AJATT quiz

Recently the following thread appeared in kanji.koohii.com forum.
http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=3360

I felt compelled to answer.

1. How many facts (production and recognition are only 1 fact) do you have in your SRS?

3937 seen facts, 482 unseen. Taking off RTK.

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?

Half from dictionary, about ~200 are names., others are from
anime/dorama/newspapers. I have not kept track of data.

3. Do you do production (audio/hiragana to kanji) and/or recognition (kanji to meaning) or something else? Is there an order (eg production and then recognition)?

I do only recognition. My cards are full kanji, I have the readings
and Japanese definitions in the answer field.

4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.

The movie method for unknown readings. I use no special review system for it.

5. How many cards on average do you add to you deck per day? Or if life is getting in the way of this, once things settle down how many do you intend to add per day?

At total, 8.5/day. With peaks of 80 cards/day and valleys of no cards at all.

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?

3-4 hours/day.
Mainly from anime, doramas, Jmovies, newspapers, 2chan, 知恵袋, etc.

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.

I can read the news, but I can't decipher them only by listening.
I can read light novels, but I need the dictionary much more for
them than for the news.
I've took 5 months to read one light novel(ハルヒ涼宮の憂鬱),
but now I'm at 30% of my second one (十二国記), after 1 week.
I can read almost anything from Internet, with an
occasional dictionary lookup, but I can only type simple posts.
I can understand understand some doramas perfectly even without Jsubs,
but there are still doramas than I can't understand even 30%
and I can't speak much more than I can write.
Same for anime.
I'm playing trough FFIV remake for the DS with almost 100% understanding,
if you take of the hiragana items.

8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?

Quite satisfied. The only painful part is the SRS review time.
Adding news sentences is fun.
Currently I only read, watch and listen things I like.

9. Are you satisfied with your level?

Nope. I'm not even close to my goals.

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?

Native-like ability for listening, reading and writing.
Strong oratory skills.

11. How confident are you of getting there?

Strongly confident.

12. From when you started adding items to your SRS, aside from your process evolving bit by bit, are there any major things you would do again differently if you could?

I'd like to try the movie method instead of RTK.
I'd avoid rikai-chan. It is more addictive than cigar.

13. How long have you been studying?
13 months, ~15 days.

Cramming trought the Joyo

I know I advocate natural language learning, and that searching for specific words is not optimal. But I was growing nervous that my Joyo % was not raising anymore and started to cover it systematically.

This is probably not the best way to learn Japanese, but I really love statistics and the kanji count that was not raising anymore was bothering me. So I'm cheating. I'm going throughout the anki unseen kanji, picking some words and adding sentences for them. Even if these sentences are not so great.

After I'm done with the Joyo, I'll continue doing sentences the right way.

The 3444 seen cards in this deck contain:
2060 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1817 of 1945 (93.4%).
Jinmeiyou: 48 of 287 (16.7%).
195 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: 813 of 939 (86.6%).

Anki stats update

Quick tip:
Try reducing your session times. I adjusted the review lenght of my session to 3 minutes. I do 3-5 already in the morning and voila! My reviews are done.

And the kanji stats:

The 3339 seen cards in this deck contain:
* 1983 total unique kanji.
* Jouyou: 1753 of 1945 (90.1%).
* Jinmeiyou: 46 of 287 (16.0%).
* 184 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: 749 of 939 (79.8%).

Anki stats

Just for the records, the last anki stats: 258 joyo kanji to go.

The 2955 seen cards in this deck contain:

• 1877 total unique kanji.
• Jouyou: 1687 of 1945 (86.7%).
• Jinmeiyou: 41 of 287 (14.3%).
• 149 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: 683 of 939 (72.7%).

HJHFATT

HJHFATT stands for half japanese, half french all the time.

I just happened to get southpark completely dubbed in French and I'm simply too curious to not enjoy it.

I plan to start it half time tomorrow.

Kanji statistics

The 2917 seen cards in this deck contain:

• 1863 total unique kanji.
• Jouyou: 1676 of 1945 (86.2%).
• Jinmeiyou: 41 of 287 (14.3%).
• 146 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: 198 of 200 (99.0%).
• Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
• Grade 6: 180 of 181 (99.4%).
• JuniorHS: 673 of 939 (71.7%).

Hehe, nice way to ruin your new year's resolutions. ^_^

Back online, for a few days

I'm back online, just until january 10th. My sentences deck suffered a lot from it, but it might have been for the good. I also could not listen to the day's news and it was boring to hear old stuff, so I had to fallback to good and old anime.

My anki stats are here:

The 2661 seen cards in this deck contain:

• 1748 total unique kanji.
• Jouyou: 1594 of 1945 (82.0%).
• Jinmeiyou: 33 of 287 (11.5%).
• 121 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: 198 of 200 (99.0%).
• Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
• Grade 6: 180 of 181 (99.4%).
• JuniorHS: 591 of 939 (62.9%).

I know I'll have to throw some sentences out. I already threw some, so my kanji count will drop again. 

