japanese friends. Many don't seem to be able to use the grammar or vocab they supposedly should have. With your progress you will crack reading Japanese (composition may take longer - it always does in any language). You need to be speaking Japanese with someone in a natural conversation for a minimum of 2 hours per week. With the number of hours you do a day I would even suggest at least an hour a day. The are plenty of language exchange people out there - even if you have to use skype etc. You may have to be patient in finding those really suitable for your needs, but you will find them. If you only want to read then you can skip this but you are aiming for fluency and want to work in Japan.

Really this is the same for any language but with Japanese it is too easy to be diverted with Kanji due to the sheer effort required. You will find it improves all the other aspects of your Japanese. Watching/listening to news and drama is good practice but it is easy to delude oneself one has understood because body language, plot knowledge, laziness etc convinces us we did understand. Conversation can expose strengths and weaknesses immediately (and can be corrected immediately). Nuances can be picked up more readily and your partner can guide you immediately. This will give you more confidence than you can imagine and is a better measure of your Japanese that many exams or other artificial measures.

You are an animal - keep going.

That's good advice, definitely will follow this for sure.
Definitely do need to find a language exchange partner in my area or so.
When I post another update(5 months from now, trying to keep it consistent) I won't post my stats, rather I'll post on what I've improved on and what else can I do to even improve beyond my past limitations in japanese. To be honest I feel that it's kinda of annoying how I've spent all this time on japanese but there will always be someone who says otherwise about my progress. So I believe that if I truly become fluent, it really doesn't matter what people say.(Not to sound mean here, but this is true. Imagine you become fluent in japanese in all skills, japanese people even say so,etc. But there will be someone who will always say your not good enough, your vocab speaking needs improvement,etc. Like a never ending amount of excuses.)
I posted my stats and stuff just to help others and to show how much time I've spent on japanese.

Eikyu Wrote:Ta: Can you help me understand this a bit (sorry I didn't read all your posts)

How many decks do you have (lots of pictures to sort through) ?
How long ago did you start (ten months from beginner?)
How long do you review every day? (yes I know it's in the stats but you have to add some numbers)
Where do your cards come from (shared anki deck?)
Do you have time to do anything else ? (j/k)

Thanks

3 decks. 1 vocab,1 sentence deck, 1 production deck. Yea 10months for my sentence deck, sometime I started doing sentences which was around September of last year. I review 1.30-2.00 hours each day. More If I feel like doing more. My cards originally were added by me, up until a point. Started getting lazy. So there were pre-made anki decks that were useful. Eventually once my pre-made decks start running low(very soon actually). I will add stuff from news/websites,etc that I may not understand fully,etc or terms I don't get. But I'll be adding monolingual cards soon.
lol, I do spend most of my time in japanese. As I don't have work just yet, still looking for one. I got the time. I do go out here and there with friends. Usual try to bring a japanese book with me to keep immersion outside of my house. Going to invest in a good mp3 player to listen to stuff on the outside.

IceCream Wrote:

shihoro Wrote:@ Icecream. You pretty well have been calling him a liar and have been persistent in exposing his presentation of stats. He is too nice to tell you this and will probably allow you a way out. Others have also been downright rude and pretty aggressive and should follow their own advice. Even the compliments are backhanded. By the way the remarks about learning humility as prep for Japan shows a misguided understanding of Japan. But that is another debate. Pretty patronising advice anyway. I doubt ta12121 would boast how quickly he learnt 12,000 words etc. He simply doesn't come across as boastful anyway. I have noticed how people like to pass personal comments on his posts.
I have found this thread pretty depressing.

shihoro, your comments about me are pretty much right, apart from the compliments being backhanded. i never meant the complimentary parts in a backhanded way at all! And neither do i or did i think Ta is a lieing type of person at all!! But when someone's stats are saying they've done 15,000 new cards in less than a month, i definately want to know that that's right. It just didn't sound possible to me. But i was totally wrong!!

i've already apologised to ta, and i apologise to you and anyone else as well. I also need a few lessons in humility sometimes But i can't say i'm sorry i was pushing about the stats, because the feeling of really understanding and knowing that is possible is great!!!

