I've been studying Japanese since 2006. Most of that time was spent attempting this method or that one, trying to ensure that I make the most efficient use of my time. This is what I came up with.

If you want to learn a language, buy (and read) a few books on learning it, replace as much of your life as you can with the target language-equivalent (within reason; action games are preferable to text-heavy RPGs, for example), and study with an SRS. Once you get to an intermediate level, start reading target-language books/playing RPGs.

Begin with Remembering the Kana to learn hiragana and katakana (the less-intimidating squigglies) in about a week or so. This is crucial, as you will be able to read (but not understand) most manga. This will also help you understand some video game text, such as menu items. Don't bother trying to download "raws," aka untranslated manga; raws are usually not scanned at a high enough quality for furigana to be legible. Use the spaced-repetition software (efficient flash card program that guarantees at least 80% retention with minimal study time; more info at http://goo.gl/Y9YeU ) Anki (available here http://ankisrs.net/ ) to review the kana as you learn them. There is a shared kana deck available.

Follow this with Remembering the Kanji to learn how to recognize and write the kanji. You won't be able to understand them; the keywords are intended only to be used as temporary anchors for the kanji in your memory, and not as their actual meanings, but this will help you easily get over the main hurdle in Japanese language study, which is differentiating one kanji from another, as well as stroke order. While you go through this book, continue studying the kana, and use Anki to study the kanji as well.

Once you've completed Remembering the Kanji, start up Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar. It is important that you take your time with this book, as you will be learning several elements at once. Not only grammar, but vocabulary, as well, which consists of the reading (pronunciation) and meaning of both singular kanji and kanji compounds (multiple kanji that are read together as one word). Make sure you do all the exercises, and get someone to give you access to the Google Docs spreadsheet with the sentences from the book, so you can easily add them to a new Anki spreadsheet. Continue working on the other two Anki decks you have.

Finally, read Japanese the Manga way. This may not be necessary, as there is a lot of information overlap between the last two books, but it provides a nice transition into reading native Japanese literature and manga. Anki is even more important with this book, as it lacks exercises with which to practice using what you learn.

Throughout the process, try to replace as much of your "fun" with Japanese equivalents. I replaced old-school and underground hip hop with Japanese old-school and underground hip-hop, and even made a highly-successful thread here for like-minded folks: http://goo.gl/xket9

Set your game consoles to Japanese, and try to play as many games in Japanese as you can. Ramp up the difficulty as you get better at the language; start with things like Street Fighter, then work your way up to Final Fantasy. I recommend not trying to fly before you can crawl because playing RPGs with a near-zero understanding of the language can be extremely frustrating.

Watch Japanese TV shows. I recommend Game Center CX, because it’s easy to “get” what’s going on. I also recommend Downtown, because slapstick comedy is hilarious even if you don’t understand what’s being said. Try to find the “Silent” and “24-hour” specials.

Watch Japanese-dubbed movies. You won’t need subtitles to understand them, since you’ve already seen them in English. Don’t worry about bad translations.

Listen to Japanese podcasts. This is the easiest type of media to get, as you can find them on iTunes easily. I can’t recommend them starting out, though, as they’re just gibberish until you get your vocabulary up.

Eventually, you'll get to a point where you can read a book slowly, looking up words you don't know. As you keep working through each book, you'll look up less and less words, until you start looking up very few of them (or none at all).

How long it takes to get to the point where you know more than you don’t know is up to you. It could be as little as a year, or more than 5 years. It depends on how high a priority you place on language study, and how much time you dedicate to it.

There. That's the best method, objectively. No gimmicks, no promises, no charge. Instead of trying to go from illiterate to fluent all at once, just take things step-by-step. Kana, then kanji writing, grammar, and vocab.

Unless you want a bad accent, don't talk until you know exactly what you're saying.

I'm half-joking in the thread title. I call this "the right way" because it's the method I use. I am not fluent, nor am I anywhere near it, but I can say with certainty that I'll be close if I stick with it. If not for the effectiveness of the plan, then for the simple fact that it is a plan in the first place.

Kana, then kanji writing, grammar, and vocab.

This.

Sums it up. Combine it with immersion all the meanwhile and you really do have a winning formula.

