I’ve read all of the TOC up until this point, and this is the most profound excerpt I’ve come across thus far. As someone who has FULLY quit Japanese, and come back 3 separate times, it can’t be overstated how important it is to remember WHY you’re doing this in the first place. Each time I came back to learning the language, it was because I had the epiphany of realizing that I had forgotten why I set the goal of learning Japanese. As soon as I remembered my purpose, starting back up was effortless. Never forget what brought you to set this astronomically huge goal for yourself, and focus on how you will feel once you know you’re fluent.

Just in case after 6 months, you come back and are still wondering…

I don’t feel like going through ajatt to find the exact article(s) that say it but , if I remember correctly, during your RTK days, you’re supposed to build up your Japanese ear. So it’s a lot of movies, anime, songs that you just listen to without particularly trying to understand them -just building up the ear so that it learns to recognize the subtle pronunciation differences between Japanese and your native language.

If you’re watching shows/movies/anime, do it ideally without subs, but if you absolutely can’t do that immediately, go ahead and put on the subs (there’s quite a bunch of posts about making sure to have fun and that some is better than none, so subs > giving up from being frustrated about watching something without understanding). Just remember that the kiddy gloves have to come off eventually.

As you progress through RTK (like after you’ve hit a few hundred), you start “reading” through stuff basically just to see if you recognize anything. Once you’ve hit a thousand+, you’ll be able to understand a lot of keywords and might be able to piece together what sentences mean.

There’s also an entry somewhere in ajatt that also reminds people that it’s okay to customize. Personally I couldn’t do RTK; I couldn’t stand it! I HATED making mnemonics and I would 3-day monk because of it. I also disliked that I was supposed to build my vocabulary while learning kanji, when I knew that nothing excited me more than seeing a kanji I just learned pop up somewhere I was reading.

So I changed it up and did lazy kanji for all the joyo kanji WHILE doing sentence SRS (I wasn’t a big fan of MCDs either so I chose the 10k sentences method).

Is it what ajatt normally recommends? Nope. Is it customized to make my learning experience fit me? Sure was. My japanese progressed quickly, far quicker than my 3+ years of previous textbook-learning japanese ever did for me, and I wasn’t burning out. In the end, ajatt has always been about having the most japanese you can handle, if that means you have to customize, then do that – whatever keeps you learning!

I keep reading stuff like this on the site. People complaining about RTK anki reps and stuff like that. And then theres always advice like above following. My question is how are you supposed to follow the advice above when:

A. Your still doing RTK and havent learned the japanese meanings
B. You dont know any vocab, grammar or japanese meaning behind Kanji because you have not yet done J-E sentences. So you cannot physcially read anything. The only thing you can do is pronounce the sounds of the kana that appears, but you wont understand it at all. And any kanji that appears you can just say its english meaing in your head. Movies is just alien dribble to you at this point.

Ive been learning RTK atm, and in reality I havent learned any Japanese this way, I just know what pictographic symbols mean in english. Every show I watch in japanese, I dont understand because I have never learned the vocabulary.

Is this how the learning is supposed to be? Until you finish RTK and start sentences your basically learning nothing but RTK english meanings, and just learning how words that you dont understand, sound and are pronounced via immersion?

>Putting in examples of segments of code?
Yeah, that sounds right. And asking yourself what they do. Not in a vague way but in very specific ways. What is the value of foo…that type of thing. I’m sure you can think of cooler, more interesting questions.

Perhaps a mixed input/trial-error approach would be ベスト.

I am a newbie to programming besides some dabbling in C++ in the past, how would you recommend inputing a programming language in an SRS? Putting in examples of segments of code? However I do think that trial and error is alright in programming, no? Because you can get a right/wrong response from the compiler immediately?

With that in mind:
www.amazon.co.jp/PHP%E3%81%AB%E3%82%88%E3%82%8BWeb%E3%82%A2%E3%83%97%E3%83%AA%E3%82%B1%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A7%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%83%BC%E3%83%91%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B5%E3%83%B3%E3%83%97%E3%83%AB-%E6%B4%BB%E7%94%A8%E7%B7%A8-KJ/dp/4797332638/ref=sr_1_1/249-0487286-8125134?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199640004&sr=1-1
www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%94%B9%E8%A8%82%E7%89%88-PHP-%E3%83%9D%E3%82%B1%E3%83%83%E3%83%88%E3%83%AA%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%83%AC%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9-Pocket-reference/dp/4774125024/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199640083&sr=1-1

I also recommend using the Internets. Just limit www.google.jp to 日本語 pages.