Hey guys I'm back for an update. This time around I won't be including my stats for various reasons. (I have re-worked my srs pace/decks now. I only have 3 decks. I add around 100-200 vocab a day if possible and I add high-context srs cards for my sentence deck. But only a few a day as I'm experimenting with that particular format.)

But let me start of on the things I can't do in Japanese just yet.
I can't speak 100% fluidly, I still have trouble with this. It's not that I can't say certain things right, I just need to copy more from what I hear at a certain pace(Nowadays what I do when I listen to a show or a song, I copy word for word at the pace they are saying the words/phrases. This overall just get's me used to the pace/speed. What I do nowadays is set a daily goal/weekly goal/monthly goal and overall goal in terms of speaking. And overall with my japanese studies. I do this, so that I can measure what I'm capable of and once I accomplish it, I set more. I find this more effective then just thinking about my main goal(fluency). Which can be vague at times, so goals help me think straight on how well I'm improving or not.

Second is writing, it's not a problem in terms of actually writing for kanji/kana. It's more of just getting more smoother with the writing in terms of journals and other writing sources. For this I've been researching books on writing, but I've yet to buy them just yet. For this, I think it's pretty simple what I must do. Keep writing, write about anything. Both online and both on paper. I will set goals for myself on this.

Now for the things I can do is. Reading and understanding has reached good levels. Anki states I know 2000-2500+ kanji in terms of retention and understanding. My speaking skills have improved quite a lot. This is due for a lot of immersion,reading and srsing(But still lacking). In terms of media, whenever I watch anime,news,movies,read mangas,novels I can understand/read pretty much all of it. There are occasional still the vocab/I screw up the readings. But it's only natural. For this, my new goals are getting more used to reading novels and from different sources. Getting more better at reading and overall just keep reading enjoyable material or anything that grabs me. I like to watch older movies in japanese. It's fun to see how different it is from modern japanese.

I'd say there hasn't really been all that much progress in these 5 months(gap between the last one), even though I have put in a lot of time. I think these 5 months have showed me that, I should srs less(I do it moderately now) and immerse/read more. Nowadays I'm experimenting around with the srs card formats so it can help me get better at japanese in terms of reading and the other skills(listening,speaking,writing)

I've learned that you just have to keep going. I love to experiment with my srs format cards and all, but in terms of learning and how to keep learning. We just have to keep going, keep immersing,srsing,reading,writing and anything else that will help us get closer to our goal for japanese or any other language.

Stuff like this is what I love to read. Nice progress report. Though I can understand why you haven't posted any stats. They were nice to see aswell. Keep it up

raz789 Wrote:Stuff like this is what I love to read. Nice progress report. Though I can understand why you haven't posted any stats. They were nice to see aswell. Keep it up

Same here. Whenever I read about people way above my level(found a few online that have reached fluency and native-level fluency). I kinda wish they'd post their stories as it would be motivational for me. Even I still get annoyed because I'm not at the level where I want to be. But I know that's why we have to make it fun. We have to enjoy it, because this will take time. The people I researched it took 3,4 years to reach a level of fluency. So I know it's only natural it will take time.

ta12121 great to hear you've been making progress. How about translating your own post into Japanese for us?

Blahah Wrote:ta12121 great to hear you've been making progress. How about translating your own post into Japanese for us?

Nice idea, I'll see what I can do. (Although I know I still suck)

Well you are undoubtedly better than I am, so it will be inspiring to see if you can do it. I've been studying much longer than you (although less intensively) and couldn't do it at all.

Blahah Wrote:Well you are undoubtedly better than I am, so it will be inspiring to see if you can do it. I've been studying much longer than you (although less intensively) and couldn't do it at all.

Wow I'm impressed: It takes an awfully big person to give an honest account of oneself like this here on the forum. Why not just pretend to be better than you are? Get a Japanese friend to post for you, Blahah. No one will know the difference. ;p

nest0r Wrote:

Blahah Wrote:Well you are undoubtedly better than I am, so it will be inspiring to see if you can do it. I've been studying much longer than you (although less intensively) and couldn't do it at all.

