How long does it take you to learn / review Kanji?

Even if you are exceptionally slow you will realize that this doesn't take an awful lot of time (assuming you are using RevTK or a similar memory trick / method). However, while doing sentences I am usually stuck with 2 or 3 words I don't know, i.e., the first time I encounter them, and even though they don't really look alien to me since I already completed RevTK, how am I suppose to remember how to read them?, conversely, remembering the meaning is actually easy thanks to the context provided by the sentence.

I created other posts dealing with similar ideas, basically asking about mnemonics, etc. This time however, I am asking how long does it take you to learn and study sentences as well as to describe your study workflow.

Doing Kanji is not just slightly easier than doing sentences, no, it is ridiculously easier. After "succeeding" with RevTK I find that I am not nearly as efficient with sentences as I was with kanji. Although not effortlessly, it was possible for me to learn 100 new kanji in a normal day as well as review a pile of 200~250. Now, with sentences, my progress is just pathetic.

Those of you that have completed RevTK and are doing sentences (specially Core), would you put in 10 minutes of your time and describe your study system / flow? (1) how do you know if you answered a sentence correctly? and (2) how do you remember words that you have not seen before? (mnemonics?).

Coming from RevTK in which the whole point is using mnemonics and memory hooks, it seems like doing sentences is just a random and wild process.

There must be a middle step that I am missing that is obvious to everyone except for me.

"Are you reading regularly?" But I just finished RevTK, read what? I don't understand Japanese.

You might try a textbook.

I've heard of the RtK->reading idea, and people have claimed it worked for them, but I still think it's borderline absurd. Something organized in steps like a textbook that introduces you to vocab and grammar bit by bit is a good bridge to being able to read.

Quote:Also you might take a look at AntiMoon's page on input so that you can get an understanding of how people are learning English.

Note that AntiMoon's advice is for people who are pretty advanced -- this isn't always appreciated by people because they don't make it clear, but they're addressing people who have had significant formal training in a language so that they have some background (especially in the grammar), but just aren't able to use the language to read native materials and such. Their advice is nearly useless for people who are literally just starting with a language.

Exactly, I can't wait to jump into native content, but there is a gap I am yet to find how to close.

Maybe I am just lazy, it's just so disappointing that doing sentences is not as easy as doing Kanji. Am I crazy here? xd

I think perhaps OP's question was about beginning sentences, knowing almost zero readings, and trying to memorize large numbers of on-yomi and kun-yomi readings for kanji. I think this may have been my most difficult place also...

it is a lot of memorization and I just fought through it... but like tokyostyle said maybe make 3 sentence cards for 1 sentence and just underline the word you want to focus on? that way you still have the context.

you will (almost) always have readings to learn but it gets much easier later, as RTK3 was easier than RTK1. I would say as far as mnemonics go... for a silly example, when I see 憲, which means constitution and is pronounced けん, I think of Ken from fist of the north star and how he would have tried to create a constitution for his lawless world... ;D obviously there will be several けん readings, so you'll get to make others for him as well...some may work better than others heh.

it doesn't have to be smart or great... just has to stick. funny ones work well for me also. this was I think the biggest hole of AJATT for me, in that it was unexpectedly hard all of a sudden and never mentioned anywhere what good strategies were...

If you're just finished RTK, you're best off start with a beginner textbook like Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar or Genki. If you don't want to buy a textbook, go to Taekim's Basic Japanese Grammar Guide. Learn the grammar there, and SRS the sentences. It'll give you a (very) basic vocabulary and enough grammar to get you started with sentences from Core. Then Core will build up your vocabulary while providing you with a general sense of how words are used in sentences　etc.

If you're doing the Core sentences, what order are you doing them? The original order puts several unknowns in one sentence. There are some alternative orders here:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5091

bcrAn Wrote:Maybe I am just lazy, it's just so disappointing that doing sentences is not as easy as doing Kanji. Am I crazy here? xd

No, you're not lazy.

Sentences are initially very hard. I'm not sure how much grammar training you've had, but if you're trying to learn something like
「本を貸してくれてありがとう」 - Thank you for lending me the book.

