My goal in starting this post is to allow people to share some of the observations or thoughts they have had during their langauge/s study.

Observation:

Topic: Reading.

Details: 6 months into really studying after finishing Helsig, I have noticed that I went through a few stages. 1st stage was reading Kanji in English (meaning knowing the keyword not the reading). 2nd stage was knowing a variety of different words in which an individual Kanji is used in. 3rd stage (my current stage) is knowing some of the words in which a Kanji will be used in and having a general idea of the reading or being able to guess the reading based on how I have seen it in the past.

Theory: I think and have read that we learn a lot of words in a very fuzzy way and this helps us with words that we don't know so well. It's like the more words you know the more you can create connections between new words and old or guess words (practice makes perfect, right).

Please feel free to share any other observations, theories or thoughts you might have below.

Observation

Topic: Listening to Anime

Details: I started off trying to listen and understand single, short news blips in the morning. I would listen to 3 or 4 news articles on loop for a week, and SRS and practice phrases from them.. but after while (3 - 4 weeks of it), I became pretty sick of it. I liked all the random places and words I was learning, but I could not feel myself picking up vocab or abilities.. and if I was, it was not translating over to listening to anime very well.. or at least, quickly enough for me to be satisfied. It didn't help that it was FNN (most depressing news.. ever). I noticed that I had begun to tune it out mentally, and I knew it was time for a change.

The one thing that I picked up from this was that my vocabulary was lacking. It was not very often that I read a sentence where I knew all the words, and I did not understand the sentence.. but it seemed like every article was a torture test with all the new vocabulary I had to learn... a slow, painful torture test.

Theory: If I slap enough vocabulary into my brain via SRS (oh let's just throw out a number... ~11,000? sounds good!) then I will be able to actually gain something from the news articles. Also, if I replace those news articles with a 20 minute long anime episode's audio track (perfect length for my ride to work.. and back for an extra go!) then I can actually have a story to follow and try to mine more vocabulary from.


Some golden nuggets I have gleaned from this:
- the news may have just been too fast, which is why i started to tune it
- vocabulary DOES go a lot faster done this way, but the end goal is to be able to recognize words when i start reading later on (like learning kanji is the key to getting comfortable with learning words.. learning words is, in my own theory, the key to getting comfortable with learning sentences.. and so forth with paragraphs, pages, chapters, books, novels.. then come over-arching ideas, concepts, etc).
- picking words from an anime you are watching, looking them up, then slapping them in SRS is really, really enjoyable [to me]
- don't be afraid that you are going to miss something. if it was really important, it will come back to haunt you later.. bwahahah
- maintain, maintain, maintain! i am still keeping my news deck alive with all 600 phrases i hand-picked because i intend on coming back to it. if i did not maintain it, along with my 1200 vocab deck, i know i would toss it to the way-side and forget all the great words i learned from it (who doesn't enjoy 統合失調症?).. and possibly never venture back into the news. but by maintaining the deck, it provides some good release from the vocab i go through daily.
- 10 reps done 15 times per day is WAY better than 75 reps done twice per day. in other words.. i chip away at my decks whenever i get a chance (even in the bathroom.. seriously). i always keep Japanese on the mind, yet i never get a chance to get tired of it... because i spread it out and do a little at a time. it is easy, rewarding.. and when i want to do new words, i never have to worry about having a ton of reviews to do

Re: Topic: Reading above.

I would add:

Theory: There are many aspects to our vocabulary knowledge. For example, if you knew じゅつ or even jutsu meant technique, you did not necessarily know that 術 meant technique or that 術 meant jutsu. If you knew 術 meant "art," you did not necessarily know that 術 meant じゅつ (like in Naruto).

There are more aspects to our vocabulary knowledge than contained the word itself. My Japanese vocabulary isn't strong enough to give a Japanese example. In English, I would describe it as words that are typically used with other words such as "to take an interest," "to hold an interest," and "to have an interest in."

Something I Tried
I took Khatzmoto's advice on chopping down podcasts into 2-3 minute blocks. I, basically, took podcasts from podcast juice and put them through a cutting program. The result was lots of small parts.

Experience
It was good to be honest. It wasn't as boring as listening to one 30 minute podcast and as my understanding level was ok, but not high, it all sounded new to me. Overall, I would recommend it. The only failing, for me, was it was unmanageable on my IPhone. Too many small podcasts to create a good playlist from and it was pretty hard to find the ones I didn't like when I wanted to delete them.

Current Method
As I found it hard to delete, I ended up not adding anything. The result was stale pod casts being played over and over. I ended up going back to music and deleting my pod casts. This lead to my current method, which is to have a massive selection of good 30 minute to 1 1/2 hour podcasts on my phone and put them on shuffle (I think management was the key issue here) and I deleted all the music and only listen to internet radio (shoutcast app for the win). The result has been that I do a lot of podcast listening with a little music now and then (the internet being what it is internet radio tends to cut out and me being lazy I just go back to my pod casts, which are better for me anyway.)

Notes
I would recommend Itunes for podcasts. The selection is awesome and it's free plus you can download it to your IPOD/IPhone directly (in the background!).

aberu Wrote:(oh let's just throw out a number... ~11,000? sounds good!)

I'm into the 3000-6000 area myself and I've found that's enough to understand the gist of almost anything (non-technical). I'm also aiming for 10,000+.

