How do YOU optimally learn from JapanesePOD podcasts?

[d4veg]

I'm just curious how many lessons fellow listeners do a week? I find I usually only have 2-3 hours each day to spend on Japanese and I am still probably classified as a Beginner in Japanese. (I have taken a first year accelerated intro to Japanese at my University.)

How many times do you go over the lessons? I feel that if I don't review them later, most of the vocab will slip right out of my short term memory within a couple of days. I guess this is inevitable though. I'm also only a Basic member (maybe this is my downfall! )

I'm just curious on advice. Has anyone made it through the beginner series and have any knowledgeable tips on retaining vocab and kanji.

I've also started watching J-DORAMAS to help with expanding my knowledge of culture as well as listening comprehension.

Regarding kanji, I have been told by my uncle who has lived in Japan for 20 years that if you want to retain the ability to write the kanji you must write it out 1000 times. This seems very monotonous and boring. There must be a relatively fun way of doing this?

I've just been a bit overwhelmed lately and slightly frustrated with my Japanese learning although I will persist!

-Dave G

[Javizy]

Your uncle is giving you some horrible advice. There's no need to write a character more than a couple of times to learn it initially. Use Remembering the Kanji to learn kanji. With the time you have available, you could finish it in a number of weeks. Check http://forum.koohii.com/viewforum.php?id=1 Anybody who tells you kanji is hard isn't worth listening to. It's time-consuming, and may be tedious if you don't find it interesting, but it's no harder than learning anything else, so don't be put off.

Then download Anki (http://ichi2.net/anki/), which comes with a premade deck for reviewing. This is also your key to retaining vocabulary, and learning it at a much, much faster rate than you are now. Once you've got RTK out of the way, you could easily be managing 50+ per day without spending much more than an hour on it.

An alternative to Anki is http://smart.fm/. Lots of premade content with audio. The core 2000/6000 are supposed to be very good. It's also possible to import the decks into Anki (recommended).

If you take a look around the forum I mentioned above, you'll find lots of great advice on all this stuff.

[salivia_baker]

I second Anki. It is my main tool for studying.
I listen to a lesson two or three times and then I learn the vocab with Anki. I also listen to the dialogue and review tracks if they exist (I do a lot of old lessons so they aren't always available.)
Since I have to manually put the info into Anki I review the lesson while doing so.
After a while of learning the vocab I go back to the lesson and see if I get everything now. If not I listen to the tracks a few times again but most of the time I get it.

Jdorama are wonderful for listening comprehension (as well as movies, stage plays, anime, variety shows,..) . Since I watch a lot of Japanese media even before I started learning and I usually don't have problems getting the dialogue in the lessons in normal speed.

I read in the forum once from a member who said that s/he would learn the vocab with the Kanji. That way one wouldn't have to learn it again when learning writing kanji.
Up until then I had learned the vocab in Kana but I switched to Kanji and I must say it does work. I am not good with telling which word get which kanji but I can read some kanji that way, which makes it easier to learn them now. Because I have at least one reading already memorized. There are also some Kanji that you encounter with different readings for words when you go through the beginner/newbie/etc. series. So you might even all readings to one kanji. You're halfway there then with the kanji.

[d4veg]

I am under the impression that it is a good idea to learn the meanings of the kanji before the vocabulary associated with them?

[salivia_baker]

I am under the impression that it is a good idea to learn the meanings of the kanji before the vocabulary associated with them?

I learn the vocab before the meaning and it works for me. But I can understand if most people would prefer to learn the meaning beforehand and then the vocab

[Javizy]

I read in the forum once from a member who said that s/he would learn the vocab with the Kanji. That way one wouldn't have to learn it again when learning writing kanji.

Up until then I had learned the vocab in Kana but I switched to Kanji and I must say it does work. I am not good with telling which word get which kanji but I can read some kanji that way, which makes it easier to learn them now. Because I have at least one reading already memorized. There are also some Kanji that you encounter with different readings for words when you go through the beginner/newbie/etc. series. So you might even all readings to one kanji. You're halfway there then with the kanji.

Are you sure you can't remember who said it? I've said a number of times that learning kanji readings with vocabulary is a great idea, and I know at least one other person who has. Learning how to write/recognise them should be done in advance though.

If you don't already know the characters, then you have to stop and find some way to memorise them before moving on. Unless your vocabulary deck is perfectly structured so that you learn kanji all 2000 in the easiest possible order, it's going to be a bit of a nightmare. You'd need a great knack for memorising them at any rate.

