People say this type of stuff on the forum all the time, but it just doesn't translate to my real life. I've lived in Japan for about four years, so I've met a ton of Japanese learners, and everybody's level seems pretty much the same according to the number of years they've studied.

There are a few things which I see that cause variations:
●People who have especially outgoing personalities get better at spoken conversation much quicker once they are living in the country.
●Some people never study at all (despite saying that they want to), and they never learn more than about 300 words even if they live in Japan for years.
●People who get married to Japanese people who don't speak English improve quickly, especially if they have kids together.
●People who study abroad in high school and take classes entirely in Japanese get pretty good within a year, even when they start from scratch.

So as much as I hear people say that you can do such-and-such in just 2-3 years, I've never met anyone who actually did that among the more than 100 Japanese learners I've met (even though I've met people that used RTK and SRS). My experience is that most people start to get really fluent in Japanese at about 7 years of study.

I know that people in this forum aren't lying. I'm just saying that this forum seems to be biased in favor of fast learning when compared to the general Japanese learning population.

I'm talking, of course, only about learners whose native language was English.

Quote:I'm just saying that this forum seems to be biased in favor of fast learning when compared to the general Japanese learning population.

I would say that the methods used around here are not the most widely known? To me, from seeing people that attempt to learn the language it seems like nobody knows what they're doing exactly, especially when it comes to kanji.

It's just pretty obvious that you can spend 10 years on this language without getting too far, and most traditional methods are designed that way in my opinion.

I feel pretty much fluent now after 4.5 years all spent in Japan (with the last 6months to a year cheating pretty majorly with Chinese), can read listen to anything I would want to. I think I could have gotten there in 2-3 years by using better methods than I did at first. Also if I was a little more hardcore, for example getting working holiday visas and working at a konbini or okonomiyaki restaurant or something I think it might be doable in 2. Not as near-native as khatz claimed but definitely fluent.

My experience with JETs has been:
CIRs had all studied some amount of japanese at university and had been on exchange years, all become decently fluent but not amazing after a year or so. I don't think their levels improved that much because they didn't push themselves. They didn't need to as they were good enough. I knew one who got 1kyuu. Others who seem fairly fluent wouldn't challenge it for fear of kanji.

ALTs. some got to old JLPT3 after a few years in japan using mostly traditional methods, tutors, exchange partners etc. Didn't really prioritise it. All talk no walk for the most part.

1 year Exchange students I have met. Were way better than JET ALTs, they could communicate basically, but not great. Didn't have the time to polish it and generally didn't prioritise studying or do it effectively.

4 year (monbukagakushou) exchange student. Could speak fairly fluently and reasonably naturally but made a lot of grammatical errors and could hardly read.

Random others I have met have typically fit this mould. People who had some university japanese under their belt improved a lot by staying in Japan a year or two, but aren't able to get it to that next level because they don't prioritise reading/listening etc and get the advanced vocabulary.

The best foreigner I have heard has lived here 11+ years, perfect accent, but is illiterate.

Things might be changing with the influence of this site, AJATT, www etc, but my impression has been most people do not prioritise it enough to spend the time reading/listening required to develop an adequate vocabulary. It's like Tzadeck said, those that used it (ie. social interaction) a lot improved the most (because most people simply do not study at all in any other way or do it so inconsistently that it becomes almost negligible), but without the additional input don't get to that next level, or they do but take a looong time.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:To me, from seeing people that attempt to learn the language it seems like nobody knows what they're doing exactly, especially when it comes to kanji.

Totally. I think people who come from the wrong cultural background (especially anglo-sphere) tend to spend their first year or so being pretty much clueless, and wasting time the first year and then either give up or progress at a slow or medium pace.
I think people who have already learned english or something else as a second language have a huge advantage, because they understand the process better and don"t second guess themselves or expect miracles.

Zgarbas Wrote:2 years is what it takes a college student to get to N4 level. That's what them normal peeps call a reasonable pace.