And you don't know 本, 貸して、the function of を, て-form, てくれる, it's difficult to see which parts fit into what and to remember it all at once.

It's better that you start with small digestible pieces first, like in Tae Kim/Genki. I used KO2001 which was very good for my level after Genki 1 because by then there wasn't a an overwhelming amount of unfamiliar grammar, and anything that was unfamiliar I could look up in Tae Kim or DBJG.

Once you understand the basics, learning new words with sentences becomes easier, and after you get experience you'll start getting better at it. When I first started sentences with KO2001, I was clearing 30 sentences in 15 minutes in SRS. Now it's more like 50-70. Set your failed cards limit to 5, write down words you failed. Sentences aren't like RTK, where you see X and produce Y. Sentences are designed to transmit an idea and you need to understand all the parts to accurately receive the idea. Spend time with it and don't worry that you're not clearing as much cards as you did with RTK. You're still making progress, even if you don't think you are.

I got a good srs pace to normal. I finish everything in under an hour now. The max I go up to is 1hr and 10mins. But that's if I'm being lazy.

Thanks to finding more ways of making the srs add cards automatically, I can learn at a faster pace now.

3 decks, vocab,sentences,production. Is all down in 1 hr, I remember when I started , all these decks took me hours. But you got to remember that: everyone does learning differently, so the way I do my cards would be different if someone dived into them.

tokyostyle Wrote:

bcrAn Wrote:"Are you reading regularly?" But I just finished RevTK, read what? I don't understand Japanese.

You have to learn the grammar patterns somehow. Either you go through a text book and read boring stories about people you don't care about or you can find a shonen manga and look up the grammar in a reference like A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.

And then get bored because it takes 30 minutes to do one speech bubble and you can't find half the stuff in the DBJG because you don't know what to look up, or it's some slang or casual speech form that's not in there.

Yeah, I think it's much better for the majority of people to go through a grammar guide or textbook first, and not start with native material.

If you start with a manga or something, the learning curve is ridiculously high, and most people can't handle that. You can say that a textbook is boring, but going through a text that is way above one's level is very very boring for 90% of people (made-up statistics!). Personally, I liked my textbook a lot, but I would have wanted to shoot myself if I had started native materials right at the get-go.

the only native material i'd recommend at the beginner stage would be simple parallel texts, preferably peppered with furigana so that you can read at a pace without slowing down, and without having to be stumped by vocab or grammar every few words.

but i dunno if those exist. maybe the graded reader series? even now, i can't read hiragana times without encountering unfamiliar words unless i read the easy article in the back.

at the beginner level, you'll benefit more from simple grammar and vocab lists than through sheer input and sentence methods of complex sentences with 9 grammar points you've never seen before.

the native material keeps you sane, gives you perspective on real sentences, and allows you to see the benefits of your learning. because even if you can only understand one sentence, by god, you can understand that sentence!

kainzero Wrote:the only native material i'd recommend at the beginner stage would be simple parallel texts, preferably peppered with furigana so that you can read at a pace without slowing down, and without having to be stumped by vocab or grammar every few words.

but i dunno if those exist. maybe the graded reader series? even now, i can't read hiragana times without encountering unfamiliar words unless i read the easy article in the back.

at the beginner level, you'll benefit more from simple grammar and vocab lists than through sheer input and sentence methods of complex sentences with 9 grammar points you've never seen before.

the native material keeps you sane, gives you perspective on real sentences, and allows you to see the benefits of your learning. because even if you can only understand one sentence, by god, you can understand that sentence!

It all starts with that one sentence, one vocab. Them multiple by that 3 and you know 3 sentences.vocab. Keep learning and keep "multiplying" and soon you'll know enough to dive into real native-material (games,news,books,novels,etc)

tokyostyle Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:

tokyostyle Wrote:You have to learn the grammar patterns somehow. Either you go through a text book and read boring stories about people you don't care about or you can find a shonen manga and look up the grammar in a reference like A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.

And then get bored because it takes 30 minutes to do one speech bubble and you can't find half the stuff in the DBJG because you don't know what to look up, or it's some slang or casual speech form that's not in there.

