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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6587 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 233 of 706 26 June 2013 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hmm I agree about condescending but I disagree about efficiency. I think your post is also subtly condescending, Evita. You're almost saying: admit it, anki is more efficient and you just lack discipline/are too picky/etc.
The thing is, there's no universal scale of efficiency. We just know examples of things that are inefficient, like using Rosetta Stone (other than as a supplement) or learning in your sleep. Most other things are efficient if they are right for you, and that's without taking into account that the best method is the one you'll actually follow. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5972 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 234 of 706 26 June 2013 at 9:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Anki really helped me get my foot in the door with Japanese. Vocabulary is a much greater problem when you're dealing with an exotic language. From the point of view of an English speaker learning to read Japanese, there are no cognates and very few loan words. In fact I almost feel like I'm cheating when I read French now, because so much of the vocab is just English with weird pronunciation! Kanji poses an additional problem which is quite beyond simply learning to use another alphabet.
Now I know just enough vocabulary in Japanese to read independently and I know enough kanji to break down, look up, recognise and remember characters with much more ease than I could as a beginner/lower intermediate learner. I've reached a stage where I am perfectly happy not using Anki for Japanese. I don't think it's particularly efficient, and one of the reasons I've stopped using it now is it seemed to be taking up a lot of time that could be better spent just reading. But I'm pretty certain that, at least for me, it was effective, and helped me get to the point where I could start reading in the first place. I'm not using Anki at the moment for any language. I kind of had a major crisis when I realised the upgrade to Anki 2 did not support Japanese as well as the older version. It really hammered home the fact that although the SRS algorithm can execute in perpetuity, the shelf life of the technology it runs on is limited. I used to think it would be my immediate solution for dealing with vocabulary whatever the language. But I think I'm doing ok with French and German without using Anki at the moment. I think there are two circumstances under which I would probably use Anki again, and in both these cases it would be short to medium term use to solve a specific problem: 1) I had a clearly defined set of facts I absolutely had to memorise in order to pass an exam. 2) I had hit a serious plateau in a language I was keen to advance and where I felt that a vocabulary gap was a significant contributing factor to the plateau. I could have added "3) I decided to learn another language that was just as tough as Japanese" but I don't think that's going to happen! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 235 of 706 27 June 2013 at 5:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I didn't get to write everything I wanted last night, because I was tired and wanted to run to bed. Anyway...
I didn't find iguanamon's post to have any kind of ill tone. I didn't think he was insulting those of us that use Anki; he seemed to just be stating his opinion that he didn't understand what all the fuss was about. And his line about not using Anki is OK... I do think that there could be some people who are new to language learning, who check HTLAL and other web sites and see ANKI, ANKI, ANKI everywhere, and think that it is the only way to learn vocabulary. So I don't mind people saying that you don't need Anki to learn vocabulary, even if it is obvious to us who are more experienced with languages. That said, Evita outlined in his (her? I'm sorry) post all the reasons that I like using flashcards, and by extension Anki. I study roughly 1-2 hours of Japanese per day. If I was studying Japanese all day, then maybe I would be engaged enough to do without flashcards, but I can't because of risk of burnout. So flashcards help me to store vocabulary into my long-term memory. Moreover, I think something like Anki is especially suited for Japanese, for all the reasons g-bod stated. Working with kanji in Japanese is a completely different animal, and for some of us a program like Anki helps make it easier to learn all the different readings as well as the little differences between those characters that look alike at first glance. So yeah, I'm going to stick with some form of flashcards. Right now, though, I'm kind of not on good terms with the Anki software, though, because of what it represents to me now. It's not the program's fault, I know, but the whole "sentence method" thing has frustrated me to no end. Sure, I've learned some things through the method, but for the entire year that I've been using the method I've been agonizing. Many times, a sentence is distracting when I just want to learn a word. Other times, I wonder if the sentence is set up, or if the card and sentence format will help me learn a word. And now that whole "unreliable deck" thing is the icing on the cake for me. So I'm kicking the sentence method to the curb for vocabulary. But sentence method=Anki for so many people out there, and Anki is distracting with all of its bells and whistles. I would like to go back to Mnemosyne, which is another SRS program I used before Anki. It is much simpler, less distracting, and its users are more hospitable. The only thing that is keeping me from making the switch now is that I cannot use it on my Android. In any case, I have blown up all of my Anki decks except for my Kanji deck. (I did make a backup, though.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5972 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 236 of 706 27 June 2013 at 9:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Anki is just a tool. It's highly customisable, can be effective, and you can use it in
whichever way suits you. Anki is not a way of life. Although the "sentence method" might be... Did it feel good blowing up your decks? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 237 of 706 27 June 2013 at 10:35am | IP Logged | ||
Ah, it felt VERY good. It was liberating! In fact, during my lunch break at work, I took a list of Japanese and Portuguese words I jotted down in my notebook and just put them into Anki as is. Nice and easy. No good sentences to search for, less typing in Anki, and less time spent on Anki. Afterwards, I even had some time left over to read a couple of paragraphs of a Japanese article before continuing work. I'm loving this so far. I'll let you know how the reviews go. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 238 of 706 01 July 2013 at 5:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Just an update about where I stand with my studies.
