Hey there fellow learners of the Japanese language!

I'm currently looking for some advice on SRSing sentences. I've finished RTK1 about a week ago and have now started SRSing sentences the way khatz describes it on ajatt. I want to add I'm a complete beginner at learning Japanese, my only knowledge of the language comes from subbed anime.


I have so far done about 50 sentences in the last 3 to 4 days (taken them from the smart.fm core 6000 + audio) and I'm feeling really exhausted.

I have really no problems in remembering the meaning of an entire sentence or the meaning of words, as I can infer them from the kanji keywords most of the time.

However, I'm having a really, and I mean really, hard time remembering kanji readings. I have to fail each card at least 5 times to finally get the readings right and the next day when I'm supposed to review them, I've already forgotten the readings and fail them again like 5 times.

I'm not making any progress at all.

My cards are designed the way described on ajatt. That is, kanji sentence on question side and kana sentence with audio and translation on answer side.

I'm sure the sentence method isn't supposed to be this hard or a lot more people would have complained in the comments on ajatt. But I've found literally noone complaining about kanji readings.

So...am I doing something wrong? Or will it get easier as I learn more sentences?

It just feels impossible for me to do multiple thousand sentences this way, when even 10 new sentences feel harder than learning 100 new kanji.

Looking forward to your replies,

apirx

Do a textbook before starting sentences, and remember that you should take everything Khatz says with a grain of salt. He apparently doesn't understand that learning curves exist.

I second using a textbook. I recommend Assimil or Genki.

What are your immediate goals for learning Japanese? What is the most important part for you and do you have any future goals that rely on Japanese?

I am also a beginner so I'm not sure I have room to talk, but I'm going to anyway.
My first question would be, how many kanji per sentence are there? I find I can't remember readings when the card has more than 2 kanji at this point. It could be you just have too much right now. Also short sentences are really, really good. You might think "This is too easy" I know I did. But it might be good to have it "too easy" at least for a while in the beginning.
Also, I would recommend vocab cards too. They have been helping me.



Oh poo poo. Grammar sucks, why do that first? (Unless of course you like it, then I apologize. But I heartily dislike it.) Textbooks are good only up to a certain point. IMHO
I finally asked my mom how she started teaching me English and it's really helped me. A lot of it was just learning basic vocab. Colors, shapes, numbers, house hold items. Of course as a toddler you wouldn't learn sentences necessarily, but being older I think that's ok. I found that "studying" grammar was useless for me. Oh yeah, I might be able to tell you how to conjugate something, but I don't really know a lot of words to conjugate! lol
Of course, I hate grammar, so feel free to ignore all this. lol Also ignore this if by "textbook" something other than grammar was meant. lol Cause they are good for some things. I use them for vocab and sentence structure. (e.g. I know the sentence この犬は危ないです。 So when I learn new vocab I can then say この猫はかわいいです。 And that's not grammar. I could give a flying flip about what does what in that sentence. I know what it means and that's all that matters for now.) I know this has probably been hashed out here many times, so I'll shut up now. lol

Edit: Also if the OP's really set on doing AJATT no amount of fast talking is gonna get them to use a textbook. It's never worked with me.

short sentences and then you won't feel it's a problem. 1-3 kanji max should do it. Even if it's so easy, still put it in the srs

K I'm gonna post without waiting for a response:

MY goals and plan moving forward:

- Conversations a.k.a. Listening and Speaking
- I don't read in English so why would this change in Japanese .. but yes I'll get into that.

There is no golden method to learning and everybody is different. I've read AJATT front and back and there's a lot of stuff in AJATT itself that is contradictory to itself. Take the Kanji card example it's true in the beginning he says Kanji on front Kana and meaning on back and that's great... if you want to read. If you are like me and value the interaction of two people you "should" (if you want) set it up with a Kana sentence on the front and Kanji on back. When you see the Kana you write down the sentence via ( insert method here, tablet, pen and paper, etc. ) and then click show answer and see how your Kanji compares to the Kanji on the back card.

That way you are practicing "listening" because real conversations don't have subtitles. If you can get your hands on Audio files then all the more power to ya.

