Asriel Wrote:

Coreth Wrote:Thank god, you're the first people to agree with me about that. You might think it's normal or whatever, but most people on forums yell at me and tell me to memorize readings. Then they leave me in the wake of their 60,000 post aura and leave. How can I disagree when they have that many posts?...
... talking on forums helps clear the confusion for me sometimes though. Getting people's general views on stuff. I've gotten a lot of replies already.. this is definitely the forum I'm sticking with from now on. I've tried others and they usually just yell at me.

1. The internet sucks at learning languages
There's so many abandoned blogs, ghost forums, post count/reputation whores out there, and everyone claims to be so great. Most of them are beginner/early immediate. Don't take the internet's advice. Take bits and pieces and find what really works. For you.

This. I think most of the people who harp on about how essential learning readings are are still just learning readings. Kind of like the overemphasis people who are doing RTK (and *only* RTK) place on RTK.

I've never memorised a reading separately. The closest i came to it was glancing at the pure groups in RTK2 (which admittedly was pretty helpful). Never SRSed them or anything like that.

IMHO, don't practice skills that aren't helpful to the language.

1) Learning how to write a sentence (the aim of the game, but i+N can make this hard)
2) Learning how to read a sentence (the aim of the game, but i+N can make this hard)
3) Learning how to write a word in isolation (good way of breaking down 1)
4) Learning how to read a word in isolation (good way of breaking down 2, problems with some words that have multiple readings depending on context)
5) Learning how to write a kanji in isolation (moderately helpful, kanji only have a single writing, helps with 3, but RTK keywords can be frustrating)
6) Learning how to read a kanji in isolation in the sense of coming up with a list of possible readings (more or less useless)

RTK is borderline. If you are aiming for quick progression in the language (heisig's argument that you're going to need to know all the common kanji anyway), then quickly completing RTK is useful. If you're going to spend years on it... then maybe a re-think is in order, because you're not learning japanese.

If you have some method to learn the most common onyomi of all the common kanji in the space of a month or two... then maybe spending time on isolated kanji readings could help. Honestly though, i found onyomi compounds extremely easy to memorise as entire words, so i can't really see how i'd have saved any time by studying readings separately first.

There is a reason native japanese people think in terms of kanji readings: usually, they already know the word! If they've got a short list of readings in their head for each kanji, they can cycle through them until they hit one that clicks with an actual word. The onyomi/kunyomi breakdown helps with being able to guess which one to try first. This is not how most Japanese learners learn the language, and therefore doesn't have the same benefit. If you learned the language to fluency in terms of speaking and listening first, and only then tried to learn the writing system, readings may make sense.

I downloaded it, trying it out.

How do you type in the intervals, I don't see any spots.

overture2112 Wrote:

dizmox Wrote:

Coreth Wrote:I have to stop and let it get down to under 200 and stuff.

You're getting 200 reviews a day from adding 5 a day? That... shouldn't happen :S

Yes, I'm curious, what's your accuracy if you don't mind saying?

I miss maybe 1 or 2 out of the hundred or so I do every day. Mostly just because of sloppyness or accidentally reading 'akeru' as 'ageru' or something.
I think it's less about accuracy and more about my intervals. I always pick the hardest interval. I want to make sure I remember the word far into the future. It takes me months before I start getting a 3-months-until-next-time interval for that card. I remember all of my cards 100% though, I never forget them.

Also that's 10 cards a day since I make a front side and a back side (A Kanji version and a Kana version with meaning and the opposite form always on the back).

5 a day is fine for me. I'm not going to learn more just for the sake of speed, the world isn't gonna end if I don't learn Japanese in a year. I'm fine with getting progressively better over five.

And like I said in a previous post.. I write the backside of my cards every single time, so 200 takes me a long time to do (well, an hour), I don't want to do that many a day. I like quality of learning versus quantity.

Coreth Wrote:I think it's less about accuracy and more about my intervals. I always pick the hardest interval. I want to make sure I remember the word far into the future. It takes me months before I start getting a 3-months-until-next-time interval for that card. I remember all of my cards 100% though, I never forget them.

