Lately, I’ve been more aggressive with the grading of my cards. I think I’ve been to hard on my self when it comes to grading my cards in the past. I very rarely gave myself a perfect score on my cards even when I knew them fairly well. I have to keep reminding myself that the 10,000 sentence deck is for passive understanding and I shouldn’t grade myself badly if I feel I can’t output that word fluently yet. A lot of cards I know keep wasting my time and I should focus more on the brand new words that I encounter.
If any of you are interesting in trying the ajatt/10,000 sentence method I can say at this point in my learning, I’m over the rough part and can delve into much more interesting reading materials. The biggest obstacle in learning a foreign language is simply accumulating a massive enough vocabulary to not have to look up words every single sentence. When you get to the point of having about 2 new words a paragraph, it’s much more comfortable to deepen your knowledge and pick up words organically from context and their kanji.

School has started back up for me now so there will be less time throughout the day to devote to Japanese study. I’ll still get in my ~10 new sentences a day and do my sentence reps. I can also squeeze in time for watching Japanese youtube videos are reading something in Japanese when I’m waiting between my classes. I’m also keeping up with my “fun kanji deck” as it’s easy to do and I put no pressure on myself with getting  a certain number of cards there. Only when I’m in the mood or come across a new kanji I think is interesting do I add to it.

Cardcount: 3581

Repcount: 19473

Coverage (non-new cards): 99.8%

Retention: 92.3%

Current Japanese ability assessment:

My ability to understand Japanese has improved a ton. I’ve been working a lot on listening lately and I’ve really noticed the benefit. However, my output of the language is still badly lacking in skill. I’ve made a new experimental anki deck to see if I can improve my output. The basic idea of the deck is to put just a picture on the front that reminds me of a sentence or dialog that includes a specific grammar point.  This way I have to pull the sentence entirely from memory instead of just reading it passively. I’m hoping this will allow me to better call upon these grammar points when outputting the language in natural situations.

For Japanese learners wanting to improve their output skills quickly, spend a lot of time working on the “tara” form. Practice using it on all verbs until it becomes second nature. There are so many uses for the “tara” form and it will add some much needed complexity to your sentences.

I’m also finding that learning some sentences without full kanji is helpful for learning. Sometimes I know a word with the kanji, but if i see it somewhere written just in kana, i have no idea what it means. Because of this, I’ll try to mix in some random kanaized sentences to hit words from all different angles in order to best remember them no matter which form I happen to encounter them.

This month I’ve noticed I’ve finally gotten over a hump. I can now watch basic television shows without subtitles and read simple texts such as manga without much difficultly.  I can’t understand something like a psychological drama in Japanese yet, but it’s something definitely to strive for.

My upcoming goals will be to continue working on building a massive vocabulary to aid in comprehension of Japanese media. Also, listening comprehension of the words I’m learning will also be a priority.

I got more work done this month than last month due to being out of school.

A couple days before this post I decided to change the timing of my reviews to get more in. Instead of the 5 minute decremental timeboxing, I’m doing 10 minutes, then skip down to 5 minutes, 4, 3, then another 3, then I’m finished with sentence reviews for the day. It sounds a little complicated but now I get in 25 minutes of review time in instead of 15 which helps a lot. I tried a straight 10 minute decremental review but it was way too long for me to stay interested. It also takes a while to find good sentences to keep up with adding at least 10 a day. All in all, it’s probably about an hour a day dedicated just to SRS sentence work.

I’ve been watching a lot of videos on niconico douga as well. These are ideal for learning new vocabulary because there are comments scrolling across the video from japanese viewers. These comments are corresponding to the content you are watching so there is a lot of repeat usage so it sticks well into the memory. The comments going across the screen are distracting at first but I think they actually add a lot of entertainment value once you get used to them. You can also use them to work on increasing your reading speed because they are scrolling. I wish you could copy and paste the comments but they are done in flash. If anyone knows of a way to copy and paste from that site, it would be a big help. Especially because I don’t really feel like looking up kanji I don’t know manually.

This month was a tough one due to all the time I had to put into studying for my finals, but I still got a fair about of Japanese study done. I was able to keep up with my SRS reviews as well as add a handful of new Japanese sentences to my deck each day.I’ve implemented a new timeboxing system for getting through my reviews and it seems to be working well. Here’s my sentence review routine now:

I start with 5 minutes of reviews, then 4 minutes, 3 minutes. 2 minutes, 1 minute…done.

That adds up to around 15 minutes of time dedicated for sentence reviews, so I usually get like 55 reviews done each time. I read the sentence aloud, trying to mimic as much of an authentic Japanese accent as possible, while also trying to get the meaning and nuance behind it. I save my writing practice for my kanji deck I play around with on the side.

For example, I’ve been looking at some different bird kanji lately that all use the familiar 鳥 radical. I’ll make a card with the word in kana, then put a vivid story and mention some of the radicals that I’ve learned through Heisig or that I’ve just made up myself.

Anyway here are two example cards from the start of my new deck. First, “duck.”

________________________________________________________________

FRONT OF CARD:

カモ

The カモran up to me with a FLYSWATTER and hit me in the face.

ANSWER:

鴨　quackity quack quack

__________________________________________________

See? Not only easy to do, but helps it stick in my memory like glue.  Next, “crane.”

