#nukemarine LLJ

[rigelmejo]

Okay there are some poor fucking translations in modern Glossika japanese :c

Look. The old version, the old cd audio lessons, had less words and their language was more artificial learner textbook format (like Genki). But there was less errors.

At least 20% (one in 5) sentences has a translation that's partly or wholly wrong. Its a good thing Im not a true beginner, and can tell. Stuff that has a literal translation of "what would be a good thing to do?" (Which would help you fogure out the wood GOOD is in the sentence) is translated in the app as "what should i do?" Another sentence thqt they translated as "are you okay" would more literally be "your mood seems bad (warui)" so the learner is going to what... tjink warui means "okay'" if they didnt realize these translations are NOT literal.

I suspect these sentences are from Tatoeba or some mass online sentences database. Theres much less purposeful grammar in the sentences compared to the old course, and the translations are so much fucking worse. So much worse. 1 out of 5 sentences being translated wrong is too fucking many in a paid course! That's 20%! Thats a huge chunk of what you study! The old version had an occasional translation INTO japanese error, but it was more like 1 in 20 so like 5% of the sentences. I realize im complaining a lot, its just WILD how much worse these translations are compared to the old course, making it seem like they for some reason tjought literal translation (which helps word to word matching and grammat understandimg) is no longer worth the effort.

I suspect they took the sentences from tatoeba (or similar sentence banks), and then cut the sentences into smaller bits but didnt edit the source sentence's translations which were probably user submitted wherever the sentences are from. (Maybe glossika made up their own sentences, who knows, but if they made these translations themselves then wowwwww did their own work drop in quality).

So ive used Clozemaster app in the past. It used to be free. Now its monthly fee if you want to more than 20 sentences a day. Anyway, clozemaster intentionally used taboeta sentences and google translate and TTS for their HUGE bank of sentences. Initially, for a few years, these features were free for as many sentences as u want (they only limited sentences for free users around a year ago). The negative was Clozemaster sentences had more errors rhan PROFESSIONAL APPS like Pimsleur, Busuu, Glossika *cough*. The upside was that Clozemaster had SOOOO many words, so much variety of sentences from real reading materials so it was how the language was Actually used. It wasnt artificially easier like many apps, and that meant when you improved understanding in Clozemaster you also saw Noticeable progress in reading skills in your target language of stuff for native speakers. You saw formal and very informal sentences. For japanese, clozemaster was awesome for getring used to verb conjugations and formality in real language use. Clozemaster also improved over time: eventually you could translate word by word, so if google translate's auto generated sentence wasnt literal then you could click word by word to find the Actual literal sentence meaning, you could look up 1 word if you didny know it, you could look up kanji.

Glossika's current japanese course reminds me of Clozemaster. Except they cut out the sentence complexity, so it doesnt have the benefit clozemaster has. Glossika doesnt have a way to show the literal translation, so where Clozemaster gave alternatives when its own sentence translation wasnt useful... glossika just lets you flounder (or worse, learn something quite wrong). Glossikas course reminds me of if you found a random japanese learner sentences deck made by a beginner learner who used google translate and hoped it was right. And i say random deck, because the most common currently floating around japanese anki decks use mostly the Japanese iKnow sentences which were made to be educational and have few errors. Tango decks are also popular, again based on a learning material the Tango textbooks, so they have few errors in the translations.

My conclusion: lmao dont pay for the modern Glossika japanese course. I may keep doing it just to see how far I get in a month, since Ive done a lot with Clozemaster in the past (and it had its errors for a while) and i still made some progtess. Im just particularly bitter because as a professional resource, i really expected less fucking errors. I shouldnt have to be vigilant to catch errors in the first fucking 200 sentences every minute or so.

I guess I'd still recommend: Japaneseaudiolessons.com (free) then Satori Reader app (if you're going paid) or SmartBook Kursx app (free parallel text reader - the full sentence translations are good but the word individual ones are 20% wrong for japanese, which is fairly common with machine translation tools). And of course anki decks if you like anki. I would love to join Nukemarine's patreon, buy his Lets Learn Japanese anki decks, then go back to those since those truly made me progress IMMENSELY in a matter of months! But i cannot focus on something like anki right now, i know i cant. I wish i could get his LLJ decks, and then could figure out how to turn them to audio files with TTS english then the Japanese repeated twice.

If ANYONE is tech savy with converting anki decks to audio files (and adding TTS)? I WILL draw you a picture or something if you would be kind enough to help me make such audio files. Im completely serious. Ill go buy the decks right now if someone can help me make english-japanese sentence audio files with the deck. I have seen some reddit posts about converting an anki deck to audio file, but i didnt understand how to do the "add tts" step for english.

[dany-japanese-study]

Well this last month was okay, sure I didn't study every day but, it was productive specially since i’m just now getting back to japanese. However, this May I want to do better so here I list of things to do so that every time i see this, my failures will motivate me lol.

Currently doing :

finish watching the Persona 4 gameplay(it's definitely above my level, but I played this game so many times that I basically know all dialogues, so it's being quite enjoyable.)

continue the Nukemarine’s LLJ decks

finally finish with all N5 grammar points(i don't study too deep in grammar, i memorize i bit and then do a shit ton of immersion to stick it in my brain) 

keep listening to the Core 2k Pimsleur audio.

and listen to more of the Japanese with shun podcast.

Plan to star soon (... hopefully):

Start reading Yotsuba&! ( i have read one chapter and could keep up fairly well)

Start playing a game in Japanese (it's probably going to be Skyrim, another game i played to much)

Star writing journal entries(...don’t have much faith in this one, lol)

[rigelmejo]

9/19/2024 some updates!

Glossika Japanese: I finished the A1 section, it was about 3000 sentences. The full glossika japanese course states it has 6400+ sentences and 5000+ words. So with how MANY words were in A1? I am predicting A2 will have 2500-3000 words and then there will be a small amount of sentences in B1 and B2. Also: the course's claims of A1 etc categorization do not actually match up to any A1-C1 clearly. I'd say everything in the "A1" module felt beginner, except for a few grammar points I didn't learn in japanese 1 in college. But it was beginner enough material that I don't think I could pass an N5 or N4 practice test with 90%.

What is good about the A1 module? It did at least cover a decent amount of new words. While there were a lot of repeated words and words conjugated multiple ways, I'd say at least 1500-2000 new words were covered. Maybe there were even 2500+ new words covered, but I'm going to guess closer to 1500-2000. I've done the beginning of Nukemarine's LLJ memrise courses before, years ago, and studied 2000 words in that. So a lot of glossika japanese A1 has been review for me. But I do think the sheer volume of sentences has been useful, with the various grammar and conjugations. While I don't think I learned very many new words... possibly only a few hundred... I DO think going through A1 has improved my listening skills in japanese. Now, that improvement could just be because (according to glossika app) I studied for 63 hours in the last few months. And yes, I recognize I should expect solid project in a language like japanese every few HUNDRED hours, not every few dozen, so I need to keep studying for longer to truly judge how much progress glossika materials can help me get to. But I will say even just the 63 hours? It's clearly helped. I can understand about half of the lines/phrase chunks in Death Note, I can understand enough of kids shows to just Watch them (so I suppose I could start immersing by watching shows).

I watched Criminologist Himura and Writer Alice yesterday for about 15 minutes and I could follow the main plot. Many details were fuzzy, and to be fair the show is Very Visual in showing what's described so that helps me follow Himura's lines of reasoning and reactions, and my brain felt FRIED trying to focus.

But its the first time I watched a jdrama and could just FOLLOW it (if roughly). When studying chinese, I could start doing that around 5-6 months of learning (when I'd studied 2000 words brute force in memrise and 800 hanzi in a book), i would feel exhausted and couldnt do it longer than 20 minutes at a time until I kept trying and eventually could handle a full episode of chinese shows. But I could Start building up stamina to watch/focus and try to comprehend at that time. So I'd guess my japanese is now around knowing 2000-3000 words overall (some from prior to glossika, many reviewed with glossika recently, som new words). Listening a LOT just tends to help me, personally, with improving comprehension and comprehension speed. I suppose I could start watching japanese shows now, but im going to be real, I am a chicken. Id rather learn more words first. I could probably rewatch a show I already saw in english, but a new show in japanese would probably make me need to focus so hard id get exhausted if i try for too long at a time.

Anyway, overall? Id say glossika is presenting new information SLOWER than I'd like (I do think Clozemaster is faster with new word introductions, but last time I used it maybe a year ago their Radio mode just didnt give you the same pick-what-to-study-new control that glossika does). But glossika is faster than pimsleur. And I do think I may be getting to a lot of genuinely NEW words for me soon, which will be the biggest test of if the material is actually useful for me more than another program that may only have 2000 words. So I'll keep going. I'll update again later.

I'd also like to try Listening Reading Method with Alice in Wonderland in japanese again, if i can get myself to focus. I think I know enough japanese now that a wall of (older childrens book) text is not going to immediately exhaust me. Or at least, exhaust me less than last time I tried.

My chinese is still in a weird holding zone. I have been listening to audiobooks still. Its like I lose all my instant recognition of words after a few days not listening to chinese, but then within a few hours the instant recognition comes back! But the first few hours of listening after those days of a break, i can't understand fully the audio i COULD nearly fully understand just before the few-days break in audio. So it's like my recognition goes UP each time I study then DROPS every time I take a few days break. I think it's probably normal, and the recognition that drops then goes back up is probably just words I know LESS fully or that are less common than the core-words I seem to recognize immediately even after long breaks. I imagine what will fix this is simply listening for a LOT of hours. I'm just lazy. I need to listen more.

[rigelmejo]

In unrelated language stuff. Japanese really is... a mountain. Its a language I try a lot of studying experiments with, for one because its going to be many more years of study so I'm having fun, but also 2 because it has so many hurdles i personally have difficulty with so I am always hopeful some experiment will help things I study click better.

Like. Conjugation was hard to me in french, and there were english cognates to lean on, it is a fairly regular language conjugation wise (japanese has more exceptions i tend to forget how to conjugate). Then in japanese, everything being a very different word order combined with the information dense conjugation makes me even more confused.

A few things worked quite well for me in japanese study. One was nukemarines LLJ memrise decks, which after 2 years of studying other things, i crammed in 6 months and went from 300 words known from Genki and maybe 100 hanzi from Heisig RTK (yes i really didnt learn much in 2 years) to 1000-2000 words recognized and basic grammar and able to read Yatsubo and play Kingdom Hearts 2 in japanese (granted i know the game very well in english). Ever since then, ive been able to read manga and look words up to learn, or follow roughly a lets play of a game i know. I can never focus on anki long, but i recognize its use, especially when i was using the LLJ deck which had hanzi, common words in sentenced, and grammar. Since then, i havent used as organized of a resource. So i squander a lot more time, trying to figure out what to study.

Then I did Clozemaster sincerely for a couple months once in japanese. I think i only got through like 1000 cards. But it FINALLY helped me understand stuff like される られる word endings. Tragically, i forgot what they mean. But forca solid 6 months after my rime with Clozemaster cramming, i finally understood a lot of the grammar that had been confusing me. I desperately need to refresh that knowledge (if anyone has any good quock grammar explanation notes theyve seen). I only remember teimasu is like "ing" doing verb ending in english.

