I don't have a particular reason for sharing this information, but someone may find it useful I hope.

I have been studying Japanese for about a year and a half, almost exclusively with Anki, for approximately 2 hours per day, spread out through the day. Started with RTK, went up to mid 2000's. I would recommend stopping after 1000 or so. The rest can be easily learned through exposure but I think RTK is a good way to break into Japanese. After that, I tried KO 2001, but the difficulty was too much. Switched to Core 6K which was the main work load.

Added 40 cards a day, 20 facts, 20 writing, 20 recall. Writing (even if done mentally) takes a lot of time, and am not sure of the value of it anymore. Recognition is much faster and by itself would probably have sped things up. Though I must admit writing does help with memorizing a word, I just don't know if it is worth it.

The results of about a year of just Core 6K was that I am able to read a large amount of material, but still a large amount remains too difficult to understand. Daily usage grammar is fine, but still don't understand nuances of many JLPT2 level points. Grammar was never studied.

Since SRS was the only method used, conversation was never attempted, and it is almost impossible to hold a normal one, though most of what people say to me is understood. Caveman responses are at the moment the only thing I am capable of. Grammar/conjugation is terribly wrong, and though I could probably pick the correct response from a test or given a choice, producing it on the fly can't be done. I have read from others on this forum that this will be resolved after a few months of practice. I hope.

I could not attempt to try an AJATT style approach, and SRS was all that was used. I read many people recommend using SRS only as 10% or less of your actual studying. At this point, excluding the conversation issue which will hopefully resolve quickly, I only see one reason SRS should be limited to such little time - motivation.

Provided that you can practice with SRS all day and not get bored of it, I don't know why people recommend using it so little. My method was about 95% SRS, 5% native material. If someone was studying 10% SRS, 90% native material, I don't think they would be at the same level I am at, but that is just my opinion.

I think that SRS is just as valuable as native material as long as the content is good, even if it is pre-produced. Having said that, you can get very far using just SRS for a few hours a day, but not at the level AJATT seems to proclaim you can get with 10000 sentences. Then again, total immersion wasn't used, and the sentences were pre produced (which probably doesnt matter).

Interesting feedback, thanks for sharing. I think I would get bored of such a large amount of SRSing- I need games, books, articles, and especially conversation to keep me interested in learning Japanese. I spent a lot of time just going out to bars or meeting friends because that was a lot more fun than studying.

When I was in my initial phase, I probably spent more than 2 hours/day of study, and I was also in Japan, so I don't think it's a good comparison. I passed N2 last year after roughly two years of study, but I'm worse now than when I took N2 due to putting a halt to my study 6 months ago. Trying to get back into it now (mostly through native material!)

A few observations:

6000 words (assuming you finished core6k) isn't actually all that much after a year and half studying 2 hours a day. You'll need to have absorbed a much larger amount of vocabulary to understand much of anything native in it's entirety.

If all you're doing when learning words is getting their L1 definitions from a pre-made deck (I don't know if this is what you're doing, but it would be the fastest way), when you do start reading real things, it'll still be difficult because you haven't picked up any of the various soft skills involved in reading, getting used to word ordering, tenses etc. Basically you'll have almost no idea of grammar because you've waited a year or more before attempting to read or listen to something. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Divide and conquer can be good if the trade off is that you learn faster in the long run, but I don't think this will be the case, especially if you're only adding 20 facts a day. You start learning a huge amount of things (words grammar readings etc) completely incidentally just by reading, without necessarily being aware of it.

You'll likely be learning words in a somewhat arbitrary order decided by whoever made the study materials rather than learning words based on the frequency they appear in the kind of content you find interesting or in real life (ie in conversations, books, tv etc).

There is a huge amount of vocabulary and grammar that never appears in study materials so this will have to be learned as you start using authentic materials anyway.