This is the price you pay if you want 100% recollection. You are getting tons of reviews because of your policy of always hitting hard. Anki was not designed to work that way (the guideline given is 80-95% recollection of mature cards).

Personally, while i'm not terribly in a rush, i'd rather know 90% of a big number than 100% of a small number. Words i don't know hold me back waaay more than words i should know but space out on.

zigmonty Wrote:

Coreth Wrote:I think it's less about accuracy and more about my intervals. I always pick the hardest interval. I want to make sure I remember the word far into the future. It takes me months before I start getting a 3-months-until-next-time interval for that card. I remember all of my cards 100% though, I never forget them.

This is the price you pay if you want 100% recollection. You are getting tons of reviews because of your policy of always hitting hard. Anki was not designed to work that way (the guideline given is 80-95% recollection of mature cards).

Personally, while i'm not terribly in a rush, i'd rather know 90% of a big number than 100% of a small number. Words i don't know hold me back waaay more than words i should know but space out on.

Yes. Coreth: I seriously recommend trying this for a week:

Wrong -> 1
Wrong in some trivial way or correct but it just by the skin of your neck -> 2
Otherwise -> hit space

Note: Hitting space equates to '3', unless your last review failed or it's a new card, in which case it does '2'.

I agree that there's no sense in rushing but there is joy to be had from learning more stuff and I know that I'm certainly happier knowing 90% of easily 10x as many words than if I were to be super strict and shoot for near 100%. I guess it would be one thing if I was forced to learn Japanese, but since I do it because I find joy in it, I strive to constantly improve my learning efficiency.

KMDES Wrote:I downloaded it, trying it out.

How do you type in the intervals, I don't see any spots.

It's in the groups setting page.

This isn't really that big of a deal, I'll be done with like every word in 5 or 6 years (5x30x12x6=10800), and I'm already done with a sizable chunk. That's fine for me, really. I still have joy in learning Japanese, I think I would have less joy if I rushed and did 50 a day so I could get done as fast as I could. I like sleeping soundly knowing that I know every one of my words. I also don't like making subjective decisions like the difficulty of a card.

I'm perfectly fine with it. That's also why I like Japanese Recall, because it gives you 5 a day in a nice order and stuff. It's nice, easy, smooth sailing for me, really.

Do you really want it to take 5 or 6 years before you can start using (conversing and listening to and reading authentic content) what you're learning? Also 10800 is actually not all that much. It's more than enough for you to more or less stop studying in any formal way but any educated native is going to know perhaps 5 times that amount, depending how you count things.

Don't be too hung up on your vocabulary count or forcing yourself to remember vast amounts of information, instead focus on increasing what you can do in the language and how well you can do it. It's worth noting here that kids start reading and are functionally fluent long before they acquire an adult vocabulary. In other words just keep reading/listening and conversing and your ability (and vocabulary) will improve as a result.

I'll give you an analogy. Think about when you drive or walk through an unfamiliar part of town. The first time you generally need to consult a map or ask for directions. The second or third time you might need to reconsult the map but you'll have a general idea where you are. After that you'll be able to navigate on autopilot. You learn to recognise all the necessary features of the environment, landmarks etc without ever having to memorise these things before hand.

nadiatims Wrote:Do you really want it to take 5 or 6 years before you can start using (conversing and listening to and reading authentic content) what you're learning? Also 10800 is actually not all that much. It's more than enough for you to more or less stop studying in any formal way but any educated native is going to know perhaps 5 times that amount, depending how you count things.

Don't be too hung up on your vocabulary count or forcing yourself to remember vast amounts of information, instead focus on increasing what you can do in the language and how well you can do it. It's worth noting here that kids start reading and are functionally fluent long before they acquire an adult vocabulary. In other words just keep reading/listening and conversing and your ability (and vocabulary) will improve as a result.

I'll give you an analogy. Think about when you drive or walk through an unfamiliar part of town. The first time you generally need to consult a map or ask for directions. The second or third time you might need to reconsult the map but you'll have a general idea where you are. After that you'll be able to navigate on autopilot. You learn to recognise all the necessary features of the environment, landmarks etc without ever having to memorise these things before hand.

