Anyway, this isn’t too discouraging. I’ve written a big piece of software before and I failed on the first two attempts–after getting quite a bit of the way through each one–before finally succeeding on the third. I felt very good once I succeeded, so I feel very good about this process! 😀

Thanks. 🙂

If you don’t like Lazy Kanji Mod deck, try thinking up your own card format, or even your own way of learning the Kanji and try it out. Remember, AJATT is about experimenting and finding what works for you (that is, what is most fun/easy while still being effective for you) on your own Japanese journey, not following what Khatz did 100%.

As for the deletion, I actually never deleted any Kanji, but I certainly should have. I finished my Kanji long before I realized the productivity and sanity benefits of deletion. However, my suggestion now would be to suspend cards that give you problems. If those Kanji pop up in your sentences/MCDs/incremental reading/whatever, un-suspend them if you want the extra review of that Kanji, although you may not need it.

‘looking’ is not a passive process.

It reminds me of this story:

A lord spoke to his servant one day:
Lord: Be sure to plant that cherry tree this afternoon.
Servant: But it will not bloom for 40 years!
Lord: Better make it this morning then.

I don’t understand how looking at Japanese can improve your reading skill. You have to read Japanese to get better at it. Anything else is just looking at letters.

yes it’s a very emotional site.
however, what khatz puts on the site isn’t unrealistic.

logic can’t be exaggerated; what khatz posts onto this blog is his logic.
ajatt is khatz “truth”, his genuine knowledge and experience written on a blog.

lol?

Yes, I think, every step in Japanese is a step in the right direction.
I guess, ‘intermediate’ is really the most annoying level, as it is a in-betweeny. You don’t get that immediate reward you get as a beginner (If you just learnt 私, you will be seeing it in almost every second sentence, but if you just learnt 勿忘草, you will probably not come across it again in the next few months just accidentally. However, you’re not advanced either, so you still need to look up lots of words in any text and if you yourself try to take part in a conversation you will need to ask for words almost all the time. You tend to only see what you don’t understand instead of seeing what you actually understand at that stage, I guess. (at least that’s what I do)

I hope, you’ll stick to learning Japanese! For sure you have motivated me again. Thank you.

Furthermore thank you for the advice with being true to myself about what actually is interesting and fun for me. I often get the impression I should be able to read texts about Japanese culture in Japanese or about Japanese economy and so on. Actually, these topics aren’t that interesting to me. Don’t get me wrong, I am interested in Japanese culture, obviously, but I’m not a total fan of martial arts or origami or manga and I’ve read the more basic things before or even experienced them myself, so I don’t want to read a text about japanese politeness or suicide rates or whatever. Obviously I don’t know many words that occur in those texts that you may find in a textbook in lesson 20 or something. (Yes, I did use textbooks once, I even own some)
I did find really interesting blogs though on topics I find interesting and there I don’t have problems looking up words I don’t get. (in one the writer even used words like 需要, so I kind of have some hope, I will eventually get economy vocabulary as well, if I just read enough blogs on stuff I consider interesting. I even SRS-d that one, because I was so happy to come across an economy-word in my life. :-P)

However, thank you very much for caring so much about my ‘problems’. It’s just nice to see other people actually having gone through the same thing.
As for the positive moments. I know that from playing the clarinet, there are these times when you try and try for the whole day and the more you try the more you suck. However the next day is the rewarding. Suddenly it flows by as if it never had been different.
I actually never had the experience to that extent in Japanese. However, I’m really really happy when I encounter a word or kanji I just learnt about one or two weeks before. You can see me with a broad smile or even laughing out loud in such moments.
Waaah! I actually just had a positive experience! A Japanese gave me a Japanese copy of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ about 3 years ago. It was just impossible at that time. Actually, I had a try at it (I just found my self-written furigana in it) and put it back to the bookshelf after seven pages where it remained for the rest of the time… I always regarded it as impossible. Just had a look in and it seems very well manageable, although I probably won’t get the details again. Maybe I’ll start of with it, when having finished the current novel.

I’ve always had anxiety about my progress, and it’s caused me to move slower than I care to admit.. and it’s gotten me no where in a whole heck of a lot of time.. So, don’t be like me. haha

Nowadays I spend my afternoons reading books, watching dramas, and sometimes tinkering with the SRS. I do 10 minutes of shadowing in the morning, and 3 minutes before bed. And that’s about it. I’m gradually trying to build on this. I had taken a massive 3-month break, and I’m just trying to build up little by little on the tasks that I try to accomplish each day. I keep track of my progress using the contact calendar to make sure I do something each hour, and I use something to keep track of the few minutes of shadowing I do each day. My goal right now is to get to 500 hours. But, within that, I have mini-goals like doing 3 minutes everyday before bed.

Basically, I’m just saying, your major goals might benefit you better if they’re based on an amount of time in the language, rather than a number of words, sentences, or characters. And, it’s been working really well for me to have such a small task right before bed and when waking up. And, I’ve gradually watched my progress go from 0 hours to almost 9 hours, going at 3 minutes a day.. I just recently added the morning practice. But the important part was, for me anyways, doing something each day and learning to appreciate small steps.