And I did japaneseaudiolessons, and the old glossika cd lessons, on and off. And each time i use audio for a while, i do make good progress. I seem to learn very well from audio. In particular, hearing so much japanese FINALLY got me used to the word order. So i struggle much less to follow sentences. Whereas before the massive listening practice, i would often lose the object or subject by the time i heard the verb. So i could not figure sentences out before, unless they were written, since id forget so much while trying to keep track of which word was which function. Lots of listening to audio lessons really helps me get into this rythm of intuitively knowing the order of the words and remembering the grammar through the whole sentence. Thats partly why i keep trying to study with more audio: its rhe biggest leap in terms of being able to understand japanese more instantly, to comprehend AS i hear or AS i read later (after audio study). I just cannot find another way to get my brain to internalize the word order, except LOTS of listening. The audio lessons have helped my reading skills SO much, all of my japanese listening skills so much, because now when i see eords i know i can comprehend what theyre doing in the sentence without thinking about it. And if i hear unknown words i can tell immediately if theyre subject object adjective verb time or a helper word like very/suddenly. I do plan to switch to reading study next, once I feel my vocabulary is solidly more than 2000 words (ideally 3000-5000 but lol im not sure ill find audio lessons that truly teach that much).

So yeah. Im studying japanese and chinese, on and off, as usual. And its always funny and frustrating when it hits just how much more I understand chinese. I took a 6 month ish break from studying ANY language. So ive been listening to audio lessons to review things i knew before, in Chinese and Japanese right now.

In chinese, i listened to maybe 4 hours of audio lessons review, and 2 hours of SCI mystery audiobook (i did not follow too much but hearing so many words helped jog my memory). Its been a week since starting review. Now? Well first of all, if i look at a chinese webnovel the READING skill comes back within 1 chapter and comes back before i eben did any purposeful reviews this past week. My reading skills in all languages seem to break down/be forgotten/get rusty the least. Second: now that I've reviewed for a week, I can understand almost all words in The Untamed (and the eordw i dont know i have been quickly google translatkng just to realize ITS WORDS I KNEW I JUST FORGOT THEM. Like 鬼 i cant believe i forgot gui its one of the first words i learned! Its in a lot of stuff i read and watch lol! Or 放手 i really forgot fangshou existed, i swear my brain just held onto hanzi as images fine but when i just HEAR a word i dont recognize it until i review it again... hence why SO much listening stuff im doing right now). I listened to 默读 audio drama last night and for the first 20 minutes i followed everything. I would guess i know at least 90% of the words (if i havent forgotten some - as with 镇魂 i knew over 95% of the words 8n most chapters right before i took my 6 month study break, and i also could read modu extensively at that point and get the main idea... since i knew thw english translation to guess bits). To be fair? With the audio drama, i did have the aid of knowing the plot already. But ive known modus plot a LONG time, and in the past i struggled to follow the audiodrama anyway, because compared to the audiobook it had less details forcme to use as a crutch to figure out what scene i was hearing. So me listening to rhe audio Drama yesterday, and following so much? Great. Ive also been listening to the mdzs audiobook, which has been brain frying as i started a week ago before realizing i needed to review the sounds of words lol. But also brain frying because the opening monologue words confuse me In Text form, so in audio form it took me 4 listens to realize they were saying the jiang jin nie lan clans fought wei wuxian etc etc. I heard meng and just completely forgot it meant clan, so my brain kept doing things like "is Xmeng a word i know?" It took me 2 listens to realize the next part was Wei Wuxian in mo manor, and 4 listens to realize mojia was MO FAMILY because id been going "mojia sounds familiar, do i know that word?" The last few listens lol. I also forgot fuchou! How! Anyway. Its an accomplishment. I have never had as much success listening to a BRAND NEW audiobook in chinese of something i havent read before, and been able to understand this much. Its not a lot, im just grasping a lot of phrases and the main scene ideas. And i do have my knowledge of The Untamed plot to help me guess. But its going better than listening to audiobooks used to go. And i see a Huge improvement in dialogue. When people talk now (except the guy who tells exposition stories), i find those words are easiest to recognize and quickly remember again. I think part of it is just: dialogue tends to be more direct communication of ideas, whereas descriptive narration can get creatively phrased and meander and discuss details in phrases i havent heard as much as ive heard conversational phrases. Like when i listened to SCI audiobook last weekend, i could follow some of the dialogue portions great, like at crime scenes, arguing, with their boss, it was the descriptions in between where id get lost for a while.

Its just sort of frustrating and sad how much stusying japanese is like hitting a brick wall and learning tiny chip by tiny chip as it wears gradually, and also grateful my mind clicked with chinese because im so over the moon i did NOT have to struggle as much with chinese. For chinese i thankfully could pretty much do exactly what i did when learning to read french, and i improved on that old study plan, and as a result chinese improvement went by faster than when i initially studied french and floundered for a while. I was reading priest novels by the end of year 1 of study (with a click translator like Pleco). The study plan was simple, worked fine. The confusing parts of grammar clicked with enough reading (after maybe 100 chapters of things), and now (likecwith french) my main grammar issues with chinese are learning to produce them right in speaking and writing. But in reading it just clicks and i know what it means immediately. I dream of the day ill finally get whats going on with japanese verbs and grammar ;-;

[rigelmejo]

2/1/2023 Update on progress using Glossika Japanese. Lessons listened to: 37

This update is mostly for my personal tracking later. 

Downsides: I am struggling to get myself to listen to lessons. Based on time I have per day to listen to audio in the background, I should have gone through at least 100 lessons by now, and easily could’ve gone through 300. So 37 is... disappointing. I do relisten to the audios sometimes, so even though I’ve only gotten through 37 lessons I have probably listened to lessons 100 times. I suppose the upside is relistening to lessons before moving on is the actual way glossika recommends to study - listen to the prior day’s lesson before listening to the current day’s lesson. However, I was not trying to study how glossika recommended. I was trying to cram through as many audio lessons as possible so I could review if simply doing that and only that, was enough to learn a decent amount and see improvement. 

I desperately would like to get through all 312 lessons in a month. Just so I could finish and prove to myself if it helps or not! 

Since for me, a decent portion of these lessons are a form of audio review for me, so I do not need to be spending as much time on them as I am. I wanted to use these to review my knowledge and reinforce it, and strengthen my listening skills (and pronunciation knowledge) since I currently recognize more words by kanji meaning than by actually knowing their pronunciation (meaning I can’t recognize in listening words that I’d know if I was reading). So I feel I am... wasting a lot of my own time here, drilling beginner things I already know and working through the glossika lessons too slowly. Which is a bad perfectionist habit of mine that I often fall into when doing japanese study. oops.

I unfortunately have no solution to this tendency I have to avoid going through the lessons. I clearly am not super interested in the glossika lessons lol, they must bore me. For anyone else considering using glossika let this be useful to you: if you find it so plain its hard to listen to, it might be hard for you to push yourself to go through the lessons. The lessons are GOOD, don’t get me wrong. I just find it much ‘easier’ to make myself listen to a condensed audio of a video game (even though I know less words), or to play a japanese video game and look up words, than I find it to get myself to listen to simple boring daily life sentences in japanese/english. Just my personal focus issue. My brain loves to be challenged I think, even though I think in some cases like this it can make things less efficient.

Side studying I’ve been doing in japanese: I’ve played about 10 hours FFX and Persona 3 in japanese now. I went through about 300 memrise words in Nukemarine’s LLJ memrise courses before I got burned out with memrise again. I also have been playing like 50+ hours in the Yakuza games with english subs lately. While this doesn’t actually count as studying since I’m using english subs, I do hear the japanese audio frequently and I do think it helps me remember new words I’ve learned recently since I’m hearing them regularly and when I listen sometimes I try to compare the japanese I hear to the english subs and see if the translation changed anything. So all in all lets call the 50+ Yakuza games with english subs ‘mild review’ and count it as 10 study ‘review’ hours. 

So total study time these past 3 months has been: 10 hours video games in japanese, 10 hours japanese audio with english subs (so review but not real study), 50 hours of glossika audio (each audio is about a half hour and I relistened to most lessons 2-3 times so I’m guessing around 50 hours total), maybe 5 hours memrise and trying out the Listlang app, maybe 4 hours on Satori Reader (which later on in my journey I think will be an excellent study tool to prepare for reading but I don’t have the money for a subscription right now). 10+10+50+5+4= 79 study hours. ToT

79 study hours over 3 months. Yikes. I sure am lazy. so in ~90 days I did on average ~50 minutes of study a day. Okay... not entirely awful I guess. I usually make good progress with chinese at 1-2 hours study a day on average, so 50 minutes isn’t way below that amount... it could be way worse. I’m frankly amazed I made noticeable progress in the last few months then, damn, considering it wasn’t like a few hundred hours...

Upsides: Despite my apparently not very high study hours... I actually have noticed significant improvement. 

With Persona 3 - I played it 1 year ago and it took 1 hour to get to the save point. This month, it took about 20 minutes to get to the save point and I was able to get to the save point 3 times. So I was able to play the game 3 times faster, therefore I was able to read 3x faster. That’s a pretty huge improvement. I also was able to look up less words. When I played it a year ago I had to look up words frequently (about once every 2-3 minutes or more) and gave up even trying to read once I got to the school I just skipped text and tried to get to the save point as quick as possible and it still took an hour. This month when I played it I was able to only look up a word around once every 5 minutes, I could read the text fast enough that I did not need to skip text sessions to ‘speed up’ my playtime. I was able to spend some time actually exploring the character’s bedroom and school since reading was faster and therefore much more bearable. A 3 times faster reading speed is a REALLY noticeable improvement, I can’t express just how much easier everything feels when I can read faster. It makes the experience much easier and more bearable. Hiragana words and slang still made me feel very drained trying to understand wtf they meant by guessing, but it still felt 3 times easier than last year lol. 

With Final Fantasy X - I’m noticing improvement AS I play. When I started, the menu was challenging, now I find navigating the menu quite easy and honestly a game menu is a great way to repeatedly practice recognizing words until you learn them. So is the combat menu. It’s like how in english we never knew the word ‘ultima’ or ‘aeon’ as far as the actual attack or creature they mean in a game, but we learn because a game teaches us. This is comforting, we have to learn these kinds of words even when playing games in english... so learning them in japanese is not really much different. So yeah, the pause menu and combat menu are already notably easier 10 hours in then when I started. Common words specific to this game were also picked up fast - I know know summoner, summon, defeat, cheer, pray, temple, monster, magic, boat, port, waruiwa - (used as ‘im sorry this is a bad time’ sort of like sumimasen but casual to end a conversation), a lot of more casual word endings or word forms (Tidus and Wakka...). This is comforting, as now I expect if I played something like say Nier Automata I would pick up the technology words eventually simply because they’re used a lot. Or in Kingdom Hearts I sure would pick up hearts, darkness, light, friends, friendship, worlds, keyblade, fast lol. I am also noticing it’s much easier to follow what’s being said in scenes then when I started. When I started I’d usually understand 1 part of a sentence but not all of it, or 1 sentence but then not 2 more then understand on again. Whereas now 10 hours in I watched the scene on Mihen High Road where Yuna and Tidus talk in front of the sunset. I understood every word of every single line, except 1 single line I didn’t know one clause within it. So I understood the scene Really Well, well enough to compare the japanese translation to the english translation I remember. There’s still lines where I only understand part of them (like when Seymour says ‘Then pretend I didn’t say it’ I understood that line but not the one right before it, or when Gatta says Chappu says spending time with your girl is nice but... I did not catch the part where I know in english he says ‘protecting your girl from’ sin is better. I only caught the ‘your girl’ part beforehand and ‘sin’ part toward the end). But I AM understanding a great deal of full lines, which is fun as I’ve been comparing it to the english translation I remember to see what was changed in english or kept the same. Lulu is... really direct in japanese just like she is in english, which I was surprised by. There’s also a part where Seymour asks Auron “It’s been 10 years, how have you been” or whatever, and Auron literally says “I’m Yuna’s guardian, I’m busy” then walks away. It was just really funny to me how directly he shuts Seymour down. Or when Gatta says when he told Lulu about Chappu, she hit him too. 