Apologize accepted? Don't worry it is lol. I've got to point this out but just because I have a lot of cards doesn't mean I have memorized them just yet. But eventually it will all become memorized if I just keep at it. I try reading outside of my srs a lot now. It helps a lot, especially with the srsing I do.

mezbup Wrote:Those are some crazy decks. One thing doesn't seem right to me... 100% pass rate on everything? You're saying you do 3000+ reviews a day and don't fail/have never failed a single review?

Am I missing something?

I'm not really following this thread closely, but it seems like he isn't using SRS for production OR recognition, just for exposure. He just looks at the card and then passes it.

If that is indeed the case it isn't at all suspicious that one could do a few thousand cards per day.

It doesn't even make sense to use an SRS that way. edit - that's not really srs'ing... kinda defeats the purpose of using anki.

mezbup Wrote:Those are some crazy decks. One thing doesn't seem right to me... 100% pass rate on everything? You're saying you do 3000+ reviews a day and don't fail/have never failed a single review?

Am I missing something?

I usual rated everything hard before, I guess I was just rating myself hard on everything to memorize it faster. So I went easier on my reviews. There are failed cards, but I think the reason why it's 100% is because the amount of cards.
I have been noticing that japanese has been becoming easier. Same with my cards. A lot of stuff I add, I'm noticing I can understand/read it no problem. I'm not sure if this is an indication that I'm improving in japanese a lot. But I feel that my understanding of japanese has increased a lot/reading.

So if a vocab card comes up and you forgot how to read it but you still remember what it means do you fail it or just rate it hard?

Jarvik7 Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:Those are some crazy decks. One thing doesn't seem right to me... 100% pass rate on everything? You're saying you do 3000+ reviews a day and don't fail/have never failed a single review?

Am I missing something?

I'm not really following this thread closely, but it seems like he isn't using SRS for production OR recognition, just for exposure. He just looks at the card and then passes it.

If that is indeed the case it isn't at all suspicious that one could do a few thousand cards per day.

I do production, but that's for a separate deck. I go from kana to kanji. But for my other decks. I basically look if I can read it/understand it initially. If I do I give it a rating and then move onto the next card.

mezbup Wrote:It doesn't even make sense to use an SRS that way. edit - that's not really srs'ing... kinda defeats the purpose of using anki.

It's been slowing down lately. I think it's because I've gotten used to this amount, initially when I began, I though 20 cards was a lot. Then it increased to 50,100 and so on.

mezbup Wrote:So if a vocab card comes up and you forgot how to read it but you still remember what it means do you fail it or just rate it hard?

hmm, probably rate it good. Because I I know half of the info.

Since I'm concentrating on understanding/reading and a bit of writing(this has increased). I need to start focusing on real-production. If my production skills can increase as well as my understanding/listening to some extent. I can definitely get really good (not fluent, fluency will take some time but it can be done. It all comes down to effort and time.)

ta12121 Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:So if a vocab card comes up and you forgot how to read it but you still remember what it means do you fail it or just rate it hard?

hmm, probably rate it good. Because I I know half of the info.

Ah see there in lies the problem. That ought to be a fail. I can see why you'd get 100% pass rate for everything over 10 months if you did that. To know a word (in terms of recognition) you need to be able to read it and know what it means. Otherwise you're cheating yourself when it comes time to read you'll wind up with plenty of words you can either read but dont know what they mean and plenty of words you can't read but do know what they mean. I don't think that's quite an honest system.

Just my two cents.

mezbup Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:So if a vocab card comes up and you forgot how to read it but you still remember what it means do you fail it or just rate it hard?

hmm, probably rate it good. Because I I know half of the info.

Ah see there in lies the problem. That ought to be a fail. I can see why you'd get 100% pass rate for everything over 10 months if you did that. To know a word (in terms of recognition) you need to be able to read it and know what it means. Otherwise you're cheating yourself when it comes time to read you'll wind up with plenty of words you can either read but dont know what they mean and plenty of words you can't read but do know what they mean. I don't think that's quite an honest system.

Just my two cents.

hmm. I could say I've adapted to seeing japanese kanji/recognizing what they mean instantly but not sure where that would take me. When you say understanding, you mean in japanese? or in English? Because I've had a lot of occurrences to understanding it fully in japanese. When I initially started, I searched up everything I didn't know etc. Eventually when I reached 8000+ or so by myself in my sentence deck. I decided that I better change to make it easier.