Most important thing is to study every day (and for at least 3 ~ 4 hours).

mezbup Wrote:(and for at least 3 ~ 4 hours).

I tried something to that effect. It frequently led to burnout. Some days, one thing would lead to another, and I would end up not studying at all for several days, weeks, or months.

It's better to make it a daily thing. Every morning, or whatever time is best. Habits are tough to break once they get started.

vgambit Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:(and for at least 3 ~ 4 hours).

I tried something to that effect. It frequently led to burnout. Some days, one thing would lead to another, and I would end up not studying at all for several days, weeks, or months.

Same here. I ended up having burnouts as well and learning Japanese was not fun at all after such a huge amount of time PER DAY. On top of that, I ask myself how people can find so much time per day, when they do not visit school or work full-time..

vgambit Wrote:Unless you want a bad accent, don't talk until you know exactly what you're saying.

Uh oh. Tell me you're not advocating some kind of silent period crap, please...

vgambit Wrote:I call this "the right way" because it's the method I use. I am not fluent, nor am I anywhere near it, but I can say with certainty that I'll be close if I stick with it.

Basically... your plan hasn't worked so far. And you want us to follow it?

Tori-kun Wrote:I ended up having burnouts as well and learning Japanese was not fun at all after such a huge amount of time PER DAY. On top of that, I ask myself how people can find so much time per day, when they do not visit school or work full-time..

I spent ~8hrs studying daily when I was in Japan this summer. Amount of time spent is not the issue when it comes to burnout, unless you study so long that it begins affecting you physiologically. The issue is whether what you're doing is enjoyable or not. Since I was in Japan, I was eager to study and then practice what I learnt. If you're not eager and excited to study, then there's a problem with your routine. Once you fix that problem, you won't get burnt out so easily.

Tori-kun Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:(and for at least 3 ~ 4 hours).

I tried something to that effect. It frequently led to burnout. Some days, one thing would lead to another, and I would end up not studying at all for several days, weeks, or months.

Same here. I ended up having burnouts as well and learning Japanese was not fun at all after such a huge amount of time PER DAY. On top of that, I ask myself how people can find so much time per day, when they do not visit school or work full-time..

lol do not visit school or work full-time? I think you meant to say: do have school or work full-time. Well the way i did it was, get the srsing out of the way and leave the immersion in breaks or left it on while I did other things.

I'm not directing this to anyone but, there will be times (well I'd say always) when your busy and can't do much learning. I still do learning even if I have other things to do. But I make it my priority to do everything I can and not leave it to time (not everyone has a lot of time, due to school,work,etc)

3~4 hours? It should be more like 1~2 hours on average, that is normally not cumulative average. It can seen why some people get burned out.

Start learning words pronunciations, and sentence simple structures early. Listen to any content that can be found, but take care with dedicated study material. Read short stories, articles, children books, word definitions, anything that captures your interest. Speak and try to understand pronunciation of words. Learn new words or phrases, by being carious.

Work towards mastering the common Kanji using any method, however RTK is a great place to start. Don't avoid learning Kanji outside the current Kanji being studied, or outside the common Kanji. This includes variations of said Kanji.

Try to think in Japanese. Don't be a afraid of making mistakes, or forgetting words.

Most important be consistent daily even if it is for a few minutes, and as ta12121 says don't leave it to the last minute.

vgambit Wrote:I'm half-joking in the thread title. I call this "the right way" because it's the method I use. I am not fluent, nor am I anywhere near it, but I can say with certainty that I'll be close if I stick with it. If not for the effectiveness of the plan, then for the simple fact that it is a plan in the first place.

that seems really crass, to make such an inflammatory thread title, then not be close to fluent, and then say it should work anyway.

it's also not very objective to list specific books, tv shows, and entertainment methods. if i don't like games, why would i play street fighter and other RPGs in japanese? (furthermore, setting sf4 to japanese really doesn't do anything, unless you change the character voices which still isn't much of a learning experience since if you do play sf4, you tend to skip intros/victory poses.)

there's also zero output practice in your plan.

there's also a thread where people dole out advice, and they ARE fluent.

AlexandreC Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:Unless you want a bad accent, don't talk until you know exactly what you're saying.

Uh oh. Tell me you're not advocating some kind of silent period crap, please...

vgambit Wrote:I call this "the right way" because it's the method I use. I am not fluent, nor am I anywhere near it, but I can say with certainty that I'll be close if I stick with it.