Yeah well there's more than one way to learn a language, and I'm comfortable with mine. 5 or 6 years is fine for me. Also I do read and stuff, I'm not just memorizing vocab. This is just building my core vocab that I won't forget, I know more vocab than I have cards. I read and watch stuff all the time trying to improve my Japanese. The only thing I'm saying is I don't want to do 50 cards a day. I like doing a lower amount of cards and actually trying to apply my knowledge, which is what you were saying to do. So yeah.

I mean in one half you say to not worry so much about vocabulary and instead focus on applying your knowledge, but then in the other half you yell at me for not learning 50 cards a day. So which is it? I like my methods just let me be.

nadiatims Wrote:Also 10800 is actually not all that much.

Yes. If you check out my morphology thread, I point out that knowing all of core6k only gets you 35% of the words in some example anime I sampled.

Coreth Wrote:I think I would have less joy if I rushed and did 50 a day so I could get done as fast as I could.

Who said anything about getting done faster? I rush as fast as I can because I can't wait to see the next new card. I continuously find myself in the predicament of half wanting to sit there and squee over how awesome the sentence I just read was and half wanting to quickly get to the next so I can remember an even more-awesome scene.

Being "done" is when I grudgingly force myself to stop for sleep/work.

Coreth Wrote:I like sleeping soundly knowing that I know every one of my words. I also don't like making subjective decisions like the difficulty of a card.

One could sleep soundly knowing that they know every one of their mature words (and probably 80-90% of the ones they just learned that day). It's functionally equivalent after some time passes.

If you don't like judging difficulty then just always hit space unless you failed. It's not like that strategy is far worse than others.

Coreth Wrote:I mean in one half you say to not worry so much about vocabulary and instead focus on applying your knowledge, but then in the other half you yell at me for not learning 50 cards a day. So which is it? I like my methods just let me be.

Yell? Maybe some hints of confusion since I think it's just hard for us to emphasize with someone not sharing our crazed zeal...

overture2112 Wrote:I rush as fast as I can because I can't wait to see the next new card. I continuously find myself in the predicament of half wanting to sit there and squee over how awesome the sentence I just read was and half wanting to quickly get to the next so I can remember an even more-awesome scene.

And I don't do that.

overture2112 Wrote:One could sleep soundly knowing that they know every one of their mature words (and probably 80-90% of the ones they just learned that day). It's functionally equivalent after some time passes.

One could. But not me.

overture2112 Wrote:If you don't like judging difficulty then just always hit space unless you failed. It's not like that strategy is far worse than others.

I don't like doing that.

I don't get why you guys are so horrified about this. I'm doing 5 a day instead of 35... big deal. Are you just shocked that someone is doing something at a slightly differently interval than you?

@Coreth
I'm not attacking your method, just giving you my advice, which is what you were asking for in creating this thread. I certainly never 'yelled' at you...

Anyway if you're reading and listening as you say, then I think you can afford to be more optimistic about your speed of vocabulary acquisition because whether you're consciously aware of it or not, I assure you that you are learning much more than 5 words a day. It might not seem like this because the kind of natural (as opposed to forced) language acquisition approach I'm talking about is a slow process. You don't get a new word, learn it and declare yourself finished, rinse and repeat 10000 times. Instead you let the overall process of learning one word occur over a much longer time, days/weeks/months and stop caring about forgetting. This may seem unintuitive, but in fact you spend less time overall on individual words in the long run because you don't care about for forgetting them and therefore don't waste any time on cramming style short term memorisation hacks. In other words you can devote less time to more words. And what better way than reading/listening? Now obviously you do need to understand what you're reading or listening to. There does need to be meaning to attach to all this vocabulary you're familiarising yourself with, and that's why I suggest reading/listening with crutches (translations, dictionaries etc) as necessary. Where the SRS comes into this if you choose to use it, is that it can give you high speed exposure with meaning to a high volume of words, to give you that point of first contact or initial familiarity that can be helpful in 'really' learning them in your reading/listening/conversation later. You say 5 words a day is a nice comfortable pace, but i'd say it's small enough to be almost negligible on it's own and therefore completely unnecessary. If you find 5 new words a day is all you can handle in the SRS then I'd suggest you're using it wrongly, i.e spending too much time (creation and/or review) on individual cards.

