The Study Thread

[MisterM2402 [Michael]Member]

@missingno15: High five, man! haha Let us know how it works out for you.

@winterpromise31: Hmmm… well it turns out that I’ll have to delete a lot of these sentences from my deck. While it was jkl’s advice to do that, it seems there are a LOT of basic sentences. No point having a couple of hundred sentences that are all「XはYが大好きです。」,「XはとてもYですね」, etc. haha. Having said that, I’ve only actually got the Core 2000 cards so far; fingers crossed the sentences get a little better in the other 4000 cards :P (though I have a feeling that won’t be the case – they’re just designed to get the meaning of the vocab across, rather than mentally challenge you). We’ll just have to see how it goes :)

Another thing I might have a look at doing is reading Harry Potter :P The gist of the method is to listen to an audiobook while reading the actual thing and just keep going – apparently it doesn’t matter if you can’t understand a humungous portion of it, you just have to keep going (which is what the audio book is for, to keep up the pace). Stop the tape every now and then, highlight problem words you don’t know that keep coming up (keep it to about 2-3 per page, so as not to disrupt the flow), and just become absorbed in the book. There’s something to do with using parallel texts as well, but he writes about it (and properly explains it) here: http://languagefixation.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/mad-flow-become-absorbed-in-your-book/ – the whole blog is for this method, but that seems a good post. And yes, I realise my description of the technique is a bit rubbish, so definitely check out the blog for more haha

The guy also said, for learning German, he watched all 7 seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space 9, and even though it was difficult at first, he was understanding a LOT of the dialogue by the end :) http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/how-i-pwned-german-using-dubs-and-translations

[missingno15Member]

To be honest, having virtually everything changed is slowing down my productivity even though everything else had been already changed, just not the browser and the OS. This is the only the first day so I’ll get used to it eventually.

完全に日本語でやってますね。

[jklMember]

I just hit 1000 sentences. I have studied around 200 kanji so far.

Here are some more numbers. The left column is the number of kanji I don’t know, and the right column is the number of sentences with that number of unknown kanji. In other words, there are 1490 sentences in the deck with only 1 kanji I don’t know, etc.

0 1000
1 1490
2 1710
3 1028
4 506
5 176
6 48
7 13

For me the group with only 1 unknown kanji is the front line of the battle. If progress is to be made, it is to be made there.

[Hatt0riMember]

Oh god, I did it. It’s the last day of summer holidays and I’ve reached The 巳nd (thank you http://kanji.koohii.com !)

Yeah, I know I still have supplement lessons before I’m really done, but finishing the book makes me feel… so great! :D :D :D *victory dance*

[MisterM2402 [Michael]Member]

Congratulations, Hattori! :D Fantastic feeling, right? How long did it take you?

One thing to note, while you may be finished learning new kanji (for now), you still have the reviews to plough through – it’ll be quite a while before they considerably reduce in number each day :P

Don’t worry about the supplement: if you coped well with the main part of the book, it will be a doddle ;) Even the one kanji with 29 strokes「鬱」! :O It’s easy to remember cause it’s so… “exceptional”, if you know what I mean haha

[リンディMember]

I am at 1,100 now… been struggling, but getting through them. :/

cannot WAIT until I can say I am finished.

[missingno15Member]

lol look at you guys completing 常用漢字 and maxing out your anki decks

this is all i did recently :/
http://lang-8.com/123987/journals/1067279

[Hatt0riMember]

@Michael Thank you very much! It took me four months with several one-week breaks (breaks in studying new kanji, not in reviewing!). And I’m so glad you replied to me here, because I wanted to thank you personally for advice about RTK. I’m talking about reverse (kanji -> keyword) decks. I know most people, including Heisig, advise against it, but it helped me immensely. I’ve started doing reverse reviews around 1000th kanji. Since then, retention rate and recognition of kanji improved drastically for me. I especially like the feeling of instant recognition after seeing the character, while for the <1000 kanji I still have to “read” through the primitives to remember the meaning. Anyway, thanks :)

I’ll slow down to 10-15 new kanji/day now, so hopefully number of due cards will drop quickly.

Hahaha, I know what you mean when you say “exceptional” kanji. Every time Heisig warned about certain kanji being difficult I had no problem remembering it. Mostly I struggle with logical and obvious kanji since they are, eh, “easy to remember and easy to forget” :D Yesterday I couldn’t remember kanji for fishing, I mean, water + fish, wth?!? :D

@ リンディ You’re almost there! Don’t know why, but I’ve heard it from other people, and it happened to me as well, but after 1000-ish kanji studying is much faster. It took me three months for the first 1000 and only a month for the rest of the book. Keep going! :D

• This reply was modified 13 years, 2 months ago by  Hatt0ri.

[リンディMember]

Thank you. :) I’ve taken several breaks in adding new kanjis, but I still keep up with reviews daily, so I don’t feel so bad about my pace. I don’t know how it’s going to be once classes start for me on Monday…

I heard that it goes faster after 1,000 as well; it’s actually a little bit of motivation for me. That, and I keep telling myself, “You’re halfway.. you can’t stop now, idiot.” I’m back to 25/day. :D

Congrats on finishing! It must feel amazing to conquer the beast. :D

[ReidenMember]

People are learning, that’s good!

For me, I stopped doing RTK…well, I did like 500 of them and after reading here and there, asking opinions, I found that it would be better for myself to learn directly with vocabs.

More of a motivation thing I guess, Didn’t have the courage to do the other 1500++ and after learning vocabs and prununciation ( I know its quite faster when you know the meaning ) but everyone is own way :)

So at the moment I’m studying Textfugu’s Ultimate lists WITH Kanji mode only, learning vocabs, verbs, adjs and Kanjis. I’m more motivated that way.

Keep up the work everyone and have fun!

[MisterM2402 [Michael]Member]

@Hattori: THANK YOU for saying that XD A couple of days ago I was giving someone (Armando) the same advice on here then a couple of people were saying “no no no, don’t listen to him, he has it wrong”. You’ve made my day :P haha

[winterpromise31Moderator]

Hatt0ri – Congrats on finishing RTK!! That’s awesome! What a massive achievement. :D

I can tell it’s still summer around here… I just got home from spending time with my family in southern Arizona. And my SIL invited me to go to San Diego with her and her sister (who is visiting from England). Well, I’m not one to pass up on a trip to San Diego. Ha. We leave in 45 minutes.

I’ve been keeping up with Anki reviews (yay!) and listening to podcasts while traveling the past two weeks. Surprisingly, I’ve found I can use my laptop while in the car and not get carsick. Yay! Lots of studying on the way to and from San Diego!

See you guys when I get back (Sunday). ;) Keep up the great studying!

[winterpromise31Moderator]

Success! I kept up with my Anki reviews every day while I was in San Diego and even managed to listen to a couple of podcasts. Tomorrow I’m diving back into the grammar lessons. Fun stuff.

How is everyone else progressing?

[missingno15Member]

Got some pretty good input this time around

http://lang-8.com/123987/journals/1081231/

[missingno15Member]

http://lang-8.com/123987/journals/1083390/

That lang-8 post may or may not have to do with this

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