Using Remembering the Kanji solves all these problems for you, and gives you the structure to get the writing/recognition out of the way quickly. Try googling for 'Heisig sample', since there's a PDF with the first hundred or so pages about somewhere. There's a lot more info in the stickies on that forum I mentioned.

[salivia_baker]

Are you sure you can't remember who said it? I've said a number of times that learning kanji readings with vocabulary is a great idea, and I know at least one other person who has. Learning how to write/recognise them should be done in advance though.

I see my fault. I meant the reading/recognition not the reverse with having the english word and then knowing how it is written.
i.e.
午前 shows up in my deck. I cannot really read it but I know that it means gozen/morning. If I get the return card with "morning" I only have to know "gozen" in order to pass. But I have seen the characters at least. And the later character actually shows up again in other vocabulary. then read as "mae" and the former character shows up in other vocab (午後, gogo). So I know that the later character can be pronounces zen as well as mae. But I cannot write or I don't know which reading is which (kun, on) or if there are other readings or what the radical is. I will learn that later n my actual kanji studies.

though simple kanji like the numbers or 日, 人, 山,.. I do ask myself. I have a card with 今日 <-> today. so when I get the card "today" I have to know the reading AND which kanji are used.

[d4veg]

I have checked out Remembering the Kanji and this is a fascinating way to remember how to write the kanji using imaginative memory and mnemonic devices. Absolutely brilliant. I can't believe I didn't check this book out before.

I wonder what a reasonable amount of kanji could be learnt a day. 20? 40?

I do have a lot of spare time right now and I am trying to optimally learn as much vocab and kanji.

I still do not have the greatest technique in my learning. Is vocab best learn using Anki decks with sentences to give meaning of the vocab? or would strictly memorizing the vocab by itself by best? Possibly a mixture of both example sentences and plain vocab cards?

I have also checked out anki decks that only have a listening component and I must reproduce the sentence. Should I also write the answers out with a pen and paper for extra practice for each card? Hmm...

Could anyone shed any more light on what I should be learning as a relative beginner to help me build a nice foundation for later Japanese studies.

[Javizy]

I wonder what a reasonable amount of kanji could be learnt a day. 20? 40?

It really depends on you. You may have already realised how many you can handle in a day. For a lot of people, it seems to start off very easy (100+ is possible), and then they have to be more realistic (50 or less). Be sure to download the Heisig deck for Anki and review as you learn (check File > Download > Shared Deck). Heisig's technique is very powerful in helping you remember, and SRS practically guarantees you won't forget anything.

I still do not have the greatest technique in my learning. Is vocab best learn using Anki decks with sentences to give meaning of the vocab? or would strictly memorizing the vocab by itself by best? Possibly a mixture of both example sentences and plain vocab cards?

The specifics depend on you, but not including some sort of context is a very bad idea. The majority of people seem to have a kanji sentence as the question, and the furigana and definition of the keyword as the answer. Personally, I feel it practically gives away the meaning of words, so I have the word by itself, and include the definition and 2-3 example sentences on the answer side. Try experimenting.

I have also checked out anki decks that only have a listening component and I must reproduce the sentence. Should I also write the answers out with a pen and paper for extra practice for each card? Hmm...

This is again up to you. You'll want to include audio for your vocabulary cards where possible so you can learn the correct pitch accent. The model you've mentioned here, however, sounds very time-consuming. It would also be pretty pointless if you'd already developed listening skills. SRS is unquestionably something you should spend regular time on, but it also takes away time from gaining exposure to natural Japanese or other studying, so you need to find a balance.

[d4veg]

I've found a very nice site for SRS. I had been using anki but smart.fm is so much more fun and interactive. Maybe it's the design and the features such as the timer, the calender and progression graphs.

http://smart.fm/series/3318
I'm doing the 2000 basic vocabulary now. It's very nice as it switches the cards around at times and asks you to type out the answer. It also associates pictures with the words and there are audio files for this series.

Is it very possible to do 100+ kanji a day? How many hours would that take with breaks? That is very impressive. I don't think my memory could absorb all that in a day without losing a bunch of kanji. I have been doing 20 a day and I hope to do this a constant pace. But I will experiment.

I realize that everyone's time and learning methods will vary.Thank you for the advice so far.

[taikutsu]

Is it very possible to do 100+ kanji a day? How many hours would that take with breaks? That is very impressive. I don't think my memory could absorb all that in a day without losing a bunch of kanji. I have been doing 20 a day and I hope to do this a constant pace. But I will experiment.

It's certainly possible, though I wouldn't have the patience for it. It's better to be consistent in just learning a few at a time, than to try to learn them all at once, burn out and give up.

