"The early bird picks the worm." meaning, SRS in the morning. Get yourself accustomed to Japanese/kanji throughout the day and you will recognise 'skipping the lines' while reading and understanding is pretty much possible in the evening of the day!

bodhisamaya Wrote:If you live in an old apartment in Japan, tape cushion to the top of the entrances to rooms.

Strange night. Woke up at about 1am on the bathroom floor with a gash above my eye not knowing where I was or how I got there. The doorways in my apartment are 4 inches lower than my head. I must have stumbled to the bathroom half asleep, bashed my head and knocked myself out cold. >_<

I've just seen a sign warning about this on an escalator but the thing is there's no chance a Japanese person (or any human for that matter) would have to be worried since there was at least 2.4m clearance

As for my list:

DON'T

Make SRS your personal god and let your world revolve around it. It's a tool, make use of it but don't overdo it. I'd just go as far and not count it as studying at all, thus each day you ONLY did SRS should mentally be treated as a day off/slacking.

DO

Anything related to the language that is fun for you, but make it conscious and try to challenge yourself. Background music is just for you, don't count it as study time. Do count it if you're reading/deciphering lyrics or shadowing/singing along but its conscious anyway so my point stays valid.

jankensan Wrote:I'd have to disagree on the point of not reading material that is 'too difficult'. I think reading above your level is a great idea...how else are you gonna get any better?

I read a 500 page Japanese detective novel after learning about the AJATT method.

It was hard as SH*T at first. Wow....it seemed impossible. EVERY freaking sentence I had at least 3 or 4 vocab words that I had to look up.

But after a month...I began to read faster and faster. At first I can only finish a page or 2 a day. But then it went to 3, 4 ,5....now 15 to 20 pages...on problem.

The vocab that I need to look up became less and less.

That book helped my Japanese more than 4 years of Japanese classes put together . No joke.

Mistake: Not having a smartphone.

Because I Have a moving, on the go lifestyle often.

NEVER EVER take language classes again
It's humiliating
and disempowering.

I've repeated this same mistake too many times :mad:
I hope that this will get ingrained into my brain for life.

jettyke Wrote:NEVER EVER take language classes again
It's humiliating
and disempowering.

I've repeated this same mistake too many times :mad:
I hope that this will get ingrained into my brain for life.

It's tempting, because my teacher is Japanese and they are in short supply in the arctic region.

But I know it won't help me move forward :/

Betelgeuzah Wrote:But I know it won't help me move forward :/

Not only that, but in my case, it will make sure that I lose every little bit of motivation that I had to learn Japanese and make me develop a minus motivation aka. hatred towards learning Japanese.

Not a smart choice.
Especially in the long run

KNOW YOUR 敬語ｗ (because I didn't. And that was a *mistake*)

Tori-kun Wrote:KNOW YOUR 敬語ｗ (because I didn't. And that was a *mistake*)

oh were they offended?
I remembre reading this blog by this japanese person who said oh even if the the gaijin is good at japanaese, they'r eusually not good at keigo. they gave this example of some foreigner who speaks really good japanese but when he/she met some president of the company they say namae wa~~? They didn't attach o to the namae= onamae and the blogger said the president of the company owner was disappointed.

So like I think onamae would be important to keep in mind as far as keigo goes.

Tori-kun Wrote:KNOW YOUR 敬語ｗ (because I didn't. And that was a *mistake*)

I think the best way to really master it is develop a system to study keigo or immerse yourself from native sources that use keigo(for the majority of the time). I think the best way to know how to get the most out of it is: learn from context (sentences+vocab to familiarize yourself with the words and so forth). Plus shadowing over material is key too. Then again, i'm not experienced with it, so don't take what I have to say seriously (anyone have experience with learning keigo here?)

The only good advice I have for learning keigo is to do a lot of roleplaying for practice. Have your Japanese friends take turns being your boss and your customers and practice the different forms of keigo you need to use for each of those types of persons. After a while it becomes natural.

Also remember that the most important part of a keigo sentence is the end. Meaning that you can be forgiven for leaving off ご and お throughout the sentence if you manage to have a nice sentence ending like でしょうか, でいらっしゃいますか, or whatever the correct conjugation of the final verb is.

@howtwosavealif3: Nah, it was luckily only a very good friend from Lang-8 of mine and we started like trolling around and then I tried to use some keigo and as it was fatally wrong, we had to laugh both (Only that I got a bit red and she did not lol).