If it takes you 2 years to get to N4, you have no hope of being fluent in 7. N4 just really isn't that far into the language. You have to know, what, all of 1500 words and 300 kanji? With audio so slow i forget what the damn start of the sentence was before the end arrives? There are a good few people here, including myself, who got to N2 in 2 years (some even faster, mezbup was 18 months i think). I was spared the craziness, but for the grad intake before mine, the target at my company was N4 in 6 months (we did N5 in that timeframe, with substantially fewer hours of classes). Yeah, when it's their money and not yours, suddenly efficiency is important.

Why do people think a uni language course is the benchmark? Beginner language courses at uni, unless you're doing one with a reputation, are just interest courses. You know, you do a double major or just pick it up alongside.

[Zgarbas]

Isn't that what most people do when picking up a language?

@Tzadeck: aren't you basing that on speech fluency though and not stuff like reading books??

Like, if you met me irl, you probably wouldn't say i'm very good at Japanese cos i can't speak for toffee. But reading a novel isn't a big deal in comparison to output.

Also, your sample is likely to biased, because if you're living in Japan, you're naturally going to put higher importance on speaking, and lower importance on reading literature, i think.

It's more about how much time and effort you put in rather than about how many years you've been studying. There's this theory saying that it takes 10 000 hours to master something, whether it be a sport, music, a language, etc.

Someone who spends an hour studying every day will obviously learn faster than someone who puts in 2 hours per week. I feel it's a bit dumb saying to someone who takes a class every week: you've only gotten to N4 in 2 years, therefore you will never learn. Yet, he's put in about as many hours as someone doing an intensive class for 2 weeks.

Assuming 40 weeks of classes per year, so about 3 months of off time, and 1 hour of study per week that comes to 80 hours of study. The same as two weeks of intensive, 40 hour per week, classes.

I bet the same people putting him down would be saying that the guy who mastered N4 in two weeks is a "genius", yet that comes down to the exact same study time.

Eh, I'm one of those that it will take years.

But...I work close to full-time, I take a full class load, and my job requires several unpaid hours (transport time, etc). I'm also doing two research projects (for school credit) that are extremely time-consuming. So I'm busy as heck.

Studying Japanese, while it is something I like, is at the bottom of the priority level. I literally have set it up to do a handful of grammar sections a week, and maybe 80 vocab words. There's just not that much time. The weekends are my saviors.

Thus why I'm looking for the quickest/easiest way to set up my decks and partially why I decided to not do RTK. I did enough to figure out how to break the kanji down. For fun most nights I do things in English, but some nights I do play pokemon in Japanese (Black).

Just saying not everyone in college has tons of time...

Eikyu Wrote:I feel it's a bit dumb saying to someone who takes a class every week: you've only gotten to N4 in 2 years, therefore you will never learn. Yet, he's put in about as many hours as someone doing an intensive class for 2 weeks.

I didn't say they'd never learn, but they should face reality: it's going to take them a long time to get to an advanced level. I'm approaching this from the same hours invested point of view you are. And the fact is that it takes a lot of hours to get to an advanced level. If you don't understand this, it'll lead to disappointment and frustration. I don't think people who go at a slower rate are less worthwhile people or anything like that.

If it were 2 years to N4, then 5 years living and working in japan, that's a different story. But 2 years to N4 then another 5 years going at that same pace... my guess is you'd end up somewhere north of N2 level, which is a long way short of any definition of fluent. It'd be possible to be conversationally fluent if that was what you focused on, but then you'd probably be mostly illiterate.

On the other hand, i'd say it's pretty natural to vastly pick up the pace once you get to N4 level. That's about where native stuff starts getting approachable and the language becomes less about classes and more about fun. It took me about a year to get to N4, then only another year to get to N2, which is a way bigger chunk of the language.

