Comments on: What, you forgot it? Good!

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 03:43:41 +0000

I’ve actually just written a post on this very topic!!!

http://nosceteipsum.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/learning-japanese-its-2008-use-technology-to-help/

By: Charles A.

Charles A. — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 08:48:46 +0000

Guess it depends on how you go at it. Right now, there’s no end all be all list to learn from. And as you wrote, many get lists only to let them gather dust on the hard drive.

I’m creating my own list from a book to get my grammar up to par. After that I’ll probably use a Kanji in Context or Kanji Odyssey to get the reading bit upto par. The idea being this allows me to efficiently read cool material earlier. It’s tedious, but even at an early level I can notice results. Feels weird to be able to read Japanese better than I can speak, yet I recall that was the case with French.

No where will I put in a table of words and translations. That really reeks of monotony.

By: Z

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:21:01 +0000

Japanese is difficult from me((( I want to improve my japanese! But time is a little bit. Kanji and reading is very big problem for me.
Can you give advice me?

By: Tae Kim

Tae Kim — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:01:46 +0000

I should clarify that the forgetting isn’t the good part but rather that you’re thinking about the word again to even realize that you forgot it. Thinking, “Oh I forgot all my Japanese” is certainly not good.

By: Marc

Marc — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:24:08 +0000

It is normal to forget words that are not in use for a longer time. I lived in Japan some years ago and studied the Kanji using the Heisig system. It is a fabulous system to memorize Kanji quickly.
Neverthelss, today – six years later – they are almost all gone. But I do not regret to have spent so much time with my Heisig Kanji cards, inventing stories for each. At that time, it enabled me to study other parts of the Japanese language more quickly as well.

By: Tae Kim

Tae Kim — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:49:46 +0000

Currently I’m studying Chinese at a beginner level and I still find that natural repetition works for me. Most reading material are too difficult for me so I get most of my spaced repetition from conversation practice once a week.

So I very quickly learned to say the things I often say in conversations such as, “How do you say…?”

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:01:29 +0000

I posted this in another entry’s comment section, but for Elliott:

http://www.ask-digital.co.jp/tadoku/

As a beginner myself, I cannot recommend these volumes enough. There’s two volumes out right now, and level 1 is very simple. That’s 10 awesome books right off the bat for a beginner. The native narration is gold. The minute, no, the second a beginner has a good grasp of hiragana, katakana, a few kanji, and basic grammar, she should be knee deep in these books.

I really hope they expand the collection for the current levels, and hopefully add a couple of higher ones in the future :)

By: Elliott

Elliott — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:39:39 +0000

I think you are coming from a different viewpoint and as someone that already has a good grasp of the language. If you are someone stating out or that is still learning basic adjectives or verbs then anything you try feels like hard work.
As at the beginning you still have to do some basic study. I’ve persevered with small SRS basic word lists even when I’d found it hard work and found that the Japanese word for something would pop into my head without realising I’d even learnt it. Maybe when you reach a level you can ditch them for something more fun with a more natural process of repetition, but at the start it is difficult to find the appropriate material. Or can you suggest something??

By: Tae Kim

Tae Kim — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:46:10 +0000

Alex, I agree that looking up the same word in the same context over and over again won’t help as much as seeing the same word in a different context. Still, forgetting a word over and over again does not necessarily mean that you are not retaining it. I’ve forgotten words up to 10 times or maybe even more before it finally sunk in.

By: Khalid

Khalid — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:41:17 +0000

My understanding is that the principal value of any form of SRS is to reduce the overall amount of review. However, if you’re reviewing isolated vocab one by one, it’s gonna get boring eventually no matter how sophisticated the software.

Personally, I don’t care much for graded readers either, except when I was actually at that age/grade level. I find them just as boring as drilling words out of context.

I think people would be surprised at how much they can figure out if they just pick up a newspaper or find a few blogs and start reading. You can delete 3/4 of the words from an article in your native language and still understand quite a bit (and in English, you can delete ALL the vowels…).

There aren’t any foreign or challenging concepts on those pages, they’re just expressed differently.

In the end, just play. Grab something easy, grab something hard and keep reading.

P.S. You make a great point about what you get wrong. Those words, phrases, and grammar start jumping out at you when you see them elsewhere and then you start getting them right.

The key is “see them elsewhere”. Stop studying and just read something.