[kagawashaun]

This really comes down to personal preference and your own learning style. I've heard really good things about RTK, and I've also heard people say it's a really horrible way to learn kanji. I've never tried it, but I decided long ago I'm not really that interested in learning kanji for the time being. The main reason being that I know once I leave Japan the first thing I'll start forgetting is kanji. SInce I never studied Japanese for a second before I came here, I don't imagine I'll study a great deal after I leave and I don't forsee being completely fluent before I leave it seemed like a bit of a waste. Maybe I'm stupid.

As for me I'm a grammar nut. So I learned most of the grammar anyone would ever need to know in advance, and it way surpassed my vocab. So, now I'm catching up on vocab. I use my Ipod. I downloaded "Japanese", which is basically just a fancy dictionary. It has a timed repitition thing in it for vocab review, probably not as good as Anki's but I find it more convenient since it's on my ipod. I just put all the words I want to know in there and then review my words for 30 - 60 mins a day. It's probably not the best way to go about doing it, but since I learned Latin and Greek by boring drilling of vocab I figured I could do Japanese that way too. Most people use Anki to put in an entire sentence instead of just one individual word. This way you get 1) context for any word which helps a lot and 2) other words to learn besides the one you were originally interested in. This seems like it could be a good way to learn.

As for this site, I only recently started using it. I'm going through the intermediate series right now. I know all the grammar, but the grammar notes give a few different uses or hints that my textbook didn't supply, which I love. I listen to the full lesson once through, and then start drilling the conversation. Only listen to the fast one as the slow one is just if you need help with pronounciation. Get whichever form of the dialog transcript you are comfortable in front of you. I use the romanized one because it's easier for me to put a mental "stop" on word breaks that way, which is what I'm mostly interested in. I listen to the convo over and over while reading the transcript at the same time - maybe 15 - 20 times. Basically until I feel like I can hear every word clearly and it's "slowed down" for me. Then I put the transcript away and listen another few times to make sure I understand. I try to shut off the part of my brain that wants to translate as it hears. It's natural, but ideally you don't want this so I try to silence it.

As for retaining vocab and what you know (kanji does not apply here). The best way is to find some sort of language cafe in your area. Most of the words I know is only because in my conversations with Japanese people I would completely forget the word, which forced me to look it up again. A few times of doing this and the word will stick. Same with grammar points. You'll naturally forget how to use a grammar point, but once you grind your way through it a few times in a real conversation (classroom stuff doesn't really count) you'll remember it. I say classrooms don't count simply because it's too structured. You need to have it so it comes up as "I want to say x"....... "Oh crap how do I say x!?"

There's also a cool little Ibook you can download and I believe the title is "how to learn any language quickly and easily" or some such thing. It's only 150 pages or so and gives some really great tips for remembering vocab and letting a language sink into your brain naturally. Some tips didn't apply to me as I don't read kanji, but the vocab memorization tools were really helpful.

I recently remembered a word because I was studying it on my ipod chanting it to myself in my friend's car at the very moment she ran over a monkey. It's burned into my brain associated with the thud and bump of the monkey's demise. So, there's always that way too.

[ebydave4857]

I just started here, but from my experience so far I would think 3-5 lessons a week if you're just starting out. I've spent 2 days on each lesson listening to the audios a few times over until I can understand the words, where a word starts, where a word ends, and pronunciations.

Once I went through the audio, I printed out the Kanji Close-Up. I started re-writing everything that's introduced on that page. I thought Kanji would be the hardest part coming in to the Japanese language without a single understanding, but learning the meanings behind the symbols has been really fun and has helped me remember all the ones I've came across so far. It's really an art!

After the Kanji Close-Up I wrote down the conversations with the Romaji pronunciation underneath, which helped me a lot with remembering parts of the Hiragana and Katakana characters. I broke down certain words to their most basic form as well to help out. But we all have our own ways of remembering this, mine was literally pounding out every part of a lesson.

I recommend picking up a book from the bookstore on learning Japanese as well. I picked up Japanese Demystified by Eriko Sato.

Good luck!

[j_bertoni2279]

I went through Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, volume 1 (about 2000 characters) in about 8 weeks. At the beginning, the going was slow. By the time I hit 1500 characters, learning 100 kanji in an hour was an easy pace. I wouldn't study more than an hour straight, in general, and seldom more than 1-2 hours a day.

If you have 2-3 hours per day, I'd suggest spreading them out. After an hour, it's time to move to a different subject. Everyone has different goals for their Japanese, but I'd spend an hour on grammar from a book, an hour listening, and save the last hour for reviewing older material, or for learning kanji, whichever you prefer.