I agree with you then. 2 years to get to N4 is obviously not a very fast pace and you'll probably never get anywhere if you don't speed up your study at some point.

A lot of people tend to stagnate around the N3/N4 level, especially those living in Japan who study, but only a little bit now and then. You seem to get to a level where you're forgetting things at the about the same rate as you are learning new things.
Beyond that level I think you need a lot of input of native material to really progress further. For some people that can be a lot of fun and it becomes possible to 'study' a lot more each day without getting bored or feeling overloaded. For other people they seem to struggle to fit Japanese into their everyday routine. For example maybe they go home, study from a textbook for 15 mins, but then get bored and spend the rest of the night watching English T.V..

There is no magic method for learning Japanese. Even with the best methods mentioned on here the time investment needed to make real progress is huge. Therefore, the best method for each individual is always going to be the one that motivates them to study a lot, whether that be talking to people, reading manga, watching movies or just having the constant push of SRS repeats.

Two years to get to N4 is a resonable goal if you only have a minimal amount of time a week to spend of studing. For example one evening class a week plus a bit of study in your own time.
It's a pretty poor goal for someone living in Japan or someone studying it at university though.

Tzadeck Wrote:People say this type of stuff on the forum all the time, but it just doesn't translate to my real life. I've lived in Japan for about four years, so I've met a ton of Japanese learners, and everybody's level seems pretty much the same according to the number of years they've studied.

[snip]

I know that people in this forum aren't lying. I'm just saying that this forum seems to be biased in favor of fast learning when compared to the general Japanese learning population.

I'm talking, of course, only about learners whose native language was English.

I hate to sound arrogant, but the general Japanese learning population, even the general language learning population, isn't using the effective and accomplished methods and ideas that a lot of us here have found. Relying on textbooks and teachers and not getting enough exposure. It doesn't matter if you say they're living in Japan, they can still be those kind of foreigners who live in these foreigner bubbles and don't connect with the all-Japanese environment they have at their disposal.

I like what Steve Kaufmann keeps bringing up, he calls it something like the three points that determine the rate at which your language skills improve:
- Your motivation
- The time you spend, with the language
- Your ability to notice what's going on in the language, how attentive you are to what you hear and how much sense you can make of it.

For average learners living in a foreign country it's all too common to not fulfill any of those three points. They can be unmotivated to go out of their comfort zone and make contact with the Japanese environment they don't understand, making them retract to their foreign environments. That in turn makes them fail to spend the necessary time required to learn. That means that they never develop enough of an ability to notice, which can make what little exposure they get go by their heads. The fact that a learner lives in the country of the language in question isn't all that matters (imo), it's what they do, how often they do it etc.

Those three positive examples you listed are examples of learners who do things right, at least something right. How many of the learners you meet do those kind of things? Genuinely asking.

By the way, this video was posted here some time ago, I think it makes a valid point.

edit:

mutley Wrote:There is no magic method for learning Japanese. Even with the best methods mentioned on here the time investment needed to make real progress is huge. Therefore, the best method for each individual is always going to be the one that motivates them to study a lot, whether that be talking to people, reading manga, watching movies or just having the constant push of SRS repeats.

Yes, but does the average Japanese learner (wherever he lives) really do these things? I completely agree that you should use whatever method you prefer, as long as you actually do get this exposure.

@OP: If you want to take a class, go ahead. There's nothing wrong with it. Why are you in a hurry to learn? In fact, what do you really know about living in Japan?

The one thing I miss about class is the camaraderie with classmates working to understand the language and you're all at the relative same skill level (or should be, at least).

A couple of things have helped me transition to self-study.
The major thing for me is accountability. If I study something, how do I know that I know it? In class I get feedback from the teacher, through tests, etc.
That's where SRS came in handy, and as it progressed, I was able to test my accountability in real situations, reading and TV, communication, etc.
I took care of the friends part with Lang-8, japan-guide, and this forum to get me support.