You can probably start enjoying native materials much sooner than you realise, if you start practicing reading/listening. If you don't, you'll likely be surprised how difficult it is at first no matter how much vocabulary/grammar you learned in advance. This is especially true for listening. You can't just memorise the written form of 10k words and a bunch of grammar and expect to understand spoken language.

edit: learning words is very good. But why not do it by harvesting unknown words while reading actual content?

Words were studied primarily as a vocab deck, but the sentences were listened to and read if not understood. As the Core series is based off of frequency, the most frequent words were studied and make it very efficient.

As far as vocabulary and grammar that appears in native materials, that is to be expected regardless of the study method. You wont likely learn grammar nuances incidentally, though the basic meaning might be known.

Harvesting unknown words takes a significant amount of time compared to using a pre-recompiled deck. For example, 50 new cards vs native material and harvesting 20 new cards in the same amount of time. While it is difficult to measure the amount of vocabulary known, the SRS only deck has a firm number while the harvesting deck will have a smaller number but a larger potential of words that may be known but not added. Then again, there are many words in the pre-compiled decks which are present in sentences and obtained through exposure but not necessary devoted cards themselves.

sikieiki Wrote:Harvesting unknown words takes a significant amount of time compared to using a pre-recompiled deck. For example, 50 new cards vs native material and harvesting 20 new cards in the same amount of time. While it is difficult to measure the amount of vocabulary known, the SRS only deck has a firm number while the harvesting deck will have a smaller number but a larger potential of words that may be known but not added. Then again, there are many words in the pre-compiled decks which are present in sentences and obtained through exposure but not necessary devoted cards themselves.

When you are used to reviewing cards, your speed will increase considerably. Lower the number of minutes in Anki to 2 for reviews, and you will see how much you get done in very little time. I did it, and I am currently working my way through KO2001, typing it all in by myself. Even manually adding cards is very fast and a straightforward process, once you are used to it.

Right now, with a time limit of 1 minute, i can review 426 cards in less than an hour. Sentence and vocab cards! Reading, speaking the sentence, so recognition only right now. But I will change it once I am done with KO.

Also the process of adding cards from websites doesn't take more than some seconds. Read a passage, mark the words you don't know, and come back with Rickaisama to save and import them into Anki. Its a different story if you are picky, but in general I would add anything and everything I don't know, including the sentences, the vocab is part of. You have to experiment a little, of course, but you will get there.

I'm way behind you, but I am 'mostly SRS' (probably 85% SRS, 10% textbook/iphone apps, 5% native material) but I've just started SRSing the Tae Kim cloze delete deck. I'm using the time left over from RTK reviews now that the number coming up and the time they take are beginning to reduce a little. What I have been doing is typing the correct sentence in full, and only passing it if the entire thing is green. Sometimes I have to see a sentence a dozen times before I can type the whole thing correctly. It makes me feel like a dolt, and I'm only doing three new cards a day at present.

But I've already noticed a step change in the number of Japanese sentences I can read in full; I'm really excited about SRSing for grammar now. And I'd already read the basic section of Tae Kim's guide, and the early parts of other grammar guides and textbooks. There seems to be something about the act of producing sentences (sort of mirroring for writing) that meshes with my personal learning style and helps me consolidate the learning effectively.

I do look at a little native material every day, but I still find everything I'm interested in is a bit too hard and I can only take a little at once.

Separately, I'd have thought that people only wanting 1000 kanji should do RTK Lite; some of the commonest kanji come at the end of RTK and if you don't do the lot then you won't recognise them. I noticed at 1800 or so that I went suddenly from written material looking like 'squiggles with some bits I recognise' to 'stuff I recognise but mostly don't understand', which really lifted my spirits. If I see a kanji in the wild I don't recognise now I try to immediately look it up and get it into my deck -- but there are fewer than I expected.

