shinsen wrote:

I just checked out the Frequency List Generator. I don't specifically care for frequency info but I was just curious how many unique words are in dorama subtitles. So I crunched jp subs for 50 doramas in increments (yeah, I like d-addicts).

http://i51.tinypic.com/fxrv9f.png


This graph shows number of unique words over 50 doramas:

http://i54.tinypic.com/23j0jyr.png

The bottom graph is the percentage change over the number of unique words, to illustrate vocab acquisition rate. Hopefully it makes sense.

Seems about right. having an active vocab of 20,000 is enough to call one completey fluent in speaking as well as reading.

In terms of reading, I'm aiming for 30,000. Seems like a good goal for vocab. I thought about going to 50,000 but I think that's just to huge of a number

Last edited by ta12121 (2011 February 18, 9:22 pm)

nadiatims wrote:

With all this mention of vocabulary recently, I think it's worth mentioning that once a certain critical mass of vocabulary is reached it's more important to just keep listening in particular, getting more speaking practice, and also reading more to continue to improve. You'll get a bigger improvement (measurable from improved speaking and listening ability and improved understanding of nuance) by focusing on improving your natural grammar intuition and improving your understanding(meaning/usage) of the words you already know than by attempting to memorise thousands and thousands of relatively infrequent words. Vocabulary is very important of course, especially as a beginner because you won't understand anything without it, but I think focusing the bulk of your study time on trying to ensure the longterm memorisation via constant review of old material is a bad idea. Instead I suggest covering a lot of new material quickly (eg unknown vocabulary noted down whilst reading) and if you forget a lot a long the way, that's fine. The most useful words will pop up frequently in your listening and reading and will be remembered.

Yea, that's what I'm exactly doing. I love to shadow via transcripts of show/news along with the audio/or video. It really works wonders if you keep shadowing. You get more confident in speaking Japanese as well as your listening skills. I've also only added vocab from context as they are more likely to show up in real life then just vocab lists. Although in the beginning I believe these lists will help people boost listening skills from zero to 80% in no time.