When I started playing FFX this month I did not expect that I was going to eventually be able to understand the lines to this degree of detail. I thought at best I was going only be able to follow the main idea. Now to be fair: I’ve played this game before in english so I have that remembered english script in my memory to help me guess unknown words or lines. I expect a game I’ve NEVER played before would be considerably harder. However, this speed of progress bodes well for if I wanted to play Nier Replicant or Nier Automata. Apparently the navigation menus will not take more then a few hours to get comfortable with in japanese, and after enough hours I will be able to enjoy understanding the detail of a lot of the japanese lines. Which is definitely a good motivation to want to play more games in japanese - I am very interested in comparing the japanese script and choices with the english translation, and knowing it will be possible to do that is exciting. 

With manga - an unexpected improvement. I’ve been opening up manga from time to time. I am finding some easier to read now. I think the improvement is mainly due to reviewing information I knew already because I’m using japanese more. I still find heavy adverb use and hiragana word usage hard and that’s where a majority of the unknown words I don’t understand but that are important are. 

Basically - I’m seeing a significant reading improvement in both skill and especially speed at 3x faster than last year, ability to follow the speed up japanese in of cutscenes/follow the speed of japanese in audio much better than before, significant improvement in recognizing stuff I’ve studied before faster/easier, and some small but solid improvement in vocabulary. I did not expect any noticeable improvement until I’d studied a few hundred more hours, so honestly this is really great and a lot more than I expected.

In regard to the Glossika lessons: I DO think they’ve been helping, I Do think they’ve been reinforcing my knowledge I already knew and giving me good review, and while I struggle to listen to them often I do think they work similarly well for me as anki/memrise do except without requiring 100% of my focus when I do them. So the glossika lessons (audio flashcards) are easier for me to actually study. While I wish I was doing them more, I’m happy to say I do think they’re helping me improve like I hoped they would.

[rigelmejo]

12/14/2022 Study Update

Hi all! 

I tried to update about a week ago and tumblr ate my whole post. So I’ll be trying again.

Basic study plan updates:

With Japanese, I am switching focus to something that’s always reliably worked for me: Nukemarine’s Let’s Learn Japanese Memrise courses 1-12. Unlike prior attempts, I’m not doing a review of the 4 sections I’ve already done. I’m focusing on inreasing vocabulary and grammar, I am to get to section 6 or 7 in a month. I’m currently in section 4-5. I’m prioritizing studying new words, with the plan to  do most of my reviews once done cramming. This strategy has always worked for me with SRS in the past. I noticed memrise added 5 second ads which is annoying as all fuck, they never had such a sucky feature for free users before. However, Memrise is still probably the SRS I’m best at cramming though - probably because seeing the circles of ‘20 new things learned’ fill in every time I study for 10 minutes is very motivating to me. It’s motivating to see I’m 10% 20% 30% finished and gets me to study another 10 minutes etc. Clozemaster is the second most motivating for me, but it shows % complete out of like 10,000 items so the percent raises in such small amounts it does not motivate me as much. Nukemarine’s LLJ Memrise courses are what got me to reading manga/playing video games, I think some dedicated focus could get me another significant leap in comprehension. LLJ includes Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide so even if I avoid reading a grammar guide because I get bored I can still cover grammar, covers kanji, covers vocabulary, and covers example sentences. In addition, I’m still doing a personal challenge of trying to listen to as much Glossika Japanese as I can - I really want to see what language level it gets a person to. Glossika claims it gets a person to B2, I am guessing though for japanese I’ll be lucky if it gets a person to N3 (N3 would still be more solidly intermediate than I currently am though, I think I’m at N4? But very skewed because I cannot pass an N5 practice test with all the hiragana-only words but I can play a video game.... the mlcjapanese kanji check test puts me at 650-690 kanji known, N4-almost N3 which needs 700 kanji... I put myself in N4 since I can’t pronounce a lot of kanji words that I can understand when reading). Also, Glossika Japanese in general has been helping improve my listening-knowledge of vocabulary, which is currently weaker than my reading skills. So it’s helping round out my knowledge.

Outside of Nukemarine LLJ Memrise Courses and Glossika Japanese, I’m brute force watching a few lets plays right now, playing Final Fantasy X in japanese, reading Ranma 1/2 and a couple other manga with bilingualmanga to click the translation when needed (reading very slow though), and contemplating watching anime in japanese again (maybe with subs to help pick up words?). I’m also considering using Satori Reader but I don’t love that it’s paid for most of the content. I’m very tempted to just keep playing japanese video games and watching the lets plays, because at my level its quite easy to coast and follow along. But I fear I’m not picking up many new words since I can just follow along by watching/playing. I want to improve, not stay at the same level. I will say, playing japanese video games NOW is significantly easier than this summer when I played a few hours of Yakuza Ishin and felt fried (but able to do it). Now I’m feeling like I can just relax and play. I think a brand new video game would fry my brain more trying to understand the directions, but replaying a game I know from english is not difficult anymore. Final Fantasy X feels relaxing to play, relaxing enough I think I could maybe do Nier Automata in japanese too. Again... my fear is Because It Feels Relaxing (not brain frying) I’m not picking up enough new words. I hope I’m learning some new words, but I can’t tell if I am.

Summary: Continuing to progress through Nukemarine LLJ Memrise, Glossika Japanese (optional), video games/lets plays in Japanese (optional).

For Chinese: Continuing to read 镇魂 on paper extensively, 撒野 on phone extensively (with some word lookup if I want). Optionally, I have a lot of audiobooks and dramas I want to check out and have bookmarked, but I want to keep focusing on reading overall. 

My reading is frustrating in that YAY it’s improving, but it’s also painfully obvious where I still fall short when I try to read a new novel (I tried reading ErYa’s stuff - the writer of SCI - and couldn’t tell the intro paragraph was describing a city and test in a period china setting until I looked up 5 words, despite SaYe now feeling as easy as TuTuDaWang for me, so setting and author familiarity is GREATLY affecting if I can handle reading something extensively without it feeling frustrating). Zhenhun is officially 95% actually comprehensible to me, I counted and measured lol. I’ve been highlighting unknown words and it’s really 5% or less of each page. I also think its fun seeing me highlight a word when I read, then figure out the word’s meaning a few sentences or paragraph’s later. I think when I totally extensively read, as in NO dictionary translation aid available, it makes me work harder to comprehend and I often figure out what would seem ‘so difficult I’d give up in frustration’ if I had a dictionary-translation to rely on. I can run into 5 unknown words and if I’m truly extensively reading without aids, I usually figure it out. If I’m relying on a dictionary I often give up trying to figure out meaning very quickly, which makes comprehending overall feel harder. I noticed this as early on as Xiao Wang Zi the first time I extensively read a print book - looking back it was WAY hard for me lol! But when I read it with no aids, I managed to read it and follow the plot! Now, my reading is much better than when I read it first, and I can tell just how much I didn’t know when I initially read it. And yet I still managed to follow the story that first time! For me it seems good to do a balance of some extensive reading with no aids, and some dictionary lookup reading.

With chinese versus japanese comprehension levels! So... lol when reading manga, it becomes BLATANTLY obvious my chinese is far beyond my japanese. Chinese comics are easy as pie now, japanese manga still make me feel I’m desperately making sense of a puzzle to grasp the main overall plot on a page. Reading novels that’s even more true: chinese novels are doable, japanese graded readers make me feel drained after a few sentences of intensely trying to grasp the meaning. I can read about 1-3 paragraphs of japanese WITH translations before I burn out, I can read hours of chinese webnovels with no dictionary and feel okay. I genuinely think the *chinese reading skill* is artificially boosting my kanji reading comprehension, which is ultimately why video games and lets plays in japanese FEEL ‘easier’ than other japanese activities right now - its more simple conversational grammar and common words, then ALSO its a lot of kanji which i can 80% of the time roughly guess the meaning of from the scene context and my chinese hanzi knowledge. 

Goals ultimately:

I’d like to read 500k chinese characters by the end of 2022. I read 400K so this should only really be like 20 chapters of something to manage it.

I’d like to get through enough japanese study material to start picking up new words through INPUT like watching shows and playing games, because that will make future language progress much easier to work in with my normal hobbies. So like I said, get through Nukemarine LLJ to the end of section 6 or 7.

[rigelmejo]

If anyone ever hears about an equivalent resource for Chinese being made, that is like Nukemarine’s Let’s Learn Japanese memrise courses please let me know.

Nukemarine’s LLJ courses are a combined set of: the Remember the Kanji deck with memonics included, Tae Kims Grammar Guide sentence examples of grammar points with audio, and the 2k/6k Core Japanese common words decks. Along with some extra stuff at the end.

So those Nukemarine LLJ decks can replace the need for a separate kanji resource, grammar resource, and frequent vocabulary resource. That means 1 resource instead of 3, an easier time focusing for learners since they’re only spending time on progressing through one resource (which is also a benefit of working through textbook series, etc). Nukemarines LLJ decks also are paced in a way that helps stop burnout - since it’s a chunk of one thing, then another, etc, so you aren’t just doing 1000 kanji without anything else to break it up.

So if someone were to make one all inclusive set of decks for Chinese, it would need: remember the Hanzi cards with mnemonics, high frequency words (ideally with audio, in sentence examples if possible), and grammar guide sentence examples (with audio if possible).

Since no such set of decks exists yet, my best suggestion at imitating the Nukemarine LLJ decks, for chinese instead:

1. Heisig’s Remembering the Simplified Hanzi memrise deck (the one with 3138 items). I’ve been working through it and it has mnemonics pre-made for most cards. There’s alternative existing decks on memrise and anki for traditional and simplified characters, not sure which other ones have pre-made mnemonics so you may have to make them yourself if using another deck.