Observation

Topic: How I got into Japanese

Details:
It all happened at once. I was travelling on a train. There was a girl in front of me who was reading some poetry.
I fell asleep and when I awoke she was gone. But... she left the book.
There was a note she wrote on the cover:
'It is a marvellous book. Please take it if you like it. If you don't, please leave it here. Somebody else might love it.
Amaterasu'
I must say I was rather surprised.

I opened the book and this is what I saw:
青梅に　手をかけて寝る　蛙哉
あおうめに　てをかけてねる　かわずかな
Czyżby to żabka
spała łapkami wsparta
na śliwce niedojrzałej

It was bilingual. I didn't understand Chinese (I thought it was in Chinese!), but I did understand the Polish bits.

Damn it! It was a soul shattering experience. I kept on reading, page after page, till the end, and then from the beginning once more.
There was no doubt about it. I was chosen.

Theory:
Books belong to people who haven't read them yet.

Cranks Wrote:

aberu Wrote:(oh let's just throw out a number... ~11,000? sounds good!)

I'm into the 3000-6000 area myself and I've found that's enough to understand the gist of almost anything (non-technical). I'm also aiming for 10,000+.

Yeah? When you say the gist of almost anything, what do you mean? Like reading articles online, watching anime, reading manga..? And how would you describe your listening skills in comparison to your reading skills? I know that my listening skills are terrible as I only pick out an odd word or phrase here or there.. basic, short phrases I recognize pretty much instantly.. but hearing even a slightly complicated phrase gets me lost in a hurry. If I can read it, it is not as bad (as often times I will read it, understand the basic meaning and go back to re-read and make sure my understanding was correct).

Cranks Wrote:Something I Tried
I took Khatzmoto's advice on chopping down podcasts into 2-3 minute blocks. I, basically, took podcasts from podcast juice and put them through a cutting program. The result was lots of small parts.

Experience
It was good to be honest. It wasn't as boring as listening to one 30 minute podcast and as my understanding level was ok, but not high, it all sounded new to me. Overall, I would recommend it. The only failing, for me, was it was unmanageable on my IPhone. Too many small podcasts to create a good playlist from and it was pretty hard to find the ones I didn't like when I wanted to delete them.

Current Method
As I found it hard to delete, I ended up not adding anything. The result was stale pod casts being played over and over. I ended up going back to music and deleting my pod casts. This lead to my current method, which is to have a massive selection of good 30 minute to 1 1/2 hour podcasts on my phone and put them on shuffle (I think management was the key issue here) and I deleted all the music and only listen to internet radio (shoutcast app for the win). The result has been that I do a lot of podcast listening with a little music now and then (the internet being what it is internet radio tends to cut out and me being lazy I just go back to my pod casts, which are better for me anyway.)

Notes
I would recommend Itunes for podcasts. The selection is awesome and it's free plus you can download it to your IPOD/IPhone directly (in the background!).

It really does come down to management, doesn't it? lol. If it is not fun to manage, then it usually becomes apparent pretty quickly. Music is soooo huge, though. The replayability of songs is not to be over-looked haha. There were two or three anime op songs I put on loop for about a month after the first time I heard them, I loved 'em that much. Plus the repetition is great as it is a natural SRS in itself (when I try to sing along, that is lol). But yeah, if it isn't fun man it's going dowwwnnn faster than the Titanic (in the movie).

buonaparte Wrote:Observation

Topic: How I got into Japanese

Details:
It all happened at once. I was travelling on a train. There was a girl in front of me who was reading some poetry.
I fell asleep and when I awoke she was gone. But... she left the book...

Damn it! It was a soul shattering experience. I kept on reading, page after page, till the end, and then from the beginning once more.
There was no doubt about it. I was chosen.

Theory:
Books belong to people who haven't read them yet.

Pretty good starter-up story. Trying to relate, I find myself gravitating towards new anime all the time. Some of the best stuff I have watched I have been forwarded/recommended by other people, not stuff that I had gotten on my own. In fact, .. Anime was actually one of those now that I think about it, and that's how I ended up being so fascinated with Japan & Japanese. Weird how small ripples can cause huge waves, huh?

Observation:
There are a lot of words I don't know.
See examples here and here. Sorry, one or both of those URLs might not work for you.

Theory:
The most significant problem of the intermediate learner is one of vocabulary, by far.

Realization:

% of time 'in' Japanese = skillful, beatiful Japanese. Add quantity per hour + quality of resources + L/R/W/S/G/Understanding/Pron. Practice = really good Japanese. Perhaps this is what the AJATT concept is or was.

I'm about 9 months in now. 5 months since RTK1 and I'm 50% per day. What I see is that this builds over time as you get new skills. For instance, I can't take notes in JP yet about general things, but with more writing practice I should get there (think about it - just note taking would increase my usage by 10%). Another thing is googling. I'm burning through books ATM at 1-5 minutes per page, getting shorter by the day, in another 3 months I should be able to add another 5-10% thanks to google! Awesome!

More time = speed and skill.

@Aberu: Listening is my strong point (say 30~% comprension); Reading (5/10 words, but 2/10 grammar points N2 level up - I know bits and pieces of all levels as I just pick up what I need.)

Example: I was talking to adv JP learner and got 80% of what she said. Then talked to Jp native and understood 30%. Natives are a whole other level. Hence, it goes up and down. I'm more likely to understand smthg I know about and have talked about before -experience counts, yeah.

aberu Wrote:Weird how small ripples can cause huge waves, huh?

I read..."weird how small nipples can cause huge waves, huh?"