Basically... your plan hasn't worked so far. And you want us to follow it?

I'll advocate whatever I damn well please. Doing what I do is your choice and yours alone. If you want to start speaking broken Japanese from day one, then by all means, do so. Nobody's holding a gun to your head.

All I know is, when I started speaking, I sucked at it until I got better at mimicking what other people had already said, instead of trying to make up my own words and sentences.

My plan has been working fine thus far. It's an ongoing process. As I said, the amount of time it takes to become fluent is proportional to the amount of time spent studying. I began studying Japanese in the 10th grade. I've since graduated from college and gotten a full-time job. These things are more important to me than second language acquisition. However, when I do study, I know that my time is well-spent.

vileru Wrote:I spent ~8hrs studying daily when I was in Japan this summer. Amount of time spent is not the issue when it comes to burnout, unless you study so long that it begins affecting you physiologically. The issue is whether what you're doing is enjoyable or not. Since I was in Japan, I was eager to study and then practice what I learnt. If you're not eager and excited to study, then there's a problem with your routine. Once you fix that problem, you won't get burnt out so easily.

Agreed. The problem is that, for me, studying with Heisig's book loses its fun factor about halfway through.

Omoishinji Wrote:Work towards mastering the common Kanji using any method, however RTK is a great place to start. Don't avoid learning Kanji outside the current Kanji being studied, or outside the common Kanji. This includes variations of said Kanji.

I agree with most of your post, except that part. I got partway through RTK1 two or three times before I decided to switch to RTK Lite. It would cover something like 90% of the kanji, and would take roughly half the time to study, so I thought it would be great.

The problem was retention. Cutting out so much kanji essentially nullifies the method. Instead of learning a primitive that you can use for several kanji, and using some of those kanji to learn even more kanji, it felt like using one primitive to learn one kanji. Because of the lack of repetition, my retention rates really suffered. I've since switched back to regular RTK.

kainzero Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:I'm half-joking in the thread title. I call this "the right way" because it's the method I use. I am not fluent, nor am I anywhere near it, but I can say with certainty that I'll be close if I stick with it. If not for the effectiveness of the plan, then for the simple fact that it is a plan in the first place.

that seems really crass, to make such an inflammatory thread title, then not be close to fluent, and then say it should work anyway.

it's also not very objective to list specific books, tv shows, and entertainment methods. if i don't like games, why would i play street fighter and other RPGs in japanese? (furthermore, setting sf4 to japanese really doesn't do anything, unless you change the character voices which still isn't much of a learning experience since if you do play sf4, you tend to skip intros/victory poses.)

there's also zero output practice in your plan.

there's also a thread where people dole out advice, and they ARE fluent.

Inflammatory? Who am I flaming?

Why do I need to be "close to fluent?" Didn't I say I spent years just figuring out what path to follow in order to become fluent? It took a lot of trial and error to get to the point I'm at now. I'm not very good at Japanese, but I'm still a lot better than I was last year, or the year before. I'm making progress, which is kind of amazing considering the relatively small amount of time my studies have taken compared to everything else I've done in my life.

What gave you the impression that objectivity was my goal? I said point blank that it's my method. It's 100% subjective. It works for me, just like the movie method worked for Alyks. I'm sharing what I've learned over the years about learning Japanese based on my own experiences in doing so.

If you don't like games, then don't play them. You don't usually set specific game languages; you set the console language, and games follow if they can. In SF4's case, it changes all of the text in the game to Japanese. Audio settings are independent of this. One benefit is that you get Japanese subtitles to go with the Japanese voices in character intros and FMVs.

You're right about output practice. I'm not worried about output just yet. Gonna focus on understanding before I worry about being understood.

That's great. Maybe they're more "qualified" than I am. But plenty of people learned Japanese the "wrong" way, as a lot of us would put it. I don't see how that's any different. Very few people actually teach themselves Japanese. Most pay for classes at a college or hire a private tutor.

vgambit Wrote:Inflammatory? Who am I flaming?

inflammatory[in-flam-uh-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee]  
1. tending to arouse anger, hostility, passion, etc.: inflammatory speeches.