The cards I do for vocab is quick recognition(See if I can read it/understand it). But for my sentence deck/production I take the time to look at it carefully.
Initially when I began japanese ,when I starting reading kanji, there where a lot of times that I didn't know what it mean, even though I could read it fine. This is when I was in the beginning phases in japanese. Eventually when I've reached 9 month phase. I've been noticing that I didn't even think about translation when understanding japanese fully. It may sound strange but I'm sure it's happened to you as well. Your mind automatically translates when you hear/see kanji (during the intial stages of japanese, even in the intermediate level and such). Eventually this stopped for me and I just focused on understanding from reading/listening. This slowly made me adapt to understand japanese in it's full originally form(no translation). Even in kanji-form.

I don't really do sentence decks anymore, because I found that "understanding" them just makes it way too easy on me. Now, you could say "but that's a good thing, it means you're learning," but that's not the point. According to nest0r's idea about people who do sentences wrong -- I think that's my problem.

But the point is, I just have the sentences to add context to the word that I'm trying to learn.

If I graded myself "good" because I looked at a sentence and knew what the word meant, that'd be a fail, or a 'hard' at the very least.
That's why I put the sentence on the Answer side of my card. Then I know whether I actually know the word or not.

I guess I'm just adding to the "grading for understanding is too easy for me" group.

Asriel Wrote:I don't really do sentence decks anymore, because I found that "understanding" them just makes it way too easy on me. Now, you could say "but that's a good thing, it means you're learning," but that's not the point. According to nest0r's idea about people who do sentences wrong -- I think that's my problem.

But the point is, I just have the sentences to add context to the word that I'm trying to learn.

If I graded myself "good" because I looked at a sentence and knew what the word meant, that'd be a fail, or a 'hard' at the very least.
That's why I put the sentence on the Answer side of my card. Then I know whether I actually know the word or not.

I guess I'm just adding to the "grading for understanding is too easy for me" group.

I guess the question that comes to my mind is. What does understanding truly mean? Initially I've found that in the beginning, you won't understand japanese without immersion. It's just common sense, let alone understand the kanji. Vocab=1 word without context. Sentence=vocab with other words explaining that one word. Or describing something else.
I do have a translation at the bottom, but I don't look at it, only if I'm completely lost to it's meaning. I guess the good-rating for me is that, I've become too easy on myself or what not. I used to rate everything hard cuz I felt I didn't understand it "fully". Not sure if it's the way I do cards or the immersion. But when I'm following transcripts from new sites. I could understand the kanji immediately and read it fine. Only a few words I recognized that I didn't know. I think it all comes down to the ratings. I guess I should double check the way I've been srsing. A lot of the ideas where from this site, like vocab and such. Production cards,etc.

mezbup Wrote:It doesn't even make sense to use an SRS that way. edit - that's not really srs'ing... kinda defeats the purpose of using anki.

Wait, wait, wait. We've gone over this before. There are many ways to SRS. That "r" can stand for repetition, reminder or remembrance after all. In addition, how one tests can change from person to person. That's why I like not only the stats, but how the stats came to pass.

That he's using SRS as a reminder of sorts does not invalidate his method. He's going for bulk and might be getting good results from it. There's some weakness as he notes with problems with kana and a bit about grammar before hand in other threads.

Again, as more and more people show their tactics and results, we get a better picture of what works better. Now, it may be that what he does is no better than the more detailed work I put into my cards. It may be I'm an anal retentive asshole that's putting perfection ahead of advancement.

Put it this way, currently I have sentences on the answer side of my vocab cards but is that really necessary? I think so, but only because I do kana to kanji/meaning (you kind of need context to know the kana). Then again, why do I need to do kana to kanji? If I went Kanji to kana/meaning I wouldn't need sentences at all for a vast majority of words. They would just be there to as a pseudo definition. That would speed up my reviews.

Again, things to learn to apply for future advice. Obviously it's too late to apply to my past learning, but it will at least temper the advice I give to others.

IceCream Wrote:it certainly seems to be working for ta.

It certainly seems to translate into results on the JLPT vocab test. I'd be interested to see how well it works for the listening, reading and grammar papers...

Quote:I know i already pass some mature cards if i get the reading just slightly wrong

I tend to hit 'pass' anyway if I just got the voicing wrong (sa/za, te/de, that sort of thing), especially for younger cards.