Hello everyone. I'm a total new comer to the world of language learning. Right now I'm doing rtk (around 700 or so using anki). I've also been doing pimsleur's Japanese.(I'm about half way through the (so called) intermediate level.
I have the basic japanese grammar & genki (workbooks and cd) books in hand.
I try to watch and listen to as much Japanese as time would allow. I also meet with a japanese language exchange partner once a week.
But.......
Since discovering the rtk method of remembering the kanji my mind has been spoiled in learning things fast and efficiently. My next goal is to pile on huge vocabulary but ive not found a good method for my self yet.

So my question is what do you do to increase your recall of tons of vocabulary?
How do you study?
Thanks

While it might be helpful to use flashcards and lists for vocabulary, that's mostly efficient only for reviewing material you've already learned, or just to introduce the words to you initially. To truly learn vocabulary, though, requires constant reinforcement of the words by both using them, and encountering them used by others. In other words, the greatest method for learning vocabulary is to simply constantly be reading, listening, and using them in your own writing and speaking. If you already have Genki, then you can just start by learning their vocabulary as you work through the chapters, and supplementing it with whatever other words you come across in your studies.

Vocabulary is something that simply takes an insane amount of time and reinforcement. Just have to let words beat you upside the head thousands of times, and let them sink in more and more each time. It's one of the beauties of foreign language learning: every word learned has a story behind it, of how the learner encountered it, and all the reinforcement it took to finally master it. Think of it like Pokémon: Gotta' catch 'em all.

Words for daily life and conversation you'll get the hang of simply from constantly hearing them and using them yourself. Rarer words will take much longer to sink in, and will require active attempts on your part to learn and memorize. For the rarer words flashcards are useful since you might not encounter them often enough otherwise.

But really, there's no secret for learning vocabulary. Time, use, and reinforcement is all that's in the recipe.

I understand what your saying...

I'm just so tired of repeating a word 100 times, and watching it slip away in 10 mins. Maybe it just the way my brain works... :p

It'll slip away instantly if you're just repeating it because in that scenario it doesn't hold meaning, it's just a string of syllables to your brain. To give it meaning and to understand it you need to see a word in use, and actively use it yourself. Once you understand how the word is used and with what meaning, then it's simply a matter of encountering it and using it frequently enough that your brain recognizes its importance and remembers it.

If you're using Genki then you should be using all the words it teaches you in both the workbook assignments as well as the practice pages, as well as see them used in the book. That will give you a good enough grasp on their meaning, and once you've familiarized yourself with them then you just need to keep using them and encountering them. If you find that flash cards help, then use Anki to review the vocabulary as often as you need.

Don't get discouraged, you just gotta' keep at it.

There are a fair number of Anki sentence decks that might be useful. I think studying word lists is considered less effective, so I'm moving towards sentence review. The Anki decks might be a bit advanced for the moment, though. I didn't use Genki, so I can't judge where you are.

I use a site called ling-q and other Japanese forums that I like to read . I put the words I don't know into anki and either use the sentence they had there if i understand it or make my own sentence for it using yahoo.jp.com. Words are hard to increase rapidly because some just stick and other don't stay until a long time. It is a process but if you keep at it you will learn the words. When you try to brute memorize the words you only set you self up for failure. This only works for short term memory and that is not our focus when learning a language. This is the reason that you forget the words after a few days or weeks. You spent a whole bunch of time trying to memorize these words but at the end all your hard work is lost. You have to let the words come to you and accept that some words you will not remember instantly but eventually they will stick in.

Good luck with you studies.

Superfreek Wrote:Since discovering the rtk method of remembering the kanji my mind has been spoiled in learning things fast and efficiently. My next goal is to pile on huge vocabulary but ive not found a good method for my self yet. [/b]

From my experience, you can't rush vocabulary. One word might have several different contexts, several different nuances and connotations, several places where they're used only in conjunction with other words. Kanjidamage had a great example: Fix and repair mean the same thing, but we don't say "fix shop," only "repair shop."

In that respect, you won't build a huge vocabulary really fast no matter what method you use. RTK works well with SRS because there's only one answer so you feel like you're amazingly efficient and fast. Too bad vocabulary and grammar doesn't work the same way.

With that said, I use KO2001 and the example sentences and just plug and chug in Anki. In addition, when I encounter it in native material, I use that in conjunction with the initial exposure from the KO2001 sentences to increase my understanding. It doesn't come easy--especially at the beginning, when almost everything is new--but eventually you pick it up and it becomes easier, and your capacity for learning increases.