I think you underestimate the spacing effect. The whole point of the system is to remember better by increasing the intervals. On the other hand, choosing 'hard' each time just makes the cards pile up. I did this too... and honestly, it wasn't that great.

Then again, I wouldn't try to use it for building active vocabulary. I'm not sure you can 'force' that anyway; it happens through random osmosis for me. I just use it as a sort of primer for passive vocabulary so that I'll have to do less lookups in the wild.

Oh, and try not to be so defensive. People are trying to give you advice, not attack you. Naturally, this is a public forum; people have conflicting views and opinions.

astendra Wrote:I think you underestimate the spacing effect. The whole point of the system is to remember better by increasing the intervals. On the other hand, choosing 'hard' each time just makes the cards pile up. I did this too... and honestly, it wasn't that great.

Then again, I wouldn't try to use it for building active vocabulary. I'm not sure you can 'force' that anyway; it happens through random osmosis for me. I just use it as a sort of primer for passive vocabulary so that I'll have to do less lookups in the wild.

Oh, and try not to be so defensive. People are trying to give you advice, not attack you. Naturally, this is a public forum; people have conflicting views and opinions.

I see anki as maintaining minimum exposure. The whole optimal intervals thing is a bit of a joke considering anki isn't the only exposure to japanese i get. Just because anki isn't going to show me for 2 years, doesn't mean that's the earliest i'll see it!

What it does do is ensure that, if my reading tastes change, the vocab i learned doesn't slip away. When projects change at work, and i'm stuck with a whole new set of vocab to learn, it's nice to have anki there to ensure the rest is still simmering away on a back burner. When I get a project back in the original area, boom, all that vocab is still there.

I'll never need SRS to remember the word 人. I see that word dozens of times a day.

That's pretty much what I do as well, nowadays. I found the spacing helpful when starting out, however, since it allowed me to get past the intermediate vocab-lacking stage relatively quickly and efficiently. Either way, my point was to point out that marking each review as 'hard' is kind of counter-productive.

astendra Wrote:That's pretty much what I do as well, nowadays. I found the spacing helpful when starting out, however, since it allowed me to get past the intermediate vocab-lacking stage relatively quickly and efficiently. Either way, my point was to point out that marking each review as 'hard' is kind of counter-productive.

Yes... there's a difference between being overexposed to vocab through real reading and listening and being overexposed to it through excessive SRS reviews.

Still, if that's how Coreth wants to learn, more power to them. I don't see any point in us all ganging up on them.

Actually if you want some degree of reading fluency you'll need to aim for around 20-30k, which would take around 14 years if you only learnt 5 words a day. :S

If you consider that this is around the average vocabulary of the average 14 year old, I guess that's roughly the pace that Japanese children learn I suppose... but I'd hate to put off the fun part of the language for 14 years.

dizmox Wrote:Actually if you want some degree of reading fluency you'll need to aim for around 20-30k, which would take around 14 years :S

If you consider that this is around the average vocabulary of the average 14 year old, I guess that's roughly the pace that Japanese children learn I suppose... but I'd hate to put off the fun part of the language for 14 years.

I seriously doubt that. English isn't my native language and I never even put in any conscious effort to pick up vocab yet I can read books and articles on scientific topics, that are beyond the grasp of the average native English speaker, without any problems. Now obviously Japanese isn't the same as English, but I'm pretty sure it won't take me 14 years to be able to read fluently in Japanese. I honestly think you care too much about numbers and statistics, you should just practice reading instead of worrying about how many words you know.

Sorry, there was a mistake in my post, I meant to say "which would take 14 years if you limited yourself to learning only 5 words a day". >< Obviously you were learning more than that through osmosis.

When I only knew ~6000 words, my reading ability was terrible. Every other sentence I'd run into something I didn't understand. I don't really pick up words by osmosis very quickly and so I have a tendency to add everything I learn to Anki, whose deck statistic feature leads me to draw conclusions. I read a lot but view learn wordlists at the beginning stages of language acquisition to be a useful tool.