____________________________________________________

FRONT OF CARD:

ツル

The ツルwas stuffed into a TURKEY COOP and all hell broke loose as it escaped.

ANSWER:

鶴

________________________________________________

There you have it. I recommend sticking to Japanese keywords to do Kanji cards if you even have a upper-beginner’s level vocabulary. It’s best start using the Japanese words as much as humanly possible. Also, I’m making this a low-priority deck. My sentence deck will always come first as this one is just for extra practice and fun. I’ll only add cards when I find interesting Kanji.

• Cardcount: 2666
• Repcount: 14500
• Interval:
o Mean: 5.8 months
o SD: 7.8 months
o CV: 133.9%
o Median: 3 months
o Max: 4.4 years
• Coverage (non-new cards): 99.5%
• Retention: 94%

Well, another month of Japanese study has gone by. I’m closing in on the end of my junior year of University so there will be a lot to do. Hopefully I’ll have time to keep up a decent pace on my Japanese studies.

I decided to post my stats from my Spaced Repetition System this time. As I posted on twitter a while back, it’s cool to start seeing cards I added during my first month of Japanese study and how incredibly simple they were. One of these cards is shown at an interval of 4.4 years which means I’ll probably never see it again.

I’ve done 14500 sentence reps so far. I wonder what the average number of reps if for someone who has completed the 10,000 sentence project. If your SRS shows stats like this,(even if you haven’t completed it) feel free to post them in the comments as I find them quite interesting. If I divide the 14500 reps I’ve done by the number of 2666 cards have I have, it comes out roughly to 5.44 reps per card. So if I do 5.44 reps per 10,000 cards, I should end with roughly 54,400 reps. Yikes… however, it’ll probably be even more than that to know each card well enough to not have to review it for a couple years.

Find less obvious connections.

Let us take for example the Japanese word, 「かさねる」　“kasaneru,” which means to “stack; pile; repeat.” At first this looks like a challenge but as a native English speaker, we all know the Spanish word “casa” meaning house/home. This is found in the common expression “Mi casa es su casa,” or “My home is your home.”

All of a sudden, your mind has an anchor point on which to learn the meaning of the Japanese verb. For instance, you can think of “casas” or houses stacked on top of each other which is quite an odd image. Also if you know that “neru” means “to sleep” in Japanese, you can add that easily to your mental imagery to create houses sleeping upon one another. Quite quickly the word “kasaneru” becomes associated with “stacking” in your mind.

One more example of a word I learned just last week. 「たずねる」 “tazuneru,” which means “to ask, inquire, investigate.” This one was kind of tough but I eventually came up with using a mental image of the Tasmanian Devil spinning through a stack of papers investigating something.

These mnemonic devices are only to help you get the word initially into your head. Eventually the mnemonic device will fade into the ether and you’ll just know the word like any other word you know fluently. Also, the larger vocabulary in your native language or another language you have, the easier it will be for to come up with creative ways to remember the vocabulary of your new target language.

Please leave a comment with any mnemonic devices you’ve come up with to remember certain words.

I’ve been reading some intermediate grammar books and picking out some good example sentences when I find them. There are some annoying aspects to this book I’m reading which include sentences on what not to do. I recommend not reading sentences like these because they only confuse you and waste time. Focus on the correct sentences only. They also aren’t clearly labeled so be careful of annoying sections like that when harvesting your example Japanese sentences.

I find it encouraging that a lot of grammar entries I’ve been reading, I already know from just doing normal sentence work. Most of the grammar you’ll find in Japanese is simply knowing how to use different particles to change the nuance of the thought. Once you get the hang of this, Japanese grammar isn’t as difficult as people say it is.

I’ve also been working on a project to increase my knowledge of Japanese vocabulary. This is because I think I’m actually over relying on the Kanji to know the meaning of a sentence. Therefore, I’ve been building a spreadsheet with words in hiragana/katakana only, and then on the other side of the paper an example sentence with kanji and everything that I can hide and check to see if I was right. I can also use this to try to remember what the kanji was from memory. I might post a tutorial on how to make a random vocabulary list like this in Excel. I plan to randomize the words every so often and just print out a page to take with me so I can work on it between classes and such.
がんばまりましょう

金魚のフン
きんぎょ　の　フン　＝　 This refers to the annoying hangers-on to a beautiful or important person. Literally “gold fish excrement” hanging on… 爆笑

競争は激しいけど,
きょうしょう　は　はげしい　けど。。。　＝　”The competition is fierce but….”

漢字は中国から来ました
かんじ　は　ちゅうごく　から　きました　＝　”Kanji came from China”

大人になったら板前になりたい
おとな　に　なったら、　いたまえ　に　なりたい　＝　”When I grow up, I want to become a chef”

カレーが飛び切りうまい
カレー　が　とびきり　うまい　＝　”Curry is extremely delicious”

一 本の歯を失うと、
いっぽん　の　は　を　うしなう　と。。。　＝　”After I lost a tooth…”

肉と魚と、どちらが好き？
にく　と　さかな　と、　どちら　が　すき？　＝　”Meat or fish…which do you like?”
The meat in this case would refer to something like pork, beef, etc… fish is given its own category.