kainzero Wrote:i woke up early to input new japanese cards in anki
i studied during lunch break at work
i went home and did a 2nd review session

then depending on the day of the week, i either went to an SF4 event or practiced online, OR i went to the gym. on the weekends i vegetated.

This sounds like a good plan. I think I might just give it a shot.

aphasiac Wrote:I disagree about not being enough time in the day though. When I started Rtk1, I got up 30mins early every morning, and did it all before work. If you're motivated enough you'll find the time - conversely, if you're not motivated, you'll always find other things to do / excuses.

You make a good point. I think my issue is maintaining motivation. I didn't get to 1000+ cards without motivation, but I definitely lost it at around that point. I'll start up again, and I'll probably do well for a while, but if this attempt is like any of my others, in a month or so I'll simply not study at all and never resume.

I'm actually a little disappointed. If I had stuck with rtk at pretty much any rate without stopping, I would probably have gotten to where I would like to be a long time ago.

You could try setting a goal of doing 100 cards a day. This way you should finish in 11 days (almost a week).

Well I think if you'll try to do it this way, you'll end up finishing it in 30 days (the expected loss)

But hey, 1 month is better than 1 year...

Just survive those couple of weeks and move on.(if you want)

jettyke Wrote:mlorenz, how many do you speak?

Five to varying degrees of fluency, but three of them I learned as a child. I chose to learn Japanese because I wanted something more "challenging" than the ones I already knew, which only goes to show that:
a) I know a challenge when I see one, and
b) I have no sense of proportion.

JimmySeal Wrote:

jettyke Wrote:I've never heard this thought [The more languages you speak, the easier the next ones become.]. What makes you say this?

Barry Farber, who has studied 25 languages, says this in his book.

As JimmySeal pointed out, I'm not the only one to say this, or to believe it. Farber has way more experience with languages and goes into it in some detail, but the most obvious way that knowing more languages helps is when you're studying related languages - so if you already speak Korean, you'll pick up Japanese a lot faster than if you only speak English (same for learning Spanish if you already speak French, and so on). But as JimmySeal also said, part of it is just knowing how to learn a language (the process). If you've never gone through learning a language before, then you're not just studying the language itself, you're also "learning how to learn" a language. If you have learned one before, then you've got that whole meta thing behind you already and the workload is less.

vgambit Wrote:I think my issue is maintaining motivation. I didn't get to 1000+ cards without motivation...I'm actually a little disappointed. If I had stuck with rtk at pretty much any rate without stopping, I would probably have gotten to where I would like to be a long time ago.

The trick is, don't beat yourself up because of what you "should have, could have" done. You got to over 1000 cards? So you're already halfway there! And who says you have to get to where you want in record time, or whatever? It's all in how you look at it.

Plus there's at least one motivational thread around here somewhere...

mlorenz Wrote:

jettyke Wrote:mlorenz, how many do you speak?

Five to varying degrees of fluency, but three of them I learned as a child. I chose to learn Japanese because I wanted something more "challenging" than the ones I already knew, which only goes to show that:
a) I know a challenge when I see one, and
b) I have no sense of proportion.

It makes sense.

But I have one interesting experience that would make it seem like it isn't true at first ---->

German is my 5th language and I've been going to German classes for 3 years now (3 hours every week).

A week ago I went to a clothes shop and went to a cabin to try clothes on. When I left the cabin there were German people standing there on my way. They were talking to each other and didn't notice that I was trying to get through.

So at first I was thinking: "hmm...how's excuse me in German?"...then I was standing there for 10 seconds trying to remember it but it didn't come to my mind. After those 10 seconds I gave up and said :"Excuse me " in English. What a pity

Well actually I already know the anwser to this problem: Classes aren't enough.

German for 3 years and I can't even remember "Entschuldigen Sie bitte" or something?

...
This just proves that yes, actually experience makes you distinguish bad methods from the one's that are more efficient. Not that my German classes were that bad, but it seems that even 315 hours of classes wasn't enough for me to say "Excuse me"
edit: No, actually I think it's 236 hours. + I skipped some, so it would be about 200 hours.(not counting homework etc)

------

But I don't think that the fact that one knows multiple languages makes such a drastic difference. Maybe takes 5% less time.

I went to French and German classes for 3-5 hours a week each for 4-5 years, am I allowed to count those even though I forgot almost everything?

Ah, if only I'd kept them up, I could impress everyone by saying I'm a quadrilingual. But I guess that's proof in itself that the end goal of being able to speak random extra languages isn't motivating enough for language learning. You have to enjoy the road of learning itself.

jettyke Wrote:[But I don't think that the fact that one knows multiple languages makes such a drastic difference. Maybe takes 5% less time.

Granted, having studied a language before may not be a huge help, but it's still good. Even if we assume only 5%, that's still 1 less day out of 20 days of study - and I think 5% might be underestimating the effect.

