After 3 almost years and 4500 sentences core 6000 is really becoming a chore and I feel it is limiting my progess. I have decided to use my study time instead to focus on using subs2srs and other native materials.

For those of you that have had a similiar situation in the past are there any pitfalls I should watch out for? Any words of wisdom?

[s0apgun]

3 years? Seriously?

If you add 20 cards a day you would finish in under a year. I feel like you're already close to the end so why not finish it out. Definitely start reading native material like manga and such though. In the end, as long as you're still doing things in Japanese... I guess the method won't really matter.

I say if it becomes a chore than quit. NO FUN = NO GOOD!!!!! if you have been working on it for 3 years then you should start your own sentence deck and add things that you want to learn or work on :] 頑張って

If it's a chore, you are limiting your progress. I say, "Throw the spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks." I constantly delete decks. My biggest to date was 6,000 meticulously collected and inputted mandarin sentences from stuff I had been reading. As long as I'm making relentless forward progress, it matters not.

I got through core10k pretty quickly (like in months) by not worrying about memorising definitions....

just concentrate on getting the various readings of kanji in your head using Anki.

Then learn the meaning of words by reading a buttload of native material using Rikai-sama as a guide.

You can get plenty of light novels in txt form if you know where to look >_>

It is by no means a shame to quit. If you feel that it has become a burden to a degree that it hinders your progress than furthering it, this is by far better than keep reviewing and adding.

Normally it would take about 10 months at a pace of 20 cards to finish off that portion of the deck. With 60 you would be down to at least 3 months. So there must be some other reason for your giving it up now. What else have you studied in the 3 years since you started reviewing the deck?

Speculation Mode: On
I suspect you either added to many cards, highly unlikely, or failing too many at a time, which is very likely. Judging by the time it has taken you to get to reach 4000 cards, you must have added 1 to 3 cards per day.
Speculation Mode: Off

I'd really like to know what the real reason for your decision is.

midonnay Wrote:I got through core10k pretty quickly (like in months) by not worrying about memorising definitions....

This is actually really good advice. A lot of people study cards like there is one true interpretation and meaning. Dictionaries are not laws. Japanese is a fuzzy language at the best of times. It's okay to have a fuzzy understanding.

In my studies I got to the point where I became okay with having a fuzzy understanding of some things at first. There's bunches of words I knew the gist of or thought I knew better than I did. Then I finally saw them in the context of a native work, and had my なるほど moment with those things. I would find out that my understanding of it was wrong or just gain a deeper level of understanding.

OP, as long as you keep moving forward with something then it's fine to quit Core6k. Native materials with more context are better anyway. If you feel like you can handle it then just do that. That was your eventual goal when you started to do Core in the first place, right?

However it is possible your Japanese could have some weird holes in it that might be plugged by continuing. My suggestion is to move your Core6k deck to "long term" mode by doing this:

Unsuspend all new cards. Set new cards to be randomly mixed in with existing cards. Review 150 a day consistently. Don't bother with trying to clear out all the expired cards every day. Do your 150 cards per day, and with the rest of your time move on to better and brighter things.

So it boils down to instead of quitting Core6k just quit worrying about Core6k. Let go and let Anki. Do more of the things you want to do while keeping the things you don't really want to do at a minimum. But, don't stop doing those things completely since they do have some value.

I've quit and restarted core a few times already, and could never decide if it's a good idea to just get that foundation of the common words and then move to native materials. It was mostly laziness from not wanting to create my own deck.

But the problem I found is...6000, plus the extra words in the sentences...is a lot more than a foundation. Eventually it just becomes a huge collection of common, but still pretty rare words in that you would only see them in certain contexts. (business related vocab everywhere!) So I finally decided that core 2000 is more than enough, and got rid of everything beyond that. Now I'm doing subs2srs which is a lot more enjoyable, and only have a small number of core 2000 reviews per day.

Juniper Pansy - if you are quitting core 6000 without completing it why aren't you questioning your motivation?

kudokupo Wrote:I've quit and restarted core a few times already, and could never decide if it's a good idea to just get that foundation of the common words and then move to native materials. It was mostly laziness from not wanting to create my own deck.