@ta121212: I'd not necessarily agree on that 'listening' stuff. I told you, I have listened actively to Japanese for 8 months now, having a vocabulary base of almost 9.2k and I cannot make sense of any sentence, which is demotivating.
Lately, however, I'm experiencing a lot of 'fun' through reading. Practicing reading, makes you recognise kanji more fluently and also you can overlook sentences more quickly and make greater sense. I find *this* a necessary step and a beneficient way to increase my listening, as I still try to decode the spoken words into kanji in my head, which naturally takes a bit longer, when you want to understand on-the-fly...
I cannot agree that the 'immersion' idea works always out like wonder..... just my 5 yen.

I agree with kitakitsune that practicing this in role plays is extremely good. I will try to do so on friday, as this became my communication day now
What also helped was a series of 日本語の知らない日本人 aphasiac recommended me some time ago (I guess it was the 3rd episode or so?) where the 先生 teachs 敬語. Kinda got the feeling for ご・お／～でしょうか（文末）...

[Zgarbas]

Tori-kun, wouldn't transcription be shooting two birds with one stone then, rather than all listening or all-reading?

@Zgarbas: Yes, actually you are right. I don't know, I've tried it and it somehow did not work as I expected it to work and that's why I switched off the audio. Lately, I'm experiencing paying more attention to particles and my particles mistake have reduced slightly. I guess I still need just time. I'm learning Japanese for 14 months only... I shouldn't have too high expectancies. If I look back, it took me 3 years of serious English studies to express myself more or less accurate -- however still stumbling!!
I will keep your advice safely stored in the back of my mind when it comes down to it once again!

Talking about 敬語 I will probably have a very fun conversation in 敬語 tomorrow:s

Tori-kun Wrote:having a vocabulary base of almost 9.2k and I cannot make sense of any sentence, which is demotivating.

Although I don't necessary have 9k vocab, I have the same problem (even when I look up words I don't know). So far, I was told "Read more, eventually, it will start making sense." but any other advice that could help with this issue would be appreciated.

(Studying grammar is an obvious one.)

shinsen Wrote:

jettyke Wrote:What are the most important mistakes that you made?

Assume that I could acquire the language through listening and watching massive amounts of Japanese radio and TV.

What happens is you reach a point where you understand enough to get by and after that your "noise filter" kicks in. See, there is this filter inside your head that just filters out most of the words you don't know. This allows you to concentrate on what you know and follow the speaker. But, you can hear a word a thousand times and completely ignore it. Now when you actually make an effort to "learn" a new word, suddenly you start hearing it all the time, because it can now pass through your noise filter.

So yes, listen and watch, but cook it before you eat it or it will just pass through your system with little effect.

this is just so true. my noise filter is pretty strong lol

This reminds me. I wish I knew about clubbox earlier.
So clubbox lets you access files that korean people upload. what I really find helpful are the korean fansub script files because sometimes the japanese drama or anime or whatever doesn't have japanese subs, or doesn't have even english subs and the korean subs are really helpful (as long as they translated it to korean from japanese) because korean shares 75% of kango (the words made up of kanji) with Japanese (I google translate the korean to japanese. the link to the instructions on using clubbox is the link on the left where it says "website" under my username). So my mistake was not knowing about clubbox earlier. I wish I could've used the korean subs to watch the j-dramas that I previously watched with no subs (just raw with my crappy listening comprehension.. where I only understand the boring/over-used/cliche/shitty script writing japanese drama/anime fluently and maybe catch other stuff).

Especially when i was at that level, all i understood was the cliche/boring lines that they say over and over and as much as i tried to actively listen,, all the other stuff just went past me. I mean I still had dramanote (it covers most/some of the lines) helping me but I remember for one drama it didn't even have dramanote.

Ginmanm Wrote:For beginners...

1)Learning hiragana and katakana DO NOT use memory aids. Get a Nintendo ds and use pictochat and write out (in order) those suckers as much as you can whenever you can. If your stuck do not rely on romaji chart use the Japanese keyboard on the ds and guess the meaning looking at it. Do this everyday for 2 months and see what you get out of it.

I was playing around with kana since I was in 7th grade and never took it seriously until 9th grade (in 10th now). One year is all it takes to read kana without fear.

2) Do not listen hiragana songs so much. What I had liked to do (since I like anime ost) just pick apart the sounds you hear which will increase your listening ability. Eventually you can hear the sounds to any vocabulary regardless of not knowing what it means. I did this for 3 years while I wasn't really interested so much in learning Japanese. Don't take as long as I did just listen to random ost,get used to the sounds while learning katakana/hiragana.

by numbre 2 you what do you mean? romaji????