I don't like thinking about learning things in total time spent on Earth but it's more valuable to think about learning things in total time spent actually learning. Furthermore I don't think it's cool to disparage others for being only N4 after University level. We all have different goals in life and we all pursue them with a different energy depending on what we want and need, so why should we get down on people who put in 7 years to learn how to read a novel?

I think all too often many of us get to our advanced levels that we are at and then step back and look back at the path we took to get here. Many of us scratch our chins and go

Quote:"Hmm, I spent 2 years just reaching a point where I could have passed blahblahblah or been able to do blahblahblah when really I could have done that in months if only..."

The part that follows this is usually something about "motivated...focused...directed efforts," all of which you are now. But the fact is most of us can apply those points now because we can apply what we know now and actually get use out of it. And this is a very critical for motivation.

I'd also like to supply another idea which I have realized in recent years concerning my progress. During your language process you will reach a point where you spent much of your time struggling to make sense of everything your hearing, reading, and speaking. But then at some point the amount of data you have assimilated is enough that something slowly, but surely, starts to click. You find yourself starting to hear everything more clearly, even if you don't know some the words. You find your self being able to read more easily even if you can't say what the word is. You find your self picking up new words without having to drill them 100 times. Again, I would say this is the part where you start to cross into "Advanced" territory, and the point where many people look back and go, "If only..."

If you are one of the few that has never critiqued your past self because you think everything you did was great. Then consider yourself lucky because you are in the minority.

I'll add my story into the mix, if I may do so. The process may seem like a long one when you put it into years but break that down to minutes or small goals that can be accomplished, then you can gain steady progress quite easily. I am by no means related to anything asian but does that make the learning harder than someone from Asian descent? It does make it harder but that's because I jumped into Japanese from scratch and tried learning it. I will be heading to the 3 year mark later this year and by then I'll will know what "fluency" means. To progress well in Japanese, you must keep a consistent "Study" session daily. I tend to mix this up with immersion from various materials (Games,animes,mangas,novels,news,shows,talk-shows,songs,etc).

My progress in the beginning was really slow but once I reached the 3 month mark I noticed a huge gain in my progress. I no longer felt that it was impossible but there is a still ways to go. Now that I'm 2 years into learning I've learned a few things that can help you gain complete fluency (reading,speaking,listening,writing).

Keep an immersion environment, use long-term memory softwares like anki that will help you remember kanji,vocabulary,grammar and so forth. Keep working on speaking/writing on a slow pace when you keep immersing/reading. This is to ensure that when you do reach high levels for reading and listening, you won't have a huge gap between reading/listening and speaking/writing. Don't worry about how some people say 7 years. In all honesty, it actually takes "10 years" but that's the traditional study route. If you combine daily efforts,immersion,srs,working on your output slowly. You can own Japanese in 3-5 years, no problem. By fluency I mean upper advanced level.

Lastly, keep going and make sure you make it fun. There is really no other way I've gotten this far and I'm still going at it.

ta12121 Wrote:To progress well in Japanese, you must keep a consistent "Study" session daily.

http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinf...ity-secret

kainzero Wrote:The one thing I miss about class is the camaraderie with classmates working to understand the language and you're all at the relative same skill level (or should be, at least).

Yeah, which is why beginner classes are pretty good and intermediate/advanced ones tend to fall apart. Unless you've got a lot of classes and are actively re-balancing, the students tend to drift apart in ability and it becomes really hard to teach them effectively. I enjoyed my first 6 months of classes, then they just got increasingly painful. Skipping up classes didn't fix the problem, as it meant i skipped over a lot of stuff i hadn't learned, and then the pace in the new class wasn't any more suited. In the end, i gave up and just switched to 100% self study.

vix86 Wrote:During your language process you will reach a point where you spent much of your time struggling to make sense of everything your hearing, reading, and speaking. But then at some point the amount of data you have assimilated is enough that something slowly, but surely, starts to click.

