Is English your native language. If not, then Tae Kim could be difficult if you're reading it in English. Fortunately that guide has been translated into a few languages.

Let's talk Initial Study/Initial Review/Review.

Initial Study: How are you studying Tae Kim? Do you read the chapter all the way through? Are you doing exercises that he has for the first few chapters?

Initial Review: How do you do that first review in Anki? Some like to hit "hard" so it comes up quick. Some write down the sentence (ok, that's me). Also, how do you design your cards? Is it Kana to Kanji, Kanji to reading, Clozed deletion?

Reviews: For every other review in Anki, how do you do it? Do you write out the sentence each time, do you type it out. How do you mark questions wrong.

Reason I ask these is some people are tougher with their flashcards than others. Some write out the sentence, some do kana to kanji, some type out the answers, some do cloze deletions, some just do recognition. Each will have it's own pros and cons and change the speed of initial and subsequent reviews.

Also, some just read through Tae Kim and don't put anything in Anki.

georgative wrote:

I study for about 2-3 hours a day (of those 1.5-2 of actual studying)
and I get through about 1 page of Tae Kim a day.
I do about 50 cards a day + I add about 10.

I've read some other people do several pages a day and zoom through all of Tae Kim in a week or something like that. And then they're adding 200 sentences a day from KO2001.

Don't take the numbers posted here to seriously, as I don't think there are representative in any way. Its only natural that people which make really good or especially extraordinary progress want to show off a little bit while people doing not so good usually don't post their numbers at all (as they are often intimidated by the big numbers).

Last edited by thorstenu (2010 February 07, 11:14 am)

In the beginning, learning vocab takes TIME! I remember spending as much as 3 (!) hours on 8-10 sentences. You have to get used to remembering vocab, which is completely different from RTK, so don't stress it.
Personally I used mnemonics in the beginning (mini-stories made within 5-10 secs), that would last until the first review, since I was so used to the RTK thinking. Give that a shot if it's really hard to remember vocab at the moment.
If you just stick to it, you'll get better at it, and when you get better at it, you can add, say, 20 sentences in the time it took you to add 10. Don't stress it!

Personally, I started out by doing half of Tae Kim's guide, and then started KO. I struggled hard with adding 20 sentences a day, but I stuck with it. I was not able to remember more than one new word per sentence, so I made several cards per sentence. After 300-400 cards (ish), I felt much more comfortable, and was able to up my pace AND remember more than one new word per sentence. Persistency is key, in the beginning more than anything.

And regarding how many cards one adds per day is just really about how much time one puts into it. I remember doing the last 2500 sentences of KO2001 at 100-a-day, and that was cool back then, to get a fast boost. Now I add 30 sentences a day, since I don't want to spend 8-10 hours adding/reviewing, and I'm more than happy with that!

PS: It's your choice, but I do NOT recommend to stop reviewing RTK, if you're not doing something else to remain your production-skill. I just started a KO2001 production deck, and now I realize how incredibly helpful RTK was, and still is.

Last edited by Zorlee (2010 February 07, 12:51 pm)

I did tae Kim at about a page a day for half of it then after that I just read over the rest. KO helped to really enforce it. I did KO at an average rate of 100 sentences a day but for the first little while I tried it at 200 and it tore me a new one. So moral of the story is keep to a pace that won't fry your brain

vocab can sometimes be a downright pain but the firmer your grasp on reading kanji, the easier it becomes to remember vocab. Just chuck the word into Anki and it will take care of it for you. Even If you fail it a couple of times eventually it will stick. Happens to me too but yeah, as you develop a firmer grasp on reading kanji it will come to you a bit easier.

mezbup wrote:

Happens to me too but yeah, as you develop a firmer grasp on reading kanji it will come to you a bit easier.

That's what I hoping for! After a while the characters start to repeat and it's not so bad. Well except when it turns out it's a new reading haha

Hmm i still haven't done kanji oddyessy completey. Although i do have that huge sentence pack for it and plus there anki deck. I will do them but at the moment nop.
I have a vocab+kanji+kanji+kana+sentence deck at the moment. I'll probably add 2 more decks one focusing on writing from memory and the other one containing all the kanji odyssey sentences. I think in my level i can easily blaze through them and understand them.

I just wanted to post this here since I'm kind of frustrated today. I know some people (such as Zorlee) basically answered what I'm about to ask, but at that risk I'm going to go ahead anyway.

I'm just pissed off with my speed. I should be adding sentences like crazy, but the combination of not knowing the word, plus some mysterious grammar, is just driving me insane. I've finished RtK1, I'm reviewing the Core2000 sentences and RtK1 everyday, I'm watching dramas in Japanese with Japanese subtitles, and I'm listening to Japanese music. At this point I'm a bit afraid that none of this will click for me. I was just going through some Japanese subtitles for "My Girl" to make some sentences. I went in thinking that I could come out with a sufficient amount of new sentences, but I'm just so incredibly slow. I got 7 in about 45 minutes, and generally they're all simple sentences.

I pick out a sentence and use http://www.alc.co.jp/index.html to help me figure out the definitions, and cross-reference with the English translation. I honestly don't know what feedback or advice I want to hear, but anything to get me out of this slump would be appreciated. I think I'm taking it too hard on myself after having learned German in high school and never really getting anywhere. I want to make sentences with Japanese, I want to study, but I also want it to just happen. I don't know what to do, maybe I should just knock out KO2001 before making sentences.

TheVinster wrote:

I'm just pissed off with my speed. I should be adding sentences like crazy, but the combination of not knowing the word, plus some mysterious grammar, is just driving me insane.

This sounds to me like the stuff you're looking at is just a notch or two too difficult for where you are at the moment. Particularly with grammar you don't know yet, I think it's very hard to really understand it if it's combined with new vocab -- there's just too much in the one sentence that's not properly pinned down.