mr_hans_moleman wrote:

Magamo: I find it hard to believe when you say "I'm studying English". Judging from you writing, your just like a native speaker to me. I'm kind of curious as to what exactly it is you don't know yet.

I have the same feeling, I haven't seen anything wrong with his written English. If he said right now "just kidding, I'm actually a native English speaker" I'd believe him.

Maybe AJATT marketing is getting more sophisticated...[sinister chuckle]

kazelee wrote:

welldone101 wrote:

mr_hans_moleman wrote:

Magamo: I find it hard to believe when you say "I'm studying English". Judging from you writing, your just like a native speaker to me. I'm kind of curious as to what exactly it is you don't know yet.

Yeah after he mentioned that I read his posts in the Subs2SRS thread, and I saw like 2 little things that I could pick out as not correct from a native perspective.  But if he hadn't said that I wouldn't have seen them or if I had I would have thought, typo.

It's really motivating me to start SRSing

You are not SRSing? NAAAAAAniiiii

I think he meant SRS'ing 'more' or perhaps with more determination. Why else would he be browsing in the Subs2SRS thread if he didnt SRS? He would have had to have looked at that thread sometime before to know Magamo had posted there. That or he is stalking him

Last edited by blackmacros (2009 June 03, 4:28 am)

Gosh, no compliments for Aijin's English. Maybe talking in the third person will help

Anyway, I've been trying this SRS thing since last night. It's quite interesting, but I don't understand how it's different from just having you decide yourself what you know you're not as familiar with, and then just studying that? It does make it a lot easier to have a computer do it for you, so I think I understand. I just don't know if I feel comfortable with having a computer decide whether or not I need to keep study something or not, since I think I am a better judge at that, y'know?

One thing I was wondering, though: since the flashcards utilize recognition, how do you guys supplement actual writing into the process? For example, I can recognize 蠟燭 without any problem, but a few days ago I went to write it by hand and all of a sudden couldn't remember about four strokes of 蠟. If you're doing nothing but recognizing words, wouldn't it greatly handicap your ability to reproduce them, or do you guys just use this program for recognition, and then other methods for reproduction?

So far I am impressed though. I added about 50 English words I have a lot of trouble with and after a few reviews I can recognize/understand them much more easily. I wouldn't say that it increases my learning any more than hand-made flashcards, but it definitely streamlines the process!

Aijin wrote:

Anyway, I've been trying this SRS thing since last night. It's quite interesting, but I don't understand how it's different from just having you decide yourself what you know you're not as familiar with, and then just studying that? It does make it a lot easier to have a computer do it for you, so I think I understand. I just don't know if I feel comfortable with having a computer decide whether or not I need to keep study something or not, since I think I am a better judge at that, y'know?

If you study 3000 vocabulary words, how would you know which ones you have forgotten. For instance if you use paper flashcards or a list, all you can do is to review all of them. The computer doesn't know when I forget something but it uses statistics of when people on average are about to forget something and can point me at those facts that I am most likely to forget without me having to go through all of the facts, so I think the computer is the better judge. SRSing doesn't improve your memorization. It would probably be better to review every fact you want to know every day as many times as possible to make sure you don't forget anything. SRSing simply reduces the amount of reviews as far as possible without sacrificing too much of your retention. It's just a time-saver.

kazelee wrote:

welldone101 wrote:

mr_hans_moleman wrote:

Magamo: I find it hard to believe when you say "I'm studying English". Judging from you writing, your just like a native speaker to me. I'm kind of curious as to what exactly it is you don't know yet.

Yeah after he mentioned that I read his posts in the Subs2SRS thread, and I saw like 2 little things that I could pick out as not correct from a native perspective.  But if he hadn't said that I wouldn't have seen them or if I had I would have thought, typo.

It's really motivating me to start SRSing

You are not SRSing? NAAAAAAniiiii

Oops I've been found out.

Actually I meant aside from Heisig and iKnow lists imported to anki.  Magamo specifically used lots of real world stuff, and that's something I am going to soon branch out into.  Now I'm just more excited about it than I was before.

Aijin wrote:

Gosh, no compliments for Aijin's English. Maybe talking in the third person will help :P

It's the price to pay for signing up as coming from Stanford University... A lukewarm reviews of our beloved SRS isn't helping either, y'know :oP
Your posts can be recommended for sentence mining without hesitation, they are as good as they get.

