To summarize Nukemarine post 1429:
If something about the way you study is not working for you, change it. ™

nest0r Wrote:This is interesting: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...e-exposure

Indeed!
Khatz uses "methinks" too.

EratiK Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:This is interesting: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...e-exposure

Indeed!
Khatz uses "methinks" too.

Ha. I can't take credit for that, unfortunately. They were using it in 2006, before nest0r was created.

Good post. Frequency is definitely important.

Captal, good thing you invited your beautiful frequency to come to Australia with you.

nest0r Wrote:This is interesting: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...e-exposure

So does this means he didn't become native-like fluent in Chinese in 18 months? ;p

The only frequency I have is that I frequently move . I haven't lived anywhere longer than 7 months in the last 4 years and have lived in 3 different countries and 11 cities. Yikes.

captal Wrote:The only frequency I have is that I frequently move . I haven't lived anywhere longer than 7 months in the last 4 years and have lived in 3 different countries and 11 cities. Yikes.

Whaaat.

nest0r Wrote:

captal Wrote:The only frequency I have is that I frequently move . I haven't lived anywhere longer than 7 months in the last 4 years and have lived in 3 different countries and 11 cities. Yikes.

Whaaat.

When I started I had a lot of money in the bank. Now I have almost none. Went to Australia for my MBA, then off to Japan to study Japanese while doing the ALT thing, now I'm back in Australia on a working holiday visa which will end in Feb next year.

Still not sure where I'm off to next... probably Tokyo or Chicago.

Wow talk about bringing back the dead. Anyways my question is semi-Ajatt related so I thought it was fitting.

Im about 1000 sentences deep in my srs and I realized that I dont have any Japanese -->Japanese cards. Ajatt says to make this switch at about 500 but Im not sure exactly how to go about doing this. Im far from being able to understand the definitions given on http://www.alc.co.jp so how is this supposed to be an effective way to study. Any advice on crossing what seems to be a huge threshold in my studies?

dusmar84 Wrote:Wow talk about bringing back the dead. Anyways my question is semi-Ajatt related so I thought it was fitting.

Im about 1000 sentences deep in my srs and I realized that I dont have any Japanese -->Japanese cards. Ajatt says to make this switch at about 500 but Im not sure exactly how to go about doing this. Im far from being able to understand the definitions given on http://www.alc.co.jp so how is this supposed to be an effective way to study. Any advice on crossing what seems to be a huge threshold in my studies?

At first (5+ years ago I think), AJATT encouraged a recursive type of sentence learning. Look up word with j-j, then look up words in the definition to get further meaning till it all made sence. According to AJATT blog a couple of years back, the whole j-j definitions was changed so that you do j-j defs on words you already know. Recently, AJATT changed the idea on how cards should be done, but as it requires payment of some sort to gleem that knowledge from his member's site I'm not sure if what I'm telling.

Now, personal opinion, start using a simple j-j dictionary (online or offline) that gives simple definitions. If you can't guess the meaning of the word from that, go to a j-e. It's not a race to J-J in xx number of sentences. It's moving more and more to J-J as time goes on.

Then again, some users went to j-j faster than others. I think TA12321 likes to talk about how fast he switched over so he's a good one to ask about experience.

Nukemarine Wrote:

dusmar84 Wrote:Wow talk about bringing back the dead. Anyways my question is semi-Ajatt related so I thought it was fitting.

Im about 1000 sentences deep in my srs and I realized that I dont have any Japanese -->Japanese cards. Ajatt says to make this switch at about 500 but Im not sure exactly how to go about doing this. Im far from being able to understand the definitions given on http://www.alc.co.jp so how is this supposed to be an effective way to study. Any advice on crossing what seems to be a huge threshold in my studies?

At first (5+ years ago I think), AJATT encouraged a recursive type of sentence learning. Look up word with j-j, then look up words in the definition to get further meaning till it all made sence. According to AJATT blog a couple of years back, the whole j-j definitions was changed so that you do j-j defs on words you already know. Recently, AJATT changed the idea on how cards should be done, but as it requires payment of some sort to gleem that knowledge from his member's site I'm not sure if what I'm telling.

Now, personal opinion, start using a simple j-j dictionary (online or offline) that gives simple definitions. If you can't guess the meaning of the word from that, go to a j-e. It's not a race to J-J in xx number of sentences. It's moving more and more to J-J as time goes on.

Then again, some users went to j-j faster than others. I think TA12321 likes to talk about how fast he switched over so he's a good one to ask about experience.

