I'm so glad this thread was created. The title is perfect.

I'm studying RTK 1 and happily doing 10 new cards/day. I used to do 25 but reality finally made me swallow my pride. Reading about the people adding 100 cards/day or that gangsta thread, I choose to be inspired by them instead of discouraged. The feeling when I successfully finish all my reviews for the day is way more satisfying.

wemaydance Wrote:I'm so glad this thread was created. The title is perfect.

I'm studying RTK 1 and happily doing 10 new cards/day. I used to do 25 but reality finally made me swallow my pride. Reading about the people adding 100 cards/day or that gangsta thread, I choose to be inspired by them instead of discouraged. The feeling when I successfully finish all my reviews for the day is way more satisfying.

That's a good mindset to have. It's better to go slow/maintain then to add a high number of cards a day.

ta12121 Wrote:

wemaydance Wrote:I'm so glad this thread was created. The title is perfect.

I'm studying RTK 1 and happily doing 10 new cards/day. I used to do 25 but reality finally made me swallow my pride. Reading about the people adding 100 cards/day or that gangsta thread, I choose to be inspired by them instead of discouraged. The feeling when I successfully finish all my reviews for the day is way more satisfying.

That's a good mindset to have. It's better to go slow/maintain then to add a high number of cards a day.

Might I add something to the end of this?

That's a good mindset to have. It's better to go slow/maintain then to add a high number of cards a day AND THEN STOP.

I absolutely agree that slow and steady is better than trying to do too much and then ultimately failing, but it's not better than doing more cards period, otherwise all the people that HAVE completed it and have continued their reviews while moving onto new material are screwed!

I am sure this is what you meant, but just wanted to clarify

I definitely had more success in finishing it when I was honest with myself about my abilities and wasn't afraid of adding none for a few days here and there, and very little other days. It's not a race, it's a goal, and a journey.

Excellent posts, thank you. This has become an interesting thread. I'll write more later, I'm too busy right now.

Cheers truando

Dustin_Calgary Wrote:That's a good mindset to have. It's better to go slow/maintain then to add a high number of cards a day AND THEN STOP.

I absolutely agree that slow and steady is better than trying to do too much and then ultimately failing, but it's not better than doing more cards period, otherwise all the people that HAVE completed it and have continued their reviews while moving onto new material are screwed!

I am sure this is what you meant, but just wanted to clarify

hah, yes that's what I meant. I used to try for 25 new cards/day but just stopped doing reviews. Then the same thing happened when I lowered it to 20. Now w/ 10 I've found the... happy medium I suppose?

I'd be happier if I could maintain 25 or more per day and finish quicker, but I know that I would simply stop

Back when I was doing RTK1, I made the mistake of working really hard and burning myself out. My record, I think, was 100 kanji in one day then taking a 3 month break even though I was at 1800 kanji. All I needed was a small final push to finish the book but I was so exhausted that I just couldn't do it. I did my reviews every day but it took me months of mental recovery before I even thought about doing new ones.
It may have taken me almost all of RTK1 but I have learnt from my mistakes: I'm doing RTK3 now at a 20 a day pace and unlike with RTK1, I never allow myself to exceed my target for the day. It's working incredibly well, I've already done about 200 but I am not tired of kanji at all. Quite the opposite in fact, 20 never feels like enough. That'll probably change when I get to the fish and tree chapters though...

Asriel Wrote:I took a Japanese class too! I enjoyed it so much I decided upon Japanese Language and Literature as one of my majors I'll soon have a BA in uncool. And Computer Science, but mainly uncool.

This makes my 4th year studying (started as a "hey look they have Japanese!" when I signed up for my freshman classes). I made super awesome progress my first year, kind of mid-better-than-average my 2nd year, was in Japan for year 3 (more "getting used to" using Japanese than any forced effort) and now I'm back in the states working my ass off to finish this degree within the traditional 4 years -- which is leaving me with NO time to study Japanese.

I just took JLPT N1 in December -- and I'm not sure if I passed. It's going to be very borderline -- I wouldn't be surprised in the least if I failed... slightly surprised if I passed, but relieved that I don't have to take it again...unless I want to.

That being said, I can feel myself losing more and more Japanese as the days go on...unless it's in my head?

