1. How many facts (production and recognition are only 1 fact) do you have in your SRS not including RTK?

About 1800 seen facts. 

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?

TaeKim, Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication (both of those about 1,000 sentences), and now KO2001. 

3. Do you do production (audio/hiragana to kanji) and/or recognition (kanji to reaning) or something else? Is there an order (eg production and then recognition)?

Recognition only at the moment.

4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.

I try to link word new vocabulary words to places I know when I'm in the mood.

5. How many cards on average do you add to your deck per day? If life is getting in the way of this, once things settle down how many do you intend to add per day?

Anki stats for my current deck says I've added 16 cards per day on average over the past 3.8 months.

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?

Average around 6-8hrs of listening during the week.  I wear headphones all day while at work.  I'm mainly looping my Shadowing CD at the moment.

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.

I'm honestly not sure where I stand at the moment.  I feel like I'm beyond the beginner stage in just about every area but still not good enough to really have anything to show for it.  I read somewhere that this stage is called the "void".  I'm past the beginner stage where every day I feel like I'm learning something ground breaking, but still not good enough to really understand anything in it's entirety. 

8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?

Yes.  I mean I always want more but when I honestly stop and think for a second it is pretty amazing how far I've come in such a short period of time.

9. Are you satisfied with your level?

No. 

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?

I don't have any end goals when it comes to learning.  One can always improve.

11. How confident are you of getting there?

I'm confident I can always keep improving. 


12. From when you started RTK, aside from your process evolving bit by bit, are there any major things you would do differently again if you could?

I wouldn't have stopped reviewing RTK1 3 months after completing it.  I feel like a freaking idiot now.

1. How many facts (production and recognition are only 1 fact) do you have in your SRS not including RTK?
My sentence deck has 3872 facts.

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?
At first I took sentences from everywhere. Lately 98% of my sentences are from books and manga.

3. Do you do production (audio/hiragana to kanji) and/or recognition (kanji to reaning) or something else? Is there an order (eg production and then recognition)?
I do recognition for all my cards, and production for some. No order.

4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.
For recognition cards I sometimes just say the sentence out loud. For production I write the most "important" words down (the ones I'm likely to forget). But I have many card formats, including dictation, shadowing, image recognition, etc.

5. How many cards on average do you add to your deck per day? Or if life is getting in the way of this, once things settle down how many do you intend to add per day?
Anki says I'm adding 7.4 a day, but I don't do it every day. I'm fine with the way I'm doing it, and I don't plan on increasing the rate any time soon.

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do you get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?
Counting only waking time (I can't listen to stuff during my sleep) I'd say I do an average of 2-3 hours of active exposure (listening/reading/watching) and another 3-4 hours of passive exposure (stuff in the background). This is something that I hope to improve (study is getting in my way)

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.
I'm at a level where everything is fun and happy. I wish I had enough money to fully support my desire for media... but my speaking ability is still very weak. Gotta do a lot more output *wink*.

8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?
I am very satisfied with my progress. The techniques have worked well so far but I'm always looking for ways to experiment and improve them.

9. Are you satisfied with your level?
I'd say that yes, I'm happy about my level but I won't be satisfied until [see next point]

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?
I want to speak and write in a way that makes natives think I was raised in Japan, and understand everything 100%

11. How confident are you of getting there?
I's only a matter of time (it might be long but I don't mind)

12. From when you started RTK, aside from your process evolving bit by bit, are there any major things you would do again differently if you could?
I would go through RTK much much faster, without ever pausing and without worrying too much about my retention rate. The rest is fine.

1. How many facts (production and recognition are only 1 fact) do you have in your SRS not including RTK?

1306 (and double that if you count production and recognition cards seperately).

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?

Right now I'm picking up any leftover JLPT3 vocab words and am slowly starting to make my way through Kanzen Master 2Kyuu.

3. Do you do production (audio/hiragana to kanji) and/or recognition (kanji to reaning) or something else? Is there an order (eg production and then recognition)?

I create new cards for both production and recognition, going kanji - kana for each.

4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.

Nope.

5. How many cards on average do you add to your deck per day? If life is getting in the way of this, once things settle down how many do you intend to add per day?

This can change drastically; I always try to add at least one and don't usually go beyond 50.  As a very rough average though, I would say between 20 and 30 new cards per day.

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?

I listen to several Yomiuru Podcasts whilst doing my SRS reviews (which take up a painful amount of time at the moment) and try to watch some of a Japanese TV Drama each day.  I struggle with this because I'm a musician and spend a lot of time listening to music and find it hard to balance the two.

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.

I'm pretty bad.  I could pass JLPT3 with flying colours but am still many miles away from JLPT2.  My listening comprehension is dreadful but I'm not so bad at reading; provided I know readings/compounds, obviously!

8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?

The method I'm using is working, albeit slowly.   I find I have a hard time memorising words unless I have several similar cards added to the SRS containing it.  For example, I would usually take two sentences featuring the vocab word I'm learning (see below) and create both production - recognition cards.  It's a slow process, but it is successfull.