For Japanese, I am currently in Chapter 11 of An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese. I've also made a habit of reading Japanese articles. I download interesting articles I see on sites like globalvoicesonline.org (I think that's the right URL) and news sites here in Japan. For that, I use an Android application called Pocket that is great. I add the Pocket plugin in Firefox, and when I come across an interesting article, I just press a button, and it gets sent to my Android device. There, I can read it, as well as copy and paste any new words into a dictionary and/or the Google Keep application, as needed. I've found several new vocabulary words that way, and it is really interesting to see how much I progress using native, "real world" materials. Aside from IAIJ and reading news articles, I've also tried to incorporate more writing into my weekly routine. Once or twice a week, I have an "Output Day", where I just concentrate on writing something for posting to Lang-8.com. However, there are two problems with this. (1) It is not good for me to write away from a computer, because the dictionaries I use on my Android device are not sufficient enough to really learn the usage of a word I look up. I did that the other day, and I had a bunch of people saying I used the wrong word or kanji here and there, and that another word is more appropriate. I guess there is nothing wrong with that, and in fact that might be the way to go when I'm short on time, but with a little searching on Google I can find out the right usage of a word myself. And (2) I find that I cannot trust many of the corrections on Lang-8. If I have the wrong grammar or vocabulary, sometimes two or more people will correct you, but give different corrections. First of all, which correction do you choose? Second, sometimes the corrections themselves are wrong, and/or what you wrote may in fact be correct, but not what a certain person would say. After all, there are different ways people express themselves. My wife once looked at one of my Lang-8 entries and said she saw nothing wrong with a word that many people on Lang-8 found to be strange. Of course, that could come from the fact that my wife is from the Kansai area of Japan, and Lang-8 correctors may come from other parts of Japan where the language is a little different. In any case, this is too much for my poor brain! I've heard that the solution is to just leave any corrections alone at first, make some solid Lang-8 friends, have them get used to your writing, and you get used to their corrections, and when the two of you have a good understanding, start studying with that person's corrections. That is something I'm going to try to do from now on. For Portuguese, I'm just about to start Lesson 22 of Unit 3 of DLI Portuguese Basic. I'm also doing PortuguesePod101.com Lower Beginner podcasts, and I'm (very slowly) working my way through the first part of the Deutsche Welle radionovela Futebol: Muito Mais Do Que Um Jogo. For Esperanto, I basically study on weekends and when I have extra study time available. Right now, I'm working through the last lesson of the Ana Pana course at Lernu.net. Edited by kujichagulia on 01 July 2013 at 5:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 239 of 706 05 July 2013 at 3:21am | IP Logged | ||
Wow, it is two weeks from being exactly one year since I first wrote the following here at HTLAL, beginning my first, short-lived log:
Recently I realized something: I'm actually starting to like the Japanese language. I used to dread doing something like reading a news article, but now I find a lot of pleasure in it! I've made reading articles, etc., a regular part of my study regimen for all three languages I'm currently studying. (It has become very easy to do that "on the go" with my Android device!) I've found that I really enjoy reading stuff in Japanese, and even looking up new words. Maybe it's really the feeling of "cracking the code" that everybody in my city speaks. I'm happy when I hear and recognize on TV a word that I learned from an article I read. I'm elated when I eavesdrop on conversations at work, and I can understand what they are talking about. I'm overjoyed when I see advertisements around town, and those kanji I couldn't read before seem so crystal-clear now. I'm astonished when I'm trying to speak Japanese with someone, and a word comes out of my mouth, and I think "Oh god, was that the correct word?", and the other person continues the conversation because he understood clearly, because I in fact did use the right word. Maybe I like those feelings, rather than having any particular love for the Japanese language itself. But hey, I'll take it. When you start seeing the fruits of your labor, you gain so much confidence that it drives you to do more. You might even start to like what you are laboring at. When I started studying Portuguese last August, I was worried that, because I enjoyed Portuguese more than Japanese, I would end up spending more time studying Portuguese, when Japanese should be my priority. Nowadays, I wonder if I spend enough time with Portuguese, as there have been times when I took some of the time alloted for Portuguese to read a bit more of that Japanese article I was working on, or review some Japanese audio. (Well, that and the fact that I'm also studying Esperanto nowadays. But as I said before, I'm not sure how long this re-infatuation with Esperanto will last.) What a difference a year makes. I'm doing so well with my Japanese studies that it makes me wonder if I should put my Portuguese and Esperanto studies on hold and just concentrate on Japanese. How much quicker I could reach B2 if I did that! But I still have too big of a fear of burning out to try that now. If my love for Japanese continues to grow, maybe I'll try that. But something is working for me right now, and I should try to continue that. Edited by kujichagulia on 05 July 2013 at 3:22am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6587 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 240 of 706 05 July 2013 at 7:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Awesome post! So happy for you! :))))
1 person has voted this message useful |
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