Yes, yes I know. It's one of those reports again...
No need to worry, this time around I'm more focused on giving pointers for other learners and what it will take to reach the next level of learning Japanese.
As of now, I've hit the 2 year mark plus 1 month mark. So what kind of things can I do now in Japanese that I couldn't (back when I started). The first was just understanding kanji and listening. Those were what mattered at the time (I just wanted to be able to understand what people were saying) and how to read.

A few key tips for learners is:
-Set a pace for yourself and don't go overboard on it.
-Use the an SRS (Anki is highly recommended)
-Add common vocabulary in one deck and add common grammar/sentences in another(so you can build a solid understanding and also gain vocabulary which is the biggest difficulty in Japanese)
-Listen and keep listening, even if you don't understand it (Listening has helped me in so many ways, it helped internalize Japanese, it helped me dive into native material, read native material)
-Read outside the srs and add from native material after a certain point(I recommend one starting out with pre-mined sentences+vocabulary). In the beginning I was quite lost and didn't know where to start. So pre-minned decks for vocabulay+sentences isn't a bad place to start
-Once you reach a good enough level(intermediate), then start learning from native material
-Also keep learning fun and have solid motivation going forward
-Expect failures (a lot), how much times have I failed my srs reps? Couldn't understand native material? Couldn't read? Couldn't speak or even write if my life counted on it?
-I can't count how much times I've failed but I kept going and success came because of the failures
-Discard all negative comments,debates or negative feelings towards not being able to succeed (people will say you won't be able to get far)
-Stop complaining and use that time to get learning done!
-You will reach plateau effects and quite a lot in your journey for complete fluency
-The only way to get past this is: keep learning and experiment with different learning methods
-When using the SRS, only use 1-2 decks maximum (it saves time and you won't get get burned out)
-Get srsing out of the way, early in the day
-Aim for advanced level of reading,listening and speaking in 2 years of learning (if done right)



What I'm currently experimenting around with is writing (I want to add only 10-20 cards per day but cloze deletion cards for basic kanji and work my way up). While I'll only add 20-30 new sentences per day. I've found that adding a whole bunch of sentences into my deck for the long-term, works well for me(adding 200-300 cards or so by importing stuff I get from native material).

While for my vocabulary deck: 40-50/day is my maximum. This is what I usual do on average but recently, I'm experimenting around and trying to find ways of maximizing my srs additions and learning. I want to gain writing skills by the next 2 years and I know the srs is key for this(if I use it right). While speaking is more just practicing and shadowing from native material and more listening.

What I've found works is: be consistent with immersing,use of the srs and learning. If you keep it up, you will succeed eventually


I'm looking at these types of cards(which is a good way for me to go deep into monolingual territory)

http://threepoundsflax.org/the-two-tiere...-deletion/
Just need to find a way to make this automated (if possible)

I'm currently looking at different methods for my sentence deck and production deck. I have a good thing going for my vocabulary deck


Progress:The more I think about this, the more I see how I've gotten this far and yet, there is still room for improvement. I've noticed that my listening skills keep getting boosted up (it's those little things now that are improving). A lot of people notice that, you will pick out phrases, then whole sentences/paragraphs and eventually you will understand the whole thing. I still find new stuff to learn, since I've yet to reach my goals just yet but it's just a matter of time.

Reading is a different story though, the only way to progress is learning vocabulary you gather from context(native material) and add them to the SRS. It really helps in the long-run, I'm not sure if I'd be able to read well without it. I slowly noticed that, if you keep learning by context, you will be able to read and even guess readings for unknown kanji/compounds. It's awesome to see stuff you don't know and yet (due to kanji+context) you can figure it out by yourself easily.

Speaking: this is probably the most important skill for most people and I'm still improving this. The key for success is: shadowing and practicing. If you keep listening you will notice you are able to say things better/with a natural tone to them. In the beginning it's good to learn from text-book style but if you want to progress to becoming fluent, you will need to dive into native material and copy from that. Speaking is one of those things that can easily take the most time or the shortest. For me it will probably take me another year to reach fluent speaking skills(if I continue to put in time). I know a few people who were fluent in speaking before anything else, so it's definitely possible without learning kanji/reading. But for my case, I'm lucky, since I'll be at my goal within the next 2 years.