Wow I'm impressed: It takes an awfully big person to give an honest account of oneself like this here on the forum. Why not just pretend to be better than you are? Get a Japanese friend to post for you, Blahah. No one will know the difference. ;p

I'll be honest too, I'm having trouble translating it all into japanese.

So far I've only got this, 久しぶりと今晩は皆様。今日は面白いの話です. I'm trying to do the rest but it's proving difficult. This tells me I still got a lot of work ahead of me. To be more direct, my output still sucks. I know this is telling me I should get of my butt and put more time into improving my output. I'm still arguing with myself over the input vs output debate. It works but I have to gear it to improving my output skills.

ta12121 Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:

Blahah Wrote:Well you are undoubtedly better than I am, so it will be inspiring to see if you can do it. I've been studying much longer than you (although less intensively) and couldn't do it at all.

Wow I'm impressed: It takes an awfully big person to give an honest account of oneself like this here on the forum. Why not just pretend to be better than you are? Get a Japanese friend to post for you, Blahah. No one will know the difference. ;p

I'll be honest too, I'm having trouble translating it all into japanese.

So far I've only got this, 久しぶりと今晩は皆様。今日は面白いの話です. I'm trying to do the rest but it's proving difficult. This tells me I still got a lot of work ahead of me. To be more direct, my output still sucks. I know this is telling me I should get of my butt and put more time into improving my output. I'm still arguing with myself over the input vs output debate. It works but I have to gear it to improving my output skills.

My advice is instant messaging or chat rooms. It's a lot less tedious and strenuous than writing compositions, and many times easier than speaking. It's a great way to practise short sentences, and also gives you some good exposure to help prepare you for conversation. It also has the added benefit of tending to be fun

I find the sentences a little worrying though. Did you learn all the basics through flashcards, or did you ever do practice questions, read through ADBJG explanations etc? I learnt a couple of hundred N1 grammar cards using Anki, and then realised that I didn't know how to use the grammar at all. I didn't pay attention to the syntax or really understand the finer nuances (完全マスター is useless for this), so in production terms they were completely ineffective (on their own at least).

Javizy Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:Wow I'm impressed: It takes an awfully big person to give an honest account of oneself like this here on the forum. Why not just pretend to be better than you are? Get a Japanese friend to post for you, Blahah. No one will know the difference. ;p

I'll be honest too, I'm having trouble translating it all into japanese.

So far I've only got this, 久しぶりと今晩は皆様。今日は面白いの話です. I'm trying to do the rest but it's proving difficult. This tells me I still got a lot of work ahead of me. To be more direct, my output still sucks. I know this is telling me I should get of my butt and put more time into improving my output. I'm still arguing with myself over the input vs output debate. It works but I have to gear it to improving my output skills.

My advice is instant messaging or chat rooms. It's a lot less tedious and strenuous than writing compositions, and many times easier than speaking. It's a great way to practise short sentences, and also gives you some good exposure to help prepare you for conversation. It also has the added benefit of tending to be fun

I find the sentences a little worrying though. Did you learn all the basics through flashcards, or did you ever do practice questions, read through ADBJG explanations etc? I learnt a couple of hundred N1 grammar cards using Anki, and then realised that I didn't know how to use the grammar at all. I didn't pay attention to the syntax or really understand the finer nuances (完全マスター is useless for this), so in production terms they were completely ineffective (on their own at least).

Yea I used flashcards for grammar. In terms of understanding it helps. But production, not so much(unless I gear it towards it). Also for that sentence I know I was trying to make it interesting, But regularly it should be like this: 今晩は皆様.

It's true what they say, stick to the simple sentences, no need to talk in any special way(not yet at least)

One of my fellow japanese learners recommend I try to craft what I already know. He says in terms of speaking, it does take time but it isn't as hard as one thinks. He said you just need to get more used to speaking freely. Once that's accomplished, crafting is needed to better your output skills. Basically there will always be words/phrases we don't know but that doesn't mean we can't gain the ability to speak fluidly/fluently.

