Total challenge time: 14.71 hours.
2252 sentences
72% accuracy on first review
75.5% accuracy all time (2163 of 2866)
88.6% accuracy with young cards
Failed cards: 366
Cards waiting for review: 1250
I'm going to spend the next few weeks going through the failed and review cards at a casual pace. Hopefully later this week I can write up a review of the challenge.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Day 17 - 82%
My current project is winding down with only 400 new sentences to go. I should be done on Tuesday at which point I'll spend another week or so doing reviews and wrapping up the failed cards (currently at 231).
This has been a really good challenge so far. I think the challenge is good in length. I'll have finished all new sentences in 21 days. The rest of the cards (reviews and fails) will be complete about a week after that for a total of 30 days. My first card accuracy rate is still floating around 73% of 1855 sentences.
It's probably not too early to say that in retrospect the project has some flaws. For one I think 100 sentences is too many per day (Flashcards, not reading in general!). Furthermore, I think the content is too easy. I would prefer fewer, more challenging sentences. It's a very difficult balance to find. Try finding 10 sentences in your target language that you want to learn. It's time consuming. I think when I move onto the intermediate level sentences I'll either do about half as many cards per day or do less sentences in the challenge.
I'll write a thorough postmortem next week.
This has been a really good challenge so far. I think the challenge is good in length. I'll have finished all new sentences in 21 days. The rest of the cards (reviews and fails) will be complete about a week after that for a total of 30 days. My first card accuracy rate is still floating around 73% of 1855 sentences.
It's probably not too early to say that in retrospect the project has some flaws. For one I think 100 sentences is too many per day (Flashcards, not reading in general!). Furthermore, I think the content is too easy. I would prefer fewer, more challenging sentences. It's a very difficult balance to find. Try finding 10 sentences in your target language that you want to learn. It's time consuming. I think when I move onto the intermediate level sentences I'll either do about half as many cards per day or do less sentences in the challenge.
I'll write a thorough postmortem next week.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Day 15 - 73%
I have 597 new sentences left and 183 failed sentences. I've decided to leave failed sentences for the end. It's important to mention I haven't been doing review cards. There are currently 720 cards waiting for review. My plan is to clean up the review cards after I finish my first run through.
Here are some basic stats.
1652 completed sentences
73% accuracy on first review
77% accuracy all time
89% accuracy with young cards
I'm getting really bored with these sentences. They're a little too easy but mainly it's the limited vocabulary that bores me. The intermediate series sentences will be different, I hope.
Here are some basic stats.
1652 completed sentences
73% accuracy on first review
77% accuracy all time
89% accuracy with young cards
I'm getting really bored with these sentences. They're a little too easy but mainly it's the limited vocabulary that bores me. The intermediate series sentences will be different, I hope.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Day 11 - 49% Complete
Today my failure rate was 36%. I think this is a good thing because it means I'm hitting new content.
I started watching some new anime series: Fairy Tail and The Twelve Kingdoms. I watch with subtitles on (at least once per episode) and I've noticed my comprehension is much higher than I expected it to be. I'm not sure if this is an effect of my recent studying or not since I don't typically watch anime. It must help though, even a little.
I'm looking forward to completing this challenge with only 12 days left. I think I might speed up and take on more than 100 new sentences per day so I can finish early. What I've noticed with learning sentences this way is that reviews are not as time sensitive as more difficult content such as Kanji stoke order or readings. After you've learned a sentence once you don't need to see it again right away assuming you know all of the words and are simply learning new verb conjugations or grammar. The goal isn't to memorize sentences but to read and understand them fluently (without thinking in English). It seems that over time you will start using the new patterns and conjugations naturally.
I started watching some new anime series: Fairy Tail and The Twelve Kingdoms. I watch with subtitles on (at least once per episode) and I've noticed my comprehension is much higher than I expected it to be. I'm not sure if this is an effect of my recent studying or not since I don't typically watch anime. It must help though, even a little.