For 1. I disagree. I say learn the stroke order, but don't learn how to write it from memory (with drilling like writing it over and over). What I did was I used rikai-chan and Japanese song lyrics and got used to reading hiragana and katakana. then I read lots lots more with stuff on the internet like wiki etc etc, then books, etc etc. and so now I read fairly fast and not only that now I can write hirgana/katakana without any struggle... without the time waste towards drilling/practicing writing it without looking at it. I mean if you care about the appearance of your hiragana/katakana (hand-writing) thing then obviously you should write it multiple times but as far as being able to write hiragana/katakana from memory... there's no need to drill it unless you absolutely have to write it b.c. you live in japan etc.

[Zgarbas]

I drilled the kana and it wasn't a problem...
Whenever I had free time in class I would replace doodling with drawing the kana charts. I also used Iknow's brainspeed and this kana game(there's a gazillion on them on the Internet) to increase my reading speed. In less than 2 weeks I had mastered kana without much effort(say maybe 15 mins per day max?)

Tori-kun Wrote:@ta121212: I'd not necessarily agree on that 'listening' stuff. I told you, I have listened actively to Japanese for 8 months now, having a vocabulary base of almost 9.2k and I cannot make sense of any sentence, which is demotivating.
Lately, however, I'm experiencing a lot of 'fun' through reading. Practicing reading, makes you recognise kanji more fluently and also you can overlook sentences more quickly and make greater sense. I find *this* a necessary step and a beneficient way to increase my listening, as I still try to decode the spoken words into kanji in my head, which naturally takes a bit longer, when you want to understand on-the-fly...
I cannot agree that the 'immersion' idea works always out like wonder..... just my 5 yen.

Personally, it differs per person but immersion does help. I guess I should watch what I say because what might work for me, might not work for you. So it's a double edge sword at times. If I'm reading your post correctly then, I have to say that I must have progressed well because it isn't as hard as it used to be for me. I used to have trouble listening too. It just got easy the more I listened to it (I did listen to stuff over and over again and I still tend to do that, even now). Kanji/vocab/sentences just help you formulate meanings based on the text. Listening is a different skill that takes time for your mind to adjust. For me, that was immersion and vocabulary.

To understand "on the fly" isn't easy at all but the key for that is to immerse yourself in different stuff. The more you can understand songs,movies,animes,news,talk-shows,keigo,slang and so forth. The more you will be able to understand most things that come your way. I've been learning for 2.5 years now, so I may have forgotten how it feels not to understand a lot of what I listen to but if I could do it, you can too. It's just a matter of keeping at it.

So, I certainly developed my listening skills way behind my reading skills, but I'm doing pretty good at overcoming that so I should say a few words.

I'm sure if you have enough reading vocabulary, immersion in audio will -eventually- develop your listening skills, however input only counts when it's -comprehensible- and -compelling-. (That means you can understand most of it and care enough about it to pay attention without forcing yourself to pay attention. This is, of course, according to the input theory.) Obviously picking out a word here and there means you're only going to care about a show if it's more about the visuals than the words which in turn means it's likely to be pretty mediocre practice.

So, anyway, once I was frustrated enough with non-comprehension actual... y'know, -lessons- became pretty compelling input. Anything I could listen to, and then read and see if I got it right, and then listen to again.

Smart.fm's 'Dictation' program was a lot of help, but very frustrating because of wrong kanji readings that had gone years without fixing despite open reports - which is precisely why I did not stick with them when they went paid. (You really have to know your kanji readings to be able to simply work around it, and it's still annoying to be typing in the wrong reading.)

There's plenty of other ways to quiz yourself though without a quiz program, basically, any time you can get line-by-line audio; listen to the audio. Listen to it again. When you're ready to make a guess, look at the text. Depending on the layout, you may be unable to avoid seeing the first couple words as you press the play button but that's okay, you still have the rest of the sentence. I used japanesepod101's line-by-line interface when I was a premium subscriber, and I've used coscom.jp, and gone through erin's challenge ( erin.ne.jp ). There's a whole lot more resources in buonaparte's text & audio links thread that are probably worth checking out.

If your reading is way ahead of your listening, it does feel like a big step back to go through all these beginner lessons, but you absolutely have to train your ear to basic grammar patterns before you can put your paper knowledge to effective use in listening. Assuming you have the grammar/vocab to understand, simply watching shows -will- start to become effective practice once you have your ear trained to basic sentences and that whole immersion thing becomes valid if you're inclined that way.

You could check out some of buonaparte's theory on LR techniques too; although personally I don't worry about having the English translation, I am borrowing something from the notion and doing some reading-along-to-audio, alternated with simply listening to the same audio. Simply listening to a story that you already 'know' what it says (at least in theory from having read it once) is pretty good practice. (So is watching a show alternately subbed and unsubbed, but of course, this only works out if you actually rewatch so it has to be a -really- interesting show for you.)