By "crafting" do you mean learning to talk around things in order to convey things that you don't know the word for? Definitely a good skill -- people speak in simple terms all the time. 2nd year Japanese at my university is pretty much all about learning to say what you don't know how to say.

Asriel Wrote:By "crafting" do you mean learning to talk around things in order to convey things that you don't know the word for? Definitely a good skill -- people speak in simple terms all the time. 2nd year Japanese at my university is pretty much all about learning to say what you don't know how to say.

exactly. When I think about this even deeper. We do this all the time in english. Whenever I read novels or some news article there are some words that I wouldn't know all to well. But I use the existing knowledge of words I already know to convey that word that I don't know. Very good to have indeed

Did you ever take the J-CAT test in the end?

EDIT: This isn't intended as an aggressive challenge, by the way - it's just that I'm interested in comparing my perceptions of my own progress in Japanese with those of other people.

Taurus Wrote:Did you ever take the J-CAT test in the end?

or post any results from timing yourself during past JLPT tests?

Taurus Wrote:Did you ever take the J-CAT test in the end?

EDIT: This isn't intended as an aggressive challenge, by the way - it's just that I'm interested in comparing my perceptions of my own progress in Japanese with those of other people.

I'm waiting on my account getting approved. The test I did before was just the sample questions. They say in 72 hours. So me taking the test will have to wait. I'm going to take this test first and then the JLPT ones. I probably just forgot about the past ones, otherwise I'm sure I'd have done it already. But for now, I'm doing this, just got to wait...

@ta12121

You're the man now, dawg.

Oh, and don't worry so much about translation. Think of it as saying what you said, as a Japanese person might. Not strict translation. (translation is more about taking the original content's concepts, and reexpressing them in the Japanese medium, not word-for-word; read:Google Translate)

Brokenvai Wrote:@ta12121

You're the man now, dawg.

Oh, and don't worry so much about translation. Think of it as saying what you said, as a Japanese person might. Not strict translation. (translation is more about taking the original content's concepts, and reexpressing them in the Japanese medium, not word-for-word; read:Google Translate)

Definitely. Japanese should be translated in japanese and english in english. But when they cross, it's edited to make sense in english or in japanese.So for now I will treat them as two different skills(which they are). But overall I still have a long journey ahead of me for mastering japanese.

ta12121 Wrote:In terms of media, whenever I watch anime,news,movies,read mangas,novels I can understand/read pretty much all of it.

Not to pick on you too much, but I would avoid claims like this. `Pretty much all of it` to most people sounds like over 85% comprehension which is huge especially in terms of novels and news. If you can honestly understand that much listening to the news on the radio without any context or repitition, then you should be getting well over 90% on the N1 and would indeed be native level.

I know you`re excited to learn and you want to excel and you`ve made a lot of progress in a short amount of time, but its best not to get ahead of yourself and just be honest about your true abilities. It sounds kind of ridiculous when you say `well, there`s a lot I can`t do yet, but I can understand everything almost perfectly.` Modesty is also a very Japanese trait so good to exercise that too.

Kinda off topic, but before ta12121, you said something about you're SRS decks not being in English. Can you tell use what your native language is or the language that your decks are in.

As for the JLPT tests, I would love to see the results you'd get on past tests.

julianjalapeno Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:In terms of media, whenever I watch anime,news,movies,read mangas,novels I can understand/read pretty much all of it.

Not to pick on you too much, but I would avoid claims like this. `Pretty much all of it` to most people sounds like over 85% comprehension which is huge especially in terms of novels and news. If you can honestly understand that much listening to the news on the radio without any context or repitition, then you should be getting well over 90% on the N1 and would indeed be native level.

I know you`re excited to learn and you want to excel and you`ve made a lot of progress in a short amount of time, but its best not to get ahead of yourself and just be honest about your true abilities. It sounds kind of ridiculous when you say `well, there`s a lot I can`t do yet, but I can understand everything almost perfectly.` Modesty is also a very Japanese trait so good to exercise that too.

