1. How many facts (production and recognition are only 1 fact) do you have in your SRS not including RTK?
3700 as of now.

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?
I am adding sentences from the short stories I am reading where there is an unknown word/kanji reading or sentence structure.

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 am basically only doing recognition on my decks, apart from my Heisig deck where I draw kanji from keyword.

4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.
Not really.

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?
Around 15-20 each day as I am currently doing KO2001. (30 new sentences per day) When that deck has "matured" (in 2 months) I will go for more.

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do you get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?
I listen to a lot of Japanese music in my idle time. I am considering buying an iPad or a similar device so I can spend my idle time on more things. (While commuting etc)

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.
I am at a level where I can read short stories (not intended strictly for adults) without much problem. My listening is OK as long as I know the words that are being used. Unfortunately my vocabulary is really low, and I have to say it is my weakest point.
Until a couple of weeks ago I had only been reading "learning material", but I thought I would try a couple of fairy tales (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo … &TPN=1) and I was pretty surprised that I could understand almost everything pretty easily as long as I had RikaiKun helping me with unknown vocab. This led me to no longer being "afraid" of jumping into native material, and I am basically learning by reading and listening to that kind of content now.

8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?
I am pretty satisfied, but I know I could do a lot better if I didn't spend half my time procrastinating. I am very happy with my techniques, most of which I discovered on this site.

9. Are you satisfied with your level?
As I said above I am fairly satisfied with how far I have come but I know I could do a lot better if I were more disciplined.

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?
I want to reach advanced fluency. As in understanding everything I hear and read, and being able to express myself to the extent where I am easily being understood by natives, on any subject.

11. How confident are you of getting there?
If I can stay this motivated I will get there in time.

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 wish I discovered Heisig from day 1. I put off kanji study for a few months when I started, just learning vocabulary "in hiragana". I would have been better off studying kanji "on the side" at that time.

13. How long have you been studying? Can you give a rough breakdown of how you spent that time? (new question)
I started in February last year, but due to illness (clinical depression which rendered me more or less paralyzed from December to the middle of April) I would say I have been actively studying for a little less than a year.
From February to May last year I did Genki I and II, then I did Heisig from May to September while going back to my learner's texts and mapping old vocabulary I knew onto their Kanji. From September till December I was basically reading sporadic learner's material on the web, picking up a lot of random kanji readings in the process.
Right now I am 30% into KO2001, and such a systematic way of learning kanji readings is really helpful, but I am also learning random readings from SRSing sentences I encounter in the stories I read. (Edit: I remember starting on KO2001 at some point last year but I gave it up for some reason. My memory is kind of foggy there.)

Last edited by twinzen (2010 May 14, 5:03 pm)

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

I dunno, bunches.

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

Whatever that dude I downloaded it from put in.

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)?

Haven't really used it yet.

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

Roleplaying? o.O

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?

Uh, zero...

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

TV and music daily, whenever I'm able to sit around I guess.

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.

The bottom level.

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

Nah.

9. Are you satisfied with your level?

Of course not! :O

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

All the way.

11. How confident are you of getting there?

It's just a skill acquired through repetition and constant exposure like pretty much any other skill, so it's not like "if" is a factor or anything.

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 started out trying to dedicate an hour or so a day to studying Japanese books, but that sucked so I just do Japanesey stuff whenever I'm sitting around with nothing to do. Which is often. Even then, I procrastinate too much, but it shouldn't be a problem once I'm able to procrastinate on Japanese websites. >:D

13. How long have you been studying? Can you give a rough breakdown of how you spent that time?

I know I started sometime this year, but I don't remember when...