In net parlance that would be akin to flame-bait, not flaming.

vgambit Wrote:What gave you the impression that objectivity was my goal?

vgambit Wrote:There. That's the best method, objectively. No gimmicks, no promises, no charge. Instead of trying to go from illiterate to fluent all at once, just take things step-by-step. Kana, then kanji writing, grammar, and vocab.

Hmm...

vgambit Wrote:Inflammatory? Who am I flaming?

When you say the right way, you are implying that all other ways are "the wrong way." That's how it's interpreted.

vgambit Wrote:Why do I need to be "close to fluent?" Didn't I say I spent years just figuring out what path to follow in order to become fluent? It took a lot of trial and error to get to the point I'm at now. I'm not very good at Japanese, but I'm still a lot better than I was last year, or the year before. I'm making progress, which is kind of amazing considering the relatively small amount of time my studies have taken compared to everything else I've done in my life.

You need to be close to fluent or have helped others become fluent before we can take your advice on becoming fluent. That's only natural.

If you want to give advice for something you've already done and share your experience, that's fine. If you've helped someone and have experience with that, that's fine as well. That's the nature of this board.

But when you're trying to convince people that THIS is the way, when you haven't reached the end yet or helped someone reach the end yet, then you get into trouble.

I applaud that you're doing better. In fact, I can share that experience as well. But I would be pretty much blasted by other people if I told people that my way is the right way when I'm not even close to fluency. Whenever I give advice, I only give advice to what I have experienced and not what I expect to experience.

vgambit Wrote:That's great. Maybe they're more "qualified" than I am. But plenty of people learned Japanese the "wrong" way, as a lot of us would put it. I don't see how that's any different. Very few people actually teach themselves Japanese. Most pay for classes at a college or hire a private tutor.

I met several Japanese majors at a university conversational club who are conversationally fluent. I don't necessarily think that's the "wrong way." The only issues I have with schooling is the lack of spaced-repetition studying and the breaks that encourage you to do nothing before spending the first month of the semester remembering what you forgot at the end of the last semester. However, except for that, you can come out of those systems perfectly fine.

Quote:Don't bother trying to download "raws," aka untranslated manga; raws are usually not scanned at a high enough quality for furigana to be legible.

I have to agree with this. I'm not fluent; I can't wait to get to a level where I can actually make use of the scans.

Quote:playing RPGs with a near-zero understanding of the language can be extremely frustrating.

I played Blaze Union; it was extremely frustrating. Blaze Union uses real Japanese like you might see in Famitsu. Most of the story dialogue (likely upwards of 80%) is voiced.

I'm now playing Yuusha 30 Second. Due to liberal use of hiragana and rainbow speak, it's very playable. My reading speed is very slow; it takes me 30 minutes per mission (reading all background text) when I think it should take around 10 minutes. I am having fun playing; I think I will continue. Sometimes I look up words due to curiosity, but not because I can't advance in the game without it.

vgambit Wrote:Don't bother trying to download "raws," aka untranslated manga; raws are usually not scanned at a high enough quality for furigana to be legible.

To use a common internet expression....

(゜Д゜)ﾊｧ? ...

Your inability to find good raws does not mean that they don't exist. I read raws all the time and the quality is generally quite (or even very) good, maybe you should look for new sources.

Then there is that.... you could always buy them.

Tori-kun Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:(and for at least 3 ~ 4 hours).

I tried something to that effect. It frequently led to burnout. Some days, one thing would lead to another, and I would end up not studying at all for several days, weeks, or months.

Same here. I ended up having burnouts as well and learning Japanese was not fun at all after such a huge amount of time PER DAY. On top of that, I ask myself how people can find so much time per day, when they do not visit school or work full-time..

I find most people tend to have a full time commitment of work or school and then come home and watch tv for 4 or so hours. Study instead. My schedule is pretty nuts but jam it all in there.

vgambit Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:(and for at least 3 ~ 4 hours).

I tried something to that effect. It frequently led to burnout. Some days, one thing would lead to another, and I would end up not studying at all for several days, weeks, or months.

It's better to make it a daily thing. Every morning, or whatever time is best. Habits are tough to break once they get started.

I guess sometimes there was a high stress level from this and it led to burnout twice that I can remember but that was only at first. As I have kept going my tolerance has increased and because I began to understand the language it became fun.