Are you me?

@ppminhphung Sounds about right for me.

Studied for 11 months (?). I can write reasonably with a dictionary. I can read Manga with a dictionary looking up 10-20 words per 50 words on a page. I can speak to a native speaker and sort of be understood. I can understand 50-75% of what people say in regards to topics I know well - 20-30% for ones I don't.

Reality check is you are in it for the long hall, guys. I study 5+ hours a day and I have gotten this far. My goal is N2 by Dec 2011 (I'm N4 to low N3). I will make it, but I will have to put in the time. Nothing in language gets done fast without a lot of effort. I would say 3-5 years, based on people I know, is a reasonable time frame for N1+ level Japanese, shorter if you live in Japan.

I watch Sunday morning cartoons on TV Asahi (Super Sentai, Kamen Rider, and Precure) because it's fun, even though I understand only 30% or so. Basically all of the one or two word sentences. Which can be most of them sometimes. I like Star Driver too. I watch subtitles of these later.

I listen to JPop in my car (at home too) because it's fun, even though I understand only 30% or so.

I haven't done a rep in about a month. I need to identify unknown words and SRS them. I just need to find a workflow for doing so. But any workflow sounds kind of long.
1) Get subtitles
2) Export to text (Aegisub)
3) Open with Firefox & make cards out of them with Wrightak's Rikaichan mod
4) Import into Anki & study

I have never done anything like this. I don't even start this workflow because it seems like a lot of work. You can spend your time reviewing with RTK because there is a pre-made deck available (that I use). However, for something specific like "K-On! Episode 1," you must make your own deck which is extra work.

I have an extra problem sometimes. I know all the words, but still don't know what they're saying! This is a good time for the "What's this word or phrase thread."

I need a lower "give up and move on" threshold (to the next frame of manga, line of anime or song, sentence of book). I have a tendency to get stuck.

I need iPod touch to do mobile Anki reviews. Read a recent thread about that. There's downtime I currently do nothing with.

I need headphones to listen to music while at work.

Started learning Japanese 09/2007. 3 yrs and 5 months in. I haven't worked very hard at it though.

I did take classes like some other people in this thread but I don't think they were worth it. I got good scores in class and still don't understand Japanese.

People say set a goal and try to reach it. My goal: Understand anime w/o subtitle. But that's too hard, so I will try understand kids anime w/o subtitle instead. I can at least enjoy watching kids anime now, even if I don't understand everything. Just having a goal is not enough. You need a plan to reach and revise the plan when it doesn't work. A basic plan:

1) Watch live, self-judge my progress
2) Download raw. These are typically available before subtitled versions. Watch scenes over and over. Identify unknown words, look them up, add to SRS.

This is a version of the Khatsumoto plan:
1) Identify unknown word 2) Learn word

Do you think this plan might work? Do you think I will be able to stick to the plan?

wemaydance Wrote:I'm so glad this thread was created. The title is perfect.

I'm studying RTK 1 and happily doing 10 new cards/day. I used to do 25 but reality finally made me swallow my pride. Reading about the people adding 100 cards/day or that gangsta thread, I choose to be inspired by them instead of discouraged. The feeling when I successfully finish all my reviews for the day is way more satisfying.

Perfectly written. I've been taking a bit of an insane pace on this run through RTK, but that's becausd of external factors (baby due in March). It is so much better to set a reasonable goal that you can meet on all days, good or bad, then fill your time with other studying on the good days. Consistent progress is its own very satisfying reward.

aphasiac Wrote:I think the issue is, people tend to post about their current achievements and well they're doing.

Then on the other hand, people doing badly don't post to say how much they suck or to take about how they've failed; instead they make posts asking for advice, which again are responded to by people saying how they're making amazing progress.

This does give an overall impression that everyone is doing amazingly well, or at least alot better than you.

This is how I dealt with it:

-The only failure is failure to invest time.
Too many people say they quit or they didn't do their reps or whatever the reason. Well... obviously, if you don't do your reps, you're not gonna finish RTK. If you can control your time and make sure you study, you'll do fine. I doubt there are many people who've invested hundreds of hours and truly failed to learn anything. And it just seems that people who spend more time, do much better. There's no escaping that.