It will take a while for you to get to the stage of J-J sentences or J-J anything. One of the major frustrations I had when trying to make the jump was that internal-translation going off on my head whenever I read or listened to japanese. I recommend you just keep reading and listening even if you don't have a clue of what's going on. Start with small/simple sentences. Numbers,counters,dates,etc. Those things you can easily go monolingual(J-J on). Start with stuff you already know(maybe some anime sentences you hear a lot or from a drama you know or any other type of thing).

I went completely monolingual around 5000 sentences. My current sentence deck is at 24998. I kept adding a lot of pre-mined sentences. But now I'm more into authentic, real japanese sentences then the pre-mined textbook-style ones(not saying those are bad but once you understand them and can read them, it's time to move onto other material in the language). I still use translations on certain things. Does it hurt going slowly into monolingual? not at all. The key to going fully monolingual in my opinion is simple: get really, really used to the language. Develop that feeling of "understanding". An example when you read a sentence, you can recognize all the kanji/reading/vocab and understand what the sentence is trying to convey then that means you have a complete understanding on it. And when you listen to japanese material your mind will be able to grasp a lot of what's going on due to vocab,sentences,reading,kanji and developing that internal understanding of Japanese.

And lastly if you don't have a clue of what the sentence is trying to tell you, then look it up on a bilingual dictionary. Overall just keep plugging in. I thought going monolingual (when I was 3 months into learning japanese) was so hard. It was hard at the beginning but the more you get used to it, the more you see how effective monolingual learning is(your learning japanese through japanese, just like how natives do it!)

Thanks for the replies.

@ta12121 I am interested to see how you use J-J on your cards. Would you mind posting an example? I guess where Im a bit fuzzy is how to use it. Do you go J-J for new vocab? For grammar points? For both? My concern is that I might not be able to catch the nuance of a word or how to use it.

Also, when you read definitions in Japanese, I guess more so at the start, were you using your knowledge of the kanji/primitives to draw conclusions about the general idea of the word?

I am very impressed to see you have made it up to 25,000 sentences. Good for you, that's awesome. If you don't mind a few prodding questions Id like to know how you would rate your Japanese at this point? Was there much increase in fluency between the magic 10,000 sentence mark and the 25,000 mark?

Rikai-chan + monolingual web dictionary (yahoo is my favorite) - I use it and it makes monolingual dictionaries accessible. Additionally, Rikai-chan gets to be annoying to use, so you'll find that you'll just read the definition normally after awhile and use Rikai-chan as a prompt. The pop up nature of it sorta pushes you towards just reading whatever instead.

Of course, that doesn't help you in your SRS, but it's good if you want to really "get" a word to a better level than J-word --> Native language word.

In reference to the Thora's text: LOL, that's some heavy text for a few simple points. I like that you're pushing pre-learning, as, basically, even if it's mass vocab, you still need to do some sort of pre-learning. Even reading a grammar card and doing a mini-sentence breakdown on the spot really is a form of pre-learning (something we do, but don't really think about - or how we can make the process more effective and efficient).

For the newbies, the best advice I can give right now has come from my own failing. "Make sure you learn it the first time to 110%; every other repetition after that is of a lesser importance." That really resonates with me right now. I failed to really learn my cards properly at the beginning and I'm noticing now how much that affects my retention (I've gone from 50% retention on young cards to 90% just by pre-learning them more effectively - Iverson style with Anki as my source for words [don't know it? Iverson it!])

dusmar84 Wrote:Thanks for the replies.

@ta12121 I am interested to see how you use J-J on your cards. Would you mind posting an example? I guess where Im a bit fuzzy is how to use it. Do you go J-J for new vocab? For grammar points? For both? My concern is that I might not be able to catch the nuance of a word or how to use it.

Also, when you read definitions in Japanese, I guess more so at the start, were you using your knowledge of the kanji/primitives to draw conclusions about the general idea of the word?

I am very impressed to see you have made it up to 25,000 sentences. Good for you, that's awesome. If you don't mind a few prodding questions Id like to know how you would rate your Japanese at this point? Was there much increase in fluency between the magic 10,000 sentence mark and the 25,000 mark?

I thought the 10,000 sentences at first was something I thought to be "magically". I.e. it would equal fluency. But that's not how it's suppose to be. It's just a means of getting used to japanese. How do I use monolingual cards? If I don't understand some of the vocab I search it up on yahoo.jp(dictionary). As for the grammar/particles, I recommend using tae kim free grammar guide online. I used that(I srsed it with anki my srs of choice).