Coreth Wrote:Just slightly off topic, am I the only one who doesn't memorize readings for Kanji? I always just learn the words by themselves, and then the readings for Kanji just sort of fall into place. This has never been a problem for me. Like I can spout off every single "reading" for 生 without even needing them on my flash card for it, since I know most of the words that use it. That Kanji is read like more than five different ways in different words.. so even if I had memorized them, what good would it do, if I saw a word I didn't know that used that Kanji, I wouldn't even know which reading it was using in that word anyway. And I remember all of the different ways it's read from my other words so... yeah.

I've never seen a single other person do that though, they're always obsessed with the readings. I say just screw Onyomi and Kunyomi and whatever else, and just memorize the stroke orders and the actual vocab. Then again... I'm a beginner, so I might not know what I'm talking about... >.>

The overwhelming consensus on this forum (which doesn't make it objectively right, but I agree with it) has long been to learn words, not readings, to the point that you'll find a minority of those who even bother with, say, RTK 2, as opposed to moving on to just learning vocabulary + readings together, so.

I'm with Nestor on this one. Readings are difficult to memorize and it's easy to learn words, which are immediately more useful.

One thing I would like to add is that you do need to distinguish between recognition of a word visually and auditorily. These are almost so different for me that you could consider them to be two different vocabularies. Of course, some lucky people can see or hear a word and create a relationship to a certain meaning, but for me it's both or one or the other.

What this means in practice is my favorite saying: You train for what you need (a Cranks original). If you are only able to recognize a word visually only, but your goal is conversational ability, a problem exists. You need to ensure that when you start out you have a clear goal in mind to start with and that you do things that lead to that goal. If reading is a focus, then SRS words with whatever visual information you need. BUT, if you want to speak and understand sooner (a conversation over Skype, for instance, will use equal parts of both, so both skills are important) then the above reading approach will be a waste of time - this is especially important for those who live in Japan, where the need for speaking and listening ability is much, much higher due to necessity. An approach where you hear the content and learn it in that medium would be much more efficient and beneficial (listening based cards, transcripts with furigana [at a minimum you should learn Katakana and Hiragana, but Kanji can be RTKed or picked up along the way as needed], and so on. Production vocabulary could also follow speaking based approach ("training the vocabulary in the medium you wish to use it", perhaps - achieving good passive recognition and active use vocabularies are quite challenging, so be creative).

Well, I wrote a lot. I hope I gave the OP something to consider.

50 a day is too fast, 35 is just right, 20 is ok, 10 is slow, 5 is way... too... slow. I know you're happy with the pace but will you be happy with the results? I mean... fair enough if you've got all the time in the world but Japanese doesn't really start coming alive as a language until you have about 10k vocab and even then it's still very patchy. I guess what I'm trying to say is that... certainly for me 10k was roughly the start of Japanese. Aiming for 10k over 5 years I think is aiming too low.

My retention rate is sitting on about 82% which is ok. Not perfect, not great but good. I find that every 3000 words I learn my listening and speaking makes a noticeable improvement. Accuracy isn't so important with vocab - as long as you can recognize the word when it comes up again, that's all you need. Even then, there are plenty of words that you might be able to recognise it when reading but if it came up in a dorama you would miss it. It's something I don't think you can avoid. I find that sometimes I'll come across a word that I know that I know and won't be able to remember it... just look it up again and reset it in Anki and boom that usually solves the problem. The sheer amount of vocab (30k ~ 40k) needed to truly function on par with a Japanese native is why everyone says 5 a day is too slow. I say you could drop the number down to 20k and still live a decent life but not to the full extent as your mother tongue. Minimum 15k if you just wanna have fun and never do anything serious with the language.

For me the magic is in understanding and engaging in Japanese. Even though I loved studying Japanese and had lots of fun... the first year and a half sucked in that special way that only not understanding Japanese fully can suck. Tonnes of vocab changed all that. My experience of going from 2.5k in Jan 2010 to 12.5k Jan 2011 taught me that it's all about vocab. It's not just a numbers game. I know we all talk about it a lot but that's because there is real weight behind these words.

I know a lot of people in real life who are learning Japanese. All different ages, abilities, length of time studying - all different combinations of those things. Time and time again, the ones that are the best have massive vocabularies and the ones that can hardly hold a conversation to save their life have small vocabularies.

