Nii87 wrote:

Man I've been at it for months and have barely passed book 1...

How are you studying it? Cos I think that makes a huge difference.

I started off at basically twice the speed I wound up going at in the end. Took me a while to find the right pace to do it at. One big tip that can make it much faster if you're using the deck with audio is to do say X reading cards the first day then the next day do all your reviews first and then do the audio for those cards because you'll be able to mark it 3 straight away and can power through every second day in half the time. Wish i'd done that from the start.

YAY! Finished Book 1 Here comes the lady voice
(Incidentally, also at 1/3 of Core 6000)

kame : Congratulations!, i am pushing at frame 660, only recognition. I was thinking, why are you doing production? I mean, of course it's good to know how to produce the words, but it takes at least double time. By now you would have finished both books recognition only.

usis35 wrote:

kame : Congratulations!, i am pushing at frame 660, only recognition. I was thinking, why are you doing production? I mean, of course it's good to know how to produce the words, but it takes at least double time. By now you would have finished both books recognition only.

I think you get a different kind of exercise with listening. Although the sentences in KO2001 are not really natural, in this way you can practise distinguishing words (homophones!) and recognizing sentence patterns. It seems/seemed to me like a good first step towards listening actual Japanese. What was your consideration to not do listening cards?
Now that I think about it, on this forum it was always a bit vague to me whether people, if they said "Do KO2001", meant to include the listening part of KO2001 or not (but perhaps I did not look hard enough). I did not read a general consensus on the forum anyway if it is good/efficient or not.

@ta12121: yeah, I have the same thing. Already had some vocabulary before Core 6000 (although you surely have a lot more vocab than me). With randomised cards, I know around 40% of newly-seen cards.

I also must say that I like to combine KO2001 and Core6000. Because they amplify each other, they both get easier and easier on the way.

Last edited by kame3 (2010 April 21, 3:04 am)

kame3 wrote:

usis35 wrote:

kame : Congratulations!, i am pushing at frame 660, only recognition. I was thinking, why are you doing production? I mean, of course it's good to know how to produce the words, but it takes at least double time. By now you would have finished both books recognition only.

I think you get a different kind of exercise with listening. Although the sentences in KO2001 are not really natural, in this way you can practise distinguishing words (homophones!) and recognizing sentence patterns. It seems/seemed to me like a good first step towards listening actual Japanese. What was your consideration to not do listening cards?
Now that I think about it, on this forum it was always a bit vague to me whether people, if they said "Do KO2001", meant to include the listening part of KO2001 or not (but perhaps I did not look hard enough). I did not read a general consensus on the forum anyway if it is good/efficient or not.

@ta12121: yeah, I have the same thing. Already had some vocabulary before Core 6000 (although you surely have a lot more vocab than me). With randomised cards, I know around 40% of newly-seen cards.

I also must say that I like to combine KO2001 and Core6000. Because they amplify each other, they both get easier and easier on the way.

Oh yea, you reminded me of kanji odyssey. I remeber I have all the sentences for that, but it's in a excel. So more sentences for me to add. But seriously that's a lot of sentences right there. That's 2000+6000=8000 right there. My sentence deck will increase so much.

nest0r wrote:

@ta212124234

Why Excel? ;p http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=58809

Thanks, unno exactly actually lol. I found it a while ago. But I didn't add that much cards into my anki deck, felt lazy at the time.

Finished Level 1 today. I'm off to Level 2 !

Damn, I just finished KO2001 moments ago. Feeling kinda empty... I'm gonna post my review/rant on KO in a few days.

I made it! this was my goal to reach by july, so I'm waaaay ahead of schedule.
It took me exactly 70 days!
Now I have at least one month (before I need to start studying hardcore for my exams) to spend on reading novels, subs2srs, learning some more grammar, ...

I'll never add another of those pre-made sentences again though. I deleted all of my core2000 cards because they were useless and even more boring IMO. They barely offer any added value over raw vocab cards. Plus I get the idea that 90+% of core2000 is contained within KO2001. At least ko2001 really taught me how to read. I'm blazing through "read real japanese", I'm chatting (alas not able to keep a spoken conversation going smoothly yet) in japanese to japanese people, using my computer in japanese, ...

I'm really getting confident of being able to survive in japan this summer, haha. I wasn't so confident at the time I finished RTK back in December (after nine months.... ugh). Quite the contrast... nine months for RTK + some very basic vocab and grammar vs 2.3 months for ko2001 + some subs2srs.
I would never have dreamed of my japanese making such a leap forward in just two months...

Cheers y'all,

Jorre

Last edited by jorrebenst (2011 April 08, 7:33 am)

On August the 6th I began my journey with Kanji Odyssey 2001. When I took a first look at the amount of words and sentences, I thought by myself that it would take at least 6 months to finish Level1! I didn't even want to think about how long Level 2 would take me once I have finished Level 1. It was a very slow start. The sentences were long, and sometimes hard to understand, because they contained many unknown words.