An example of how I do monolingual is this:

知恵を絞る
[ち][え]を[しぼ]る
to exert one’s wits (meaning to the sentence)


知恵 >物事の道理を判断し処理していく心の働き。物事の筋道を立て、計画し、正しく処理していく能力。「―を借りる」「生活の―」

絞る>水などが染み込んだ布などを強くねじって、水分を出す。「ぞうきんを―・る」「袖を―・る（＝ヒドク泣ク）」

(Now when you look at all this, there's a lot of vocab you don't know and therefore you won't be getting much out of it. I recommend doing vocab but only after you've gotten past the main kanji. A few people on the forum recommend 500-1000+ kanji before you go dive into monolingual. There is no need to rush into it. Looking up all these will get you even more confused. So I recommend srsing grammar points/particles. Srs sentences up towards a certain point(then you can branch onto vocabulary cards+keep doing the sentences as well. Monolingual is one of those things that you get better at when you know more kanji/vocab and get used to that japanese to japanese by itself.

The particle I would look on a grammar guide/srs it so I can instantly recognize it in random context of japanese. Next the vocab/kanji. Sine I did remembering the kanji volume 1 and 3. I can recognize a lot of the kanji but eventually these english keywords have gotten replaced by japanese ones.

So to over come monolingual sentences, it really comes down to simple sentences and you have to keep learning japanese. I know I'm not really good at explaining these things. I just kept doing Japanese, kept srsing, kept trying to learn, kept listening,etc.

There's still a lot of things I see in a dictionary that I don't know. So don't sweat it if you don't get it all. Just as long as you understand the sentence your putting in(simple,short sentences first and then increase the kanji per card when your ready(i.e. bigger sentences)

I never got to 10,000 sentences.

I stopped around 300 or so. But by that time I can already understand 98% of sentences I read. If I don't understand a sentence. I'll just re-read the sentence a couple of times and I will get it.

The other 2% I will just guess or ignore it, come back to it later and it will make sense.

I don't even consciously memorize vocab anymore. At this point, I'll see a word once and can pretty much remember it, no matter how long the word is.

Can't explain it. Because a few months ago I was still kinda struggling with AJATT. But now it's just clicking on all cylinders.

So you necro posted on this topic because.....?

Cuz I was browsing through the forum and felt like posting it...what's it gotta do with you?

http://www.fluentin300sentences.com

Realism Wrote:Cuz I was browsing through the forum and felt like posting it...what's it gotta do with you?

I'm one of the guys responsible for cleaning up spam. That's what it has to do with me.

Your low post count combined with an almost absurd necro post doesn't look well.

Since the two recent threads that have been critical of AJATT have been closed, the 1~3 threads started on average every month praising it should be also. This should go for all future ones as well. Otherwise, some troll might want to give equal time to alternate views.

Are you serious? I mean, i made my views clear in the other thread, but necro-posting to try to get a dead thread closed? Really?

Let it go dude...

Were there other anti-AJATT threads that were closed? I can't keep track of all the arguments. Most threads or comments about AJATT result in arguments. I didn't understand Fabrice's comment and it seemed out of character, but there were good reasons to close the thread. Certain posters were worked up about the topic and they consistently took it out on other forum members.

There have been many other AJATT threads since the last post was made in this one. I just thought it was the most appropriate given the post count and name. There wasn't anything more to say on the last thread closed, but how much more can be said positive about AJATT? It is mostly just a delirious profile with commentary. I have sometimes felt this forum should be renamed forum.IheartAJATT.com due to the number of threads created to discuss it.

zachandhobbes Wrote:It's time to face facts, if you have more than 10 posts in this thread, you have an obvious man crush on Khatz and you're tsundere for him.

One of the best ways to make someone you don't like go away is to not constantly talk about that person. Why don't you guys lead by example... (unless youre all ツンデレ of course;D)

dtcamero Wrote:

zachandhobbes Wrote:It's time to face facts, if you have more than 10 posts in this thread, you have an obvious man crush on Khatz and you're tsundere for him.

One of the best ways to make someone you don't like go away is to not constantly talk about that person. Why don't you guys lead by example... (unless youre all ツンデレ of course;D)

Could you please refrain from resuming the insults on forum members who dare to criticize Khatzumoto/AJATT? It's especially bad form to quote a remark in the same vein from the recently closed thread, as if continuing the bad behaviour that tainted said thread.

However, if you don't want to talk about Khatzumoto/AJATT anymore, I'm sure that's a new rule that could be considered? It would spare me having to correct the bad advice and caution against wasting money on the fellow.

Most of your comments are ad hominem insults, often with a homophobic tinge—don't assume you can continue this attitude indefinitely.