BohemianCoast Wrote:I'm way behind you, but I am 'mostly SRS' (probably 85% SRS, 10% textbook/iphone apps, 5% native material) but I've just started SRSing the Tae Kim cloze delete deck. I'm using the time left over from RTK reviews now that the number coming up and the time they take are beginning to reduce a little. What I have been doing is typing the correct sentence in full, and only passing it if the entire thing is green. Sometimes I have to see a sentence a dozen times before I can type the whole thing correctly. It makes me feel like a dolt, and I'm only doing three new cards a day at present.

There is no need to feel that way. It is only natural that you can't always remember everything. This is different every day. Some days I have to fail 3 out of 260 cards, and on others i fail 9 out of 70, it depends. Just think of the number of cards in your deck, and don't grade yourself too hard, because there is so much more you will have to learn. And if a word doesn't seem to stick, even after having seen it dozens of times, drag it along for some days. Eventually you will remember everything then, or are able to produce the correct sentence in full, in your case.

BohemianCoast Wrote:But I've already noticed a step change in the number of Japanese sentences I can read in full; I'm really excited about SRSing for grammar now. And I'd already read the basic section of Tae Kim's guide, and the early parts of other grammar guides and textbooks. There seems to be something about the act of producing sentences (sort of mirroring for writing) that meshes with my personal learning style and helps me consolidate the learning effectively.

I know where you are coming from. I do this too when I initially learn new things, and it really helps me, to remember the information. I am a strong visual learner, so I have to mark things, or represent the information in other ways.

BohemianCoast Wrote:I do look at a little native material every day, but I still find everything I'm interested in is a bit too hard and I can only take a little at once.

Just explore and look up words with google for instance. Enter picture search, then start to read or look around for words you already know. And maybe you will find something that catches your interest, that leads you to read more, and this is crucial when learning mass amounts of vocabulary. Or even small amounts over a long period. By doing this you can not only learn new words, with Rikaisama, but also reinforce vocabulary. How much you do is up to you, if you are fine with 5 minutes a day, so be it. This will grow over time, so don't force it.

BohemianCoast Wrote:Separately, I'd have thought that people only wanting 1000 kanji should do RTK Lite; some of the commonest kanji come at the end of RTK and if you don't do the lot then you won't recognise them. I noticed at 1800 or so that I went suddenly from written material looking like 'squiggles with some bits I recognise' to 'stuff I recognise but mostly don't understand', which really lifted my spirits. If I see a kanji in the wild I don't recognise now I try to immediately look it up and get it into my deck -- but there are fewer than I expected.

Some do, some don't, and some are going back to the books after learning different aspects of the language, to learn the rest of it. So it really isn't necessary to learn them all in one go.

I have taken a different approach. After finishing RTK I started the core 2k/6k decks on anki but quickly realized that it would make more sense to finish off learning the grammar.

So I have put SRS'ing on hold (excluding RTK) till I am done with these grammar textbooks (Japanese from Zero 3/Genki-2). In my opinion adding more vocab would be more useful after knowing how to put it in a sentence. Some of the conjugation stuff I've read so far is pretty complex.

Kysen Wrote:I have taken a different approach. After finishing RTK I started the core 2k/6k decks on anki but quickly realized that it would make more sense to finish off learning the grammar.

So I have put SRS'ing on hold (excluding RTK) till I am done with these grammar textbooks (Japanese from Zero 3/Genki-2). In my opinion adding more vocab would be more useful after knowing how to put it in a sentence. Some of the conjugation stuff I've read so far is pretty complex.

Adding more vocab helps your understanding ability, which can (if you let it) teach you how to put them in sentences.

nadiatims Wrote:A few observations:
6000 words (assuming you finished core6k) isn't actually all that much after a year and half studying 2 hours a day. You'll need to have absorbed a much larger amount of vocabulary to understand much of anything native in it's entirety.