Of course, for those who are not specifically asking about remedial listening strategies, the takeaway 'learn from my mistake' is... don't neglect the audio part of your studies when you're first starting out!

I experienced the opposite problem of SomeCallMeChris. My listening and speaking skills have always been way ahead of my reading and writing (which is the reason I started using RevTK.)

Without having to bore you with personal anecdotes, here's what I have to offer from my experiences:

Don't let fear get the best of you. It's extremely frustrating when a modern, intellectual adult is incapable of expressing himself/herself beyond the level of a 6 year old. Many times, it is easier just to say nothing in order to avoid sounding "stupid," or making a mistake, or embarrassing yourself. The sooner you overcome this fear, the quicker and more enjoyably you will learn.

This is why people claim that their Japanese improves after they've had a few drinks, (I know mine does). When your inhibitions are gone, you just speak, and 95% of the time, it'll be fine. The other 5% of the time will probably just be another humorous learning experience, like many of the other posters on this forum have talked about, and then you'll never forget.

Don't be afraid. Talk to everybody. Japanese friends, your host family, Japanese tourists, as much as you can. I know it's hard. It only gets easier when you realize how sparse your mistakes actually are. It might feel a little funky speaking Japanese with fellow Japanese learners, but if you can get passed it, by all means, go for it. Even I still have a hard time taking my gaijin friends seriously when they're speaking to me in Japanese, though. Good luck everybody!

Like people said music is helpful since you can look up the lyrics and rikaichan exists. Also there's a lOt of common phrases or grammar in Wong lyrics so its very helpful. Also for me it was really indispensable with learning to read hiragana and some katakana since its more sensible than some quizzing program that drills it in you. I remember pausing a slow song every 3 secs to read the hiragana ahead of time ( I read super slow) but after a while I didn't haver to pause every 3 sec for slow songs also its helpful with learning how to read kanji bc of rikaichan And u dont have to know how to write i to resd it . now a days I'm on my 50 somethingth book in Japanese ( this isn't due to only song lyric reading obviously)

No matter what level you are, try to take in as much Japanese from actual people as you can. I'm a huge fan of SRSing, immersion, and all that but I can't help but feel stuck in some kind of Japanese language purgatory--I can read and understand 90% of anything I come across, but when I try to express myself in a unique way I feel discouraged because the words don't come together. So as much as I don't enjoy having to look at other people and "copy" their personalities, without the experience of knowing what does and does not work in Japanese I'm not going to be able to get to a point where I really feel fluent expressing my own ideas.

That being said, this is much much much easier said than done (I'm sure most of us would have bypassed our studies if we could just move to the country and learn by going out for drinks with friends, lol) but I wish I had looked for more accessible chat rooms earlier. The one place I can definitely recommend is http://www.chaberi.com/. On that note DON'T talk about how you're foreign or how you're learning Japanese. I've done that, was called "tedious" （くだくだ), got made fun of, and I understand why. I realized then that it's boring and self-centered to put yourself in the middle of a conversation without having anywhere to direct it to, or any way to connect it to the other people talking. DO think of little questions to ask other people before you come in, and if you don't feel comfortable joining in the convo, just come in, say こん and let the others talk. (I agree that you need to put myself out there more to learn more, but for the time being I'd rather sit back and get a sense of how people convey themselves in Japanese.) You'll save yourself from quite a bit of embarrassment :p

Don't be such a goddamn perfectionist. Got something wrong? Finding something a bit tricky? Worried about missing something? Just move on, carry on. It doesn't matter. Who cares if you miss one word, one sentence? It's not like you'll never see it again.

./self-rant

Don't stop reviewing RTK!!! >_<

Life has been hectic and just because I don't have time to add new cards, I should at least review the kanji I already have covered.

Also get to adding the Japanese keyword at the from of the card. I'm currently using the 6th edition of RTK and was wondering if anyone would be kind enough to post a spreadsheet or website listing the kanji keywords that weren't in the previous editions. I have the resource for the 2042 kanji but not the new ones added.

I also know the keyword chosen can be 1 kanji reading but I am aware of multiple readings and wouldn't know which to choose as the keyword.

Here is a 6th edition kanji I got info on via Kotoba!

Quote:Kanji: 唄

ON reading: バイ
Kun reading: うた, うた.う

Meaning: songs with samisen
Grade: 8
Stroke count: 10
JLPT: N1

I don't know which of the 3 readings I would choose /confused

I just add Japanese keywords when I'm familiar with the word using this kanji. For "write" I used 図しょ館 and 葉がき. I did start to look at a dictionary to find words, but I felt that they didn't help at all since I didn't really know those words.