If you are doing that you are doing it wrong and completely backwards. Go from a grammar reference to a native book not the other way around.

Your time spent messing around with native materials should be to enforce the things (vocab/grammar) that you've learned from boring sources. You aren't trying to "fan-sub" your manga.

"you can find a shonen manga and look up the grammar in a reference like A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar."

Sure looked to me like you were saying to read a manga and look up the stuff in DBJ. In any case, how are you supposed to search a manga to find one grammar pattern?

bcrAn Wrote:Those of you that have completed RevTK and are doing sentences (specially Core), would you put in 10 minutes of your time and describe your study system / flow?

Background:
I studied the Kana first, and did Genki I next. I stopped learning for 4 months, trying to get into Genki II but failed, blaming my lack of kanji knowledge. So I decided to put it on halt and study Kanji with RTK instead. I started learning in late October last year, with a pace of 34 frames per day, and was done with it in January.

Workflow in the beginning:
While working with Genki, and part of Genki II, I simply typed of the books, and familiarized myself with the kanji by typing them in, and creating vocabulary lists. Doing 3 chapters, reviewing them after 3 chapters, until I was done with the book. Not very efficient, typing off a whole book, everything, sentences, vocab, grammar information. But it worked quite well. After having been done with RTK, i moved back to the Genki textbooks. I did a review of book 1, copying and pasting the information into Anki, since I have gone through the process of doing it already. Took a week, after which I started Genki II, in much the same way I was working with Genki I. Typing off the whole book, prioritizing the writing now, handwriting that is. I was analyzing sentences, breaking them down, which took a while but also not much longer as writing on a PC.

Before moving on to An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, I did another grande review of all the material, and started with that book. Being thought of as the next step after having finished Genki. And again I started typing out the chapters while I was learning, but being fully aware of the power of Anki, I also had to add vocabulary now. It didn't feel like doing much for my retention rate, and it took time, to create all those cards. Since it took me the better part of a week per chapter, without being able to fully understand the sentences, and having no translations was a big setback for me.

I was very good in learning vocabulary, retention was getting better, but I had trouble with Grammar. So I went back analyzing and breaking down sentences, and translating them, from Genki I all the way up to Chapter 6 of An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese. Doing it has helped a lot getting a better understanding of sentence structures, but it wasn't efficient at all, even though it hasn't taken much time.

What I knew was that my lack of understanding of those hellishly long sentences in AIAIJ was due to my lack of necessary vocabulary. So I started Kanji in Context, simply by typing in and brute forcing the vocabulary, and translating the sentences. It took 3 hours to get 200 words into Anki. Sentences took longer, because I had to look up all the grammar information, and coming up with good translations. It felt like a deja-vu with AIAIJ. So I was looking for other material, and found Kanji Odyssey which I have read so much about here, that I simply had to give it a try.

Workflow now and some more information
Starting last month, after I got the CD from a friend who had no need for it anymore, and thanks to Coscom - bless you for inventing this system, and bless the person who introduced and recommeded it on here, I really started kicking. This time, and before I started, I began looking for a way to find a perfect structure for my deck. Allowing me to combine both sentences and vocab study with a single deck. This took the better part of four days, and at the beginning of August 6th, I started working with it.

By the nature of the product, it comes with Audio, and a very good UI. I decided to type in everything by myself, so I copied the files onto my harddisk, and began typing away. In my first day, I created 59 cards, took a break of one or two days, did 120 cards, then 250 after another day off and this continued until mid August. Until then I might have gotten up to around "frame 160."

The way I was typing the information in, first the vocabulary, and then sentences without having to change decks, allowed me to work as efficiently as possible. And by changing the type of input, and learning all the information while typing it in, really got me in the groove. The only thing that was troublesome in the early stages was the huge amount of cards and reviews per day. 4 hours typing out new cards in the beginning, after having had at least 250 cards for review, was a bit difficult. And the reviews took quite a while due to the length and my reading speed at the time.