I've rambled on way too much but I can't stress the point enough. I guess my advice to anyone would be... even if you're content with going slow... spend 1 year going fast and THEN take it slow. You're Japanese will love you for it.

mezbup Wrote:but Japanese doesn't really start coming alive as a language until you have about 10k vocab and even then it's still very patchy. I guess what I'm trying to say is that... certainly for me 10k was roughly the start of Japanese.

I wonder how true that is. I've heard numbers like that a few times in this thread already, but I'm nowhere NEAR that (Maybe 2k, if I stretch it? Probably 1500) and can already read manga and light novels to the point that I enjoy them. Yes, there's a lot of words that I don't know and have to look up, but that isn't killing my fun. I can also have fairly basic conversations in Japanese and usually get my point across. I understand more than I can speak, too.

High vocabulary is not necessarily crucial for fluency. Children are extremely fluent without having an adult vocabulary. They can also enjoy reading without knowing every word. So I hear what you're saying, but I think 2k is a still a little on the low side (even for children). Fluency (i.e. speaking ability) comes from masterful command of the basics. However unless you have a particularly brilliant teacher to teach and converse with you to build up this fluency, I think the best way is simply to grow your vocabulary to turn incomprehensible input into the comprehensible kind and then effectively listen/read your way to fluency.

Weeeee. Had a double post somehow. Fixed.

nadiatims Wrote:High vocabulary is not necessarily crucial for fluency. Children are extremely fluent without having an adult vocabulary. They can also enjoy reading without knowing every word. So I hear what you're saying, but I think 2k is a still a little on the low side (even for children). Fluency (i.e. speaking ability) comes from masterful command of the basics. However unless you have a particularly brilliant teacher to teach and converse with you to build up this fluency, I think the best way is simply to grow your vocabulary to turn incomprehensible input into the comprehensible kind and then effectively listen/read your way to fluency.

Children also tend to have a better inference ability than adults do, not to mention better attention spans for certain things.

Realistically, a person can probably get by with 2000, but don't expect to talk about anything specific with people. That's about all a foreigner needs to function in Canada or USA to live and work. Of course this not exactly an ideal person to converse with, or an ideal state to be in. Needing 30-40k seems also fairly high. In normal non-specific living a lot of the words in the high 10K you'll only maybe see once or twice a year. This also brings into question compounds. While Question and Questionable may be two different words, you can apply the 'able rule' and be able to figure out many words based off this compound.

I'd say, shoot for 10000 via study and then pick up the rest as you go along. If you didn't/aren't studying English words after 10000, why would you do it with a different language? Unless your goal is to just study Japanese and not make use of it.

The average English native probably only knows between 12k-20k anyway.

wccrawford Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:but Japanese doesn't really start coming alive as a language until you have about 10k vocab and even then it's still very patchy. I guess what I'm trying to say is that... certainly for me 10k was roughly the start of Japanese.

I wonder how true that is. I've heard numbers like that a few times in this thread already, but I'm nowhere NEAR that (Maybe 2k, if I stretch it? Probably 1500) and can already read manga and light novels to the point that I enjoy them. Yes, there's a lot of words that I don't know and have to look up, but that isn't killing my fun. I can also have fairly basic conversations in Japanese and usually get my point across. I understand more than I can speak, too.

I think this is a factor of how willing you are to look up/gloss over stuff. Unless you are reading very basic material or in a very narrow field where words are repeated a lot, there's just no way you could call a 1500-2000 word vocab adequate. That's like N4 level. There's a big difference between being able to fully or nearly fully understand something and just eek out enough to follow the plot sorta, almost. Sure, you may still enjoy what you're doing (i agree, i was the same at that vocab level), but that doesn't mean mezbup is wrong.

40k is a bit of a reach. There's a point of diminishing returns and it happens a lot lower than 40k. I think somewhere between 10k-20k, you can probably stop actively studying new vocab. The level needed for fluent conversation is far below this... until you hit that topic you want to talk about where you suddenly know *none* of the requisite vocab, to the point where you can't even talk around your gaps because it's nothing but gaps ("The thing with the thing" only goes so far).