But the problem I found is...6000, plus the extra words in the sentences...is a lot more than a foundation. Eventually it just becomes a huge collection of common, but still pretty rare words in that you would only see them in certain contexts. (business related vocab everywhere!) So I finally decided that core 2000 is more than enough, and got rid of everything beyond that. Now I'm doing subs2srs which is a lot more enjoyable, and only have a small number of core 2000 reviews per day.

I think if one's goal were to be able to understand spoken language exceptionally well, then sub2srs would be great. However if you have plans to read, then a deck like the core6k will get you to a point where you can read. I've finished the 6k and I can say that in my reading of newspapers, light novels, mangas, etc, that about 80% of the words in the deck show up with enough common consistency to be considered important to learn. Thought I'd just point this out.

vix86 Wrote:I think if one's goal were to be able to understand spoken language exceptionally well, then sub2srs would be great. However if you have plans to read, then a deck like the core6k will get you to a point where you can read. I've finished the 6k and I can say that in my reading of newspapers, light novels, mangas, etc, that about 80% of the words in the deck show up with enough common consistency to be considered important to learn. Thought I'd just point this out.

Yeah I agree finishing core6k will help you read a lot of stuff, but I've been thinking about that tower of babelfish method, where it says the first 1000 is 70%, and the next 1000 is another 10%, and after that really low. I don't know how accurate that is, but I was surprised how little benefit it becomes after the first couple thousand. So I decided it would be a better idea to learn from the sources I most want to understand. Of course if the vocabulary is sticking and it's enjoyable enough, then core is great. I'll use other sources besides subs2srs eventually, but it's fun right now.

I don't think the "1000 words covers 70% of the language" is accurate for written Japanese, although probably for the spoken language... and unlike in English, the first 1000 words in written and spoken Japanese will be quite different. In any case, not understanding 10-30% of what you read or hear is quite a lot.

But to the original poster's problem: Why not try reading and listening to material you like, and looking up the words you don't know. If that works better for you, fine, quit Core6k.

For many people, that kind of reading with a dictionary and listening to dialogue chunks over and over again would be even more frustrating than slowly working to acquire a minimum vocabulary, but to each his own. For these people (myself included; I worked through both 6k and the remaining sentences from 10k), the first years of learning Japanese are primarily a test of your staying power, so you might just as well force-feed yourself 6,000 (or 10,000) sentences first.

But I'm wondering if you get any other exposure to Japanese besides your SRS? I can't imagine it taking that long if you encounter words from Core6k in the wild.

I think the tipping point where you hardly have to look up anything anymore and basically can call your vocabulary native level is at around 20k words.

dizmox Wrote:I think the tipping point where you hardly have to look up anything anymore and basically can call your vocabulary native level is at around 20k words.

So these 20k words are for a native poet, doctor, engineer or a simple minded garbage man?

I just finished Core6k about a month ago. Here was my progression (during full-time study + part-time work):

0-2000: 12 months. Lots days didn't add any. Got behind with reviews a lot, etc.

Took a break for a few months. Read lots of Naruto.

2000-3500: 8 months or so. Whole weeks where I didn't add anything. Started getting really sick of it.

3500-6000: 3 months.

How did I speed up so much for the last 2500?

1. Just sucked it up and did 25 a day. Only had a handful of days during this time where I didn't add or didn't do my reviews. It just became a (pretty much) non-negotiable part of my day. Usually only took about an hour and would do it first thing in the morning, or last thing before sleeping.

2. Suspended (and eventually deleted) cards that I just didn't understand or kept getting wrong. THIS HELPS. I only had to delete about 25 cards in the end, but it stopped me getting frustrated and slowing down during reviews.

3. Focus on the target vocab for that card. Originally I tried to make sure I knew EVERY word perfectly on each card and would fail if I didn't. But then I later realised that those other words come up as target vocab with their own sentence later.

4. It get's easier. It's true. You really do get a feel for the Kanji and readings and can often guess the reading and/or meaning of new vocab as they appear.