To solve this problem I decided to copy and paste the words into a google window, to hover over it and get the reading, in case I don't know a word. The google window sometimes filled 28 lines on a very bad day. After a review session with at least 236 words per day, I relearned those words, and reviewed them again. In the beginning I had to fail an average of 20 out of 160 first seen cards. At first I was reviewing once per day, in one long session, before I started adding new words. A real time killer.

Then, some weeks into the program, instead of doing a one hour review session every day, I changed the settings in Anki, and started reviewing when cards were due. I also started with time-boxing. I also started changing the number of minutes per session, first 10 minutes, then 9, 8, 7 ... 1 min, and then 2,3, 4 ... 10. I noticed that when I had less time, I was able to get more done, I became faster and so left the time setting at 2 minutes. Sometimes I changed it to 5 which was more than enough to get at least 25 cards done. Sentence and Vocabulary cards. On a regular day I had 150 cards due, sometimes 200, depending on how long I have slept. So I got most of them out of the way in a few time-boxing reviews, before I began adding new cards.

I think I had my first breakthrough after about 4 weeks, when I decided to add Japanese definitions to my cards, for words in sentences that I haven't yet learned. I noticed that I could now understand or at least figure out what the definitions mean. For words in definitions that I didn't understand, or for complicated words, I added English definitions as well. Then I noticed that I could guess right the reading of some words that I didn't know before.

Another breakthrough was, when I noticed that I didn't even need the English translations for sentences, to understand what was going on! I was adding the sentences in English as well, but during reviews I didn't even have to take a look at them any more. The best thing for me personally was though, when the Kanji in words suddenly started to make sense, hard to describe what I mean by that. But it just made click, and I could really see the Kanji, that make up words, by knowing the readings.

Every day I was adding around 95 sentences and vocab cards which was the lowest, and 226 which was the highest number. This equals around 15 to 20 frames in the program. This hasn't changed until the end of Level 1 which is today. Well, today was an exception, to the 15 to 20 frame per day rule. I got so inspired by Zorlee's drive that I simply had to finish level 1 today.

I started at around 10:30 a.m. and got done adding the last card about an hour ago 22:03. In between I was reviewing a bunch and adding some more, reviewing, adding, reviewing, adding ... welcome to the Insane Asylum! But heck it feels great to be able to say:

YES! I have finished this Level!

It means that I will drown in 480 reviews from tomorrow, but I have seen every card at least once today already, so I can really say I am done. And it was so worth it! My reading speed is increasing, my understanding of sentences is too ... This is awesome!

Tomorrow I hope to get my reward for all the hard work. By then my books I ordered should arrive. カラー版 ナルニア国物語 全7巻セット C.S.ルイス、ポーリン・ベインズ、 [単行本], ムーミン童話全集 全9巻 [単行本] and 世界の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド [単行本] I was really lucky to get the special edition of  ムーミン童話全集 it was almost sold out. Anyway, from tomorrow I will have enough material to read to last for some months. And while I keep reading, listening, and watching even more now, I will also work on Kanji Odyssey 2001 to finish Level 2 in another month and a half. From there I will continue straight into Kanzen Master, but I haven't decided it yet, but I think this is the most likely thing I will do after this vocabulary and sentence craziness that is KO.2001.

I can only thank Coscom for having made a great program like this. And in case someone really has read all this here comes the good news. I will release my deck containing the whole of Level 1. You only have to show me proof that you own the original and you get my special deck. Although, I suggest everyone to type everything in by themselves, and not relying on other peoples decks just to save time. But if you want it, you can have it.

Thanks for all your inspiration, and congratulations to everyone, who has made it before me. Now I think I deserve some good nights sleep, if you'll excuse me everyone.

Nagareboshi, I may take you up on that offer, since I do have the book, but not sure yet. Does anyone else's book also have typos? I remember last year when I tried doing KO2001 (and failed) that occasionally the sentences had typos. Kind of weird for such a book.

TheVinster wrote:

Nagareboshi, I may take you up on that offer, since I do have the book, but not sure yet. Does anyone else's book also have typos? I remember last year when I tried doing KO2001 (and failed) that occasionally the sentences had typos. Kind of weird for such a book.

I can't speak for the book, but only for the software, and it contained some errors here and there as well. By the mass of content this program has to offer, I would wonder if there were no errors in there at all. I am thinking of RTK here. Also some translations felt off ... so I changed them and added better ones. So this deck doesn't contain 100% vanilla KO, and it also has more Kanji words in sentences, where applicable and not interefering with the original audio. For instance the word 味 for horse makarel or 鯨 for whale. Which has the word in kana instead of Kanji on the cards.

Be my guest and PM me in case you decide that you want to have it.