Writing: This skill will probably take the longest but it will be the most rewarding out of them all. It takes to the longest to gain and therefore will be probably the hardest thing to gain (if your aiming for it). Now I have a few ways of improving this one: think about the long-term. I'm slowly only going to add 20 new production writing style cards per day(so I don't get so much reviews). The key here is to gain basic writing skills/kanji writing skills. Eventually you will be able to write 2000+ if you keep this up. The key here is also to be good at reading kanji as well, it makes memorizing for the long-term key. I've yet to reach a good level for this skill but I'm confident it's just a matter of putting in the time.

Lastly, maintaining is key. I'm sure there are many ways of improving your language skills but I find it's best to not take my advice as well(find your own way of learning by experimenting). I've always learned at a hardcore path at times and most people have thought I'm easier crazy or just plain out lying. I'm neither, I'm just a motivated learners who wants to gain native-level skills in this language, I've come to love.

Could you talk about how your language abilities have progressed since last time as well?

Yeah, I was wondering that. It seems you've missed out the progress report from this progress report.

Splatted Wrote:Yeah, I was wondering that. It seems you've missed out the progress report from this progress report.

ah sorry about that. I'll add in that section

JAAIV Wrote:Could you talk about how your language abilities have progressed since last time as well?

i'll be updating it right now

It was very interesting to read your progress report. And it is a good occasion to ask you to write about something, that I started to gain an interest. Which methods, tools, ideas you found or came up with yourself, didn't work and why?

The reason for my interest in this is, that people tend to write progress reports, to write about things that worked for them. When others read it and see how far someone has come, they are trying it out for themselves, and take the risk to fail. On the other hand, by knowing what didn't work for others, can be equally as helpful.

This depends on the way to look at failed methods and ideas of course. It does not follow that because something failed for one person that it doesn't work for another. People can become very creative in solving problems, or improving on methods of others, as long as they are aware that they exist. Someone could have come up with a great method, but nobody ever hears a word about it, simply because it failed for the person who came up with it. They aren't talking about it, because it is seen as a failure, and not something that failed and has the potential to work for others.

And now I am asking you to write about it. And I hope you will have as much to write about failed ideas and methods, as you have written about the things that worked for you.

Nagareboshi Wrote:It was very interesting to read your progress report. And it is a good occasion to ask you to write about something, that I started to gain an interest. Which methods, tools, ideas you found or came up with yourself, didn't work and why?

The reason for my interest in this is, that people tend to write progress reports, to write about things that worked for them. When others read it and see how far someone has come, they are trying it out for themselves, and take the risk to fail. On the other hand, by knowing what didn't work for others, can be equally as helpful.

This depends on the way to look at failed methods and ideas of course. It does not follow that because something failed for one person that it doesn't work for another. People can become very creative in solving problems, or improving on methods of others, as long as they are aware that they exist. Someone could have come up with a great method, but nobody ever hears a word about it, simply because it failed for the person who came up with it. They aren't talking about it, because it is seen as a failure, and not something that failed and has the potential to work for others.

And now I am asking you to write about it. And I hope you will have as much to write about failed ideas and methods, as you have written about the things that worked for you.

Hmm failed methods. When I think about it, almost everything I've done has come from AJATT and this forum(methods). I have experimented a few times with certain things but I'm not sure if I could call them failed methods that didn't work for me. I think that everything I have done has benefited to me in some way.

I'll list a few things that I did try at one point and haven't continued using it(I might just start using it again because I know how I learn well)

Question and Answer type format for the srs. I did try this in the beginning phases and soon scrapped it. I believe it didn't work at the time because I wasn't used to Japanese.
The point of doing these types of cards was: you'd read the question and you'd answer it back(this can either be pre-mined or it could be from a native source). I believe this method only works once you've gained a significant ability in Japanese for it to work really well for the long-term(probably the phase when your about to enter the advanced level of skill)

Another method was transcription. Were you'd listen to audio and type what is being said. This allows you formulate the kanji from audio and improve your typing/recognizing the right kanji in context. This can work if there's a way of automating the way you add cards to the srs. A lot of reasons why these methods don't work for me is simpy because it takes TOO much time to do. That's why I'm all about automating learning at once point in time(now that I'm getting really close to my goal of fluency).