I tell people who are frustrated that the first 3 months are more about growing the part of your brain that you'll need to learn japanese than actually learning japanese. I struggled hard to get any vocab to stick when i first started. I was resorting to mnemonics, etc and learning only a few a day. Fast forward a year and i was doing sprints through the N2 vocab deck at 100 a day. Somewhere between those two points, something in my head changed.

Gaijinme Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:To progress well in Japanese, you must keep a consistent "Study" session daily.

http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinf...ity-secret

Side note: I love the show Seinfeld.
What he says is true, consistency here is key. Apply it to everything you do and you will improve until you succeed.

Quote:To progress well in Japanese, you must keep a consistent "Study" session daily.

That's pretty much common sense for any kind of self improvement. You have to do something every day, even if just for 30 minutes. 30 minutes study once a day is better than 14 hours once a week.
I noticed huge gains in my music ability when I made an effort to play guitar a little bit every day.
5 minutes of pushups daily works better than 2 hours in the gym once a week too.

I know this will probably be considered bad advice, but if the OP is getting that stressed out, they should put RTK away, and just focus on watching and listening to a lot of Japanese.
Before I ever started studying Japanese, I had already known quite a few Japanese words and phrases. Years of watching subtitled anime had implanted all these phrases into my head without my even thinking about it. Maybe whenever the OP feels stressed, they should just sit back, and watch some Japanese TV, with English subtitles so it's still enjoyable.
I also agree with some of the others on here - get a basic textbook. I used Japanese for Everyone, it's good, and it's only $20. Although I've heard that Genki holds your hand a bit more, so maybe Genki would be a better fit for the OP.
Just remember - learning Japanese isn't something that should cause you stress. Learning a second language is usually something that is completely optional, so view it as a hobby, and not as something that you have to do. Otherwise you're going to get so stressed that it'll drain all the fun out of learning, and you'll end up quitting.

Edit: However, that's not to say that one shouldn't try to maintain a daily schedule. But even doing something as simple and relaxing like watching a drama is better than doing nothing.

Gaijinme Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:To progress well in Japanese, you must keep a consistent "Study" session daily.

http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinf...ity-secret

I'm totally interested in this idea of chains,
but could you possibly do it for more than 1 thing?

I mean, would 3 calendars, calendars for

Japanese
Exercising
Writing Jokes

work, if they would be used simultaneously?

Maybe it's kinda impossible to use the calendar trick for more than 1 thing, because more calendars would make the thing too complex.

Why not just use three big markers of different colors? One for Japanese, one for exercising, one for writing jokes. Blue, yellow, and red.

Instead of Xs just use three big bars (the top, middle, and bottom of each box). Fill it in well so it's very visible. That way you can still tell how well you are doing in an easy-to-see way.

Jarvik7 Wrote:5 minutes of pushups daily works better than 2 hours in the gym once a week too.

Yeeeeah, really skeptical about this...

quark Wrote:I know this will probably be considered bad advice, but if the OP is getting that stressed out, they should put RTK away, and just focus on watching and listening to a lot of Japanese.

I don't think there is anything wrong with putting the RTK away and focusing on real Japanese. The reason why people try and recommend that people start with the RTK first is because after you start learning tons of words and then try and come back to the RTK you　often have a hard time making Heisig's keywords fit within your model of Japanese.

This actually fits me quite well. I'll have Core6k done in about 1800 words and only have done maybe 400 of RTK. My time is valuable and I want to really push my ability to read, further. I can't study study both core6k and RTK without cutting one or the other back. So I chose Core6k since it has the most application to me right now (I live in Japan). If you want to study vocab or work on listening, etc. Do it.

I've always wondered how some people just pick up a core deck and learn the vocab without much kanji practice. If it was that simple why do RtK at all? Yeah handwriting doesn't improve but lolhandwriting in this day and age.

If word recognition is merely a matter of mass-exposure even with kanji included RtK loses its meaning.