When I discovered that I could simply switch to reviewing when cards are due, instead of doing it every 24 hours, brought the much anticipated breakthrough in both speed and efficiency I was hoping for to achieve with my deck structure. This came very late last month, but it came, and it was awesome. Because now I changed to timeboxing, and having only a small amount of due cards compared to what I had before, 156 cards was nothing after getting up. And by the time I already became very fast at reading, recognizing words, sentences etc. Due to my prior knowledge of grammar from Genki I, II, AIAIJ I didn't have to look anything up.

Now, 1 month and 10 days later, I am at "frame 405 of 555 of Level 1" having over 2642 cards in my deck, every card seen at least once and a lot of Japanese only definitions for both sentences as well as some single words, having 81,5% correct young, 100% mature, and 95% recognition on average, I am quite happy with progress and efficiency.

It now takes 2 or 3 hours for 150 to 200 cards I do almost every day. Taking breaks in between, I review old cards and new cards, but not all of them in one go. I suspend them first, review only old cards, get some new cards out of the way, and add another bunch of new cards after all were seen. If you want to learn about my deck structure, just check my website, and the KO.2001 entries there.

One thing worth mentioning here is, that I don't even have to look at the translation anymore, to know what words and sentences have to say. And a sentence card takes 12 seconds, recognition only right now, to say it out loud, and get it correct most of the time. My reading outside the SRS has improved tremendously, I guess due to adding Japanese definitions, and doing it constantly to learn words that way as well. But also my listening has improved, as well as my overall workflow, all because I changed the way of working with the material.

bcrAn Wrote:(1) how do you know if you answered a sentence correctly? and (2) how do you remember words that you have not seen before? (mnemonics?).

I answer a sentence as being correct if one of the following is correct:
1) I understand the sentence in Japanese and get the pronunciation right.
2) I understand the marked vocabulary right but fail another that wasn't officially learned yet but is in the sentence

3) I fail to know the meaning of a sentence in English or Japanese and got the reading for marked vocabulary wrong
4) I fail new words if I don't get them correct but drag them along for some days.
5) If I still have trouble after 5 days it is an instant fail and goes back to the cycle as newly learned card.

Sometimes it takes time for a word to be learned. For instance the word 熱帯雨林 or 除雪車 gave me a hard time. But after some days even they were learned and I can recall them without problem. And I don't rate extremely hard, although I often push hard or fail cards, even though I knowing that I just takes time for some words.

Overall my stats, which I pay little attention to say, that my retention is 81,6% for new cards, 100% for some easy but already mature cards, and an average of 95% for young cards. (See above.) So there really is no need to rate extra hard or fail over and over again, due to the high number of words still waiting to be learned, and considering that learning the language as a whole is an ongoing process.

Suggestion:
Go through a textbook as others have told you. Get the basic grammar down, and work on your vocabulary afterwards. It will take time, and you will not be able to get from 0% to 100% in no time, be it typing off of sentences, or something else. You have to get into the flow, and it takes time, get used to it and make the best out of it.

bcrAn Wrote:Doing Kanji is not just slightly easier than doing sentences, no, it is ridiculously easier.

I completely agree.

Tzadeck Wrote:Yeah, I think it's much better for the majority of people to go through a grammar guide or textbook first, and not start with native material.

If you start with a manga or something, the learning curve is ridiculously high, and most people can't handle that.

kainzero Wrote:at the beginner level, you'll benefit more from simple grammar and vocab lists than through sheer input and sentence methods of complex sentences with 9 grammar points you've never seen before.

I agree. I looked at native texts more than a few times before, during, and just after RTK. I remember getting really frustrated and eventually giving up after spending a bit of time trying to decode everything. Most likely the the material was too complex. Graded readers, however, as Kainzero noted, would be great I think. (An application from the excellent cb4960 in case you're interested in tinkering a bit to find your own "graded readers" ...there's also a graded list of 5000 books a bit further down the page.)

Nagareboshi Wrote:Go through a textbook as others have told you. Get the basic grammar down, and work on your vocabulary afterwards.

Yup! (Grammar doesn't need to be perfect. As Nagareboshi said, basic.)