Khatz explains that the reading on the front is how he is learning chinese and admits it could work for Japanese too.

Khatz also list a few resources to use such as All About Japanese Particles which is a good book that you could pick up cheap. Has Kana/ Kanji / english translation.

Get the sentence deck in Anki of Tae Kim's Grammar for good foundation of grammar sentences.

I am reading even though I don't do that in English. I do this for practice of Kanji as well as exposing myself to grammar without studying them. However anything I read is put into Kana and flipped for my SRS. I plan to take about 10-15 sentences a day from "the wild" and add to my sentence deck while grinding KO2001 sentences ( which are harder/longer than core sentences )

So I'm more or less doing a Hybrid of AJATT and KO2001 with AJATT philosphies sprinkled on top.

AJATT steps:

Kanji - check
Kana - check
Starter Books (E-J starter dictionary, All About Particles, Music Lyrics )- Check
Tae Kim's Guide - Check
Native Sources -Check
Done.

KO2001:

Sentences (reverse for Kana front ) - Check
Done.

( Oh and I Loudspeaker all the sentences ) ( I say them out loud. )

@apirx

I had the same problem.

I stopped srsing sentences and I did the Movie Method.
Took me a while, but it was worth it.

Now I have absolutely no problem srsing a lot of new sentences each day

For remembering the readings, it makes a big difference what order you do the sentences. See the "kore" thread: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5091

The beginning is extremely hard. I remember that much.

Any words I fail, I write down on a piece of paper along with the readings.

I powered through it, working very slowly and methodically and eventually it got easier. However, you can also try rearranged sentences where there's only one new reading per sentence... the "i+1" theory talked about here.

I don't know what grammar is in Core, so I hope you're not get confused there as well.

kainzero Wrote:The beginning is extremely hard. I remember that much.

Any words I fail, I write down on a piece of paper along with the readings.

I powered through it, working very slowly and methodically and eventually it got easier. However, you can also try rearranged sentences where there's only one new reading per sentence... the "i+1" theory talked about here.

I don't know what grammar is in Core, so I hope you're not get confused there as well.

I remember in the beginning I didn't write much. As it got tedious, although recently I'm back to writing more. I have a separate deck for testing recall of kanji via reading.

When i started sentences i too found it very difficult and could see a new card 5 or more times before i remembered any of it. after a little while i started cheating by making duplicates of the regular cards that included readings.

ie. a REGULAR card would be
front: sentence written with kanji/kana
rear: translation, kanji readings

a CHEAT card:
front: sentence written with kanji/kana, kanji readings (or furigana with ruby if that's easier for you)
rear: translation

this meant that i could easily pass the cheat cards so long as i knew the meaning of the sentence which i would pick up pretty much first time and if the cards were viewed in order i would get the regular card immediately after the cheat which would be fresh in my head so i could pass it too. i would normally score the regular card as hard and it would be back the next day.

in the short term, you're messing with the way anki is meant to work for you and you're doing twice as many reviews to handle the cheat cards, but in the long run the cheat cards rapidly disappear as they're always easy, you get to see the sentence ~3 times in your short term memory before you do a review with an interval of more than a few days and if you're one of those people (like me) who are discouraged by fails it reduces the stress and you get through the new cards quickly.

i tried to think of it as a card preview rather than a cheat - i get to see tomorrows new REGULAR card twice today before i have to do it for real... or something like that...

i think i did this for a few months and then i didn't need it anymore i guess because seeing a kanji and knowing it's reading just becomes more natural after a while.

things that worked for me where.
1.Include less kanji
2.Short sentences
3.Timeboxing
4.Doing very little(do not burn yourself out)
5.Srs basic grammar via sentences(so you learn the grammar usages without even noticing it. I.e. without "Actively" studying it)
6.Give it time, you will suck in the beginning/it will be very hard. But keep at it and you'll succeed and eventually love it(I hope). We where all horrible in the beginning, so no sweating it if you don't get what you put into the srs. It will all make sense if you keep learning/immersing.
7.Maintain. I've figured out how to learn very well. It's quite simple and we all know of it. It's called "daily" work. Therefore, in order for the srs to work it's work on you. You have to do it daily.
8.Have fun, add random things in there that would interest you. No need to pure grammar/vocab all day long. Add random short context (from music,game scripts,movie scripts,etc)

Yes, learning kanji readings has a steep learning curve. I can assure you that it does get easier just like all reading/listening/understanding. I'm SRS'ing my way through Kanji in Context now, and I'm typing in sentences far ahead of where I'm actually at with SRS so that if there's a time crunch in the next few weeks I'll still be able to add new sentences every day by simply unsuspending the cards.

