There will be lots of newcomers and people who are studying Japanese from now on.

What are the most important mistakes that you made of which you want to talk about to the people still on the road?

Don't jump straight to Subs2srs sentences after RTK
I picked up the Tokiwokakerushojo and 5cmpersecond decks and learned all the sentences. It made me burnt out and the decks progressed very slowly and very VERY difficultly. I had the knowledge equivalent to 2-2,5 years of classes when I started those decks, and it still wasn't enough for those sentences to be easy.

Better alternative---->CORE 6000
I felt stupid when I found out that I had pointlessly wasted my time on learning almost 2000 sentences from subs2srs decks which came up very rarely later on.

Core6000's words are much more useful, more common for me...and it's easier to learn vocab as opposed to sentences.

Don't write anything down unless you need to do it
Well probably most of you know it. You don't really have to write EVERYTHING down, do you?
If you need any extra information you can get it with some effort via this thread, not that there's very much info directly.
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7097

Not conversing with Japanese people
I suggest you to converse!

local Japanese friends
Mixi
Skype
Msn
Penfriends
You name it!

Any contact with people who I can use Japanese with has become a great motivating factor for me.

And motivation is important!

edit:
Advice:
Don't write about trivial things.

...Just to keep it easy to read and as useful as possible.

By this logic -->"Don't repeat my mistakes" thread, and highlighting: "Converse with Japanese people" means that it's a mistake... is it?

If not, he could rephrase it as "Don't not converse with Japanese people".

海老 isn't read as かいろう.
キーパッドで○○○○を入力してください does not mean "please input 0000 on the keypad".

Those were both pretty embarrassing...

My 3 biggies:

Listening to 12 months of semi to non-comprehensible audio!
In brief, my "hearing skills" are awesome! My understanding is still only 30% I should have made it comprehensible from day 1

Doing sentences then doing word lists!
Doing sentences without the vocabulary to understand them and having to work them over (I mean heaps of vocab notes) is a waste of time. If your going to do sentences at least rip out the vocabulary first and make a cram deck, so when you go to your sentences you don't need to look anything up!!!

Doing Core6000 type word lists.
Once you can read or hear and even before then you should be taking your vocabulary from the real world. Khatz was right. I was wrong. (Sorry Khatz!) The only purpose of a vocabulary deck is to make the things you are reading/listening/writing/saying more comprehensible or more easy to produce. Doing random vocabulary is a waste of time N2 upwards. Use your Anki time to SRS stuff from your books, audio, newscasts, podcasts - even if it's one word at least you know one situation it's used and can hear it again and again reinforcing it every time.

Oh, and man up bronko and talk!

Raschaverak Wrote:By this logic -->"Don't repeat my mistakes" thread, and highlighting: "Converse with Japanese people" means that it's a mistake... is it?

I think so, thanks.

Even if it's not, it's kind a vague sentence, so I'll change something.

jettyke Wrote:Don't write anything down unless you need to do it

I didn't read the thread from your link, but this sounds like really bad advice to me for anyone with a serious long-term commitment to Japanese.

beginner:

DO:
loop audio of watched videos (anime, TV etc)
Read phrasebooks and grammar guides filled with examples sentences
use audiobooks
focus on easy authentic content
get occasional speaking practice
follow the advice of Youtube polyglots
RTK1

DON'T:
spend more than 10% of your study time in SRS.
bother making sentence decks
waste time jumping from study method to study method
waste time searching for the magic bullet
neglect listening
read materials way above your level
be obsessed with remembering everything
listen to music
use smartfm, jpod101, random youtube lessons etc
do RTK 3
use JLPT study materials

advanced:

DO:
speak a lot
read a lot and widely,
listen a lot,
watch TV/Movies, youtube etc.

DON'T:
use JLPT study materials

nadiatims Wrote:DON'T:
use JLPT study materials

なぜなのかな。

CarolinaCG Wrote:

nadiatims Wrote:DON'T:
use JLPT study materials

なぜなのかな。

...Because starting from passing JLPT1, you're at the advanced level and thus you won't be needing JLPT materials anyway...?

bodhisamaya Wrote:

jettyke Wrote:Don't write anything down unless you need to do it

I didn't read the thread from your link, but this sounds like really bad advice to me for anyone with a serious long-term commitment to Japanese.

Well...that's why I wrote "unless you need to do it"
Everyone decides what they need for themselves

From my experience, wait a while until you practice speaking. Why? So you can get used to all the sounds of Japanese. I remember reading something like 800 hours of listening before output. Start with easy context sentence/vocab.
I recommend one start a production deck where they write out reps.But in very small amounts, so you don't burnout(So you can gain some basic writing skills, but if you feel like it's too much work then don't do it). Focus on your listening skills as they are what you need.

jettyke Wrote:Not conversing with Japanese people I suggest you to converse!

I agree with this and a little with what ta12121 just said above. There is a short period needed to get used to the sounds prior to making them. That said, we all wait way, way, way too long. It's probably why quite a few people generally suck at output. In fact, I've meet my share of English learners and among them I have met 20 or more that rock at output, but when you say something to them they have no idea what you just said (they lack the ability to hear the sounds well enough to understand you and have limited passive vocabularies).

What this tells me, this also comes from my person experience as well, is that: You should start speaking sooner rather than later. As an adult I completely know how sucky that is, but I've met people who have and the effect is noticeable. I think it's really hesitation, fear and embarrassment that hold us back.

I wish I could roll back the clock and do what I am doing now in terms of production (talking to people as much as I can, even if it's "good morning" [they might say something you understand or can guess how to reply to*], and talking to myself.) My Japanese would be 100x better minimum.