2. Chinese words spoken by frequency memrise decks by BenWhatley (0-1000, and 1001-2000). If desired, there’s also a deck on memrise called Advance Chinese - Frequency 2000-5000 + Audio. I suggest these 3 decks because they have audio, although the last deck sounds computer generated, while the BenWhatley decks seem to have natural voices. An alternative is Polymono’s 5000+ most common Chinese words [HSK] - it’s benefit is the extensive definitions (although I prefer just looking new words up the first time in Pleco dictionary regardless of which flashcard deck/list/show/novel I see a new word in), it’s drawback is NO audio. Another alternative is HSK Complete incl. Examples deck on memrise. If your focus is only HSK, and you’re okay skipping some very frequent words until thousands of words in because the HSK vocab level is your priority, then this deck or the Polymono one will prioritize that better. The difference is the Polymono deck still puts frequent words early it just labels their HSK level, whereas the HSK deck puts everything in HSK order and may even omit some frequent words if not in the HSK vocab. This HSK deck also has no audio. An ideal alternative for common vocabulary is SpoonFed Chinese deck on Anki - so you need anki to do that deck. Benefits of SpoonFed Chinese deck on Anki is it has audio, and is in sentence format. So it’s probably the best frequency word resource objectively. (I just do not use anki much).

3. Two options for Chinese grammar decks. Option 1 is probably better if you already have at least a little grammar knowledge like a class or some chinese exposure etc (like me, who read through a grammar guide). Option 1: Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar (with audio) memrise deck. Benefits include sentence examples of grammar, audio, and it’s based on a useful book. It is the closest Chinese equivalent I can find to the Japanese Tae Kims Grammar Guide flashcard decks. If you’re studying a common word flashcard deck with no sentence examples, this is a good resource to add both grammar and sentence exposure (just like Tae Kim cards do for the Nukemarine courses). Option 2 is more thorough, and potentially a resource to start from, or continue from (or study on a particular grammar point basis) after option 1. Option 2: Chinese Grammar Wiki memrise decks. Someone made decks for A1, A2, B1, B2, grammar points based on the grammar wiki website. The website itself is very useful, so this flashcard series also has useful information. Benefits: thorough, also uses sentence examples to teach. Drawback: no audio.

If anyone would like specific links to these memrise decks, let me know and I’ll put them up.

[rigelmejo]

Study Plans May 2021

bold - priority

italic - less important

Chinese - short term (listening/reading):

Continue Listening Reading Method Guardian

Continue reading chinese - ideally some extensive and some intensive (currently reading in Pleco is intensive, Guardian is partly extensive when I do L R Method step 2 or read the print version)

Continue listening to Spoonfed Chinse Audio (I’m getting there!)

Continue adding background chinese listening to my day (lets get to 1,500 hours! Which I suspect is not as far as I think, considering all that cdrama watching probably counted, and I can generally parse some words I ‘know’ when listening and also parse some unknown words enough to look them up - and I can parse more words each time when I re-listen to things).

*priority here is L R Method, in general just strengthening reading and listening skills.

long term (listening/reading, with more shadowing and *hanzi solidifying):

L R Method more, and read in general more - so what I’ve been doing, but hopefully get to more books.

Shadowing with L R Method more.

SHADOWING more - both in general and using my pronunciation apps on my phone (general putonghua app and Chinese Pronunciation Trainer - both of which allow recording so I can compare my own pronunciation)

Experiment with the Re-listening technique (7 steps, a lot of shadowing, compatible with l r method)

Experiment with step 5 of L R Method - translating pieces to and from english/chinese.

Read through Alan Hoenig’s Chinese Characters and READ the mnemonics! write down mnemonics for sound/tone, and practice writing the hanzi (just write it in the book I’m begging you just DO THIS - it should take 1 month or 2 if you can just be dedicated). Basically focus on hanzi solidifying (specifically recognizing radicals, remembering pronunciation).

*idea is to start incorporating more production activities (shadowing, writing, translating)

longer term (grammar solidifying, production of grammar/vocab, *hanzi solidifying):

Start one of my physical Chinese grammar books - probably Chinese Basic Sentence Patterns (or my Textbook, just start one). Prioritize reading through. If reading is accomplished, do journal entries where I practice the sentence patterns/words - and/or do the textbook exercises. (Basically prioritize grammar solidifying, production skills/active vocabulary). *Ideally use a physical book I have so I don’t get distracted (only use a digital HSK book IF you’re studying FOR that test please ;-; )

FINISH Alan Hoenig’s Chinese Character’s book (at MINIMUM read through it i’m begging).

Likely still reading, and L R Method (if I like any audiobooks which lol I can think of a lot) - for these months it would take background to grammar-book work.

priority: solidifying grammar/hanzi, improving written production skills

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Japanese - short term (vocab/grammar primarily from Nukemarine LLJ):

Continue Nukemarine LLJ courses (make an effort to use mnemonics to remember more kanji/pronunciations, shadow sentences)

READ Tae Kim’s grammar guide (I know I took it off but I GENUINELY need to read a grammar guide it helps how my brain thinks stuff... I can put this step off but if I FEEL like grammar, please go do this over any video or new grammar resource!)

AS DESIRED, check out lets plays, Game Gengo (specifically his grammar vids), game scripts, cure dolly (*LIMIT this one as not priority), playing games. Basically no need to make immersion a priority (as I think 2000 base vocab is what will make immersion more Productive), but doing it to maintain interest and do something when I don’t feel like studying is nice.

*priority here is pretty obvious - get through as much of Nukemarine’s LLC memrise courses as I can asap. In general I think my life will get easier once I do more of it...

long term (I should have 9-10 of nukemarine’s LLJ courses completed before these):

FINISH Nukemarine’s LLJ courses.

Listen to more Japanese - core japanese audio files, japaneseaudiolessons (pick one to start with, listen to it once I’m done with Chinese Spoonfed Audio) - the point is to use this to reinforce vocab/learn vocab, practice listening hours more.

Start playing video games in japanese more regularly, reading things I want to read more regularly. Lets plays more regularly, etc. So more everyday immersion. 

Transcribe rest of Japanese in 30 Hours (not priority, but fun)

*Read through my Japanese Sentence Patterns (I honestly might understand this better than any grammar guide).

*Read my learn to read japanese books (note - if I start this I should consistently read and finish it, hence best to start this after Nukemarine’s LLJ is completed/near complete).

* = activities I may save for MUCH longer term. I think whether I do them sooner or later depends on ease of immersion. If after Nukemarine, immersion is still painfully difficult, then I should probably read one (or both) of these books asap. 

[rigelmejo]

found this tool to check how many kanji you know: https://www.mlcjapanese.co.jp/level_check_kanji.html

I’m curious if anyone else has used it, and if so did you think it was accurate for you? @a-whump-muffin​ 

It estimated I knew about 710-750 kanji, which puts me at their scale of N3 

This is a nice JLPT table for me to reference. I personally would put my Actual Study time where I was entirely focused on japanese, at around N4. As in, back when I did Nukemarine’s LLJ memrise decks, I am fairly confident I went through at least 2000 cards, at least 500 kanji, and the first fourth of Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide. And I’m sure in my japanese class when I took it, and the 500 common words in Clozemaster I covered, I had some overlap with the Nukemarine memrise course studying so again I feel confident I’m probably familar with at least 2000 common words. The clozemaster sentences gave me exposure to some common grammar points that were more advanced than beginner stuff I had studied in Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide or my class, but still in my opinion pretty basic everyday-needed grammar to understand. So at minimum, with my focused study I thought I’d reached maybe N4.

I think maybe this quiz put me as ‘N3′ because I was judging myself only on kanji/vocabulary familiarity, not on if I could say the word out loud (so no pronunciation knowledge required). I think with the overlap of chinese I know, that boosted the ‘near cognate’ recognition I have of japanese. So after chinese, when I saw new japanese words with similar kanji, I remembered the japanese words much better after looking them up just once for meaning. And I guessed meanings of new japanese words in the context of games I already played before, much easier. So I think maybe with that ‘overlap,’ that might be why I comprehend things a bit more at the N3 level. Aka why I can read manga without a dictionary now (Neon Genesis Evangelion, Death Note, Yotsuba, Ranma 1/2), and why I can play video games without a dictionary now (Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X, Yakuza Ishin). If I have some context to lean on (so with manga its the pictures, with games its the familiarity with the games in english/visuals I can see) then my hanzi-to-kanji recognition helps enough I can generally comprehend stuff without a dictionary. 

Like the Guardian japanese translation... its the first japanese novel I’ve been able to read totally without a dictionary! But I know the plot, the characters, am familiar with the chapter content in chinese and english, so when I see unknown words in the japanese version I can reasonably guess what they probably mean based on the kanji I see and the context of the sentence/paragraph it’s in since I already know what Should Be There. (By the way, with other japanese novels I’m officially at the “can read it with a click dictionary” stage... which is rough, and I look up a bunch of words, but it does mean i CAN read with tools if I want to, which is about where my chinese reading level was after 8 months-1 year). 

I’ve mentioned this before, and its still mostly true: my main focus for japanese is still audio recognition. Especially with the hanzi-to-kanji near cognate recognition making reading Possible now, it makes it even more obvious my weak spot is knowing the pronunciation of basic words and recognizing words I know when listening. My reading skills are very basic, but they’re artificially inflated by near-cognate help. I would consider my actual japanese ability maybe upper-beginner or lower-intermediate, whatever you’d consider the level manga without a dictionary become readable. I consider my listening skill lower than that, so ‘beginner’, and so learning through listening is still my main focus for Japanese. This whole past year, study has mainly been Glossika Japanese Audio, condensed audio of Final Fantasy X (which I should listen to more), listening to the Yakuza games audio with english subs as I play (which barely counts lol but does keep me from forgetting words I know), watching japanese lets plays with japanese subs, and watching Sailor Moon and Ranma 1/2 etc in japanese with no subs.

I should eventually: FINISH the glossika Japanese courses and RELISTEN a lot, LISTEN to general japanese audio more like shows with no subs and audios, maybe listen to audio dramas on youtube and try Listening Reading Method with them (since I want to listen to them anyway!), and play more video games in Just Japanese (since its what motivates me the most).  

Am I going to do those this year? Probably not. But long term those activities are my plan for the forseeable future, in addition to reading with a click-dictionary when I feel like reading novels. I wonder if Guardian japanese translation has an audiobook... oooh. 

My chinese plan is less structured, as my chinese is really close where I want it to be right now. Its just: read more, continue trying to push reading level up higher. And LISTEN more, continuing to try to push listening level up to reading level.  