But the biggest plus to knowing multiple languages is when vocabulary and grammar overlap. For example, I can't speak Italian, but I can read a fair bit of it because I do speak French. On the other hand, when I studied Japanese in Tokyo my Korean classmates were flying ahead , even though I'm a decent student and we had started at the same level. At first I wondered why, but then I found out how similar Korean grammar is to Japanese (and some vocabulary, apparently), and then I didn't feel quite so stupid anymore.

mlorenz Wrote:The trick is, don't beat yourself up because of what you "should have, could have" done. You got to over 1000 cards? So you're already halfway there! And who says you have to get to where you want in record time, or whatever? It's all in how you look at it.

yep.
i've taken large "breaks" where i just don't add any new cards, sometimes as long as two weeks, and i just do anki reviews and do no natural japanese. it cuts my review time down after a while, as i start doing only 30 cards a day or something which i can wrap up in 10 minutes. then when i'm ready, i start adding cards again, playing games, watching drama or reading books, etc.

i guess it balances itself with those times when i feel extra motivated and i add more cards than usual.

jettyke Wrote:Well actually I already know the anwser to this problem: Classes aren't enough.

German for 3 years and I can't even remember "Entschuldigen Sie bitte" or something?

that's not a fair assessment because it depends on what you study.

for example there's a lot of words i know in japanese that would be considered complex, and there's a lot of simple conversational phrases/adjectives/adverbs/situations that i don't know because i've never studied them.

I didn't really read everything, but here's my take on things.

With 100% certainty I can say you are doing the right thing.

Having been where you are now, I can say for certain that taking care of your financial well being for the next 5, 10 or 15 years right now will be a good investment of your time when compared to Japanese. Often when we are younger we underestimate the value that having a decent income or having income that builds even when we don't work. It certainly makes a difference when we decide to take the time off from work for things like Japanese.

Actually, to be honest I am going through a similar sort of life change right now. Recently, I studied 5 hours a day, day after day, and worked crazy hours for around 1 year. I look back at my mistake in not balancing out my life and pursuing things more evenly with a controlled focus on those things that were most important at the time (family, my hobbies, relationships) and cringe a little. I now put a lot more time into make sure I don't do just one or two things in my life, but lots. A man should be more than just one or two things. His life should be filled with an abundance of interests and projects. (On a side note, by cutting down and throwing my time into the many things I find interesting my Japanese has skyrocketed.)

I guess what I am trying to say in this post is that you should look at what you want to achieve in life and do things related to those things on a daily basis in small ways that gets you there in a realistic long-term time frame (an extended time frame is such a valuable thing, especially when you are young). If Japanese or anything else needs to be cut off or reduced then so be it. Pursue those things that make you happiest and you will be happier for it!

P.s., Please don't take my example from my life as something you should do. I think, in your case, you would be better off doing something similar to me last year and focusing on only one or two things and seeing how that goes for you (just ensure that both make you happy or benefit your future in terms of 'free time', 'financial freedom' or 'long term happiness'.) Good luck!

Thanks for the insight, Cranks. I'm actually moving soon, closer to my job, which means less time spent driving and more time spent doing other things.

Well if your original goal was to learn Japanese because it would allow you to work in Japan, but you no longer plan on doing so, then quitting and focusing on what's important right now is probably the best course of action. I'm in university for a biology degree right now myself, but I find myself hardly spending any time on that and instead focusing completely on Japanese. I'm purely learning Japanese so I'll be able to read/watch raws of the entertainment I most enjoy. I'm in a bit of a luxury position though, because I've always been good at academics and I can easily pass all my exams by studying at the last minute. If it weren't for that I'd probably have to adjust my priorities, like you're doing now.

Kuma01 Wrote:I've always been good at academics and I can easily pass all my exams by studying at the last minute. If it weren't for that I'd probably have to adjust my priorities, like you're doing now.

1 What makes you be good at academics?

2 How can you pass exams by studying at the last minute?

jettyke Wrote:

Kuma01 Wrote:I've always been good at academics and I can easily pass all my exams by studying at the last minute. If it weren't for that I'd probably have to adjust my priorities, like you're doing now.

1 What makes you be good at academics?

2 How can you pass exams by studying at the last minute?

I'm assuming you're asking if I have some kind of trick, I don't really. I just open my books and make sure there's nothing to distract me and then I cram for several consecutive hours. If anything I think it's mostly that I seem to have an inherent propensity towards concentrating on a single task to the exclusion of everything else. I've been called an 'absent minded professor' more than once.

I wish you could cram mathematical intuition.

dizmox Wrote:I wish you could cram mathematical intuition.

As a math & cs major graduate, I'll advise that cramming for high level mathematics courses gets pretty trivial with practice.