Pffbt, you could finish that in a day.

bladethecoder wrote:

I'm stalled at Lesson 52 =/

Come on, you can do it. There's so little left!!

bladethecoder wrote:

I got the last few of Lesson 52 today. Some people could finish in a day, but I'm more like 25 on a good day, and the last few days haven't been very good.

I don't know about anyone else, but I consider a day when I get through even one or two to be a good day where I was able to move forward a little bit more.  I've been averaging maybe 20 a day for the last month, and I consider that to be a tear.  I got through 17 yesterday and consider that excellent.

What I'm personally afraid of is what happens when the Fall semester starts.  I work full time and am being sponsored through work in an MBA program, so those periods can be very busy.  I was able to start Heisig in the first place because of summer break.

Lesson 53 done (at an average of about 6 per day)...

If you feel like 150 reviews a day is getting hit hard, you can set the limit of reviews per day to something lower. The number of review due will begin to go up, but as long as you keep going the number will begin to drop.

The light at the end of the tunnel is frame 2042 and it will not get any further away only closer with each single kanji.

I felt burnt out at one stage, so I only did 20 a day for a while untill I felt better. You would be surpirsed at the wodners worked just be slowing down a little.

Raschaverak wrote:

I don't see any light nor the end of the tunnel... I'm gonna give up on this language

No point in giving up the language, unless you truly have no desire or passion to continue learning it.

I get burnt out a lot (and I don't even do much learning compared to most on this forum!) but I've learned that taking breaks is integral for me to keep my motivation up. For instance, until about a week ago, I hadn't done ANY new material in a little over a month. Was burnt out with school, a horrible job which I was considering leaving (and eventually did), doing new Japanese material just felt like torture (this was mostly because I was doing Tae Kim grammar only).

No grammar reviews, no KO2001. All I did was keep up my old reviews and keep my immersion environment going (which is effortless for me anyway because that's what I like to do).

Despite many people putting AJATT down sometimes, I remembered his advice about changing something if it's not fun. I got KO2001 early this year (around Feb.), did about 100 sentences and stopped because my lack of grammar was holding me back far too much. Decided to go give Tae Kim a shot. Over the next 3 months, yes, THREE months, I finished the basic grammar section and about 70% of the essential grammar. My biggest problem, which I realized far too late, was that I hated the Tae Kim guide. Don't get me wrong, his guide is amazing (especially considering it's free!), but it was just so boring for me. I had to force myself each and every time to go do a single lesson. Even worse, most of the information didn't stick, and I absolutely loathed doing the Anki deck I had for it.

About 2 weeks ago, I dropped my Tae Kim deck. Realized I wasn't getting anywhere with it. Even with the bad experience, I knew far more grammar than I did before (which was zero), enough to get by on most of KO2001's sentences. So I deleted my Tae Kim deck in Anki, and started up my KO2001 sentences again. I'm having a total blast right now learning new stuff and I feel like I'm starting to slowly get better with reading. All the new vocab sticks pretty well with me, especially because they're re-used so often in a lot of KO2001's sentences. I like the repetition because it helps me remember. All this enjoyment and feeling of motivation just from making one simple change in my current learning method. In Tae Kim I was adding new vocab but got disheartened after seeing a word used, and then never seeing it again anywhere in his guide (or in my native materials), and forgetting it.

I knew I still needed grammar, and I had read a thread on here about someone having troubles with Tae Kim as well. Someone mentioned the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. I checked out some reviews, read a bit, and ordered a copy and just got it 2 days ago. Wow, what a difference and I love it. For some reason, I actually find it enjoyable to find a grammar point I don't understand somewhere, and then go look it up. The examples and descriptions are stellar for my learning style.