-Bragging is fun but is often difficult to compare.
Too many people have different accomplishments and different backgrounds, so it's often very difficult to compare yourself with another person.

In Starcraft II I hit Diamond League (which at the time, was *kinda* the highest ranking) fairly quickly and easily and wondered why other people were struggling. I just happened to forget that I tried to play Starcraft Brood War competitively and already had an intuitive feel for all the units, I routinely watch professional Starcraft Brood War, had experience playing games competitively, etc. So I got to Diamond in 2 weeks, and it's easy to see why.

In Japanese study, someone might have lived in Japan, have watched anime for 5 years, etc. etc. so they could pick it up much faster. Maybe they can do certain things better, like read manga, but they can't speak. Maybe they have more free time and don't have to juggle bills/family/marriage. Who knows. The bottom line is that there's so much we can't compare in terms of our own situations, so we can't compare our accomplishments equally well.

-Measure your own progress and use that as judgment for success or failure

Every time I get frustrated that I'm not really learning anything, I pull out something in Japanese that I tried to read last year and try reading it again. Almost all the time, I'll find something that I didn't understand at first, but with my new knowledge, I can understand it now.

Other people have their own ways of measuring things... could be numbers, Anki card reviews, completion of a book, passing JLPT, I don't know. But this is best done by yourself, for yourself.

Ryuujin27 Wrote:Are you me?

I sure hope not, because otherwise I'll have some major thinking to do...

Definitely everyone is different.Different situations,time,etc. For me personally, I have a lot of time on my hands. I'm a student who only goes to school (no work at the moment).So all I do is school+Japanese. A lot of people are busy with school/life. So I don't meet up a lot with friends. So this right here gives me so much chances to immerse.I can definitely fit in speaking with jp people easily now.

To be honest, there are times(definitely few a months now). That I did nothing but jp all day. Obviously I have to eat/go out for a little bit. But in terms of the whole day(not counting sleep of course). I probably spend 80% of my day learning Japanese. I;m working on output now, but once I can get some more language exchange partners to speak with. I expect things will be going up for output (I listen to jp a lot, seriously even my dreams are becoming japanese lol). I read via games,manga,news,sites,youtube,etc. So it really comes down to time.More time=more success.Simple as that.

SRS=1hr and half everday

Asriel Wrote:

Ryuujin27 Wrote:Are you me?

I sure hope not, because otherwise I'll have some major thinking to do...

I'm not sure if that was an insult or a ontological quandary.

mafried Wrote:I've been taking a bit of an insane pace on this run through RTK, but that's becausd of external factors (baby due in March). It is so much better to set a reasonable goal that you can meet on all days, good or bad, then fill your time with other studying on the good days. Consistent progress is its own very satisfying reward.

Consistency is key! It's not as exciting to write or read about I suppose, but I have a full-time job and part-time school as well as other interests, so it's more realistic for me. When I was trying and failing to meet what seemed to be the "average" pace of RTK, one of the things that kept me motivated was this one post by someone-- he said he finished RTK doing 3 cards/day because he knew that that was the pace that worked for him.

Knowing that there were people out there more like me made me keep up hope. So I hope this thread will give others motivation as well.

Good luck finishing! And congrats on your baby-to-be

wemaydance Wrote:Consistency is key! It's not as exciting to write or read about I suppose, but I have a full-time job and part-time school as well as other interests, so it's more realistic for me. When I was trying and failing to meet what seemed to be the "average" pace of RTK, one of the things that kept me motivated was this one post by someone-- he said he finished RTK doing 3 cards/day because he knew that that was the pace that worked for him.

Knowing that there were people out there more like me made me keep up hope. So I hope this thread will give others motivation as well.

oh, definitively - I already made some changes to my Japanese schedule... Consistency is key. I'll write that on my wall! Thanks, wemaydance.

Ryuujin27 Wrote:I'm not sure if that was an insult or a ontological quandary.

What would it mean if you wrote it?

It was meant to be existential, as in something along the lines of 'if i'm you, and i don't know about it, i've got to figure out what's going on.'

wemaydance Wrote:Reading about the people adding 100 cards/day or that gangsta thread, I choose to be inspired by them instead of discouraged. The feeling when I successfully finish all my reviews for the day is way more satisfying.