By the way, here is the buyee link to the print japanese translation of Guardian book 1. It is not the complete novel, I imagine future volume releases will happen later as more of the ebook translations are completed. ebook translations into japanese are released on amazon.co.jp and other ebook sites regularly, then after a while they sell the collection in print form: https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/shopping/koretame-ys_69638/category/?conversionType=service_page_search

[rigelmejo]

Some japanese resources

Sabuki Yesterday’s Grammar Guide (I like their summary at the start tbh because they suggest just reading through to get an overview which is my preferred way of reading grammar, also I notice some of the grammar topics are exactly what I’ve been seeing in manga/clozemaster/video games/shows lately that I keep just having to guess what it means): https://sakubi.neocities.org/ 

DJT Guide (not super in depth, but suggests a good plan for studying along with linking to what to use, suggesting specific tools to use, and having a list of immersion material): https://djtguide.neocities.org/guide.html

DJT Guide’s Table of Resources (includes many novels, manga, movies, learning materials - most notable to me is the novels since they have been hard for me to find): https://djtguide.neocities.org/cor.html#novels

Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide (an often used grammar guide): http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar

Reddit - a dump of japanese game scripts (specifically final fantasy): https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/54haix/a_dump_of_jrpg_japanese_scripts/

DJT Guide also suggests using some method to learn kanji (RTK, KanjiDamage, Kodanshi Kanji Learners Guide, or learning kanji as part of vocab), learning vocabulary (using core 2k/6k, your own sentence mining etc, in my case Nukemarine’s memrise decks and Clozemaster). And to start reading after learning 1000-2000 words. Sabuki recommends starting to reading once you have reached the start of the ‘SECTION TWO: ABSOLUTE TERRITORY’ section. 

My version of this would be: kanji mostly learned through word learning now as I know a lot of ‘rough meanings’ now, vocabulary being studied in Nukemarine’s LLJ memrise decks and Clozemaster, and I’m going to either read this Sabuki grammar guide or finish Tae Kim’s (or both). 

Based on the vocab suggestion, I probably could start reading I’d just prefer to get more vocabulary first. I already knew around 1000+ words, now its closer to 2000 with 650 from Clozemaster recently and over 500 new words from Nukemarine’s memrise decks a few months back. Currently, I am sticking with video games mostly to read since they’re a bit easier (with all the context, or a script of something I know from its english translation), although manga’s also doable for reading at the moment. Reading is not really a priority yet for me I’m still improving the vocabulary and grammar bases.

also i read 2 pages of Guardian in japanese yesterday, but I’d put that in the same category as Kingdom Hearts 2 for me - I know the context so well its more like practice and less intensive. 

[rigelmejo]

Audio Immersion Loop

I’ve read this suggestion by Nukemarine before, and I think its quite a good idea - especially for improving listening skills and reinforcing what you know into a more immediate-understanding. https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/886lfg/does_your_japanese_listening_ability_lag_behind/

The core idea is: a mix of ‘audio seeds’ (audio you’ve studied before and therefore understood before) and ‘other’ audio (ideally things you’ve watch/heard with english subs or directly in your target language before - so your mind ‘likes’ the material). He suggests 30% audio seeds and 70% other, though any combo may be useful and he’s not sure if another % split would be more effective.

The idea is your mind understood the ‘audio seeds’ before in study, so as you listen to it regularly without pause your mind practices understanding it quicker and without concentrating as much, then over time you hear words/phrases/sentences similar in the ‘other’ audio material and your brain latches on and starts trying to comprehend them too and practices. 

I’ve very roughly followed this article’s advice before, and it started helping. So I’d like to make a proper list of what I could use for a full on Audio Immersion Loop that meets all these needs:

Japanese:

Audio Seeds: - Core 2k Pimsleur (audio directly from Nukemarine’s LLJ decks and because of that it should be mostly things I’ve studied before, or you could study using the Nukemarine LLJ Memrise Courses): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B8cWM0WNU3s4eFdSMzk5Vm9HR1E?resourcekey=0-KVCnBQh3SJxhn2oCUC-SiA - JapaneseAudiolessons.com (not ‘pure’ audio seeds idea since this includes english, but would count as comprehensible audio). Link for meL https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qoJ7B002ZEgyDvCnGyFXUS1u8S_qgoG2 , General link for you: https://www.japaneseaudiolessons.com/ - Clozemaster Radio Mode for Japanese - Well suited for this, since you can have it play audio of sentences you already studied!

Other Audio: - Lets plays of any game you have familiarity with/like - for me that’d be Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X, Ratchet and Clank, etc. Also any ‘video game movie’ since it goes directly through parts you know. - Condensed audio of FFX (perfectly suited for this): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1M5jdUQCM7O12r1X8np5y4ofkzBKMSdJo - Condensed audio of Death Note: https://www.paliss.com/episode/death-note-1615919536511x465432008057248060 - anything from this site if you’ve seen the anime: https://www.paliss.com/ - general condensed audio files: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EMBr5yskSiBTZ-LUQtMY-r4AihRIJczJ

What I’d do: listen to Clozemaster Radio Mode Japanese, and FFX condensed audio.

Chinese:

Audio Seeds: - Chinese Spoonfed Audio (not ‘pure’ audio seeds because there’s english, but when I played this in even just the background regularly I saw listening skill improvements): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MCKgOxzW9cd1u9cWjzGwWrpxnL5pDz0w - Clozemaster Radio Mode for Chinese - again, well suited for this, as you have the option to play only sentence audio you have already studied. 

Other Audio: - Guardian audiobook! by Avenuex: https://music.163.com/#/djradio?id=791802378&order=2&_hash=programlist&limit=100&offset=0 - Sherlock audiobook: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVyDH2ns1F757P-m8MHckuIFqWapl6y-1 - Guardian audiobook by wheat (I really like their voice): https://music.163.com/#/djradio?id=794964371 - Silent Reading audiobook (note this is the same version as ximayala so if you have that then just search ximalaya this version has some sentences/paragraphs skipped): http://www.6ting.cn/books/59641.html - Silent Reading audiobook unabridged (UPDATE I am listening through this one while following the webnovel and YES this version actually matches the text): part 1 - https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1b5411N7aa?share_source=copy_web part 2 - https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1SX4y1G7z7?share_source=copy_web part 3 - https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1tU4y1p74y part 4 - https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1cy4y1t7cC?share_source=copy_web - Silent reading (on music.123 by 景喵- , I tend to prefer this site because you can still listen to it in a mobile web browser with it minimized)  https://music.163.com/#/djradio?id=349361634&order=1&_hash=programlist&limit=100&offset=100  - Silent reading (on music.123 by  栗煜子)  https://music.163.com/#/djradio?id=792725710&order=1&_hash=programlist&limit=100&offset=100 - Guardian condensed audio (my link, will not work for others, u can ask for a copy if you’d like I just basically ran the episodes and subs through subsrs, mainly to make condensed audio): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11J2qADG9rHSK_45rKpvVIpzXn8YYWhA_ - Silent Reading audio drama: https://youtu.be/DsdmeQBMD_M - Word of Honor audio drama: https://m.missevan.com/sound/2853120 - LiuLi audiobook: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLH_aGSaKXFeHSofRd4LF1Hl8fpCSREVBW - HP audiobooks: https://music.163.com/#/djradio?id=526222636&order=2&_hash=programlist - general condensed audio link for chinese if anyone would like (it has The Untamed): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LtZEKe9ItVg-H5q-G01YITLyfrWpOZR-

What I’d do: listen to Chinese Spoonfed Audio or Clozemaster Radio mode Chinese (whatever I could get myself to), then other percentage split between any audiobooks I’d want to listen to Guardian/Silent Reading/Sherlock.

French:

Audio Seeds: - Francais Par Le Methode Nature (literally made to be comprehensible, even if its brand new then Still just like chinese spoonfed audio files, it should be fine to just play repeatedly until you pick stuff up): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8XN5kNFkhdIS7NMcdUdxibD1UyzNFTP - Gigafrench audio files (specifically if you have studied the related lessons already): http://gigafrench.com/construction/ - Clozemaster Radio Mode for French (however I’m not a big fan of my phone’s french voice)

Other Audio: - Dracula in french: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0hdBpzGpYY - Frankenstein in french: https://youtu.be/8AP02iALr5A - Carmilla in french: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpOWTYUar6NK8Qn7niKNw7Vp0z5YE5t7Z - Buffy francias: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x42mdjh - Merlin francais: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2crj9t

What I’d do: listen to Francais Par Le Methode Nature on repeat, spend other portion of time going through Dracula audiobook tbh (unless anyone knows an audiobook I’d enjoy more that’s easy to find). 

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As for me specifically, realistically what I plan to do for a while:

Listen to Clozemaster radio mode Japanese and Chinese more often in down time (make the most out of the fact I have the radio mode option lol)

Listen to more chinese audiobooks, in the background, any time there’s nothing playing otherwise. (Since I really could LISTEN more often, its super easy to do during work I just don’t do it).

Actual other materials in japanese and french I probably won’t get to for a while. But if and when I do, above is a good plan for ways to include more listening practice.

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Overall, my main July (to maybe mid-August) study plan right now:

Listening to chinese audiobooks (so more listening in general)

Listening-Reading Method Guardian or Silent Reading (or honestly anything), just doing it when I feel like it or can. (so more listening and reading in general, along with getting through more of Guardian). This activity eats up the most study time.

Reading more chinese chapters (so more reading in general, I want to up the amount I’ve read)

Trying to use Clozemaster (Listening Mode and/or Radio mode) for Japanese more. (and chinese optionally, if I want) So more basic vocab/grammar for japanese. *italic is lower priority

Lower priority, but I’m also doing these:

Reading through japanese grammar guides (specifically finishing reading Sabuki https://sakubi.neocities.org/, and my Japanese in 30 Hours book). So enough of a grammar base to read more. This should take like 4 hours max to finish if I just sit down and do it. 

Small amounts of japanese immersion (mainly reading) - right now its been playing KH2 in japanese, and reading Guardian’s japanese translation.

Translating Guardian print novel into english (so mainly reading skills, translation practice). This is much slower going than reading, so I probably won’t have much time for this project until I’m finished reading it regularly. 

[rigelmejo]

notes to myself basically, on how i study languages (so far, there’s always gonna be better ways i don’t know of yet lol):

learn 500-1000 common words asap, read a grammar guide that provides overview asap - like the first 3 months. If a full grammar guide doesn’t exist that’s concise (hi japanese ;-;) find a basics grammar guide at least and read that (pimsleur, websites, genki, tae kim, youtube). Specifically within the common words, at least look at the ‘300 common word tumblr to say things’ language vocab list. That list is good for me starting some kind of active vocab/expressing ideas.

if its got a different writing system, look up the alphabet in 1st month (kana for japanese, cyrillic alphabet for russian etc, pinyin for chinese). listen to pronunciation guides, and write and/or mnemonics to learn those asap.

if its got characters (like chinese, japanese), learn 300-500 super common characters ASAP (first 5 months). 

After month 3, learn up to 2000 common words (hi srs flashcard programs like anki and memrise, common word lists, graded readers), and up to 2000 characters. Not all these need to be done with srs flashcards/focused study, but get TO recognizing this many as soon as u can. Goal is get to this by month 8-10. But depending on how much i can overall understand without doing this, i may not learn All of these words by then (but ideally i should).

By 500-1000 words (and 500+ characters if needed), so after 3-5 months, start trying to immerse in what I WANT to do - so reading, watching (maybe listening, maybe games). I don’t have to do it much, but do it a bit to remember what I learned and also motivate myself to study more.

Months 5-8 somewhere between 1000-2000 words, start trying to write/say basic things to myself or on apps with others. Probably will be a mess, don’t have to do it much. Do it enough to have motivation to study more - see where I’m lacking skills. I may need more grammar explanation, or more vocab, or notice a big issue in my pronunciation etc.