I guess my point is is that I think there's a lot of pressure by being a member of this forum to blaze through and learn new stuff No one pressures you of course, but just frequenting these forums and reading them you see so many people do amazing things, making amazing progress, which is great. However, all of us are different, all of us have different learning styles and motivating factors, and, most of all, all of us have far different goals. For me (and maybe for you), I have no immediate use for Japanese aside from my own entertainment. I enjoy studying it, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a chore sometimes. Taking breaks is how I cope with this anymore. I wish I'd realized it sooner. If you have an immediate need to be learning Japanese (i.e. business, school, trip, etc.) then the situation is different. If not, I've learned there is nothing wrong with taking breaks (as long as you aren't worried about making the quickest progress).  For motivation, I think about my end goals, and picture myself 1,2,5,10 years in the future and how my life may be like at different points in my Japanese journey.

Learning this language for any purpose is a difficult endeavor, and every one of us is gonna reach our end goal (usually semi-fluent or above) in a different way and in vastly different time spans. Just be proud that you have the discipline to even attempt learning it, even more so during your free time. So many people are too afraid or have no self-discipline to even take the first step. All of us here on this forum attempting this journey to Japanese fluency (usually without formal schooling/teaching methods) are very lucky!

And holy crap. I got way too carried away...

tl;dr Don't give up on the language. Tweak your study habits or methods to try enjoying it more, or take breaks. There's nothing wrong with that. Unless you have no desire, passion, or immediate reason to need/want to learn Japanese, then there's no reason to give up! Be strong, enjoy the journey, and keep the end goals in sight!
If I can make any progress with this langauge, then trust me, ANYONE can, haha.

I've learnt 1300 kanji. I had a lot of work during three weeks and I didn't review my kanji and didn't add any during this period.
I've got now someting like 500 expired kanji, and if I had something like 75%-80% good during reviews before, now i'm more 50-60%.

I've tried to review them little by little : I stop when I have something like 15 kanji to restudy, but the expired kanji number is terribly constant

Last edited by breakies (2010 August 12, 3:31 am)

I'm doing Remembering simplified Hanzi but I could use some encouragement. I'm at 700(almost half way through) Hanzi studied but I got a little frustrated that the past hundred that I blitzed through gave me trouble. I have a 91% retention rate for all the cards I've studied so far since I've started studying.

I'm around kanji 560, and most of the stories in the lesson (it's Lesson 21) are basically so boring and uninspiring they just don't stick. Kanjis like 'accomplished' (552) or 'miscellaneous' (562) are just impossible to assign any plausible, sticking story. The only way seems to be to just memorize the primitives itself, which totally sucks. Sometimes I think Heisig decided not to invent any stories himself here just because there can't be any at all. Are all further lessons so boring? I'm left with 11 kanjis from this lesson, but I hardly remember most of the ones I have already learned here -- the only way would probably be to drill them through SRS until they get remembered through basic repetition, which is kind of defeating the method.

Last edited by dragonroot (2010 August 13, 8:53 am)

dragonroot wrote:

I'm around kanji 560, and most of the stories in the lesson (it's Lesson 21) are basically so boring and uninspiring they just don't stick.

Hey dragonroot!

I'm around frame 1200 now and I must admit that I have had (and still have) from time to time the same thoughts. There are several kanji for which there simply seems to be no image that sticks!
However, I think, 達 is not one of them! I've come to find the image of the clone-sheep Dolly that digs a tunnel (that's why it's under the soil) out of the research institute towards the road of freedom and therein proving to be an accomplished escapee VERY helpful!
Be that as it may - every mind works differently. But I can tell you that there are some kanji awaiting you for whose stories alone working through RTK is worthwhile! All those stories about Mr. T from frame 951 on were such an inspiration for me!
And only just a few days ago I could hardly stop laughing after the 尺-primitive was introduced in frame 1070!
It's just like in real life - at some times you're patience is tested, at others you are rewarded!
Keep at it! I certainly will!

Thanks for encouragement, EratiK, gyouza, Anna B! I have just finished those 11 kanjis left in the lesson, and as if by magic, they were all very good ones (all the 'pegasus for my birthday', eric cartman and microsoft outlook stories -- just hilarious). And yes, I'll certainly continue, no one's talking about giving up. It just feels hard sometimes.

Last edited by dragonroot (2010 August 14, 5:16 am)