Another one was having kana only questions or readings and writing the kanji equivalents for the answer. This caused me a lot of problems, since writing the equivalent kanji can be more than one. But if it's aiming for the basic kanji,numbers,dates,basic names,etc. It can be super useful for mastering basic vocab/writing.

Cloze deletion (for writing). This is effective but only if you go slow with the additions here and work with basic stuff and build your way up. Making it simple is key here to(testing for 1 word is better than testing for 2 words and so forth). Cloze deletion for a whole sentence isn't going to get you far, since you won't remember that far to begin with.

Cloze deletion (for speaking). This here can work, a lot of people have used this for effective grammar acquisition but like I said again, in small amounts and success will come but in the long-term. Some things won't seem like there working until you've done it for a few months.

Audio based production, for example you here an audio(asking a question or maybe even phrasing something differently) and you reply back. Like I said before, this can work but the key is to make it basic.

Massive Context learning (having context and cloze deletion). This works well but GO SLOW, don't overflow yourself with these types of cards, unless you can handle it for the long-term. I'd say adding at a pace of 10 cards per day, will see you being able to recognize the vocab of desire(cloze deletion part) and you will be able to read the rest for immersion reading(not testing reasons).


Vocabulary based learning: a lot of people use this method and it works wonders. You are able to do a lot of learning for vocabulary that give you trouble in context. I have names,idioms,katakana/hiragana based words and vocabulary in that deck. So I'm familiarizing myself with a lot of things

The traditional way of srsing is: sentence and answer contains reading a definition. This only is effective and one should start using this more than anything else(in the beginning) but later on, one will experiment with new formats to reach new heights.


At the moment that's what I can think of, I'm sure there is more methods out there but these are the ones I've experimented with.

As for tools: the srs was key for me. I'd add context and vocabulary in there and immersing from native material is what got me here. I use rikaisama which can create a text file to which I can import into anki for easy vocab additions. To be honest, when I think how I got this far, it's simple. I used anki, I immerse a lot, I kept doing it daily, I kept myself motivated and immersed in fun material. Having fun is the key to success in language learning. Why else would you be doing it then?

Hi, I have been reading this forum for over a year now and I think read somewhere that you were going to university while studying japanese, but how do you fit all those reviews between uni's homework and part-time job(if you have one) I found my self really short on time for studying japanese( train + subway and sometime at the job(24 hours a week :'( )) in fact i just have enough time to go through my review and I rarely have the time to add new cards.

So is there a trick somewhere, or you are a genius who dont need to study for uni? ;-)

Elidan456 Wrote:Hi, I have been reading this forum for over a year now and I think read somewhere that you were going to university while studying japanese, but how do you fit all those reviews between uni's homework and part-time job(if you have one) I found my self really short on time for studying japanese( train + subway and sometime at the job(24 hours a week :'( )) in fact i just have enough time to go through my review and I rarely have the time to add new cards.

So is there a trick somewhere, or you are a genius who dont need to study for uni? ;-)

When I first started doing Japanese, it did take a good chunk of my day, even when I was at school. I did leave stuff to the last minute for school work at times but I've learned how to use the srs effectively and how to pace it out with school. I eventually started researching ways of using the srs for school, since it worked well for me at Japanese so far.

How did I balance out Japanese+school work? (I did have a part-time job at the moment but it took me 7 months to find another one, it's hard to find good jobs nowadays, even in Canada). What I did was get the srs reps out of the way after school and I concentrated on school work after Japanese Study. I listen to Japanese passively a lot and it had a solid effect on my improvement. I always kept my srs reps up, even if school work was critical. Nowadays, I use the srs for school, since this an effective way to get grades go up and still keep up my Japanese Study.

A lot of people here say they don't have much time, heck even I didn't have that much time to study Japanese at times, due to school but I made time. It's like saying "I want to be fluent in Japanese completely by 3 years" and not put in any time to that goal. \
The key is to create a plan that you can benefit from the long-term learning of Japanese, that's key for success

I am sorry that it took so long to reply. This was exactly what I had hoped for! Thank you for taking your time to write about it.

Nagareboshi Wrote:I am sorry that it took so long to reply. This was exactly what I had hoped for! Thank you for taking your time to write about it.

no problem