I wanted to give up many time too. But as someone who felt the same, also took a long time, but eventually GOT IT DONE. I think it's worth finishing.

Nagareboshi Wrote:Normally it would take about 10 months at a pace of 20 cards to finish off that portion of the deck.

OP only has 1500 words left, if I read correctly. That's more like 2 and a half months @ 20 a day.

Inny Jan Wrote:

dizmox Wrote:I think the tipping point where you hardly have to look up anything anymore and basically can call your vocabulary native level is at around 20k words.

So these 20k words are for a native poet, doctor, engineer or a simple minded garbage man?

Simple minded Japanese person. HS education.

Inny Jan Wrote:

dizmox Wrote:I think the tipping point where you hardly have to look up anything anymore and basically can call your vocabulary native level is at around 20k words.

So these 20k words are for a native poet, doctor, engineer or a simple minded garbage man?

Probably closer to the garbage man. However, it really depends on what qualifies as a word. There have been numerous studies on the vocabularies of native speakers of various languages, but they often have different criteria for what counts as a distinct word. Compound words are a good example of this difference. For instance, does the word "another" count as a distinct word or as merely a combination of "an" and "other"? What about an idiom like "white collar"? It's impossible to understand the idiomatic meaning while just knowing the meaning of both "white" and "collar". Perhaps it's foolish to think of vocabulary in terms of words in the first place.

[Zgarbas]

Yarr... vileru, Aren't you confusing lexemes, phrasemes and morphemes in that assumption? Theoretically word number counts should be focused on individual lexemes, so indeed do, undo and redo would only count as one word(1 lexeme+bound morphemes), but another is its own lexeme despite it consisting of two different morphemes.
Core 6k is not 6k lexemes indeed, since it has many pairs like 規則ー不規則、線ー無線、やる、直すーやり直す、やる－やり et co. *

Either way, most word-count studies (aside from English, which for obvious reasons gets way more attention) are highly theoretical, if not more or less educated guesses. I wouldn't waste too much time thinking about the numbers. Just pick up a book which would be considered at your desired level and see if you can read it without having to look up too much; if you can then you're there, if you can't then there's more to study.


*please, feel welcome to correct me. Lexicology confuses me.

Zgarbas Wrote:Yarr...

Hmm...Zgarbas, aren't you confusing yourself with a pirate?

On topic: You can always go back to it, so if you don't feel Core6k is working for you, go try something else. The worst case scenario is that you don't make progress for a while and end up returning to Core with a new-found confidence that it's right way for you to study. The best is that you realise it was holding you back and make amazing progress. Either way, it's a win.

SammyB Wrote:

Nagareboshi Wrote:Normally it would take about 10 months at a pace of 20 cards to finish off that portion of the deck.

OP only has 1500 words left, if I read correctly. That's more like 2 and a half months @ 20 a day.

I am aware of that. My point was to find out how it could have possibly taken the OP so long to get there, with my calculation not taking into consideration how much is left, but how many it would take on average to take so long.

Thanks for the wonderful thoughts everybody. It is very helpful

Zgarbas Wrote:Yarr... vileru, Aren't you confusing lexemes, phrasemes and morphemes in that assumption? Theoretically word number counts should be focused on individual lexemes, so indeed do, undo and redo would only count as one word(1 lexeme+bound morphemes), but another is its own lexeme despite it consisting of two different morphemes.

I stand corrected. Although, I will add that I've seen different vocabulary studies cite widely varying average vocab sizes. It makes me wonder whether the studies count only lexemes or not...

@OP, I'm interested in more about your study methods. How many reviews do you have a day? How long does it normally take you to get through them? (These questions aren't as important, but... what's the percentage of young cards in your deck? Mature cards? I forget the name of it, but what's the percentage of cards you get right for both young cards and mature cards? It should be something around 80%-95%.) Do you have any other decks? How many reviews are you doing in your other decks? How much time do you spend on other activities in Japanese?

90% correct
100-150 reviews a day
30-50 min maybe