@howtwosavealif3 what author?

I switched TV, movies and books. I couldn't switch music tho, I like music too much.!

I took classes for two years with the book Japanese: The Spoken Language.

I studied abroad for four months in Shiga and did Genki 2.

I stopped studying for a little while.

Then I moved to Japan. I didn't do much at first because I was a bit bad at self study.
Eventually I did RTK1 using this website.

Then I did about 2/3 of Core 6,000 with Anki.

After that I started to read and eventually started studying grammar for N2.

Recently I just read. I took N1 in July, but since I didn't study for the test at all I failed. I'll try again in December I think.

All in all about five years of study, with a break of about a year.

caivano Wrote:@howtwosavealif3 what author?

I switched TV, movies and books. I couldn't switch music tho, I like music too much.!

森絵都
本田孝良

AND then I looked up suggestions for other authors with these 2 authors and now i'm looking forward to reading those author's books.

really i can't believe it.. I love Japanese music. at first I didn't know the heights that japanese music could reach cause you know it takes effort and time to find amazing stuff but I'm so glad I didn't give up. i really did hit some shitty music in the beginning like people that legit canNOT sing and I even tried to like it but then I realize they do have good singers too and just because _ is popular doens't mean they're actually good or that i have to like it either...

Thanks, I'll check em out at the library tomorrow I think

I like some Japanese music, but I wouldn't really want to listen to any 1 countries music. Half of the music I like has no lyrics, and the other half I don't particularly pay attention to the lyrics, so it would make pretty much no difference in terms of language input anyway..

When you guys talk about a lot of reading, what kind of reading are we talking about? Books? Internet (articles, news)?

I stopped my intensive reading for 2 weeks because I add around 500 unseen cards in anki and it's much more effective if you add the cards to anki and learn those same cards in the same or day after.

CarolinaCG Wrote:When you guys talk about a lot of reading, what kind of reading are we talking about? Books? Internet (articles, news)?

I started reading manga when I first moved to Japan (first Doraemon, then after that manga appropriate for my age).

After that I switched to novels for young people. My first was a children's book, and then a couple of books for young teenagers.

Somewhere in there I also did both "Read Real Japanese Fiction" and "Essays," which improved my reading a lot.

Then I switched to books for adults, and sometimes news articles (usually 京都新聞). First I read a book of fairly simple short stories, and now I mostly read novels, but still somewhat slowly.

mezbup Wrote:

dizmox Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:I learned it to fluency without ever going to Japan (went first time just the other day).

Does this include speaking?

Of course. You couldnt really call urself fluent in Japanese if you couldnt speak it. I could speak it fluently after about 2 years and it just slowly improves as my vocab continues to expand. Been studying intensively for 3 years now.

Surely you must have practised a lot of speaking to get good at it?

mezbup Wrote:On the flipside I met a guy who lived in Hokkaido for 4 years on the JET program and can only say konnichiwa in a heavily foreign accent. Goes to show it's not about where you are but what you do and who you do it with.

Yes! The advantage of living in the country is the fact that you have an all Japanese environment around you 24/7. Some people just don't plug in to that environment, and the fact that they're in the country doesn't matter. Some others do and are able to learn the language to a respectable level in a year or less.

We're living in an age where pretty much everybody has a computer hooked up to the internet in their homes, everybody carries around some sort of mp3 player or a smartphone with them, and it's also quite comfortable and easy to order native entertainment material form all over the world (and it doesn't have to be too expensive). Since living in an environment that allows you to get huge amounts of input of the language you're learning is the key, I think the question of "what you can do to learn a language" should have at least one obvious answer at this point.

caivano Wrote:Thanks, I'll check em out at the library tomorrow I think

I like some Japanese music, but I wouldn't really want to listen to any 1 countries music. Half of the music I like has no lyrics, and the other half I don't particularly pay attention to the lyrics, so it would make pretty much no difference in terms of language input anyway..

well I listen to korean music (indie) as well. butit's like I'm listening those two types of music because I enjoy them first foremost and not because I HAVE to get the immersion in every second. I'm not forcing myself to limit myself to only k/j music.. I just prefer listening to that thna american music ESPECIALLY THE MAINSTREAM (it actually sounds MORE SHITTY after listening to only k-indie/japanese music for just one month)

CarolinaCG Wrote:When you guys talk about a lot of reading, what kind of reading are we talking about? Books? Internet (articles, news)?

I stopped my intensive reading for 2 weeks because I add around 500 unseen cards in anki and it's much more effective if you add the cards to anki and learn those same cards in the same or day after.

Re anki and intensive reading, I think one of the ideas of intensive reading is that you don't need to rely on an SRS so much because the book acts as a kind of natural way of reviewing words. Many of the words you are adding to anki will come up in again in the book, so they will be reviewed without anki.

Personally I do add cards to anki but with a lowish leech threshold so any I don't pick up quickly get suspended, thus reducing anki time.

I'm no intensive reading expert, nor fluent tho so...

caivano Wrote:

CarolinaCG Wrote:When you guys talk about a lot of reading, what kind of reading are we talking about? Books? Internet (articles, news)?