That's exactly what happened to the last thread, people thought it was impossible, he posted his stats and everything. Do you really think he's not being modest? He did say "Well there's a lot I can't do yet."

julianjalapeno Wrote:`Pretty much all of it` to most people sounds like over 85% comprehension which is huge especially in terms of novels and news. If you can honestly understand that much listening to the news on the radio without any context or repitition, then you should be getting well over 90% on the N1 and would indeed be native level.

This, actually, is partly why I'd be intrigued to hear how the original poster gets on with the J-CAT. Judging from past JLPT papers and the J-CAT, my level is between levels 2 and 1 of the JLPT, but I still really struggle to understand a lot of the stuff in meetings at work, or on telly, and if I have a conversation, I almost always have to ask the other person to repeat what they say (usually just to be sure that I have understood them correctly and don't have one of those terrible moments where the two of you are talking about different things - actually the worst time that happened to me was entirely in English, when I was getting my hair cut aged about 7, and the hairdresser asked me, out of the blue, 'do you have a party?' I thought it was a pretty strange question, but answered anyway, explaining that yeah, I do generally have parties when it's my birthday, and this year my mum made a special cake and we all went to the park to play football etc. etc. and on for quite a long time. And then there was a long pause. 'Do you part your hair on the left or on the right?' said the hairdresser, finally. And then I realised her original question was actually, 'do you have a parting?' and I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. But I digress.)

So I'm sort of keen to know at what point I will be able to just listen to Japanese and understand everything effortlessly, and comparing my progress with others seems to be one way of reaching some sort of conclusion about that...

raz789 Wrote:That's exactly what happened to the last thread, people thought it was impossible, he posted his stats and everything. Do you really think he's not being modest? He did say "Well there's a lot I can't do yet."

Anki stats just show how much you`ve studied, not what you actually know. The JLPT is a way to measure how much of that has stuck.

He did say there`s a lot he can`t do, but he also says he can do pretty much everything really well, so kind of a mixed message. So again, even if he can speak the Queen`s Japanese, I would recommend a more humble attitude and a more realistic assessment of one`s abilities. If you were to ask a native Japanese person how their Japanese was, they`d most likely say it`s terrible.

I agree with julianjalapeno and Taurus -- While SRS stats and yada yada are nice, it's not until you do some outside source like JCAT or JLPT that you can really gauge yourself. Yeah, "pretty much all of it" is way too vague..I understood "pretty much everything" until i got to Japan and realized how much I didn't.

Plus, there's a big difference between "understanding" and "comprehending," so to speak. Like reading an article and thinking "oh yeah, that was a pretty simple read, I understood it," and then you have to answer questions about it -- and have no clue what the answers are. Watching a drama/anime/news and 'understanding it' doesn't really say how much you're comprehending the language, as there's so much context involved, and you don't have to interact with it, so your mind is free to guess and put the pieces together as it goes along.

I guess that's why I've always wanted to see test scores from you, as opposed to SRS stats, because it's a "better" gauge at testing how much you're actually comprehending.

also: I would definitely recommend starting some serious production training -- get yourself on lang8. You can believe all the input hypothesis that you want, but after seeing your little sentence, I'm pretty sure you'd progress faster by doing some output.

julianjalapeno Wrote:

raz789 Wrote:That's exactly what happened to the last thread, people thought it was impossible, he posted his stats and everything. Do you really think he's not being modest? He did say "Well there's a lot I can't do yet."

Anki stats just show how much you`ve studied, not what you actually know. The JLPT is a way to measure how much of that has stuck.

He did say there`s a lot he can`t do, but he also says he can do pretty much everything really well, so kind of a mixed message. So again, even if he can speak the Queen`s Japanese, I would recommend a more humble attitude and a more realistic assessment of one`s abilities. If you were to ask a native Japanese person how their Japanese was, they`d most likely say it`s terrible.

I can see what you mean. But then again he's not Japanese. I would love to see some JLPT results or J-CAT. It's definitely intriguing to see what he means by 15 months progress and being able to understand 90% of mostly everything.