Yeah, I can confirm that. I started using Anki effectively and learning Japanese in Januar of this year and I have about 7200 vocab cards now, growing every day and a Subs2SRS deck I started (but discontinued.. only 25 revs/day) and a grammar deck with about 2300 cards (JLPT5-2 grammar). All in all almost 10.000 cards in 10 months. I study exactly 1 hour and not longer a day. (Exceptions: Piles of reviews after holidays >.<)

I'm pretty sure you're exaggerating when you say you studied 2 hours every day. I haven't done that much formal studying per day and I started learning vocab around may. I have studied around 8k words in anki, but unlike you I started trying to read things after the core 2k. Actually what's helped my Japanese the most is reading visual novels, since they combine both audio and text. Formal studying isn't anywhere near as important as actually being immersed in the language. Reading VNs has done more for me than any anki deck I've used. The SrS should be nothing more than a tool to help you remember facts. If you never use the facts you crammed to understand actual Japanese it seems like a waste of time to me.

I can't even get through the core 2k, he word lists utterly random as hell, and is so very very boring. I can't even think I've heard half of these words in conversation. Most common used words.. were did they compile this list.. a boardroom or merger meeting?
Saying that once you get passed all the random business words it's full of, I'm pretty sure I know most of them already (2k - 6k decks).. they just haven't appeared because I don't have the motivation to open that deck on anki.

But then I think if you know that many words, you should be supplementing all the SRS with some tv shows or something.. You'll hear the words used and it'll cement them further, and or you'll hear ones you don't know but can add from context.

sikieiki, I'm glad this is working well for you and thanks for the details about how you are learning! Sometimes I love my SRS and other days I hate it :-). But right now I'm mainly doing RTK and Anki and it's going well.

nadiatims and Tori-kun, could you give some more details about how your learn your vocab/grammar and then SRS them, as well as approximate times for each part? I'm hoping to dive into vocab after Christmas (I should be done with RTK by then!).

Kuma01 Wrote:I'm pretty sure you're exaggerating when you say you studied 2 hours every day. I haven't done that much formal studying per day and I started learning vocab around may. I have studied around 8k words in anki, but unlike you I started trying to read things after the core 2k. Actually what's helped my Japanese the most is reading visual novels, since they combine both audio and text. Formal studying isn't anywhere near as important as actually being immersed in the language. Reading VNs has done more for me than any anki deck I've used. The SrS should be nothing more than a tool to help you remember facts. If you never use the facts you crammed to understand actual Japanese it seems like a waste of time to me.

can you recommend any visual novels/where to get them?

BohemianCoast Wrote:Separately, I'd have thought that people only wanting 1000 kanji should do RTK Lite; some of the commonest kanji come at the end of RTK and if you don't do the lot then you won't recognise them. I noticed at 1800 or so that I went suddenly from written material looking like 'squiggles with some bits I recognise' to 'stuff I recognise but mostly don't understand', which really lifted my spirits. If I see a kanji in the wild I don't recognise now I try to immediately look it up and get it into my deck -- but there are fewer than I expected.

RTK Lite is not the first 1000, but the most common 1000 from RTK. I went all the way through RTK and am now re-doing it in KO2001 (Kanji Odyssey 2001 from Coscom) ordering. At 1200 right now.


As a side, I self-study using SRS only (well, I do read a little on the web), but it is all the time I can spare right now. For the most part I am progressing, but it is slow. I have three decks: rtk with Japanese keywords, core 2/6k and a listening deck w/ 10k sentences. BTW the listening deck is my newest deck and probably the easiest to plow through - it really helps your listening comprehension.

I don't think SRS and native material are mutually exclusive.

However, I feel like the only way to truly evaluate your progress is with native material.

You can do SRS and you can say it's working because you have mature cards but... that only means you're good at what you SRS. Which could really be anything, from words lists to words on TV to novels. I do have a bunch of random phrases and words that I know that are largely useless. 多摩丘陵 will probably not be helpful at any point in my life.

My vocab deck is like 90% Vocab List/KO2001, 10% native material.

(I think output is impossible to SRS, but still possible to practice by yourself.)

ta12121 Wrote:can you recommend any visual novels/where to get them?