その会議室は現在使用中です。
機械は多量の電気を使用する。

9. Are you satisfied with your level?

No.

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?

I'd like to be fluent enough to hold meaningful conversation with natives and to work as a translator if I wished.

11. How confident are you of getting there?

I try not to think about the end result or I may get disheartened about how far I still have yet to go, so I just take it one day at a time.

1. How many facts (production and recognition are only 1 fact) do you have in your SRS not including RTK?

3855 facts, about 10 or so are names of people on television I forgot all the time which got really annoying (e.g. Akashiya Sanma).

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?

When something interesting shows up in a book, on the news, in a movie, game, song etc. I add it.

3. Do you do production (audio/hiragana to kanji) and/or recognition (kanji to reaning) or something else? Is there an order (eg production and then recognition)?

98% Recognition only. I do not like production cards personally

4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.

No

5. How many cards on average do you add to your deck per day? Or if life is getting in the way of this, once things settle down how many do you intend to add per day?

Anything from 5 to 40. Usually 15-20

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?

I read a Japanese book on the train (gah, 1Q84 is sold out everywhere), listen to Japanese music most of the time (whoever recommended Soul Scream on this forum, thanks!), watch lots of movies and sometimes I read Mangas.
Oh, also class.

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.

My weakness is that I do not understand much, if I do not concentrate, although I do when listening to German or English. It kind of gets better with reading, but when it comes to listening, I need to concentrate. With Manga, novels, movies and TV I understand about 90% if it's intersting enough to pay attention to. But then again, I did not try to watch Primer or similar movies in Japanese yet and I horribly failed the last time I tried to enjoy a Natsume Souseki novel.
Oh, another weakness.. I have a really hard time to understand Japanese song lyrics without looking them up. Same with English.

8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?

Yes, compared to what I've learned in 8 months of using a SRS those 2 years of learning Japanese in university are a joke.

9. Are you satisfied with your level?

No, and I probably never will be.

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?

I would like to have a better reading competency than the average Japanese person.

11. How confident are you of getting there?

It is all just a matter of time, so pretty confident.

12. From when you started RTK, aside from your process evolving bit by bit, are there any major things you would do again differently if you could?

Start RTK 3 earlier. The Joyo list turned out to be garbage.

Last edited by Evil_Dragon (2009 June 04, 6:07 am)

I edited my reply to discuss how long I've been stumbling along.

Also, there are more than just 2 ways to look at cards. There's also cloze deletion, or "fill in the blank" if you want to call it a more simple term. Anki now supports it, too. It's pretty handy for forcing you to remember which particle to use, or which form of a verb to use, or that sort of thing. Anything you want to fill in a blank with, really.

Actually, it's not too hard to learn how to read a J->J definition. You just have to learn the J dictionary-speak. Once you learn that, then the definitions get easier to read. You'll still need to look up some extra words, but that's the point of it. You get bonus vocab. (Of course, I don't bother with all of this... but this is what people keep telling me... I have a J->J dictionary, though, and it's not that bad. Start with words you know already.)

Khatzumoto pimped this dictionary by Benesse, and I have a copy as well. I give it a thumbs up, too.:
チャレンジ小学国語辞典第四版
ISBN-13: 978-4828804774
This is the new edition. I have the older edition. It's a grade school dictionary, J->J. A good place to start, runs about 2200 yen. I love mine. Very handy. Benesse makes good stuff, generally.

I guess I might ask here, as its related to where I'm at in my Japanese. Anyway:

I've started reading/mining the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya because I wanted some more interesting and natural native input rather than just KO2001.

Even after looking up new words (which is almost all of them ) I still don't really know what the sentence means. So what I've been doing is adding an example sentence (with that word) from the dictionary that I do understand. After that I move on to the next sentence and repeat.

I'm kind of looking for input from someone further along than me. Is this an okay way to be doing things? Are there better ways I could be tackling the transition to native material? Do you try and understand the whole sentence before moving on? Any tips for making the process more efficient etc? I know a few of you jumped straight from RtK to native stuff, so any advice that your experience has provided would be very welcome :-)

Last edited by blackmacros (2009 June 06, 9:34 pm)

Thanks for the advice! The problem is for most things I am interested in, finding an i+1 sentence is relatively hard. Whereas using a dictionary I can usually always find an i+1 sentence for a particular word that I want to know. If I use a dictionary then I'll learn words faster, and be better able to understand the natural stuff I'm reading. On the other hand, the native sentences I have mined are much more interesting and easier to remember.

I started Haruhi (the light novel btw) for a few reasons:
1) I'm interested in it.
2) I wanted to try out mining something where I looked up everything I wasn't familiar with. I know it will be much harder, but I wanted to see what sort of benefit would come with this different method.

Btw, this is what I'm reading right now/how I'm mining.

Read Real Japanese Short Stories- this is just right about my level so far, which is good. Lots of things are i+1.