The main lesson is--don't rush. The method doesn't matter as much as the time you put into it.

Superfreek Wrote:I understand what your saying...

I'm just so tired of repeating a word 100 times, and watching it slip away in 10 mins. Maybe it just the way my brain works... :p

Just as seeing them in context helps reinforce them, learning them in context can help too. You may want to try using subs2srs on a favorite anime/drama, suspend all the sentences, and then just skim through the dialogue until you find a cool word or phrase and unsuspend the sentence (maybe highlight the word in question and only _test_ yourself on the word, but still listen to the audio for and read the sentence when reviewing). It's quite difficult to not remember a word after hearing it said by your favorite character, in a memorable scene due to dramatic effect, etc.

That said, the price you pay is time spent in prep time. Finding 6000 words in highly memorable lines in your favorite animes, books, etc will take signficantly longer than just downloading a Core 6k, Genki, or any other premade list shared deck.

As such, I think it's worth doing at least some study from pre-made lists, but you need to put more effort into the initial learning phase. My method thus far has been to have a second "Learning" version of my vocab deck, which has drastically smaller interval timers and suspends leeches with a low threshold. I basically leave the deck open and do reviews from it constantly, which _slowly_ progresses the micro intervals and _slowly_ introduces new cards. Other methods I've tried result in me forgetting them after 30min, but with this method I just progress the intervals to a few hours and then unsuspend them in my normal vocab deck and seem to recall them fairly accurately the next day.

Regardless of the method you use though, you still need to see the word in the wild an obscene number of times to catch all the nuances well enough in order to properly use it. Then again, being able to read and recognize the most common meanings of a decent number of words is more or less neccessary to read native text anyway, so it at least a good start.

kainzero Wrote:With that said, I use KO2001 and the example sentences and just plug and chug in Anki. In addition, when I encounter it in native material, I use that in conjunction with the initial exposure from the KO2001 sentences to increase my understanding. It doesn't come easy--especially at the beginning, when almost everything is new--but eventually you pick it up and it becomes easier, and your capacity for learning increases.

The main lesson is--don't rush. The method doesn't matter as much as the time you put into it.

I agree with your first point- you do need to see the word in a number of different contexts to solidify your understanding, but the method not making a huge difference is sort of a poor approximation of the truth. A few hundred hours of i+1 material that slowly incorporates new vocabulary while systematically building up on old vocabulary will trivially beat the progress of your average high school foreign langauge class despite taking less time (obtaining such a well designed corpus may prove difficult, however).

I assume you moreso meant that it's important to choose a method and do it rather than debate about one while doing nothing. In that case, sure, although it's always good to experiement once and awhile to see if something else works better.

Vocabulary takes time to truly learn, because it takes time for your brain to rewire itself. To know a word as well as you do in your native language, your brain has to have rewired itself over time in response to encountering it so many times that it deems it worthy of a place in your longterm memory. Cramming a new word just sticks in your short-term memory. Context and mnemonics and so on can help glue it in a little more robustly but if you completely ignore that word for the next 2 weeks don't expect to remember it. This is especially true when you're just starting out because you're not going to notice the words within the words and etymological details etc. For example 駐車場(chuushajou) is just going to sound like a string of east-asiany sounding syllables, rather than being instantly recognisable as chuu (park), sha (vehicle), jou (place), car park. And you're not going to make connections like 駐 having the similar(not same) pronunciation to 主 or 場 having similar pronunciation to 腸. Ensuring repeat exposure overtime is more important than trying to make absolutely sure of learning something the first time you see it. If you learn hiragana and katakana and then jump straight into reading children's books or easy parallel texts with furigana or translated example sentences, it is enough just to read and take notice of word meanings without conscious effort spent on 'learning' them. Natural repeated exposure will take care of this. If a word isn't recurring enough to be learned easily in this way, then consider that word unnecessary at this time. As a beginner, it'll be difficult to judge which words are even worth learning, so exerting a lot of effort try to memorise lists of words will not prove very fruitful.
Having said that, some members (myself included) have had success with mass vocabulary acquisition and I actually think that it really is key in gaining high comprehension and eventual fluency because it makes real japanese content much more accessible and especially amplifies the effectiveness of so called 'passive' listening. But the trick is to go for volume rather than quality. What I mean by this is just feed massive amounts of easy to create vocab cards into your srs or use a pre-made vocab deck. The reviews will be quick and dirty (low quality) and you may well forget a lot of it, but the useful words you learn will start popping up in your reading, listening and conversations.