When I first started typing things in from the book, it was extremely difficult because there was very little furigana. I was looking up lots of kanji simply to know how to type them so they'd show up properly when I pressed the space bar. I'm up to inputting lesson 46 out of 143, and it's to the point where I know at least one reading for most kanji. I can type in about 100 sentences per hour(2-3 lessons) now whereas before it was pulling teeth just to be able to input one of the lessons in an hour.

It gets easier, and it gets easier exponentially. Your brain starts picking up on the patterns in the language, and if the material you're working from has been constructed in the right way then there will be a smooth progression from one lesson to the next. This is why people are suggesting things like textbooks for you. It's so that you can SRS from something that has a proper progression to it so that you can learn the basics easier.

The order you study things in makes a big difference which you should already understand if you've been following the Heisig method for kanji. The same goes for learning how to read kanji/learn vocab. Trust me, before you know it you'll be shocking yourself left and right about how many correct educated guesses you'll be making for kanji readings. It's to the point where I'll try to guess a reading to a kanji I've never seen before, and I'm able to get it on my second or third try now. I only ever have to look up one or two new kanji per lesson. The rest are pretty apparent.

I know this looks crazy, but maybe try this?

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid130010

And yes, I know it's really long and somewhat complicated. It's actually not that bad for complexness in practice though.

apirx Wrote:It just feels impossible for me to do multiple thousand sentences this way, when even 10 new sentences feel harder than learning 100 new kanji.

You are definitely not alone. Learning the kanji using the Heisig method is a completely different type of learning than internalizing words and grammar with the sentence method. You can't expect the same speed and the exact same techniques to work for both.

Here is my experience after about 2700 sentences:

When approached as a complete beginner, the Core 2000 should better be called Frustration 2000%. It feels like some evil experiment to torture misguided students of Japanese. The sentences for the most trivial words contain some other words that don't even make the top 12000 list, the difficulty of the included grammar is essentially random, and there is insufficient repetition between the sentences. I won't even go into the iKnow interface, which occasionally manages to greatly amplify the already tremendous frustration.

Once you have a decent basic vocabulary and you are familiar with the grammar, core 2000 becomes a useful resource for listening and reading drills. But not before that. (disclaimer: of course it's possible to start with core2000, if you totally ignore the frustration/accomplishment ratio - but maximizing this ratio is what AJATT is all about)

Find a better source of sentences, one that offers a collection with gradually increasing vocabulary and grammar usage. I found JapanesePod 101, UBJG and Japanese the Kanji Way to be very useful. After a few hundred sentences you can branch out to more native media, such as children's manga (Yotubato, Doraemon, etc.) as well as dictionary explanation and example sentences.

Also, don't be afraid to include several sentences for the same word (of course if it's a very common word, it will be coincidentally included in a lot of your sentences anyway). You only start to really internalize a word after you've seen it in a variety of sentences.

The other trick that worked for me is to initially ignore kanji readings altogether, and concentrate on word readings. Learn the sentences and words as a whole (shadowing is the least stressful technique, see Alexander Arguelles' Youtube videos). Only enter the sentences to anki once you've shadowed them a few times, and reviews will be a piece of cake. If you don't have audio for a sentence, you can use a cram deck to practice in Anki, or just fail the card 5-10 times until you remember (it's OK to fail cards, and if you fail them too many times, it's OK to delete them as well .

Your brain will (consciously or unconsciously) figure out the kanji readings after a few repetitions. You can even artificially boost the number of recurrences for the kanji by kanjifying words that would typically be written in hiragana.

I hope this helps...