Some time has passed and I've added songs that I really like, jpod101 transcripts and audio, words I've come across in daily life (w/example an sentences). I just started doing the "japanese core 10,000 with audio v2" deck. I did 100 cards in the first couple days without any problem. There was some new vocab, but not a lot. I'm going to try doing 50 a day for a little while, but I'm sure it will become more difficult as time progresses. I'll be doing this in addition to the mixed deck and RTK reviews. I'm also going to start reading a bit a bit.

1. I pass cards if I know all the kanji readings and understand the overall meaning. (Sometimes I don't understand why a particle is used or a particular grammatical structure. Sometimes I look it up on Tae Kim's site. Sometimes I leave it until later, understanding that it'll make more sense when I've progressed a little more.

2. I use mnemonics for pretty much every word. Nagareboshi mentioned a couple words I haven't seen before. It took me about 20 seconds to create a mnemonic for 熱帯雨林 (Nate eye urine): A guy I know, Nate, was walking through the tropical rain forest and some of those tropical flowers sprayed urine in his eye. Kanji is less of a problem for me to remember as it usually fits with the meaning. The reading's always the tough part for me. But with mnemonics, learning can be fun *and* easy! :p Of course, sometimes I just know the reading from previously learned kanji so I use that, and sometimes I just can't think of a good mnemonic quickly enough, so I get it to stick through efficient brute force (Anki). C'est la vie.

Let's try the other 除雪車 (joe sets): Joe (my cousin who is a weightlifter), sets a snowplow in my front yard. (車 I already know.)

In the same way that dissolvable stitches are an excellent "tool" for healing, mnemonics are an excellent tool for memorization: useful for a time, but eventually fading away and leaving you with a firmly fixed vocab word.

Quote:2. I use mnemonics for pretty much every word.

I'm not so sure if that's helpful or not, but I can imagine, if you know in the end like 10,000 words, that a few will be difficult for you and that if you use bizarre mnemonics for those, you will mess yourself up in your memory. At least that's what I experienced and I'd advise you to use mnemonics with care.

Earthlark Wrote:

Nagareboshi Wrote:Go through a textbook as others have told you. Get the basic grammar down, and work on your vocabulary afterwards.

Yup! (Grammar doesn't need to be perfect. As Nagareboshi said, basic.)

Quote:1. I pass cards if I know all the kanji readings and understand the overall meaning. (Sometimes I don't understand why a particle is used or a particular grammatical structure. Sometimes I look it up on Tae Kim's site. Sometimes I leave it until later, understanding that it'll make more sense when I've progressed a little more.

Same here. But I use All about Particles, and some other books for it, not always though.

Quote:2. I use mnemonics for pretty much every word. Nagareboshi mentioned a couple words I haven't seen before. It took me about 20 seconds to create a mnemonic for 熱帯雨林 (Nate eye urine): A guy I know, Nate, was walking through the tropical rain forest and some of those tropical flowers sprayed urine in his eye. Kanji is less of a problem for me to remember as it usually fits with the meaning. The reading's always the tough part for me. But with mnemonics, learning can be fun *and* easy! :p Of course, sometimes I just know the reading from previously learned kanji so I use that, and sometimes I just can't think of a good mnemonic quickly enough, so I get it to stick through efficient brute force (Anki). C'est la vie.

Let's try the other 除雪車 (joe sets): Joe (my cousin who is a weightlifter), sets a snowplow in my front yard. (車 I already know.)

I noticed that it becomes easier to remember the readings for such words, once I know more readings for the same kanji, that I learned through other words. Oftentimes, words simply connect to something I know. For instance the word 期待 triggers Kithai and is a map in a game called Spellforce. Most times, when I have difficulty to remember the reading, I just think of the word while doing other things. And then, all of a sudden, I can remember it without a problem. Sometimes, when not even writing the word out numerous times including the reading in Kana fixes it, I simply brute force it or leave it alone for a while. And then there are cases when I learn a word like 南無妙法蓮華経 and remember it without a problem after some seconds ... I learned it some months ago and still remember it ... Don't ask me why I choose this example and not 机上の空論 ... I am curious how your mnemonic for those words would look like? I learned them from Kanji in Context and still remember them without having seen them in a long time ...

I really see no need for mnemonics in order to help me memorize the readings of a large quantity of words. But I do see a value in mnemonics, as they can indeed help memorizing lots of stuff.