One day I'll sit and read this thread. At least the ones where the people who are currently active have answered.
Anyway, here I go:

1. How many facts (production and recognition are only 1 fact) do you have in your SRS not including RTK?
I just recently went through a big overhaul, startover thing, so my decks are:
Sentences (recognition): 87
Vocab (kana -> kanji, a lot from coming from Sentences deck): 342
Core2/6k: 250 (went through 1200 of them, deleted the ones that were too easy)
RtK -> yep
Total: 679

protip: this is proof of my lack of motivation, which solidifies my current lack of improvement)

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?
I've got a couple of things that I mainly gather from:
1. Books/News/Blogs. These are things I find in the wild, and I want to remember
2. Core2/6k. 'nuff said. Although I only keep the ones I want
3. Dictionaries, etc. For words I find during the day, but can't record the sentence (ie. in conversation, in class, etc...)
4. Class Worksheets -> Easiest way to pass the weekly tests. Plus I actually learn words

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)?
Vocab deck: Kana -> Kanji.
However, if I don't know the meaning of the word, I might mark it wrong, or just "Hard" instead of "Good"
Sentence deck: Just recognition. If I can still read the sentence and know the word I want to learn, I'm good.

4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.
Beginning to break down the sentence in my head, mainly so I'm not just learning the sentence on face value, but actually understanding the word I want to learn. This is very hard for me to do, though!

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?
An average would be somewhere like 5 cards/day. I go way too long without adding any cards, and then one day I'll add a few. I've got huge motivation to learn, but when it comes down to doing it, I lose it all. Instead, I fill out questionnaires on RevTK

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do you get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?
I'm in Japan. I get quite a bit of immersion. Although I am very guilty of staying in our "Foreign Bubble." It's not that I want to, circumstances keep me from the full benefit.
I'm forced to live in a dorm with all foreigners, all my classes are in the "foreign" building, I'm not allowed to take actual university classes, etc. Although Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are usually OK - I spend them "living" at my girlfriend's place and hanging out with our friends.

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.
I've been told that I could pass JLPT 2 without batting an eye, but I disagree. I don't think I'm that good.
I can function in everyday life in Japan, no problem. There's words I don't know, but that's natural, and I don't let it get me down.

One of my weaknesses is listening. It's not necessarily that I don't know the words the person is using, but I mishear things all the time. For example:
Waitress: ご飯の量は？
Me: コーカコーラで
Waitress: blank stare
To me, こはんのりょう sounded like　おのみもの. lolwut?

Another weakness: I feel that my vocabulary is abysmal. I can speak pretty fluidly, but the way I have to talk around things to explain words that I don't know is just annoying.

8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?
Hard to say. I can recognize the words I learn, but I can't use them irl. Plus, I'm not really "using" any techniques. I just SRS the things I already know over and over, rarely adding new things.

9. Are you satisfied with your level?
If I were to be honest with myself, I think my lack of motivation stems from being too satisfied with my current level.
There are a lot of times where I am disappointed in myself, telling myself I have to study more, but the back of my mind says "But you do fine in day-to-day life, so what's the big deal?"

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?
As far as I can. If I can get to a point where I can understand everything 100% and not have to sit and think, stumble, and talk around words that I don't know, then I think I would be happy. But of course, I'd still want to go further.

11. How confident are you of getting there?
My confidence in getting there isn't an issue -- I know that I can make it there.

The problem is my motivation in learning new things. I don't have that "do things that are fun because they are fun" thing that others have -- it still feels like "studying" to me.

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?
My process hasn't stopped evolving yet. I just had a major delete-everything-SRS-related overhaul, and I don't even have 1000 facts.

If I had to do something differently, I have no idea what I would change, because I can't find an actual method that works well for me.

13. How long have you been studying? Can you give a rough breakdown of how you spent that time? (new question)
2 years, 7 months
Year 1: University Class, 1st Year Japanese
Year 1.5 (summer vacation): University Class, 2nd Year Japanese
Year 2: University Class, 3rd Year Japanese
Year 2.5 (summer vacation): ---RtK Reviews Only--- (study break?)
Sept. 2009 - Current: In Japan, trying a bunch of stuff out that I have spoken about before, having multiple overhauls, start overs, blah blah blah.

Last edited by Asriel (2010 May 15, 4:52 am)