I use either http://omochikaeri.wordpress.com/ or http://vndb.org/ to find interesting ones. As for where to get them, I doubt I'm allowed to explain that on this forum, but suffice it to say that a quick Google or Tokyo Toshokan search will yield results.

Don't want to go too offtopic but ta12121 reminded me: is there any seinen-like visual novel, like a detective story or something like that, without ecchi/hentai elements, little girls or similar?

jishera Wrote:nadiatims and Tori-kun, could you give some more details about how your learn your vocab/grammar and then SRS them, as well as approximate times for each part? I'm hoping to dive into vocab after Christmas (I should be done with RTK by then!).

Japanese: Already sufficiently fluent and literate, so don't really study any more. I do occasionally note down new vocabulary which I encounter in a notebook which gets reviewed later. But I'm fairly confident I can remember most new words fairly easily. Current Japanese vocabulary: hard to estimate exactly but I'd guess 25K+ (passive).

Chinese: Read wikipedia or other stuff as best I can with rikaichan and note down a lot of new vocabulary in notebooks. Up to a hundred or more a day. This all gets reviewed eventually. Listen to podcasts. So far I've studied zero grammar. Current vocabulary: 5-6K passive (noted down) + a fair amount that can be inferred via knowledge of japanese. Time spent varies day to day, but I can say that when I'm reading, I'm adding a lot of words, certainly at a much faster rate than the 20 a day mentioned by the OP, and most days I spend less than hour on this type of study.

Kuma01 Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:can you recommend any visual novels/where to get them?

I use either http://omochikaeri.wordpress.com/ or http://vndb.org/ to find interesting ones. As for where to get them, I doubt I'm allowed to explain that on this forum, but suffice it to say that a quick Google or Tokyo Toshokan search will yield results.

thanks, I get your drift(going to search for haruhi ones as well)

Shadeless Wrote:Don't want to go too offtopic but ta12121 reminded me: is there any seinen-like visual novel, like a detective story or something like that, without ecchi/hentai elements, little girls or similar?

I hope there is those types of visual novels, those would be sweet.

ta12121 Wrote:

Shadeless Wrote:Don't want to go too offtopic but ta12121 reminded me: is there any seinen-like visual novel, like a detective story or something like that, without ecchi/hentai elements, little girls or similar?

I hope there is those types of visual novels, those would be sweet.

Umineko No Naku Koro Ni is one of the most awsome mystery visual novels I've played (and I haven't gotten far). Also, I want to play Steins;Gate, after watching the anime, and people say the visual novel is better. Or for non-download visual novels, I go to http://www.mazenove.com, click on a genre, and browse through the highly rated ones. They have all sorts of genres there. I mostly stick with the horror or mystery ones, but judging from those, I'd say the general quality is pretty good.

I'm practically 100% SRS right now. I'm an ALT and during my break periods all I do is work my way through the Core deck (nearly finished with core2k). Need to work on getting back at RTK (someday), and inputting the Donna toki stuff into a deck.

I've found that after you have a moderate grasp on grammar, that probably switching to hardcore word cramming can benefit you a lot and be a real motivation booster because you can understand a lot more material when you can spot the words and know their meaning. You may not understand the specifics but you can piece stuff together as long as you know the words. Its also a pretty good feeling to be able to pick up a light novel and read 50% of the words.

----

On the topic of Visual novels. Torrents are good ways to get them but if you happen to find something you can't find on torrent. I recommend checking out Perfect Dark. It might not be very usable outside of Japan though. The sort of speeds and the amount of data you need to offer up can be steep but it really is possibly one of the best sources (for anything Japanese). VNs aren't really good though if you aren't somewhat intermediate/advanced though. Some of the dialogue is extremely difficult and not very colloquial. They fun though.

If you liked Steins;Gate, check out Nitro Plus's other production, Chaos;head. Its somewhat related to Steins;Gate.