Nagareboshi Wrote:I am curious how your mnemonic for those words would look like?

Haha. Well, I'd probably break 南無妙法蓮華経 into its components since they each have meaning: 南無, 妙法, 蓮華, 経. Of course, I'd rather it just stick like it did for you. (Context and enjoyment were probably instrumental.)

Same with 机上の空論
机上: Picture of Kid Joe (my cousin again), with his baseball cap and bat, hard at work studying academic material in an academic setting.
空論: Professors sitting around talking about impractical theory over coronas

Edit: Coronas is enough of a hint for me to get くうろん (rather than こうろん). I'm usually okay with it, but maybe it's confusing for some...

Of course, sometimes as I mentioned sometimes I just "get it to stick through efficient brute force (Anki)", and as you pointed out, sometimes it just sticks automatically.

Tori-kun Wrote:2. I use mnemonics for pretty much every word.

I'm not so sure if that's helpful or not, but I can imagine, if you know in the end like 10,000 words, that a few will be difficult for you and that if you use bizarre mnemonics for those, you will mess yourself up in your memory. At least that's what I experienced and I'd advise you to use mnemonics with care.

Good point. For me, because I've run into a lot of that vocab (in conversation and other sentences) over and over, eventually I don't need the mnemonic anymore and it fades away:

Earthlark Wrote:In the same way that dissolvable stitches are an excellent "tool" for healing, mnemonics are an excellent tool for memorization: useful for a time, but eventually fading away and leaving you with a firmly fixed vocab word.

Plus, as has been mentioned I think, the more words you know, the more readings you'll know, so it'll get a lot easier and you'll have to use such mnemonics to a lesser extent probably.

My study method comprised...studying. I just got the core 2k and 6k decks from the shared decks on Anki and then just remembered them as you usually would with vocab. After so many thousands of words you start to pick up on patterns in the readings so in a way it's also studying readings I suppose. As for grammar, I despise most textbooks for languages because they have this distinct patronizing high school language class feeling to them. Also the way they explain grammar usually lacks depth. I just read Tae Kim's entire grammar guide. It's probably not for everyone, but if you prefer abstract explanations that immediately get to the core of things you'll probably like it. About halfway through the Core6k I started attempting to read actual Japanese daily for about an hour. At first it was painful and it was hard to decode, but I'm glad I started with actual native Japanese and not something as dull as sentences from a grammar dictionary. Right now all I do is SrS vocab I encounter in things I read that is unknown. As for listening, I don't do anything special for that, except I try to follow the conversation in Anime I watch and then compare it with the subs. My studying is probably a lot less systemized than most people on here, that's cause it has been my experience that taking the studying out of language learning is the most effective means to get fluent. I learned English entirely by being exposed to foreign sources of entertainment, and I intend to do the same with Japanese. Obviously Japanese is somewhat of an exception, mostly because of the writing, but I believe that once you get to an intermediate level you should replace formal studying by entertainment as much as possible.

bcrAn Wrote:Those of you that have completed RevTK and are doing sentences (specially Core), would you put in 10 minutes of your time and describe your study system / flow? (1) how do you know if you answered a sentence correctly? and (2) how do you remember words that you have not seen before? (mnemonics?).

I use subs2srs to piece-watch my favorite shows. I suspend sentences that I am not ready for and then work with ideal sentences like so:
1) Look up words I don't know and add the definition.
2) Sentence mine from subs2srs: If necessary, I truncate sentences into a nice bite-size pieces and paste into my separate Anki sentences deck.
3) Review the subs2srs deck daily to see the words being used in context
4) Review the sentences deck daily and as I read the sentence I imagine the scene in which it's being used. No translations.
5) Watch the shows with Japanese subtitles and/or watch the show in subs2srs (select all cards, unsuspend, and reschedule as new cards).

As for knowing if the answer is right, you just know. If you have to check the meaning, then you do not know the card. Also, I make all English text in white font so that it is only visible in the edit mode. I click the edit button to see the English text, or highlight the back of the card to see the answer. This way 95% of my review time is done entirely in Japanese, without seeing any English unless I absolutely need it.