I agree; I find enjoyment from the semi-bragging threads (and sometimes even learn a new method to try to improve my system). I'm reminded of a quote:

The Fountainhead Wrote:Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers--show me yours--show me that it is possible--show me your achievement--and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.

ta12121 Wrote:SRS=1hr and half everday

You're always around 1.5 years into studying Japanese, so with your time bending skills it's probably more than my entire day jk

Kubelek Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:SRS=1hr and half everday

You're always around 1.5 years into studying Japanese, so with your time bending skills it's probably more than my entire day jk

1 year and 5 months, I just reached that point a few days ago. If I add RTK, it's the famous "18 month" mark. But since I now know RTK isn't actually learning any real Japanese. Just keyword associated with an English meaning. Officially reached that mark, feels like I'm still just learning Japanese.

I know now that languages will take years to get fluent.I got some good advice from someone who is completely fluent. He said, you will get there if you simply keep that mindset of "never stop learning and never stopping".

Sometimes I get extremely impatient that my progress is not going quickly enough. I've only managed 6000 sentences into anki over the last 6 months, some people are doing 100 a day or whatever. But I use this impatience as a drive to continue. I get restless if I stop moving forward and demanding more of myself. There's plenty of time to be lazy when I'm dead.

Asriel Wrote:

Ryuujin27 Wrote:I'm not sure if that was an insult or a ontological quandary.

What would it mean if you wrote it?

It was meant to be existential, as in something along the lines of 'if i'm you, and i don't know about it, i've got to figure out what's going on.'

If I wrote it, it would mean... I, wait, no... hold on.

What's going on? Who am I?

This is a positive thread. I feel the same way as many here- I'm not one of the superlearners- I just don't have the willpower to do that much.

- I learned hiragana/katakana in mid-2007 before a month long tour that really sparked my interest in Japanese
- I moved to Japan for 15 months as an ALT at the end of 2008 and really started my studies, passing 3級 in Dec 2008
- I left Japan at the end of 2009 and spent a year in Australia, finished KO2001 and tried to keep Japanese in my life in some form each day
- I took N2 Dec 2010 but pretty sure I failed it due to 読解
- I just came back to Japan a week ago, applied for foreigner registration, health insurance and a new phone, all in Japanese

I've always been speaking focused because that's what I enjoy. I like going out all night and speaking Japanese- I like forming relationships. Reading books, while I love to do it in English, is a struggle for me in Japanese, and something I'd really like to get better at (just purchased The Catcher in the Rye in Japanese yesterday and am going through that).

I look at where I am and know I could be further along, but I also look back and see how far I've come. I also know that I will get better in the future, it just takes time.

vinniram Wrote:Sometimes I get extremely impatient that my progress is not going quickly enough. I've only managed 6000 sentences into anki over the last 6 months, some people are doing 100 a day or whatever. But I use this impatience as a drive to continue. I get restless if I stop moving forward and demanding more of myself. There's plenty of time to be lazy when I'm dead.

I'm currently doing 100 new vocab cards per day. But in terms of sentences, only 30. As sentence cards take longer to make/add. But it's best to go slow but keep going and it will all your goals with come to present.

I'm going fairly slowly as well. As many people have said already, I try to be consistent, by which I mean:
- Do all my reviews, every day. If I miss some, do as many as I can when I'm back at it. When I missed a few days around the holidays, the reviews got up to about 300, so I just tried to do 25 here, 40 there, until I had 100 done in a day. A few days like that and I was back on track - when you're behind, the trick is to just do more reviews than you'll be getting the next day (this also feels like progress, so your motivation is easier to keep up).
- Try to get missed cards back into the first pile the same day I miss them, or the day after. That's actually a recent change to my routine, to try to keep that red stack small.
- I add 25 cards at a time, when I'm adding. However, I don't add cards every day, because I just can't always find the time. Also, if I look at how many cards I have vs. the time I've spent since restarting, my daily average works out to about 7 cards.

Doing it this way, I hit the halfway mark tonight. That's way more than I've ever done, and my retention rate varies between 80-90%, so I'm very happy with that.