Last edited by Jeromin (2009 June 03, 6:19 pm)

Aijin wrote:

Gosh, no compliments for Aijin's English. Maybe talking in the third person will help

Anyway, I've been trying this SRS thing since last night. It's quite interesting, but I don't understand how it's different from just having you decide yourself what you know you're not as familiar with, and then just studying that? It does make it a lot easier to have a computer do it for you, so I think I understand. I just don't know if I feel comfortable with having a computer decide whether or not I need to keep study something or not, since I think I am a better judge at that, y'know?

One thing I was wondering, though: since the flashcards utilize recognition, how do you guys supplement actual writing into the process? For example, I can recognize 蠟燭 without any problem, but a few days ago I went to write it by hand and all of a sudden couldn't remember about four strokes of 蠟. If you're doing nothing but recognizing words, wouldn't it greatly handicap your ability to reproduce them, or do you guys just use this program for recognition, and then other methods for reproduction?

So far I am impressed though. I added about 50 English words I have a lot of trouble with and after a few reviews I can recognize/understand them much more easily. I wouldn't say that it increases my learning any more than hand-made flashcards, but it definitely streamlines the process!

Sorry, I have nothing positive to say to people that went to Stanford instead of Berkeley   Like others have said, your use of written English is native level. Had neither of you told us your were Japanese, we would have thought English was your first language. I think you all three pass the "RevTK Forum Turing Test for Fluency (tm)"

As for the computer deciding when to study: Well, you're telling the program how well you know that card. From that, it just schedules based on the last time you saw. So really you are deciding when you'll study it next.

About writing ability: Flashcards on computer can be very versatile. For your specific question,　I and others would do "production" or what I sometimes called "dictation".  We're given the sentence in kana, and we'll write it out in Kanji. The answer then is the kanji version of the sentence. This is very good as it tests not only if you know what the word is, but how to write it out. Note I do a slight variant, where a kana word and a kana sentence with that word is shown (to give context to what the word is), and I write out just the word.

When you get a chance though, try the sentence method. It's not exactly about finding a sentence with new words. It's about a sentence you haven't seen before, maybe has new words, maybe using words you know in a new way, etc. Early in one's learning, that would be pretty much every sentence. I think I've put half the sentences from Zettai Kareshi in my deck (yeah, I'm just starting out).

At your level, it could be a card dedicated to "I've been using the Internets lately" and "You can look it up on the Google", and as to why it's funny to say it that way. It may be the punchline to a joke that everyone laughs at but you don't get why. It could be why someone would say "That's a negative Ghostrider, the pattern is full". But again, it could be a word you've not heard before "The parents watched in horror as their son openly masticated in front of the guests at the dinner table" (ok, you probably know what masticate is).

Now if only I can get my wife to try it (the sentence method, not masticating. She's very good at masticating, thank you very much).

Last edited by Nukemarine (2009 June 03, 5:58 pm)

Aijin wrote:

One thing I was wondering, though: since the flashcards utilize recognition, how do you guys supplement actual writing into the process? For example, I can recognize 蠟燭 without any problem, but a few days ago I went to write it by hand and all of a sudden couldn't remember about four strokes of 蠟. If you're doing nothing but recognizing words, wouldn't it greatly handicap your ability to reproduce them, or do you guys just use this program for recognition, and then other methods for reproduction

Others have covered the rest, so I'll bring this up. The reason we know how to write kanji without training to write them is because of Remembering the Kanji, the book this site is built upon. By splitting kanji up into well-known (rote memorized) portions and creating stories about them, we never forget how to write a kanji and we never write them wrong. As long as we know which two kanji to use, we will write them perfectly. (At least, that's the point of the book, nothing is ever 100% of course, we're all human).

An RtKer won't add an extra stroke, because an extra stroke = wrong primitive = wrong story.

Are you a native English speaker? Those two are extremely common, particularly "pass the buck". I don't see why you'd avoid learning them - they're an essential component of native-level conversation.

Same here, I've never heard either, though I'm very familiar with the rest of them.

The use of idioms is one of the defining features of someone who sounds fluid and natural. I find that so many "advanced " speakers are still just talking in words but not using phrases properly.  Not just the kind of idioms that were stated above but more evryday phrasal verbs like get on get off, get over etc. Many people don't use them properly or at all.

Maybe the other English speakers couldn't understand the idioms because they are from N America? British and American idioms differ very much.

Last edited by kyotokanji (2009 June 03, 7:04 pm)

Three people in a row who haven't heard of "pass the buck"... now I've seen everything.

From Google:

"pass the buck" = 268,000 matches
"passing the buck" = 210,000 matches
"passed the buck" 107,000 matches

(and bear in mind that using idioms in written English is considered incorrect...)