Around month 8-10, around 2000+ words studied (although it may be less or more depending on what I’m comfortable with), ramp up immersion a lot. As soon as its mildly tolerable, ramp it up a LOT. Look up words when immersing as often or not often as desired, goal is to always follow at least the bare minimum main idea (and more details if possible/if I wanna put in the effort to look more up). Now I can start learning new words primarily from this. 

Reading skills - during immersion do intensive reading to learn more vocabulary quicker, extensive reading to improve overall comprehension. Do SRS flashcards/focused graded readers/word-list prep for stuff I read as needed, to speed up how much vocab I learn (if I’m learning too slow for my preference lol). Ways to make extensive reading easier: read graded readers, read show subtitles in target language while watching show, textbooks built to increase info taught in context, read stuff I’ve read translations of first, read stuff I have prior context for (I saw the show/heard already with english transcript etc), Listening reading method, read extensively what I’ve read intensively before etc.

Listening skills - start extensive listening to audio (for overall comprehension improvement). Start intensive listening where I hear words and lookup definition and/or learn word pronunciation with explanations. So start listening to audio flashcards for building a base of learned words/phrases (chinese spoonfed audio files, japanese core 2k audio, japaneseaudiolessons.com, SRS flashcards if they have audio only ones too, Coffee Break French, audio for Francais par le methode nature etc). To make extensive listening easier: start with watching/listening to shows I’ve already seen subs for, shows in general (visual context helps), comprehensible input audio (like comprehensible input french youtube, Learn Korean in Korean youtube, Dreaming Spanish youtube etc), listen with a transcript then listen without, Listening reading method, listen to things I have prior context for like audiobook of something i read/audio drama of show i’ve seen. Do some shadowing (shadowing audio flashcard files is easy and reliable tbh). 

Production skills (I am not here yet) - in general I’ve found making myself write more, talk more, to myself (like journals and practice convos) and to others, tends to improve my active vocabulary. Especially when I try to communicate about topics i’m bad at (so making myself look up those words and write/say them to put them back into active vocab). At this point I’m guessing more explicit grammar drill practice might help, people correcting me, shadowing a lot. Maybe practicing translating to that language/from it, to practice building active vocab? I’m not sure what will help most here tbh as I’ve never gotten far in this area. (For chinese, studying pronunciation more in depth and doing more listening/shadowing, and pronunciation apps, helped a lot with pronunciation itself but not active production yet). 

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i’m currently mostly just doing 8-9 for chinese right now - building reading skills, building listening skills. Varying what i do. For production skills i’m guessing there’s a ton of varied things i can do right now or later, i’m just not entirely sure what they’d be. i have not tried/troubleshooted those skills much before when studying. All i know for sure is the more i make myself use the language in Varied topics, the more i get an active vocabulary (aka writing journals, making self-convos, and doing language exchanges help in a basic way). No idea how to improve grammar though in ways that’d work well for me. so right now my skills lean heavier toward comprehension, less skill in any production. Studying chinese taught me a lot about how i learn listening skills though...which is valuable as i barely had practice learning HOW to study them when i studied french or japanese before.

troubleshooting wise - this is the rough trajectory i went through in chinese, that has worked okay for me. looking at it helps me see where i ‘slowed down’ my progress in other languages i studied.

for french - i did very LITTLE listening practice, and had few ideas of how to work on it at the time. Now I would probably do listen with transcript then without, and shadowing, to work on listening skills. And watching shows/videos with subtitles (if possible), then without subs. And very little speaking practice - same deal as listening, i did a little at some point realizing it was a weak area but not enough work on it. I also did very LITTLE production practice like language exchanges. i had few reasons to produce language, and so the few times i needed to i could mostly rely on super common words or look things up when writing. i know i’d need to do more to work on production. so i was very unbalanced - large reading comprehension, low pretty much every other skill.

for japanese... i did a lot in retrospect i wish i’d redone different. and i do it different now. i did not read/watch a grammar guide - and i still freaking need to (or at least get clear grammar exposure like nukemarine’s LLJ course’s tae kim portions). japanese has grammar i find very hard to figure-out through exposure so this holds me back a lot. and lack of immersion to both motivate me to study MORE and to practice reading/listening skills. ALSO lack of common words - i learned like 800 hanzi rough-meaning through RTK, and maybe 500 words in genki... and no wonder it wasn’t enough lol! i think nukemarine helped back years ago, because it forced me to study grammar and vocab, listening and reading, in a structured way (similar to how genki helped me in the very start before i quit using it). and japaneseaudiolessons.com helped because it made me practice listening and gave me comprehensible listening with definitions. that in combo with me really starting to immerse and TRY to read/listen at year 2+ is when i finally made some progress because i was doing things that work for me - finally. and now that i’m coming back to japanese, i’m starting to apply all those things again that were finally working. 

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anyone have any tips on how to improve production skills? Both active vocabulary, and how to both practice speaking/writing broadly AND how to fix grammar errors. 

For active vocab and general writing/speaking I know just talking more/writing more helps. But I can only tend to catch grammar errors if I run it through a translator first to compare how the translator phrases it to how I did (which can create a LOT of errors if the translator is Wrong), or if someone corrects my grammar error (which relies on other people - and preferably a tutor since i dont want to bother people who aren’t paid to correct - so what can i do on my OWN?). 

The big thing is with grammar, I can only think to either go through beginner courses Again from the start and do the writing drills and copy the patterns to internalize them? So I could correct my basic writing/speaking but not necessarily when I start speaking/writing creatively, unless I find textbooks/workbooks that eventually go into intermediate material (and of course finding textbooks/online exercises that provide correct answers so i can compare my attempts to the correct ones). Aside from either a tutor, or trying to find well made free online courses with exercises with answers provided, i’m not sure how to improve grammar production. If I write out sentences i read, would that internalize being able to ‘copy their grammar correctly’ when i write? if i shadow correctly said speeches/videos, would that help drill ‘correct grammar’ when speaking? (And be less boring then doing FSI speech drills). Basically I’m trying to find some ways (creative or not) to improve grammar in production. Improving active vocabulary seems pretty straightforward to me (make myself use it, look up words until they come natural to me - but if u got any other fun ways to improve active vocab i’d love to hear!). But I don’t know how to improve grammar when you are NOT in a class structure, have no teacher/tutor, and already have a base level of comprehension. As in like? I can read fine, but when writing I can’t tell if what I produce is grammatically correct or not - and again I can run it through a translator sometimes to try and ‘check’ but since translators make errors, my ‘corrected example’ isn’t always reliable to use as something to emulate for ‘correct form.’

[rigelmejo]

apps i’ve heard that are good for various aspects of language study:

Japanese:

WaniKani for vocabulary and kanji - the creators of it seem to think their app, plus a good grammar guide (so grammar textbook working through exercises) should be enough to learn and move into immersion. So I imagine at least their kanji/vocab coverage is large. People seem to like this app - I like that it supposedly has mnemonics. I imagine its kanji/vocab coverage goes up to N1, a benefit as stuff like Lingodeer only covers the basics.

Bunpro - Japanese Grammar SRS. What I like about the ‘concept’ of this, is that if fully used it would be a lot like doing textbook exercises/review of grammar which may help grammar correction/production more (versus what I do generally which is just passively read grammar which helps with comprehension but not production). I also specficially like that it GOES UP TO N1 GRAMMAR. Which pretty much all other apps for japanese don’t go past N4-3 at the absolute best. 

KanjiKoohi - not an app but a site, free, super nice to just reference for kanji meanings and mnemonics. 

Anki/Memrise - self explanatory, good for flashcard study of kanji/sentences/words. I personally really like Japanese Core 2k deck etc, and personally have only ever stuck with Nukemarine’s LLJ Memrise Courses. (*To be fair, the Nukemarine courses include Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide, Kanji study, and vocab study like Core 2k, so its a pretty comprehensive all-in-one if you can’t be motivated to study multiple materials).

Chinese:

Skritter - like Wanikani, its for learning hanzi characters, seems to cover most characters, and is well liked by people. However I used it and remember finding it not beneficial and quitting so I’ve got mixed feelings. I can’t remember if I only quit because the app wasn’t worth the subscription cost to me, or because it taught too slow/without enough mnemonics etc. (One big benefit I find to Anki, Memrise, Clozemaster specifically is you have a LOT of control over how much you study per day - you can grind through 100-200 things in less than an hour or just 15 words and skip some days then return, but stuff like Skritter really has a ‘plan’ they keep you more rigidly on if I remember correct which doesn’t work well for people like me who cannot study X amount of time the same way each day consistently).

HackChinese - I saw this mentioned recently for hanzi AND vocab. What I like, it includes vocab up to HSK 6. It also seems easy to add new vocab and vocab lists from textbooks. However I don’t think it covers more than that, so perhaps an alternative to Skritter and Memrise etc.

Anki/Memrise - again self explanatory. Specifically there’s some really good chinese specific decks out there (like Hanzi with Mnemonics chinese anki decks, Chinese Spoonfed anki deck - and just audio files someone made which I use a lot). Timo’s All in One Chinese 3 part anki deck is also useful. How good/bad what you study really depends on the materials you find. 

Chinese Pronunciation Trainer - a simple, free app. I fully recommend it as its built perfectly for Shadowing. It shows text (with or without pinyin) you hear the audio, you record yourself shadowing by just pressing a button, then you hear a replay of your voice compared to the audio. Shadowing works best when you can get feedback comparing your voice to the example you’re shadowing, so this is a great tool for that. Its also like 1000-2000 sentences, so even a beginner can find it useful as they’re generally daily life sentences that aren’t too complex.

普通话学习 app - I use the free version (I don’t think it will let me pay where I live, but it did let me register). This app is all in chinese so there’s a little learning curve but I figured it out back with a vocabulary < HSK 4 so its pretty doable. The free activities include a LOT of shadowing drills like individual syllables, sentences, and paragraphs. The app has native audio and hanzi/pinyin as a transcript, then you record your voice and it will compare how you did and grade you. It will tell you if you were comprehensible and how much, tell you what places you made errors, and let you compare your voice recording with the example audio. It also has tests, and doing those is nice as it will show you specifically if you mess up tones, initials, or finals and which specific instances you mess up. So for example it helped me realize I really mess up eng final a lot, the c initial, tone pairs of 3-4, etc - which helped me pinpoint WHERE to listen for my errors and try to figure out the correct pronunciation compared to them. I think it really helped me a lot in that beginner-ish stage where I could not tell very well what sounded right or wrong, since it can get so specific with what my struggle areas are. It also helped me figure out once I was doing tones correct (assuming its just shadowing and not free convo where I’m coming up with words on the spot), because it would show I got to a point where if I saw pinyin for 1-4 tones, I’d be replicating them correctly (most of my mistakes now are b, c, q initials and  eng, en finals).   

