Today I completed the JLPT word list. What initial interest I had in Japanese culture and media has mostly died, and now I'm stuck with a language which I had invested a lot of time in but little future use for. But anyways, it is my belief that not using immersion was absolutely the most efficient way of learning this language within the time I spent. Instead, devouring the sentence packs KO2001 and Core6k is a lot better use of your time than random word lookups when you come across it, or other strategies that just seem to creep along, compared to such streamlined learning.

I do have one more goal, which is to learn the grammar around levels JLPT 1 and 2, but I think it is sufficiently obscure enough that I could learn it as I go along. So I think I will stop learning Japanese for now, as I am happy just to maintain whatever I have now with SRS. I guess it really nags me that there's no way to achieve at least native fluency in a foreign language no matter how deep you study.

Tobberoth wrote:

The problem is that you probably have horrible listening skills now since training word lists does nothing for your ability to comprehend fluent Japanese. That's where immersion comes in.

It's also a misconception that JLPT2 and JLPT1 grammar is obscure. I recommend anyone who has studied all the grammar for JLPT2 to pick up a novel and check every line for JLPT2/1 grammar. You'll be surprised just how often it comes up.

I already have horrible listening skills to begin with, but certainly studying vocabulary and sentences couldn't have made it worse. I'd have to read novels to know about the grammar points themselves too, and whether to study grammar all at once or as I go along. But I need allocate more time and interest, and it would have really helped if I had any Japanese friends. But I just have reading skills and I guess that's all can manage, language learning is a real black hole and that's pretty discouraging.

I agree, if you don't listen to the language or do stuff with native materials,drama's,games,mangas,novels,animes,etc. I've gotten to the point where If I didn't do my srs reps daily or do stuff with native material. It would be weird, since it's so interrelated to what I do now.

Finally hit 1,100 in RtK. It feels sooooo good to be past the half way point! And the kanji are just flying by now. Making stories is way easier after the half way point (at least for me it has been).

kame3 wrote:

ta12121 wrote:

Basically what I do is this. Before I go to school I finish my srs reps within 1 hour.

I think you also mentioned you having 5 decks, with sentences, kanji and vocab. And you having 10.000 sentences already. How in the world are you managing that in 'only' 1 hour?

Yea i do have 5 decks but 2 of them are kanji(meanings) and the rest are vocab,sentences,production. My two kanji decks/production don't take much time. So for vocab/sentences I only read it out loud to myself and check if the readings are correct and if i got the general meaning for it. I remember when I first started I looked up everything and it seriously took so much time. Eventually when I became more accustomed to Japanese I didn't need much translation. When I say I did it in an hour I did it in breaks. Like i did one deck and then took small break, then go at another deck,etc.

As for the "1 hour" it varies man. It can usual be between 45mins-1:30 for how long it takes me to do all my decks. But regularly I've been able to finish everything in under 1 hour, like 55mins,etc.

Last edited by ta12121 (2010 April 26, 11:11 am)

Finally got around to making a daily/weekly/etc. schedule for my Japanese studies, using MLO (My Life Organized), something I'd started using with a series of comments here last year or so, but which kind of fell by the wayside as I kept devising new strategies, finding new materials and incorporating the new tools our programmer-gods here at RevTK make...

I must say, I'm much more at ease now, I was getting rather overwhelmed and had been avoiding just sitting down and breaking it all into manageable pieces. It was only then that I was able to combine it all and make sure it's flexible and flows together (i.e. not a rigid 'thing' I adhere to like a chore).

Perhaps part of the delay in doing this was simply needing to develop my self-study skills at the same time as reaching a point where being completely unscheduled and spontaneous just wasn't cutting it...

Last edited by nest0r (2010 May 02, 3:57 am)

The grammar I'm looking up now is not in my Basic Japanese Grammar book but my Intermediate Japanese Grammar Book. Yay...!

I have reached 3 milestone achievements today and all 3 have to do with RTK ^^.

1) I reached more than half of RTK in the 4+reviews with 1042 kanji.  This means 1/2 of RTK is in my long term memory .

2) I reached over 10,000 reviews here on this RTK site with 10,042 .

3) after 11 months of hard work I finally reached the 1500 kanji mark.

Boy do I feel proud of myself, it's really nice to see when hard work pays off.  lets keep the achievements coming everyone!

Just passed 10,000 reviews myself. 

Today I passed the last of four stages of hiring (in Japanese) to get a new job that pays ~$21k (USD) more than the last. (technical translator for automotive industry)

Who says majoring in Japanese is a bad idea?

Jarvik7 wrote:

Today I passed the last of four stages of hiring (in Japanese) to get a new job that pays ~$21k (USD) more than the last. (technical translator for automotive industry)

Who says majoring in Japanese is a bad idea?

nice. Technical translator this was something I want to do. But still deciding.

Actually yea about the technical translation Thora lol. It would probably get really really boring if you kept doing it for a living. So I think for now I'll just concentrate on getting my japanese to a high level.

I've found a new language swap partner (via the amazing gumtree.com). She seems pretty keen, and wants to do regular meetings from next week onwards.

This is bad cos my 日本語 speaking / listening absolutely sucks, but good because it forces me to study and prepare; I can't just turn up and having nothing to say! Also trying a new experimental format - we've decided to pick 1-2 topics to discuss before each meeting, so can prepare roughly what to say, brush up on vocab etc. Should be useful..we'll see..