I'm looking forward to completing this challenge with only 12 days left. I think I might speed up and take on more than 100 new sentences per day so I can finish early. What I've noticed with learning sentences this way is that reviews are not as time sensitive as more difficult content such as Kanji stoke order or readings. After you've learned a sentence once you don't need to see it again right away assuming you know all of the words and are simply learning new verb conjugations or grammar. The goal isn't to memorize sentences but to read and understand them fluently (without thinking in English). It seems that over time you will start using the new patterns and conjugations naturally.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Day 9 Progress Report (40%)
I finished sentence 900 this morning. Here are some statistics from Anki.
Average time per answer: 15.5 seconds
Total review time: 6.2 hours
Correct young: 87.6%
Correct first time: 74.4%
Total correct: 79.4% (1145 of 1442)
The "correct first time" statistic is interesting because it represents success rate of the first exposure to a card. It's probably higher than it should be but I can think of a few reasons why that is. First of all this is the beginner series grammar book. Secondly, when I reach a new grammar point it is easily learned after the first exposure. This means that subsequent cards (new facts) containing the same grammar point are usually easily read and passed on the first exposure. This might change once I hit more difficult grammar patterns in the intermediate and advanced books.
Reading Speed
In addition to doing my sentence repetitions in Anki I've been reading some Manga and Amazon game reviews for fun. I've noticed that my reading speed has increased quite a bit. Perhaps my ability to deal with unknown words has improved as well.
Overall I have to say I'm really happy with the sentence input method that I learned about through AJATT (All Japanese All The Time) over a year ago. This is my first sustained effort at doing sentence repetitions and I'm finding it extremely useful.
Only 1,352 sentences left in the A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.
Average time per answer: 15.5 seconds
Total review time: 6.2 hours
Correct young: 87.6%
Correct first time: 74.4%
Total correct: 79.4% (1145 of 1442)
The "correct first time" statistic is interesting because it represents success rate of the first exposure to a card. It's probably higher than it should be but I can think of a few reasons why that is. First of all this is the beginner series grammar book. Secondly, when I reach a new grammar point it is easily learned after the first exposure. This means that subsequent cards (new facts) containing the same grammar point are usually easily read and passed on the first exposure. This might change once I hit more difficult grammar patterns in the intermediate and advanced books.
Reading Speed
In addition to doing my sentence repetitions in Anki I've been reading some Manga and Amazon game reviews for fun. I've noticed that my reading speed has increased quite a bit. Perhaps my ability to deal with unknown words has improved as well.
Overall I have to say I'm really happy with the sentence input method that I learned about through AJATT (All Japanese All The Time) over a year ago. This is my first sustained effort at doing sentence repetitions and I'm finding it extremely useful.
Only 1,352 sentences left in the A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Day 7 Progress Report (31%)
I just finished sentence number 700 of 2252 (31%) of the A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. Today was probably the most interesting day so far because I had a failure rate of 27%. This is opposed to about 4% on day 1. Failure rate basically means that I didn't completely understand the sentence the first time I read it. After 1 or 2 reviews the sentence was learned. It's boring to read simple text which is why graduating from textbook sentences to literature can be so painstakingly difficult. That is of course my goal.
Only 16 more days and I can get ready to tackle the intermediate level book in the series. I've already been reading the intermediate level on the side and the sentences are definitely more interesting. A lot of the basic grammar is built-in to the intermediate sentences. I've been waiting a long time to be able to read Japanese at this level. It's really a joy to sit down and read It will be a long time before I can really enjoy a Japanese novel but at least the way is clear to me now.
How much reading and listening does it take to achieve fluency?
How much input do you need to speak English fluently? - This is an interesting article over at Antimoon that talks about one mans journey to fluency in English. He estimates that he's read about 333k sentences in 3 years. It looks like a lot but it is a very achievable goal at less than 9 pages of text per day.
My 100 sentences per day challenge can only take me so far. 86 days to be precise. Of the 3 volumes in the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series there are a total of 8,555 sentences. I will consider the 8,555th sentence my graduation into real Japanese, and I'm looking forward to it.
Only 16 more days and I can get ready to tackle the intermediate level book in the series. I've already been reading the intermediate level on the side and the sentences are definitely more interesting. A lot of the basic grammar is built-in to the intermediate sentences. I've been waiting a long time to be able to read Japanese at this level. It's really a joy to sit down and read It will be a long time before I can really enjoy a Japanese novel but at least the way is clear to me now.