I've recently discovered for myself why AJATT's sentence method works so well: The sentence MEANS something, and therefore the word means something, because you pulled it from a book that meant something. It all ties together into a memory, instead of just random memorization.

Previously, I had been studying words by themselves on many different sites, and while it -works-, it's really slow and inefficient. When I read a book and find a new word, I find that I'm a lot more likely to remember it's meaning immediately. If the book uses the word a few times within a few pages, it's almost certain that I'll remember that word from then on.

With AJATT's sentence method, you guarantee that lock-in by forcing the repetition of that scenario at perfect intervals.

So what do I recommend? Reading books, at the very least. Putting i+1 sentences into Anki from the books is even better.

Thanks for all the help!

I guess the real question is should I even be trying to learn vocab now. I think maybe just power through the rest of RTK then start sentencing mining. Im just to the point now where I know 300 or so words (just a guess) and everything is so intimidating!

Thanks again

Just make a pure vocab deck, word in kanji on the front, hiragana + english on the back. U can use rikai-chan and the S feature to save it to a list - import the list into Anki. Data entry is your biggest killer, this method removes pretty much all data entry time.

Don't add words from word lists, instead add stuff that comes up in materials you're actively using. Could be anything from music, tv, textbook, real conversation.

There's a deck that's already set up perfectly as a vocab deck in the shared decks - search for Rikai-Chan Friendly Template Vocab Deck. Once you have it downloaded you need to install and set-up rikai-chan in firefox and then set it up so you can save it to a list in the right format.

Seriously, I used that method and at the start of last year I knew 2.5K vocab and could hold on very very basic conversations. Now I know 13.6K vocab, understand Tv shows, read novels (with dic) and can converse with a certain degree of fluency.

When it comes to language learning - Vocab is king.

I use Rikai-Chan some but I'm not sure how to "S feature" works...Im assume its saving the kanji somewhere. Care to tell more?

I'm finding smart.fm great for learning pure vocab; Core 2000 + smart.fm's iknow application has worked better for me than jumping straight from RtK to KO2001 (found it impossible, as all sentences were i+4 or more). Each word has audio and an example sentence, so you get some context.

mezbup Wrote:Just make a pure vocab deck, word in kanji on the front, hiragana + english on the back. U can use rikai-chan and the S feature to save it to a list - import the list into Anki. Data entry is your biggest killer, this method removes pretty much all data entry time.

Don't add words from word lists, instead add stuff that comes up in materials you're actively using. Could be anything from music, tv, textbook, real conversation.

I 100% agree that learning from context is best, but you need to already know *some* vocab to be able to use native material; this is actually known in linguistics as the "beginners paradox", and is one of the biggest problems with the AJATT method.

I think sentences can be good to get you used to basic grammar and sentence structure. However, I do question the benefit of them after the initial stage, since they take much longer to add and review. That is time you could spend reading instead, which is, as other people have mentioned, required to internalize word nuances and such.

Therefore, what I like do to is pretty much what mezbup said. Read a whole bloody lot, and save unknown vocab I come across as quick and dirty J-E cards. This ensures that the next time I see those words, I won't have to look them up again, since I can both subvocalize properly and sort of know the meaning. You can't internalize something through exposure unless you can get a gist of what it means, and preferably how it's read, which is initially hard with Japanese due to kanji. Therefore, I think making a vocab deck has greatly helped my progress.

As for Rikaichan, enter the options for the firefox addon. Go to the last tab, "Clipboard & Save". Enter a filename. Hit OK. Now you can mouse over stuff, hit 'S' and they will be saved as vocab entries to said file. Enjoy.

You might also want to look into this modification by wrightak.

I'm testing out a new vocab memorization method atm.
I haven't used it enough yet to know for certain but it looks promising.
I'll let you know when I've come up with more substantial data.

its based on the assumption that the most well known words have been reinforced 10-12 times and the idea that 7 is the optimal number for memory.

basically you take the core whatever k your on and read through the words and seperate them into groups of 7. then put the definitions in random order accross those 7

utsukushii -always
itsumo -foot
ashi -wake(someone)
okosu -beauitful
miseru -show
musume -fun
tanoshi -daughter

use your eyes to match up the words to the definition
then you write the next group of words. after you finish writing the second group
review the first group and the second group
and so on till you get to group 10. after group 10 you no longer need to review group 1
so after you write group 10 you review 2-10 then 3-11 etc.
at the end of the week review all words learned in the past week using your papers.

I can do about 30-50 an hour with this method. after I finish reviewing a list of 7 10 times I haven't forgotten any of the words.