Death Note Manga- I enjoy reading this, and get the gist of whats happening because of the pictures (plus I've watched the anime about 10 times. I'm not kidding.). Quite a few things are i+1, but many are not.

Full Metal Alchemist Manga- This one is harder for me, because I haven't watched the anime as much and am not so familiar with the story.

Harry Potter (in Japanese)- I'm reading this without mining it, and really enjoying it. I don't need to look things up at all, because I'm already so familiar with the story. But almost nothing here is i+1. Even though I understand whats happening, the sentences as individual units are too complex for me.

With Haruhi in the mix my reading material nicely ranges from 'just my level' [reading real japanese] to 'difficult' [Haruhi].

thermal wrote:

I think it is great you have different approaches for the different stuff you are going through. Variety is great for language learning.

Yeah sorry I should have mentioned at the start that Haruhi was just a part of the approach I was taking.

Its *way* more difficult than manga, that's for sure! But I'll keep at it, because I think its important to have at least one thing that is constantly stretching your abilities.

1. How many facts (production and recognition are only 1 fact) do you have in your SRS not including RTK?
I have about 2000 sentences from enjoyable sources.

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?
Whatever sounds good/cool/funny from my favorite drama/anime/movies.

3. Do you do production (audio/hiragana to kanji) and/or recognition (kanji to reaning) or something else? Is there an order (eg production and then recognition)?
I do recognition. When a recognition cards "First Reviewed" stat gets over 6 months ago, I generate a production card for it.
Recognition: Kanji + Image --> Audio + Reading + J-J Definition
Production: Image + Audio + (Reading) --> Kanji + J-J Definition

4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.
I read aloud, trying to sound just like the actor. Shadowing I guess.

5. How many cards on average do you add to your deck per day? If life is getting in the way of this, once things settle down how many do you intend to add per day?
18,4/day,since deck creation according to anki. I want to do 40 per day(I'm at this pace right now).

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do you get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?
(Waking hours) minus (about 2 hours) = (my exposure per day in hours)

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.
Weakness: Can't read well, more good recognition cards will fix this.
Weakness: Not big enough vocabulary, more fun sentences will fix this.
I can read the GTO manga with about 3-4 unknown words per page.


8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?
I am. I'm using my own super special techniques.

9. Are you satisfied with your level?
Sure, I started 7 months ago. The way I've set things up I'm probably fluent in less than 9 months.

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?
Dunno.

11. How confident are you of getting there?
The way I've set things up I'm probably fluent in less than 9 months.

12. From when you started RTK, aside from your process evolving bit by bit, are there any major things you would do differently again if you could?
Starting RTK and sentence-picking native material sooner. Really, doing ANYTHING is better than doing nothing.

13. How long have you been studying?
SRSing for 7 months now, this is what I call my "serious japanese study period". Before that I was watching drama and stuff, but my study materials were boring textbook pdfs (I doubt I retained anything I read in those things, I get bored easily)

Last edited by nonpoint (2009 July 18, 4:45 am)

nonpoint wrote:

yukamina wrote:

nonpoint wrote:

Does trying to understand the whole sentence and its context count as a technique? I know most people here don't care about context. I do.

Since when?! I thought people here were crazy about only learning stuff in context, hence the popularity of the sentence method(and how everyone avoids RTK2 like the plague). Although I do wonder why some people are so obsessed with generating frequency lists and why they plan to do with them.

There is no context with KO2001, SmartFM nor using jisho/alc to find sentences that contain something you want to learn.

I think the general opinion is that a sentence has a little more context than just a word, but I agree, nothing quite replaces the context that you get when you actually see the word used out in the wild, like for example when you are text-chatting with someone in Japanese.

nonpoint wrote:

Thora wrote:

nonpoint wrote:

(about 2 hours) = (my exposure per day in hours) [...]
I started 6 months ago. The way I've set things up I'm probably fluent in less than 9 months.[...]
I'd like to see more people answering these questions, that way I will know who to ignore.

Indeed. ;-)

Its: (Waking hours) minus (about 2 hours) = (my exposure per day in hours)
Misquote...

Thora, you should answer the questions in this thread so I know if I should ignore you. Also, I would like further posts to ONLY be ones that answer the survey. If you want to me more Thora you can use the email button, I'd be delighted to hear from you.

You probably should be grateful this typing error was pointed out.  Otherwise, everyone reading this thread would have viewed you as another poster making ridiculous claims.  She has an email button you might want to use to thank her

Last edited by bodhisamaya (2009 July 17, 1:14 pm)

For the past few months I have been building vocabulary with Smart.fm and listening to Japanese news online.  I am not using a self-created SRS like Anki so most of the questions I would have no answer for.  I am fluent when it comes to Instant Messaging in Japanese because the conversations always follow the same script and I have all the automatic responses memorized.  Other than that, my Japanese is fairly mediocre.  I already have myself on the ignore add-on for Firefox as I pretty strongly disagree with most of what I ramble on about here.

Last edited by bodhisamaya (2009 July 17, 3:18 pm)