How much reading and listening does it take to achieve fluency?
How much input do you need to speak English fluently? - This is an interesting article over at Antimoon that talks about one mans journey to fluency in English. He estimates that he's read about 333k sentences in 3 years. It looks like a lot but it is a very achievable goal at less than 9 pages of text per day.
My 100 sentences per day challenge can only take me so far. 86 days to be precise. Of the 3 volumes in the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series there are a total of 8,555 sentences. I will consider the 8,555th sentence my graduation into real Japanese, and I'm looking forward to it.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Compound Verbs in Japanese
It's been said (who knows where) that Japanese is 80% verb conjugation. In fact verbs are often entire grammatical sentences on their own. It can be difficult to get used to but it's actually a pretty cool feature of the language and makes your life easier later on. Take this sentence for instance.
Japanese: スコットがあまり失礼なことを言うのでサリーは怒って帰ってしまった。
Literally: Scott (subject marker) very rude thing (direct object verb marker) say because, sally (topic marker) angry and returned and finished/ended up.
Translation: Since Scott was very rude, Sally got mad and went home.
The sentence looks really complicated if you don't know much about Japanese grammar but let's take a quick look at the compound verb at the end. 怒って帰ってしまった。 There are 3 verbs in here. Okoru (to get angry), kaeru (to return), and shimau (to finish, close, complete). Shimau looks a little strange but it basically implies regret in this sentence. It wasn't a desirable thing for Sally to get upset and leave. You could leave the shimau verb off at the end. I'm not an expert but I believe that would imply that either you don't care that Sally left or that it was a desired result.
To chain them all together you basically put the first two verbs into "te" form. Te form is used to connect verbs into a compound. The final form of shiamu determines the tense of the entire sentence. In Japanese the final verb always determines tense. Since this is a past tense sentence it's conjugated into ta form. We end up with okotte-kaette-shimatta which is pronounced "oko * tay-ka-eh * te-she-ma * ta". The asterisk just means you make a slight pause. It's hard to explain but it's really simple when you hear it. Also, the asterisk is not a standard notation in textbooks I just made it up because it's easy to understand.
As you can see compound verbs in Japanese are pretty simple compared to the same expression in English.
Japanese: スコットがあまり失礼なことを言うのでサリーは怒って帰ってしまった。
Literally: Scott (subject marker) very rude thing (direct object verb marker) say because, sally (topic marker) angry and returned and finished/ended up.
Translation: Since Scott was very rude, Sally got mad and went home.
The sentence looks really complicated if you don't know much about Japanese grammar but let's take a quick look at the compound verb at the end. 怒って帰ってしまった。 There are 3 verbs in here. Okoru (to get angry), kaeru (to return), and shimau (to finish, close, complete). Shimau looks a little strange but it basically implies regret in this sentence. It wasn't a desirable thing for Sally to get upset and leave. You could leave the shimau verb off at the end. I'm not an expert but I believe that would imply that either you don't care that Sally left or that it was a desired result.
To chain them all together you basically put the first two verbs into "te" form. Te form is used to connect verbs into a compound. The final form of shiamu determines the tense of the entire sentence. In Japanese the final verb always determines tense. Since this is a past tense sentence it's conjugated into ta form. We end up with okotte-kaette-shimatta which is pronounced "oko * tay-ka-eh * te-she-ma * ta". The asterisk just means you make a slight pause. It's hard to explain but it's really simple when you hear it. Also, the asterisk is not a standard notation in textbooks I just made it up because it's easy to understand.
As you can see compound verbs in Japanese are pretty simple compared to the same expression in English.
Day 3 - Beginner Sentences Challenge
I just finished day 3 of my new 30 day challenge. It feels a lot less painful than my previous 120 day challenge (which I put on hold). At day 3 I'm already 10% of the way through the challenge as opposed to 2.5% if it were a 120 day challenge. The other big difference is that I'm reading beginner sentences and I already know most of the words and Kanji readings.