AlexandreC Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:Unless you want a bad accent, don't talk until you know exactly what you're saying.

Uh oh. Tell me you're not advocating some kind of silent period crap, please...

vgambit Wrote:I call this "the right way" because it's the method I use. I am not fluent, nor am I anywhere near it, but I can say with certainty that I'll be close if I stick with it.

Basically... your plan hasn't worked so far. And you want us to follow it?

I didn't talk for the first year I learnt Japanese and I'm doing pretty much the same thing with korean. Also this plan worked for me but the difference is *drum roll* I put in 3 - 4 hours a day.

Hinode Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:Don't bother trying to download "raws," aka untranslated manga; raws are usually not scanned at a high enough quality for furigana to be legible.

To use a common internet expression....

(゜Д゜)ﾊｧ? ...

Your inability to find good raws does not mean that they don't exist. I read raws all the time and the quality is generally quite (or even very) good, maybe you should look for new sources.

Then there is that.... you could always buy them.

true that.... i don't know where you're getting your raws from but there are some huge-highqualityraws floating around. and honestly you don't NEED furigana if the manga is that interesting then.... i'm sure you'll be motivated to look up whateve.r or rea dit a bunch of times etc etc.. or wait till you get a level where you know the kanji... like when you just don't know how to prnounce in a certain combination but you know the meanigns of both kanji that make it up etc etc.

I stopped reading this thread about 2/3 the way through. I haven't posted on RTK in a while, but the RTK I remember wasn't so hostile. Wasn't that what this community valued? Sharing ideas in a non-hostile environment? Building off each other instead of tearing each other down?

Has RTK become just like every other internet forum? If so, tell me now so that I can stop coming altogether.

captal Wrote:I stopped reading this thread about 2/3 the way through. I haven't posted on RTK in a while, but the RTK I remember wasn't so hostile. Wasn't that what this community valued? Sharing ideas in a non-hostile environment? Building off each other instead of tearing each other down?

Has RTK become just like every other internet forum? If so, tell me now so that I can stop coming altogether.

It happens from time to time, although for me personally, I still come back to give advice since I asked a lot of questions here and from AJATT. There will always be debates and arguing but it shouldn't get nasty (if you want nasty visit my 10 month progress report thread, I remember getting chewed up on that thread. I don't take it personally though, this is the Internet after all)

kainzero Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:What gave you the impression that objectivity was my goal?

vgambit Wrote:There. That's the best method, objectively. No gimmicks, no promises, no charge. Instead of trying to go from illiterate to fluent all at once, just take things step-by-step. Kana, then kanji writing, grammar, and vocab.

Hmm...

Saying that something is the best is a subjective statement, and I explicitly said that statement was objective. Take from that what you will.

kainzero Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:Inflammatory? Who am I flaming?

When you say the right way, you are implying that all other ways are "the wrong way." That's how it's interpreted.

And that's what I meant. The wrong way... for me. Just as 10k sentences is the wrong way for some people, and drilling onyomi, kunyomi, compounds, stroke order, and meaning all at once is the wrong way for others.

kainzero Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:Why do I need to be "close to fluent?" Didn't I say I spent years just figuring out what path to follow in order to become fluent? It took a lot of trial and error to get to the point I'm at now. I'm not very good at Japanese, but I'm still a lot better than I was last year, or the year before. I'm making progress, which is kind of amazing considering the relatively small amount of time my studies have taken compared to everything else I've done in my life.

You need to be close to fluent or have helped others become fluent before we can take your advice on becoming fluent. That's only natural.

No, I don't. I don't need any qualifications. I can say what I want. If you don't like it, don't read it. This is yet another thread for people who want to know what paths are available for them to follow. I decided to finally share it in detail despite not having followed it all the way to the end just yet because not only have I already jumped ahead, gave each stretch a trial run, and seen the results, but it took me a very long time to get to this point.

kainzero Wrote:If you want to give advice for something you've already done and share your experience, that's fine. If you've helped someone and have experience with that, that's fine as well. That's the nature of this board.

But when you're trying to convince people that THIS is the way, when you haven't reached the end yet or helped someone reach the end yet, then you get into trouble.