Anyways, you’ll get there, just find stuff to keep you interested. And, be *honest* with yourself about what’s fun/interesting and what isn’t. This alone kept me from progressing quickly for a looong time. I’ve found that my favorite genre of books is TOEIC books for learning English. ^^ If that’s your thing, too, try reading 「超音読」,「もしも英語が出来たなら」, or if you want something more technical, 「シャドーイングと音読の科学」. Before I was trying to find random stuff to read because I felt a duty to read.. it wasn’t until I got curious about other topics that I started buying books that I actually would read. And, just yesterday I was feeling some kind of lament because I was spending less time with Japanese. I looked at my folder of videos on my hard drive.. and sure enough, none of them interest me anymore enough that I’ll re-watch them. People love novel things. If you continue to have turn-over, i.e. deleting boring stuff, changing the order of your play lists, adding in new stuff, etc., it’ll keep things novel, and as a result, more interesting. This is important because you’ll just lose yourself once you find something truly interesting. That’s when you’re really making progress. So, just focus on finding cool stuff, do a little bit of study, and keep doing the things you said you were doing. Every little bit helps. And, you’ll eventually realize you’re awesome. But, I think that comes after you forget about where you are for a long time.

Anyways, good luck!

But maybe what you should do is just stop doing reps all together and come back to it later? I’ve done that sometimes, and I feel more like I want to do it. Although I think Khatz called that ‘binging and purging’… Oh well, as long as you don’t beat on yourself after the break I’m sure it’s fine. AJATT isn’t about faithfully following every little detail or else you’ll never learn Japanese, it’s about how Khatz learnt Japanese and ‘now go try it and modify it to fit you’.

I also believe there’s an article were he talking about the intermediate learner… That they tend to feel they’re not progressing but he says to just keep at it and one day you’ll see the progress again 🙂

These days I limit my kanji intake (five new ones a day, though I might stretch to six!) and I’m always wanting more… allll the time. I don’t even need them really, until I start learning Chinese again anyway… but I want ’em. So maybe that’s worth a try if your situation was anything like mine (no idea 🙂 ).

As for measuring your progress – this is a tricky one. I think I went through the same state of mind that you’re going through now about six months ago. I eventually snapped and retreated to Chinese (new~ fresh~ exciting~ sexier~ (okay I go back n forth on that one)), and for two weeks I was loving it. But eventually I came back to Japanese, and naturally could really feel the difference in how much I knew. And just kept going from there. It’s tricky when you’re constantly faced with the contrast of how much you understand vs how much you still don’t, but I think there’s only one SHOULD in all of this… which is you should be a bit better than yesterday. That’s it. (and if you forgot a word or a kanji it doesn’t mean you got worse ~)

Aside from that, there’s stuff here that you just CAN’T measure. I dunno the science or theory or anything behind it, but I’ve had the experience of going through a fairly stressful day or two where I get really bummed out about my Japanese ability (or maybe something else happening in my life), only to come through it a couple days later and I feel like I can suddenly understand things I never understood before. This has happened a good few times for me now and other people I’ve talked to say they’ve had similar experiences (though sometimes without the stress part – they just one day realise they’re a lot better than they thought). ダンちゃん I am kinda curious, did you ever feel this way?

All that immersion, all that listening, half-listening, reading… I’m sure your mind is building bridges over all the gaps the entire time. Even when you stop, your mind is working away at it. Just don’t stop for long. As for making the effort to understand everything (or not) – immersion isn’t reading and comprehending everything you see and hear around you (it took me an embarrassingly long time to grasp this simple fact that I’m sure you know already). Even if you don’t have an mp3 player/don’t want to use it, just taking a book with you is enough. Every time you see or hear something (anything) in your target language, it’s helping in some way. I really think taking the stress out of the learning experience is the biggest favour we can all do ourselves. (Stephen Krashen has talked about it as well). If we’re reading and listening to Japanese every waking hour and it’s frustrating the crap out of us to do it, we’re probably not learning nearly as much as someone who rocks two minutes per hour and loves those two minutes. Okay that might be a bit too extreme, but hey, supposing we DO learn more than the 2-minute guy, I can guarantee we’re not as happy about it :p

Okay I’ve rambled on like crazy here, I just hope there’s something helpful in this mess 🙂

finally, what do you actually want Japanese for? do you know your end goal? I mean reading novels and stuff for me isn’t really the means to an end, it IS the end. Once I can read them, I wanna be able to read them better… faster… when I look in the dictionary I want it to be at a point where a native speaker has just as much chance of having to look in the dictionary. I just wanna be able to rock this language… just a feeling I have… and the last few months I’ve really enjoyed the journey to that point more than ever before. I still don’t know when I’ll be there, but if I enjoy the ride I’m not too stressed about it.

諦めないで：）　頑張ろう！

As for dont-know-if-Im-making-any-progress and stuff- you’re not a Japanese Learner- you’re a lost Japanese child living in a foreign country abandoned and forgotten, who also lost memory. Now you have to re-learn your mother tongue to be able to return to 日本　and live happily ever after.

/the-three-laws-of-language-learning-version-3-0