My process for doing sentence reading recognition cards is simple. The front of the card is in Japanese, full Kanji with no Furigana readings. The back of the card is in Japanese with Furigana readings and an English translation. I begin by reading the card out loud so that I can practice pronunciation. Then I flip the card to verify that my reading and understanding of the sentence was correct. At the rate of 100 new cards per day I've noticed that my mouth starts to get pretty tired after about 50 sentences. I've never been a big talker so I suppose I just need to keep exercising my jaw muscles.
My goal is to finish all 2,252 sentences in 30 days. The pacing for this is about 75 cards per day. I've been doing 100 per day because they've been really easy so far. If I keep up this pace I will finish the new cards in about 21 days. If I do end up finishing early I'll spend the last week doing review cards.
Learning New Words in Context
Out of the 300 cards that I've completed I estimate that I only encountered about 5 new words. When I tried doing sentence flashcards last year I gave up very quickly. I found it too difficult to learn new words in the context of a sentence. This is especially true when trying to learn not only word meaning but Kanji readings as well. I prefer to memorize words in isolation before learning how to use them in context. No doubt there are people that disagree with this approach but I think it depends on the person and their pre-existing knowledge in the language. Learning words in context can work but I think most of the time it's too slow.
My process for doing sentence reading recognition cards is simple. The front of the card is in Japanese, full Kanji with no Furigana readings. The back of the card is in Japanese with Furigana readings and an English translation. I begin by reading the card out loud so that I can practice pronunciation. Then I flip the card to verify that my reading and understanding of the sentence was correct. At the rate of 100 new cards per day I've noticed that my mouth starts to get pretty tired after about 50 sentences. I've never been a big talker so I suppose I just need to keep exercising my jaw muscles.
My goal is to finish all 2,252 sentences in 30 days. The pacing for this is about 75 cards per day. I've been doing 100 per day because they've been really easy so far. If I keep up this pace I will finish the new cards in about 21 days. If I do end up finishing early I'll spend the last week doing review cards.
Learning New Words in Context
Out of the 300 cards that I've completed I estimate that I only encountered about 5 new words. When I tried doing sentence flashcards last year I gave up very quickly. I found it too difficult to learn new words in the context of a sentence. This is especially true when trying to learn not only word meaning but Kanji readings as well. I prefer to memorize words in isolation before learning how to use them in context. No doubt there are people that disagree with this approach but I think it depends on the person and their pre-existing knowledge in the language. Learning words in context can work but I think most of the time it's too slow.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Unplanned Hiatus
After an unscheduled 1 month break from studying Japanese I'm back! I went through a month where I didn't feel like doing any studying and so I didn't. The hiatus was triggered by boredom and other personal reasons but it gave me time to do other productive things like actually speak Japanese!
I discovered a few things during my break.
Instead of going back into the vocabulary flashcards where I left off I'm going to start a new challenge. I have a flashcard deck with 2,252 sentences from the book A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. I'm going to try and finish this deck in the next 30 days at the rate of 75 sentences per day. It shouldn't be too difficult because I'm already familiar with this book and I probably have most if not all of the vocabulary that it uses already. After this challenge I have another 3,157 sentences from the Intermediate book from the same publisher. That might be my next challenge.
Time to get started! I'll be maintaining my Kanji (production and reading recognition) decks during this challenge as well. I don't want them to degrade any further following the extended break.
I discovered a few things during my break.
- I'm more proficient in Japanese conversation and have plenty of confidence speaking with strangers. I can spend all day in Japanese and although I can't express everything that I want I could survive without ever using English again
- There are still a number of words and verb conjugations to learn
- My meta-skills have improved but if I intentionally work on them now I'll be far more comfortable using a limited vocabulary
- There are a number of sentence structures I need to learn for more natural conversation
Instead of going back into the vocabulary flashcards where I left off I'm going to start a new challenge. I have a flashcard deck with 2,252 sentences from the book A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. I'm going to try and finish this deck in the next 30 days at the rate of 75 sentences per day. It shouldn't be too difficult because I'm already familiar with this book and I probably have most if not all of the vocabulary that it uses already. After this challenge I have another 3,157 sentences from the Intermediate book from the same publisher. That might be my next challenge.
Time to get started! I'll be maintaining my Kanji (production and reading recognition) decks during this challenge as well. I don't want them to degrade any further following the extended break.
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