Christmas offline time

Ehe, christmas is only letting me connect to the internet a few hours a day, not everyday, only with a slow connection. I even feel like I'm turning into a normal person. 

No more news podcasts until january. But I'm not worried (anymore). I have some books to read and offline dictionaries (including one from the DS wich is pretty neat).

I'm also rewatching old favorite anime.

My sentence habits changed and so I was compelled to write them here. I'm doing this, just for a few days: I go to my anki unseen kanji list, select randomly a kanji, and then put it in the dictionary. After that I chose 2-3 words, preferably words that I already knew from listening, very simple words that contain the kanji meaning or words that I really wanned to know.

I did that yesterday and today. The result is that my joyo % jumped a bit wich is quite motivating.

The 2581 seen cards in this deck contain:

• 1687 total unique kanji.
• Jouyou: 1542 of 1945 (79.3%).
• Jinmeiyou: 33 of 287 (11.5%).
• 112 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: 198 of 200 (99.0%).
• Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
• Grade 6: 168 of 181 (92.8%).
• JuniorHS: 551 of 939 (58.7%).

Isn't it great to see all these 100% ?

Anki statistics

Today I finaly got to 70% of joyo! Hurray!

10 more kanji/day and in 60 days, I'll be done.


Kanji statistics

The 2260 seen cards in this deck contain:

• 1463 total unique kanji.
• Jouyou: 1361 of 1945 (70.0%).
• Jinmeiyou: 27 of 287 (9.4%).
• 75 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: 180 of 200 (90.0%).
• Grade 5: 165 of 185 (89.2%).
• Grade 6: 153 of 181 (84.5%).
• JuniorHS: 431 of 939 (45.9%).

Anki status (2): 65%!

Just for the records, the current anki statistics:

The 2092 seen cards in this deck contain:

• 1350 total unique kanji.
• Jouyou: 1265 of 1945 (65.0%).
• Jinmeiyou: 23 of 287 (8.0%).
• 62 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

• Grade 1: 79 of 80 (98.8%).
• Grade 2: 159 of 160 (99.4%).
• Grade 3: 189 of 200 (94.5%).
• Grade 4: 172 of 200 (86.0%).
• Grade 5: 159 of 185 (85.9%).
• Grade 6: 135 of 181 (74.6%).
• JuniorHS: 372 of 939 (39.6%).

Maybe I could pass the 6th grade now!

Anki status

Just for the sake of recods.

Kanji statistics

The 1896 seen cards in this deck contain:

• 1259 total unique kanji.
• Jouyou: 1185 of 1945 (60.9%).
• Jinmeiyou: 21 of 287 (7.3%).
• 53 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

• Grade 1: 79 of 80 (98.8%).
• Grade 2: 157 of 160 (98.1%).
• Grade 3: 183 of 200 (91.5%).
• Grade 4: 163 of 200 (81.5%).
• Grade 5: 147 of 185 (79.5%).
• Grade 6: 126 of 181 (69.6%).
• JuniorHS: 330 of 939 (35.1%).

The cautious reader might have noticed that the amount of sentences actualy is smaller. The reason is that I had some problems with anki and with some sentences. Some I lost by accident, some I deliberatedly threw away.

JLPT

I'm interested in doing JLPT next year. But I wanna go straight to lvl 2. I should be doing it this year, but I'm a bit lazy and I'm a bit scared of it.

This are the stats that anki gives to me:

Kanji statistics

The 1082 seen cards in this deck contain:

• 849 total unique kanji.
• Jouyou: 807 of 1945 (41.5%).
• Jinmeiyou: 13 of 287 (4.5%).
• 29 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

• Grade 1: 73 of 80 (91.3%).
• Grade 2: 151 of 160 (94.4%).
• Grade 3: 142 of 200 (71.0%).
• Grade 4: 119 of 200 (59.5%).
• Grade 5: 78 of 185 (42.2%).
• Grade 6: 73 of 181 (40.3%).
• JuniorHS: 171 of 939 (18.2%).

I'm searching for past tests for JLPT but I only found this page: http://www.mlcjapanese.co.jp/LevelCheck/PT/01.htm

If I follow it, I'd pass lvl 3 for sure and would only get 40-50% in lvl 2. The passing mark of lvl 2 is 60%. That is making me wonder if I'm just being a chicken.

The 40-50% mark looked too close to the 41.5% mark of anki to be a lie. I'll redo this test in a month to see if I get a better score.

About me

I'm 23 yo, learning japanese for ~4 years already, but until recently with little success.

That's it, until april/17th/2008, when I found out about a blog called "All japanese all the time". It gave me a boost of confidence and everything changed.

In april/18th/2008 I started to go trought Mr Heisig's Remembering the Kanji book, as Kaztumoto sugested. In july/19th/2008, I finished it. Only 3 months.

I skipped the kanas, wich I already knew.

Since july/27/2008 I'm doing sentences.

I notice improvement in my japanese daily.