Pleco - I don’t know how I almost forgot! Specifically I use Pleco Reader tool every single day. Pleco also has flashcards, and community made flashcard decks, so it could replace Anki/Memrise easily as your SRS system with sentence mining etc. And its got a huge dictionary, graded readers, etc. I usually use Pleco or Baidu Translate or Google translate for random word lookup. Pleco is best for individual words, google translate is best for ease (loads fast and recognizes real messy handwritten input), BaiduTranslate is best for sentences. I use Pleco daily to read, in their Reader area I can open up any website, click a button so its all just text, and read the text with a pop up dictionary or audio for a word/idiom or the entire selection, and save any word/sentence/phrase into my pleco flashcards with all the dictionary info and audio.  It’s a better reader tool with a built in dictionary than LingQ by far. The reader features are free under “Clipboard Reader” so just copy paste text in there to use these features. I bought the one time cost $24 Reader Tool (and a graded reader and an expanded dictionary, the extras didn’t cost much), so I can open any website in the Reader or pdf/txt file etc. It also came with an OCR reader so I can just point it at real books I’m reading, and a handwriting lookup feature so I can lookup words in pleco by handwriting too (but I usually use Google translate as it tolerates my sloppiness better). Because I can save words in Pleco Reader, I can immediately see if words I’m looking up are ones I’ve seen before (and should try to recall) or brand new words/hanzi. Which helps me prioritize study. I can also Bookmark sites/pages/books in the Reader, so its just really convienient.

[rigelmejo]

Things I’d like to do, in order of me doing them versus no time yet lol. Bold - i plan to genuinely freaking commit to doing it even if other things come up. italic - i really want to be able to do these, if i don’t have time now i’ll try to do them later on.

Currently doing:

finish reading hanshe (currently doing, on chapter 52 out of 155 haha rip me)

finish reading guardian english translation (currently doing, also dang my reading speed got slow lately lol)

finish listening to chinese spoonfed audio (on like 12 or 15 out of like 39. i’d like to finish it so i can say i’ve done it, and at least have some exposure to everything it’s got to offer word/sentence wise once)

exercise 5 times a week. 50 crunches, 70 pushups, 15 minutes cardio at least. until the end of the month (i tried this last week then bam twisted my ankle lol - someone tried this to get fit and it worked and you know me i Love proving to myself if things work and i also Love simply things i can remember that are flexible. i have been switching between jogging or HIIT that’s mainly muscle building, depending on how i feel... gonna count it all as long as i do something consistently 5 times a week. maybe next month i’ll do that kpop dance challenge i found that looked cool but for now i just wanna do something i know i can stick to because its simple and flexible)

finish reading Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide (i almost forgot ToT but unless i’m giving up japanese again lol... well... we’ll see... either way i am in the process of doing this and there isn’t really a good stopping spot so i should just finish reading it)

Also just general watching chinese shows, reading chinese (so hanshe OR whatever i feel like). I’ve been pretty consistent about that and it helps even if i jump around to different materials so i don’t have to really list anything specific.

And for japanese? I would really like to try one of my games in japanese this summer but that is Highly dependent on how prepared i feel. i’d like to try maybe though, just because like... even if i never learn as much as i’d like, a big goal had always been just to play my favorite games the way they were originally written. if i can follow enough to just see a lets play and look up words i want to understand, follow the grammar, catch some line differences between the original and localization, i will already be so happy. even though more in depth understanding will be a long way away from now.

Going to do soon:

listen-read method guardian (because i literally have avenuex’s wonderful audiobook that PERFECTLY matches the webnovel chapters - i plan to listen-read with just the eng translation tho)

read guardian chinese print version (while i may push this off a while... it would be appropriate to read in august as an anniversary of watching guardian drama lol... i also kind of think the closer i do this to the listening-reading method, the more i will comprehend and easier it will be and more details i’ll get out of the sections that are unique to my print novel version... after hanshe i would love to put this as my actively-reading chinese novel)

read His Evening Star (<3 <3 asap! like as soon as Guardian eng translation read, i’m starting this)

read Silent Reading english translation

continue doing Nukemarines LLJ memrise decks (i made some progress, and wanted to go back after reading Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide... again IF i do this is highly relevant on if i can keep managing some time for japanese study we’ll SEE lol ;-;)

Going to do eventually...:

listen-read method Silent Reading (at least TRY, although i already know the chapters and audiobook-episodes do NOT end in the same place so like... its valid if i try and give up... I would just love to do this because i WANT to listen to the audiobook... and if its too annoying trying to sync audio to text when i know the audio varies off from the text half the time, then i might just try to listen to the audiobook ON its own)

listen to DeFrancis Chinese Readers Audio (i can look at the book, optional, if i’d like... i should USE the books since i bought them lol. Emphasis on trying to shadowing the dialogues because so much is basics i should be able to speak decently. I’m thinking this would be a good replacement for ‘background listening’ for when i finish chinese spoonfed audio. Also i really want to utilize these textbooks since i bought them ToT)

read 2ha

read Can Ci Pin!

read Tian Ya Ke (extensive reading like guardian, the eng translation then the chinese chapters... reading might go faster this way then with constant word lookup in Pleco, tho i can of course read in Pleco instead if I want)

read Qi Ye (same thing as above - read the eng translation, and then the chinese version either extensive or in Pleco with word lookup)

read yuwu

read the new priest novels E Danglars translated!

FINISH tamendegushi (the chinese novel i keep reading HALF of then giving up)

FINISH tamendegushi COMIC (i literally own the manhua print but when will i finish reading ToT)

Possibly Listen-Read to MoDaoZuShi, SVSSS (both have audiobooks now. A plus of mdzs is i have never read it so it would be a surprise. A plut of svsss is i’ve l-r method 8 chapters before and the audiobook matches VERY in line with the chapter endings so its super easy to follow along)

read DaoMuBiJi books (a long endeavor... currently mostly just reading the english translations, i’m on book 3. But I was reading the chinese version too which i could switch to if i want a reading material in Pleco or just extensive reading... but reading it in chinese is not a priority yet...)

[rigelmejo]

fyi if anyone besides me IS trying out the Listening Reading Method - I have some tips you can read if you want (or feel free to ignore):

you should see significant progress within 30 hours. If you started as an absolute beginner, did what the guide suggests beforehand (learned some common words like a few hundred, looked at a pronunciation guide, looked at a basic grammar summary), then you should see SOME progress. If after 30 hours you don’t see any - you might be doing it wrong (or its not a method that works for you in which case don’t feel u need to waste ur time on it when other stuff might help you more). (http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/!%20L-R%20the%20most%20important%20passages.htm)

Someone did L R Method as an absolute beginner in Italian (they already knew french, english). They took tests - were A1 when they started L R Method. They did about 30 hours of L R Method. They took a test again and scored B1. So 30 hours should see SIGNIFICANT progress for a language reasonably close to yours, and SOME clear progress I’d imagine even if it’s a less common language (even some gains from absolute beginner to A1-A2 would be solid and noticeable). (https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1721&p=99415#p99415)

Someone tried to L R Method mandarin as a proof of concept. So they only did several hours, and used The Little Prince (which is much simpler writing/language than the L R Method article recommends using). This is their results: “I tried Mandarin LR as a proof of concept a while ago. I used "The Little Prince", and did a few hours. The first couple of hours were exhausting and I was usually lost; by the end, I was associating quite a few characters with their sounds, occasionally understanding sentences in real time as I read along (knowing what parts corresponded) of up to 7 characters or so, etc. Again, this was a small handful of hours, as an effectively zero-beginner; I know some Kanji, but my active Mandarin vocabulary was probably in the single digits... I think this was after I'd studied tones/Mandarin phonology relatively intensively, but I don't recall for certain.” So - within a handful of hours, someone saw language improvement in Mandarin as a total beginner (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=38593)

I personally have been trying L R Method as a beginner-intermediate ish learner. What I noticed: without a parallel text (so just using english text for step 3) I improved listening comprehension of words I already partly knew (through reading) FIRST. I also picked up some new words, but listening comprehension of words I knew improved most noticeably the first 10ish hours I did L R Method. Using Pleco’s dictation tool for step 3 (so instead of english text, I use chinese text where the english definition auto-pops up as the audio reads each word), or using a parallel text (so chinese and english visible at same time), both VASTLY improved how many new words I pick up per session. For me at least, seeing the chinese text to keep my place in the audio, and seeing easier what audio matches to what english definition, lets me learn new words faster. Since I waste much less effort trying to just keep the text/audio matched up. 

So if the effort of matching up text is draining to you (like it is to me), I recommend: getting an audiobook and chinese text that match as closely as possible. And getting either a parallel text, or using Pleco’s dictation tool in the Reader, or something similar (Pleco’s dictation tool is a lot like using a word by word chinese/english translated text). 

Step 2 seems very useful for: giving you context prior to step 3, practicing reading comprehension and reading speed, listening practice with the chinese(target language) spelling visible, and reinforcing what’s learned in prior step 3′s. 

Step 3 does seem useful the more you repeat it (I’m just lazy).

Test yourself by trying to LISTEN ONLY every once in a while. You should be noticing some improvements in your listening comprehension - the audiobook chapters you should follow more parts, a show without subtitles you might recognize more dialogue, etc. If your listening comprehension itself is not improving to some noticeable degree after 10+ hours of L R Method you may either be doing L R Method wrong, or its just not useful for you.

To see considerable progress in language abilities, it may take 50-100 hours. Or even 100-300. The article linked above, the person who does L R Method (aYa) would usually do at least 30 hours, then 50-100 for a language - eventually also doing step 4 shadowing, step 5 translating back and forth. For less-closely related languages, people mention having done it for a few hundred hours. So do NOT expect total beginner to Fluent in 30 hours. I simply mean, you should expect noticeable progress after some X milestones. After a dozen or so hours you should be able to start recognizing word boundaries with ease, some short phrases. If you’re not a total-beginner, but beginner-intermediate like me, then you should start notice much BETTER listening comprehension of words you already half-knew from reading within a few dozen hours. Then after 30-50, maybe some dialogue understanding, some common words regularly understood, etc. Again - test yourself with Listening-Only every once in a while to see if you’re actually making any progress. Also to see if you wanna ‘alter’ the L R Method to suit your needs better. Maybe you’ll find a way to do it that works better for you.

For ABSOLUTE beginners, especially in languages very different from their own, at the beginning stages simply using sentences with audio may be easier. To perhaps learn a few hundred to thousand common words first - and/or using translations that are word BY word translation right under the target language word. To help with getting used to the grammar, all the new common words, the sounds etc. So materials like Assimil probably do this - Spoonfed Chinese anki deck with its audio/text does this, Nukemarine’s LLJ audio/text deck does this, Japanese Core 2k with its audio/text does this, etc. Clozemaster app might even be a nice beginner transition tool...

For the L R Method steps - really READ them and understand what they mean. Step 3 is NOT watching a target language audio movie with english subs. It is trying to comprehend all of the audio, glancing at the translation JUST to fill in the gaps for parts you can’t manage to comprehend (so for looking up words here and there). While you’re supposed to ‘follow along’ with the translation text, you do NOT tune out the audio. The audio should be your main focus, keeping in line with the translation text is so you can REFERENCE it when you hear a word/phrase/sentence you don’t fully comprehend. And I am guessing step 3 is suggested to be done multiple times so that each time you need the translation less.