I think the trouble is that you haven't read everything I've said. I think I've made it clear that this method is the right way... for me. Not even anyone else, necessarily. But I've tried a hell of a lot of different methods before settling on this one that I mostly cobbled together on my own from other people's methods.

Hinode Wrote:Your inability to find good raws does not mean that they don't exist. I read raws all the time and the quality is generally quite (or even very) good, maybe you should look for new sources.

Then there is that.... you could always buy them.

I've only ever found one source of raws: IRC. Out of several dozen different mangas I've downloaded, maybe two or three of them were scanned at a high enough quality to be legible. Maybe we're both talking about the same source and simply have different definitions of high quality, but either way, they aren't for me, so I don't waste time on them.

I tried going the "buy my media" route once. Never again. It's just not worth it. I already have plenty of print media that I haven't yet read, so I don't need to buy any more pretty much for the foreseeable future.

mezbup, there are other things to do other than watch TV. 4 hours is a very small amount of time, especially when errands need to be run after work.

I can see where you're coming from about understanding being fun. I still love the feeling I get the first time I understand a lyric from a song I've heard hundreds of times.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:true that.... i don't know where you're getting your raws from but there are some huge-highqualityraws floating around. and honestly you don't NEED furigana if the manga is that interesting then.... i'm sure you'll be motivated to look up whateve.r or rea dit a bunch of times etc etc.. or wait till you get a level where you know the kanji... like when you just don't know how to prnounce in a certain combination but you know the meanigns of both kanji that make it up etc etc.

Without furigana, looking up unknown kanji becomes a huge pain in the ass. It involves recalling the kanji's Heisig keyword, looking it up on RTK, then copying and pasting it along with the rest of the sentence in order to get a translation and reading. Compared to simply typing it out and looking up the compound.

I haven't checked on this site for over 6 months or so, and I was hoping for some interesting reads. While I did find some really good stuff, it is sad to see that this kind of useless bickering is still continuing.

Why is it that we English speakers learning Japanese are so critical of each other? From what I have seen in the language schools I attended, neither Chinese nor Korean students behave in this way.

Can't we all just hold hands and sing around the camp fire? We should be proud of the achievements we have made thus far. I may be speaking for myself here but we are a bunch of nerds that had a dream and we have made it into our realities. Take a step back and share your accomplishments with your fellowship. Though many of us have never met, we all have shared many of the same experiences.

Hmm, this is probably why I never write on forums and just lurk. Well I hope what I said has some effect and wasn't in vain.

Good night!

I just read what captal said, amen brother. I am glad there was someone to beat me to the punch.

vgambit Wrote:

AlexandreC Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:Unless you want a bad accent, don't talk until you know exactly what you're saying.

Uh oh. Tell me you're not advocating some kind of silent period crap, please...

vgambit Wrote:I call this "the right way" because it's the method I use. I am not fluent, nor am I anywhere near it, but I can say with certainty that I'll be close if I stick with it.

Basically... your plan hasn't worked so far. And you want us to follow it?

I'll advocate whatever I damn well please. Doing what I do is your choice and yours alone. If you want to start speaking broken Japanese from day one, then by all means, do so. Nobody's holding a gun to your head.

I underestand you have your own method and all. But the way you responded to that sounded a little mean and that it is "wrong" to start speaking japanese inmediatley.

You know, there are method that are about speaking from the very start. I saw it in a thread in this forum a while ago, and I also have read something similar it in another book. The first method was about mimmic what you do when you are a child. That you relate words with action or something like that.

And the book I read proposed the idea of learning the most frequent words(using mnemotecnics), learn some basic grammar and start talking 'tarzan-like' not worrying everything you said was perfect, just talking and talking, so you start getting better at it. And then start worrying about making things perfect. Again its similar to what happend when you are a child, you dont have perfect grammar or complete sentences you say 'mommy water' and your mom will understand. Then you go to school and they start teaching to you proper grammar and how to make correct sentences, etc, etc.

I have to say, I dont do any of the method I just talked about. As I'm really more interested in understanding rather than creating output.

You know, what is right for you, maybe doesn't work for others. It's, as you said, about testing and finding what works for you. So, I also think (as others have stated), that the thread title isn't an appropiate one, as there isn't a really "right" way to learn japanese and the title can generate innecessary arguments. Maybe it could be change to something else?

vgambit Wrote:I think the trouble is that you haven't read everything I've said. I think I've made it clear that this method is the right way... for me. Not even anyone else, necessarily. But I've tried a hell of a lot of different methods before settling on this one that I mostly cobbled together on my own from other people's methods.