I stopped my intensive reading for 2 weeks because I add around 500 unseen cards in anki and it's much more effective if you add the cards to anki and learn those same cards in the same or day after.

Re anki and intensive reading, I think one of the ideas of intensive reading is that you don't need to rely on an SRS so much because the book acts as a kind of natural way of reviewing words. Many of the words you are adding to anki will come up in again in the book, so they will be reviewed without anki.

Personally I do add cards to anki but with a lowish leech threshold so any I don't pick up quickly get suspended, thus reducing anki time.

I'm no intensive reading expert, nor fluent tho so...

What I've noticed is that, over time you will rely less and less on the srs. That's a good thing, that means you've gained a substantial reading ability and just need to maintain it to be able to read well. But I still believe maintaining srs reps for the long-term helps more than to just keep reading (saves time so you don't need to re-learn anything if you keep it up)

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:

caivano Wrote:Thanks, I'll check em out at the library tomorrow I think

I like some Japanese music, but I wouldn't really want to listen to any 1 countries music. Half of the music I like has no lyrics, and the other half I don't particularly pay attention to the lyrics, so it would make pretty much no difference in terms of language input anyway..

well I listen to korean music (indie) as well. butit's like I'm listening those two types of music because I enjoy them first foremost and not because I HAVE to get the immersion in every second. I'm not forcing myself to limit myself to only k/j music.. I just prefer listening to that thna american music ESPECIALLY THE MAINSTREAM (it actually sounds MORE SHITTY after listening to only k-indie/japanese music for just one month)

Yeah mainstream music is pretty terrible anywhere. I haven't met many people in Japan who just like Japanese and Korean indie tho, most people into indie seem to be into US and UK indie too. See the Fuji Rock lineups, although the Rock In Japan festival is all Japanese stuff so obvs those fans exist but I just don't meet them!

Anyways better not derail the thread too much :$

JimmySeal Wrote:@AlexandreC
Well, your question was "How does lots of reading lead to oral fluency?" and the answer is that about 80% of language proficiency (including spoken) is a thorough familiarity with the sentence patterns and vocabulary. The rest is just practice. I don't think yudan was trying to imply that reading alone was sufficient to be able to speak at full tilt, but it is enough to get you most of the way there.

I don't think I posted anything, but my view is that reading can help a lot to increase your vocabulary, but you really do need to practice speaking as well. And even more so than that, it's very hard to really fine-tune your fluency without somebody correcting your mistakes, and without making effort to fix things you're doing wrong. A lot of people seem to get the idea that if they just listen and talk a lot, they'll automatically fix whatever errors they might be making, but nothing could be further from the truth. If you do a lot of speaking practice but make no effort to get corrected or fix your own problems, you'll likely end up with a fluency in "broken" Japanese (how broken depends on the person).

This is pretty much what happened to me. I had passed 1kyuu and lived in Japan for two years, and I could hold a conversation, but after I went back to the US and had to teach, I realized how much I didn't know and how many mistakes I was making despite my seeming "fluency". And these weren't just small mistakes, some of them were in 1st-year Japanese level stuff. 6 years later I'm back in Japan and I can tell a huge difference in my ability to speak, although I still have problems.

dizmox Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:

dizmox Wrote:Does this include speaking?

Of course. You couldnt really call urself fluent in Japanese if you couldnt speak it. I could speak it fluently after about 2 years and it just slowly improves as my vocab continues to expand. Been studying intensively for 3 years now.

Surely you must have practised a lot of speaking to get good at it?

Yup. Didnt speak any Japanese for the first year I studied it, second year I started going out and meeting pol and making friends. I spoke a few hours of Japanese a week (max 10). Third year I have had a japanese flatmate constantly, we speak Japanese at home - social scene is mostly Japanese - lots of parties at mine with friends and new acquaintances. Lots and lots and lots of speaking over the last year.

mezbup Wrote:Yup. Didnt speak any Japanese for the first year I studied it, second year I started going out and meeting pol and making friends.

Was that before or after you crammed 10k words?

yudantaiteki Wrote:If you do a lot of speaking practice but make no effort to get corrected or fix your own problems, you'll likely end up with a fluency in "broken" Japanese (how broken depends on the person).

This. I'm still in the phase, where I, when I want to say something have the English sentence in front of my mental eye and process it through my mental-core6k-and-grammar-magic-box to get the Japanese equivalent. That's for writing so far and I'm afraid that nobody will understand me if it comes to speaking as I get lots of corrections on lang8 not getting less after almost a year.. I just want to be able to say what I want without thinking :|

Tzadeck Wrote:I took classes for two years with the book Japanese: The Spoken Language.

I had to use that book in college and it single handedly made me hate studying Japanese.
It took me almost a year to start studying again.

yudantaiteki Wrote:I don't think I posted anything,

My bad. I was referring to wccrawford's post. I get you two confused for some reason.

syntoad Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:I took classes for two years with the book Japanese: The Spoken Language.

I had to use that book in college and it single handedly made me hate studying Japanese.
It took me almost a year to start studying again.

Haha. That's the book I taught from for 6 years.

