Progress Report: The News and Output

I'm doing fine reading the news. It depends of the article. Sometimes I might not need the dictionary at all, somemtimes I'm forced to look up more than 20 items.

Listening is not going so well. It is much harder to understand it listening. It's too much information compressed in so few words. I guess now it has been 4 months since I started the news operation, but I think I'll still need more 4 months.

On the other hand, anime and dorama are becoming very easy to understand.
Sometimes I don't need make any effort at all to get probably more than 95% of understanding.

I think this is finally triggering my output. I feel like soon I'll be able to construct my thought directly in Japanese. I'll try to write something once a week in my lang-8 journal to measure how I'm going.

Finally, the anki stats:

The 3210 seen cards in this deck contain:
* 1968 total unique kanji.
* Jouyou: 1737 of 1945 (89.3%).
* Jinmeiyou: 57 of 287 (19.9%).
* 174 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:
* Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
* Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%).
* Grade 3: 200 of 200 (100.0%).
* Grade 4: 199 of 200 (99.5%).
* Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
* Grade 6: 180 of 181 (99.4%).
* JuniorHS: 733 of 939 (78.1%).

Japanese names

It's been hard to find new kanji in texts. Vocabulary never ceases to appear, but kanji is kinda different.

So, I started to tackle names.

Japanese names are interesting. I'm not sure how it is yet, but it seems there are many different ways to write the same name so I'm not intending to be able to do that. I just want to be able to read them, even without 100% accuracy.

You may call me a cheater again but I fixed a file with the names of a few hundreds of japanese writers and just imported them in my deck.


Kanji Stats:

The 3100 seen cards in this deck contain:

* 1931 total unique kanji.
* Jouyou: 1724 of 1945 (88.6%).
* Jinmeiyou: 46 of 287 (16.0%).
* 161 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

* Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
* Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%).
* Grade 3: 200 of 200 (100.0%).
* Grade 4: 199 of 200 (99.5%).
* Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
* Grade 6: 180 of 181 (99.4%).
* JuniorHS: 720 of 939 (76.7%).

The News + The crisis

The crisis is affecting my vocabulary. Lately my vocabulary needs are turning to financial/preocupation related words. This is ruining my joyo count rate! These words keep using always the same kanjis time after time!

Joyo count:

The 2494 seen cards in this deck contain:

• 1630 total unique kanji.
• Jouyou: 1496 of 1945 (76.9%).
• Jinmeiyou: 31 of 287 (10.8%).
• 103 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

• Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
• Grade 2: 159 of 160 (99.4%).
• Grade 3: 196 of 200 (98.0%).
• Grade 4: 186 of 200 (93.0%).
• Grade 5: 174 of 185 (94.1%).
• Grade 6: 167 of 181 (92.3%).
• JuniorHS: 534 of 939 (56.9%).

I should stop reading finantial news. It is also affecting my resolve.

Btw, tks for the comments. I started this blog so no one would doubt me when I speak about the timeframes. When I started explaining AJATT to my pals, they tought it was one more of these methods that promiss to teach you without effort.

As you realize, AJATT is all about effort.

Reading the News (2)

I'm far from understanding the news by audio sources. I'm doing it 2-3hours/day during weekdays. But it seems I need to listen to it more.

But I'm managing to get close to 100% understanding in from written material. Yes, it takes a while, I need the dictionary for it, but it is working.

And thanks to the news, my joyo count is raising quickly without extra effort again.

Reading and listening to the news is convincing me that the major obstacle of learning languages is vocabulary. It is simply a huge task. Way too many words. Grammar is not simple, but it fits for itself as you start to acquire more and more vocabulary. 

Learning a vocabulary of 10.000 words, 30 words/day, takes a lot of time. And during that time, you'll have plenty of time to practice the other aspects of the language.

Lastly, the joyo count for today:

The 2465 seen cards in this deck contain:

• 1615 total unique kanji.
• Jouyou: 1482 of 1945 (76.2%).
• Jinmeiyou: 31 of 287 (10.8%).
• 102 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

• Grade 1: 80  of 80  (100.0%).
• Grade 2: 159 of 160 (99.4%).
• Grade 3: 196 of 200 (98.0%).
• Grade 4: 186 of 200 (93.0%).
• Grade 5: 172 of 185 (93.0%).
• Grade 6: 165 of 181 (91.2%).
• JuniorHS: 524 of 939 (55.8%).

Why reading the news?

Over the last month I grew overconfident of japanese.

I'm already understanding a lot from anime/manga and that somehow made me think my japanese was already actually good.

The news put me in my place again. I'm just a beginner. I have tons to learn. And I cannot let my pace down in this critical time.

That was the first reason. The second reason is:
It is easier to come from nothing to being bad at something. Somehow languages look like creating a Diablo character (diablo the computer game). Going from lvl 1 to 10 is quick. Going from lvl 80 to 81 is a long way.

In anime, I'm already in 80%. It is hard to fight for every new 1% of understanding. And it is not that much motivating.

In the news, I'm lvl 1.

Starting from the beginning is painful, but everything is new. So everything I see will be contributing for my japanese.
Even if I only understand 10%, I like to think that these 10% are much more useful than the 80% from the anime.

The 80% from anime is pure confort. And confort is a dangerous thing.

I don't know if I made myself clear, but that's what I want to believe.

Btw, Phauna, thanks for the link for the kids news, it will be very useful.

Started reading the news

Yesterday I started hearing the news from yomiuri online podcasts.

Most of it sounds like gibberish. I can notice the sentence patterns, but there is so much unknown vocabulary that generaly I choke right with the first sentence.

I also created a policy of reading at least 1 article/day.

Today's lucky one was

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/atmoney/news/20081204-OYT1T00051.htm?from=top

I might've understood about 10% of it _after_ going trought it with the dictionary. Yup. It was sad. But watching anime isn't doing much for me anymore. I can already understand most of it.

Anki statistics in my first day of reading the news:

The 2326 seen cards in this deck contain:

• 1515 total unique kanji.
• Jouyou: 1401 of 1945 (72.0%).
• Jinmeiyou: 29 of 287 (10.1%).
• 85 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

• Grade 1: 80  of 80  (100.0%).
• Grade 2: 159 of 160 (99.4%).
• Grade 3: 193 of 200 (96.5%).
• Grade 4: 183 of 200 (91.5%).
• Grade 5: 166 of 185 (89.7%).
• Grade 6: 156 of 181 (86.2%).
• JuniorHS: 464 of 939 (49.4%).