*Interestingly enough to carry on a conversation you don't need to understand. I was on Skype today and had absolutely no idea what my friend was saying, but as I sorta knew how he expected me to reply I just went with it. The result was when he asked me a question related to what he said in English later, he was a little shocked to realize that I hadn't got half of it because I responded 70% correctly (according to him) and when I clarified it seemed like I had a good understanding of what he'd said - we were able to have a pretty long conversation because of it. Then again, when I explained to him that I was guessing and the idea behind it he thought I was kidding, lol. I'm sorta lucky to have such a good friend.

nadiatims Wrote:beginner:

DON'T:
spend more than 10% of your study time in SRS.
bother making sentence decks
waste time jumping from study method to study method
waste time searching for the magic bullet
neglect listening
read materials way above your level
be obsessed with remembering everything
listen to music
use smartfm, jpod101, random youtube lessons etc
do RTK 3
use JLPT study materials

Your dont list has everything I want to do...maybe time to rethink my plan!!!

Superfreek Wrote:

nadiatims Wrote:beginner:

DON'T:
spend more than 10% of your study time in SRS.
bother making sentence decks
waste time jumping from study method to study method
waste time searching for the magic bullet
neglect listening
read materials way above your level
be obsessed with remembering everything
listen to music
use smartfm, jpod101, random youtube lessons etc
do RTK 3
use JLPT study materials

Your dont list has everything I want to do...maybe time to rethink my plan!!!

I think at the beginning that the majority of study time for people WILL be SRS, simply because they don't have a huge variety of vocab/grammar and it's really stressful and disheartening to even look at a manga/novel and realize how much you don't know. I'm making a sentence deck simply for grammar, since I don't have enough time right now where I am to study constantly enough for grammar to be retained anyways. Also...I'm using JLPT "lists" to pick what to study in what order-ish, IE, do the JLPT N5 before N4, etc.

Actually the reason why I brought up this topic of conversing with Japanese people is that right now I'm in the middle of writing my longest piece of writing in Japanese as a Mixi reply to my real life friend ( who I hang out with almost every 2 weeks).

As of now I've beat my record of a 1600 character piece (diary entry) with an astounding result(for me) of 2000 characters. And I'm still writing so I'm estimating it to be 2500+ characters long.

I got the mixi account less than 2 months ago.
When I got the account, replying shortly to an email or writing a small comment on mixi was quite hard & slow! Writing like 100-200 characters was a pain...

As of now I have 20 friends in my friend list.
*And I've sent a total of 73 letters to my friends (most of them in Japan right now) in those 2 months!
*I've noticed a greater confidence when speaking and my flow got considerably better( although I have spoken to Japanese people about 6-8 times during the last 2 months).
*I'm able to write much more easily and it takes less time, and I have more confidence as to grammar.

What I did was just write a lot of replies and some messages of my own initiation and as a result of big motivation I wrote more and more. And improved steadily.
I don't know if it helped, but I have met 19 of the 20 people I sent mails to. And discussed all kinds of topics related to our lives recently.

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.

Big DONT:

If you're going to Japan on a homestay or trip, do not tell people you speak English, or at least do not tell them you prefer english.

Stayed with a family who moderately good English for 6 weeks. I told them either Japanese or English was fine. Their English was better than my Japanese -> a lot more English conversations.

But it's not all that bad because I made an effort in the last 3 weeks to do lots more Japanese. But I wish I had done that all 6 weeks.

nadiatims Wrote:beginner:

DON'T:
spend more than 10% of your study time in SRS.
bother making sentence decks
be obsessed with remembering everything
use smartfm, jpod101, random youtube lessons etc

Why not? Could you elaborate on these items?

The miistake that is bugging me the most at the moment - dragging my feet on the systematic learning of readings, ie movie method or some alternative. I think I'd be progressing faster with reading (obviously) and vocabulary acquisition if I'd addressed that sooner. There aren't many shortcuts in language learning. RTK1 is a great one and even though only part way into studying the readings, I think it more than repays the effort - seems less effort than RTK1 to me, anyway.

Don't worry too much about what other people are doing ... do what works for you.

The mistakes I've made have been not doing things sooner. Not polishing off the core 6000 sooner. Not finishing rtklite sooner. Of course it's more fun to read and watch stuff but sometimes you have to get the boring study done too.

Think I'm gonna do a systematic reading thing like ^ and I bet I'll wish I'd done it sooner.

Don't put stuff off. There's always "tomorrow this, tomorrow that" but the best time to start is now.

DON'T:
Compare yourselves with others.

There's a group of friends I have, and we all studied in Japan last year (although at different universities). We came back, and it seems like their conversation skills and active vocab increased more than me. It became almost intimidating to talk to them. Don't let that kind of thing get in your way -- don't be afraid to be mistakes, make a fool of yourself.

Learning the language is your own journey, and if you let your pride get in the way of your using it, you'll never improve.

*I still have problems with this when talking to certain people.

DON'T:
Get down on yourself.

You'll have good days and bad days. If you have bad days that continue on, change something. Maybe you're studying too hard; turn on a drama and just enjoy, without trying too hard to pick up new vocab. On the other hand, maybe you're too passive and not improving fast enough; pick up and start studying more seriously.
Maybe even take a break, if you need to. Studying can get boring!
But if you get down and discouraged, you won't feel like studying, and you'll fall into a slump. Find ways to always encourage yourself.


edit: I might edit this post from time to time with things that I know that i've done

Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Learning is a learning process also. What might be a mistake for one person that they regret making could be something that works for you, or a mistake you don't regret because making that mistake taught you something.

Also, be consistent. Even the SRS won't save you from inconsistency.