DevvaR Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:Yup. Didnt speak any Japanese for the first year I studied it, second year I started going out and meeting pol and making friends.

Was that before or after you crammed 10k words?

Before. I crammed the 10k words over the course of the second year. The first year all I did was RTK, Tae Kim, KO2001 and then JLPT2 grammar study. Start of the second year I knew about 2.5k vocab and by the end of it I knew 12.5k. I literally went from only being able to have a terribly boring, limited conversation in a mix of broken Japanese and English to being able to have in depth conversations for hours all in Japanese.

syntoad Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:I took classes for two years with the book Japanese: The Spoken Language.

I had to use that book in college and it single handedly made me hate studying Japanese.
It took me almost a year to start studying again.

Sounds like you had a good book and crappy teachers.

mezbup Wrote:

DevvaR Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:Yup. Didnt speak any Japanese for the first year I studied it, second year I started going out and meeting pol and making friends.

Was that before or after you crammed 10k words?

Before. I crammed the 10k words over the course of the second year. The first year all I did was RTK, Tae Kim, KO2001 and then JLPT2 grammar study. Start of the second year I knew about 2.5k vocab and by the end of it I knew 12.5k. I literally went from only being able to have a terribly boring, limited conversation in a mix of broken Japanese and English to being able to have in depth conversations for hours all in Japanese.

You are obviously gifted for language acquisition.

Have you learned other languages before?

AlexandreC Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:

DevvaR Wrote:Was that before or after you crammed 10k words?

Before. I crammed the 10k words over the course of the second year. The first year all I did was RTK, Tae Kim, KO2001 and then JLPT2 grammar study. Start of the second year I knew about 2.5k vocab and by the end of it I knew 12.5k. I literally went from only being able to have a terribly boring, limited conversation in a mix of broken Japanese and English to being able to have in depth conversations for hours all in Japanese.

You are obviously gifted for language acquisition.

Have you learned other languages before?

I get this comment a lot an I'm not always comfortable receiving it. I say this because I don't think what I've done is so extraordinary, I feel like anyone did the same thing they would get the same results. I remember my first year of learning Japanese was almost pure grind work. Several hours a day straight Anki combined with copious amounts of native media...

I definitely believe experiences in one's formative years lay the foundations for further skills he or she will be able to gain in future years. For me I can think of three things that probably aid my language acquisition ability...

1: I had a Chinese friend as a kid and he had DBZ on VHS in mandarin. I had no idea what they were saying but would happily sit there and watch it because I found the visuals engaging. I feel this did two things - expose me to the concept of a foreign language and immersion. I think thats the reason why I can sit and watch stuff and enjoy it despite not having a clue what they're saying at first.

2: I studied Spanish in intermediate school (I think?). Anyway, I did it for 2 years in a row but at different schools. I loved it but we only got taught very basic stuff and I lost interest when I took it for the second year at my new school because we did the exact same things I learned the previous year. I remember feeling sad and frustrated at this because I was seriously passionate about it and had a grandparent who really encouraged me lots. So I never got anywhere with Spanish but I had passion and zeal for learning a foreign language.

3: I spent way too much time on the computer from age 5 to present. I have excellent computer skills and learned to use the computer as a tool to help me accomplish whatever I set out to do. This has been my single biggest advantage to date. Why? Well, I turned to the computer to help me right from the get go. This means I had Anki/AJATT/Media from the start. I also believed in the power of good software so I knew that to use and trust in Anki would be the best way. Also, being a hunter/gatherer of the digital world, I was never short on resources to learn the language.

Am I gifted at language learning? I don't think so... I think I merely had the ability to look and see what was going to work and what wasn't then stick with it for several years at least 3 - 4 hours a day oftentimes more.

@mezbup, Tzadeck, yudantaiteki, and other advanced learners

Are academic or highly literary works accessible to you? For example, can you read scientific journal articles (not popular science, but real academic journal articles) or books like Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in Japanese? Likewise, can you write and speak at a university level? Anyway, I'm just hoping to get a realistic timeframe for how much effort it takes to attain a high level of academic proficiency in Japanese.

vileru Wrote:@mezbup, Tzadeck, yudantaiteki, and other advanced learners

Are academic or highly literary works accessible to you? For example, can you read scientific journal articles (not popular science, but real academic journal articles) or books like Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in Japanese? Likewise, can you write and speak at a university level? Anyway, I'm just hoping to get a realistic timeframe for how much effort it takes to attain a high level of academic proficiency in Japanese.

Scientific journal articles (other than mathematics) or philosophy wouldn't be accessible to me even in English but reading literature isn't any bother. Mathematics isn't a problem at all, just have to relearn the terminology in Japanese. It's probably easier than literature considering its rigidity.

There's no such thing as "academic Japanese" or "university level" anyway. It's just a matter of knowing the specialist vocabulary and getting used to the style of writing. I know I haven't phrased that very well, but what I mean is, if you can read a newspaper you can read anything else as long as you know the terminology. I can assure you that understanding someone using heavy slang will take more getting used to than an academic using 標準語.

As for writing you'll only get better with practice. How long did it take you to write academic papers in English?