The trouble is that you have an inflammatory thread title, followed by paragraphs written in the imperative, and the only sentence we have that it's your own personal way is in the second post, which is also a little bit vague.

Were it not written like that, I would actually agree with a lot of advice you were given and we would have avoided this whole thing.

So in attempt to calm all these people saying RTK-is-doomed, we can actually have a decent rational debate and exploration of your topics.

1: Switching game language for simple games.
-I'm not finding this to be too effective. I've switched my Facebook profile to Japanese but I find myself ignoring most words since I pretty much understand the meaning and don't need to read it. The only time I'm in trouble is with security updates, since I have no idea what they're talking about. I sometimes switch my OS to Japanese to play certain... games, and it is a hassle when it changes GIMP/Picasa/Audacity to Unicode since my focus is not to learn Japanese in that instance but to process pictures or audio.
-At a better level, I can see it being useful. Playing games with fluency is definitely a goal of mine.

2: Japanese TV
-The problem with Game Center CX is that there's quite a bit of Kansai-ben and a lot of vocabulary is game specific. But still, I support the idea of native material, since I've been watching AKBINGO and all sorts of AKB-related shows. Arino actually came to an arcade in LA last Friday, I took a photo with him. =)

3: Japanese Books
-When I read the four strands of language learning, I became convinced that there is a difference between reading for fluency and reading to learn. I feel like those should be separated. If we always read books where we have to constantly define so many words, it becomes a hassle. I feel like there should be reading where you don't look anything up at all in addition to the strict, look-up-every-word type of reading.

4: Output
-I've been practicing a lot through email and I've improved a fair bit. I can write decent emails now, but my conversation is absolutely horrible because I don't practice. I feel like the input hypothesis (all input, zero output until you're "ready") is absolutely bogus if you want to learn how to write or speak. I think that you'll certainly have an advantage with input and that it doesn't hurt to wait. However, there are times when you want to say something, you've heard it said in Japanese before, but because you never tried to say it you didn't commit that structure to your head. I still make simple past/non-past tense errors in conversation that I wouldn't ever have in written communication.

As for burnout, Thora linked to a book called Willpower with an interesting thesis behind it according to the description on Amazon. I haven't read it yet, although it's sitting in my Kindle waiting to be read after I finish the book Brain Rules which was recommended by nest0r on the RTK wiki.

I think it takes some patience to go through Anki decks and vocab lists though, and perhaps this is something that can be built up over time. I'm envious of those who can do deliberate study for more than 2 hours a day; I think I peak at about 1 hour a day before I start immersing, in which I learn a LOT less but at least enjoy myself somewhat.

kainzero Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:I think the trouble is that you haven't read everything I've said. I think I've made it clear that this method is the right way... for me. Not even anyone else, necessarily. But I've tried a hell of a lot of different methods before settling on this one that I mostly cobbled together on my own from other people's methods.

The trouble is that you have an inflammatory thread title, followed by paragraphs written in the imperative, and the only sentence we have that it's your own personal way is in the second post, which is also a little bit vague.

Were it not written like that, I would actually agree with a lot of advice you were given and we would have avoided this whole thing.

Yeah, I think this is what exactly bugged me when I read this topic. But simply reading it this way gets us nowhere fast. So I'll be nice and read it as a "My method that is working for me." topic, as it was intended.

Looking at the "method", I don't see anything wrong with it.

Or as mezbup put it,

mezbup Wrote:Kana, then kanji writing, grammar, and vocab.

If you do this enough, I don't see why it wouldn't work. I'll be honest, I don't think it matters what you do to achieve each of these things, as long as you stick with it. And the more time you put into it the better. In fact the whole point of AJATT is to make as much of your life exposure to your target language so you have no choice but to learn it.

For me RtK got bloody boring, so I found different things to SRS like vocab or sentences that were more interesting. Which eventually lead me to using Subs2SRS and the Morphology plugin to be SRSing really fun sentences from my favorite Japanese TV shows. While I'm no where near fluent, this is what keeps me coming back right now.