 L R Method works best with very vocabulary rich, long texts. If you use a simple text, or a short one (3 hours of audio for example), there’s only so much you’ll be able to learn from it. For example The Little Prince only has a vocabulary of 2000-3000 unique words, 1200ish hanzi in it - so even if you learned it entirely, repeating it over and over, that’s not a lot of info. Particularly if you don’t plan to repeat things, it’s probably going to serve your time better to pick rich vocabulary long texts (so you can pick up tons of words just through one pass through the book, and if you choose to repeat the book, pick up tons more words, before you start running into the rarely used words which will be harder to pick up). 

I am mentioning all this, because I saw someone who did L R method for mandarin for hundreds of hours, and does not have natural listening yet - so cannot follow a new audiobook listening-only, cannot follow a show listening-only. Considering that people have demonstrated they made some progress in 5-10 hours for Mandarin, and 30 hours for Italian, then 300 hours in Mandarin might be able to make more progress. I’ve done maybe 20-30 hours of L R Method so far, and already find I can now listen to at Least the audiobook of the book I’m L R Method-ing now without the text, and follow the main scenes fine. With simpler audio, if I have a visual cue (like acting scenes, or pictures) I find I can follow the main idea much easier than I could before. So I just think... if you are seeing very little noticeable progress after 30-50 hours, the method may not be giving you benefits as quickly as you might want a study method to show improvements. I think if something isn’t giving you some improvement after X effort, you don’t need to stick with it if something else helps you more.

Other factors that may affect this: 

I had some reading basis before I started L R Method. This might have helped me as far as how fast a rate L R Method is helping my progress. For an example: when I simply do step 2 ON ITS OWN I see improvements - because it helps me read through a chapter as fast as the audio, matches audio to the spelling I might already know, and I already can understand enough when reading at that speed to follow the general plot (so step 2 gives me context and increased plot understanding). Therefore, when I do step 3, I can really primarily put my attention on learning to recognize the SOUND of what I already understood - and on learning a few new keywords I already JUST saw and realized I didn’t know. Basically I can use L R Method to quickly pinpoint areas I’m weaker in, while practicing what I can already do. A total beginner won’t have the ‘practice what they already know’ benefit. (Genuinely though step 2 is helping my reading SO much and I know that’s in part due to my current reading comprehension level).

Also I have seen an example of someone who did L R Method while already B2 in Italian - he was aiming for C1. He noticed less drastic improvement after 40 hours - he did still notice some, like easier listening comprehension for shows and conversations. But he did not reach C1 listening/reading skills. So from this we see: L R Method might help you improve faster if you start off with more you still need to learn (which makes sense, since as the words you need to learn get rarer you will run into them less frequently in L R Method). Also, the gap from B2-C1 may be bigger than the gap from A1-B1? Also what I took from his example, is repeating step 3 multiple times becomes MORE important as you’re more intermediate-advanced. I would guess because you probably have less frequently occurring words/grammar to learn, so repeating content WITH those things in it is a way to get more exposure (whereas just going over it once then moving on is Not going to expose you to it much). Also step 3, if you really look away from the transcript for most of it, allows you to really practice listening comprehension. Also shadowing/translating, steps 4 and 5, may be of more benefit to an intermediate-advanced learner. Since shadowing may be doable for them now, and translation may be doable (and hone in on skills more). So... I would guess either the gap you have to bridge as an intermediate-advanced learner is bigger, and/or you just need to do more challenging aspects of L R Method to get similar frequency of benefits you would’ve saw at the beginning stages. 

[rigelmejo]

march - just some thoughts

i have read more this month than any other month? and its not slowing down its only 3/12 so i have 2/3 of a month to go and i’ve read 26 chapters. even if these chapters are ‘short’ at 10 pages, if i wanna count by ‘20 page’ chunks i’ve still read 13 chunks so far. and i’ve still got more time in the month left. most other months i’ve managed to read ‘a lot’ i read 10-20 chapters. so i’m doing really good.

grammar is a weird thing? in reading i feel like its quite easy now to understand. when listening or watching - same. and yet if asked ‘why do i say/type X’ or ‘why is it written/spoken like X’ i have absolutely no explanation in my head. i could not explain the grammar if prompted. this puts me in a weird place and i feel like i SHOULD go over a grammar guide again just so i can WORD what i’m intuitively understanding.

this is a bit bizarre to me because within the first 6 months of study i DID read through an entire grammar guide just to get an idea of what i was about to look at, and it hardly made sense once actually reading/watching/listening. i understood the guide fine, but actually Seeing chinese i was still confused. i would reference AllSetLearning’s Chinese Wiki on some basic points, then after 6 months i just stopped. now its been what 1.5 years and - reading is so easy, listening is so easy, grammar wise. none of the grammar confuses me. but i no longer ‘explicitly’ have any idea what the fuck the grammar is. i used to. i studied it explicitly before trying to read/listen. and yet now that i can read/listen, i have no idea how to explain the grammar. i can listen to a podcast and i don’t think about what the grammar is i just get it. i read and just know what i’m looking at. its like english - i cannot fucking explain it. Which makes speaking/writing a bit hard. Because when i try to check if i’m right i have no fucking clue HOW anymore - i just say/write what comes to mind and HOPE it makes sense. i have no way to conciously check for errors except ‘does this feel right’? And that’s not good enough for me lol. So I definitely do need to eventually read a grammar guide for explicit explanations again.

Technically I think “English and Chinese Grammar Side By Side” grammar book would be an excellent one to use. Because i read the first 50 pages of it and it compared it to english (so it explained english too), and it was very easy to understand and started basic then got more involved. 

I’m probably gonna use my very old Chinese Grammar Self Taught by Thimm book instead. Just because I really like that book. Then I guess use another after (probably Basic Chinese Sentence Patterns since its modern and perfect for ‘catch your own mistakes’ study and much shorter than Eng+Chinese Grammar side by side). 

Anyway I’m in a very weird place right now lol. I know i’m understanding grammar that is stuff I never even studied initially in the grammar guide, but unable to explain what it is, and a lot of stuff i did explicitly study in a grammar guide i completely forgot the explanation for. My reading and listening is GREAT, because all my effort only has to go into learning new words lately! its relaxing! Its the only part i need to do! But my writing/speaking i am very concerned about because being able to check myself for mistakes is something i’d like the ability to do.

how grammar is presented really makes a difference in how well i get it. there is some serious benefit to ‘show simple first then build up what you know’ that text books tend to prefer. versus like grammar reference books that may start with some in depth stuff.

i tried to read a japanese grammar guide the other day and 1 it was great but 2 it covered some ADVANCED stuff i never learned in genki 1+2, and so it was Explicit grammar description of stuff i had literally years ago been immersing in japanese and Still not conciously known about. So i felt. Overwhelmed lol. I felt so confused. I feel like I might switch to Tae Kim’s grammar guide primarily just because its structured with basics covered first. and i feel like until the basics are again glued into my brain, seeing even more advanced stuff just confused me so much i had no idea how to remember it. which is funny because? my usual strategy with grammar guides is to just read it and let what sticks stick and what is confusing be moved on from, in the hope i will later see it again and understand it better. so like based on what i usually do i should’ve just been able to read through it (and i’m gonna try anyway lol). but truly japanese grammar just... my mind does not like wrapping around it and remembering it. (chinese grammar is so much easier for me... so much easier....;-; )

i have been tempted to just Restart Nukemarine’s LLJ (Lets Learn Japanese) memrise decks, because I KNOW they worked for me last time really really well. And they include Tae Kim grammar lessons. And I know if i did it then maybe i’d get back to where i was years ago pretty fast.

I tried Earthlingo app. Its a cool idea, I don’t think its worth it though unless you planned to get Rosetta Stone (since Earthlingo is FREE). Earthlingo features 1000 words per language, taught to you by exploring video game worlds as an alien. Its a cool concept, but since all words seem to be nouns then you aren’t even learning the most common verbs/adjectives. And 1000 words is not a lot. And you could learn 1000 quite fast if using srs flashcards like Memrise or Anki (think weeks if you push yourself, and a month or two months if going at a regular pace). Earthlingo you have to slowly explore the worlds so that eats time, you have to choose to test yourself (so you don’t review nearly as often as flashcard apps), and one test includes walking around the world clicking the object which you’re given the word for (takes time to find the right object). All this means a word that might take maybe 15 minutes to study over a few weeks, might instead take much longer to study and learn. I don’t use duolingo because it generally covers so few words (usually 2000-4000 i think which is good for a beginner resource but you have to do the WHOLE course to get to all those words and i take so long on duolingo that could take YEARS for me versus a month on a flashcard app or clozemaster). Duolingo I also don’t use because it very slowly paces learning material (it takes me months/years to get through 1000 words on duolingo - just personally i go so slow on it, i think faster people would find a use for it). Likewise Lingodeer takes me AGES to get through (and i think covers 2000 words nowadays? I’m shocked Duolingo has more words for the japanese course tbh). However, Lingodeer is by far the best ‘app’ for Japanese grammar lessons in app practice form. Even if basically all the apps feel pretty slow to me in how fast they give you new info. Earthlingo is cool that its free, and for learners 12 and under i think it would be super useful as a way to engage them and keep them studying (since what child likes flashcards? whereas as a child i would’ve loved this). But as an adult Earthlingo is sooooo slow on how fast you can learn words, and it does not even offer very many words (1000 is a nice bare minimum but without verbs/adjectives it can only be a supplementary learning tool for beginners at best).

Link about Lingodeer having 2000 words in a course. (Since its SO hard to lookup how much vocabulary lingodeer includes :c )

Nukemarine’s LLJ memrise decks (which I’m considering going through again but ToT agh flashcardssssss.... they sure do work though agh)

http://www.chinese-grammar.com/beginner/ - this is the site I read a chinese grammar guide on at like Month 3. I am rereading it now maybe it will help me remember wtf grammar explicitly is. ToT (A tip, read Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced sections). Last time I visited the site you just clicked a section, then saw each fully explained grammar point and clicked ‘next’ it was nice. Now its laid out a little less ideal for me, but its still got all the same nice info! (Also honestly if you are a beginner I really DO like this grammar guide... it introduces basic info first, gradually gets more complex, and i could follow its logic knowing like 200 hanzi and 100 words ToT. its very easy to understand even if it takes a while to apply that info).

im probably gonna read hanshe more today. i’m at the point where either i know enough vocab, or the writers style has just ‘clicked’ idk. but now i just am not getting bogged down by unknown words and am just. speeding through enjoying the plot. Also rip me this novel has 155 chapters and im only on chapter 30.

watching japanese lets plays is really fun! i feel like im 3 years old cause i just see nouns i can learn pretty easy in context cause i know the game well, and hear some vaguely familiar verbs, but its fun! also it helps i know kingdom hearts 2 like by heart so. a lot of it makes me instantly cheerful and nostalgic. roxas’s voice is so cute in the japanese version.

oh i almost forgot: I found a book recently for chinese that for it’s like 10 page grammar guide summary at the beginning ALONE i think is more than worth the 4 dollars it costs to get. It has a ton of compound words and its a reference book in mandarin and cantonese (it has pronunciation for both, all characters are in traditional). I got it initally because it as a bunch of compound words and I’d like to get better at knowing a lot of common ones. But the intro to the book has a page explaining sentence structures in chinese, then examples. Its so straightforward and to the point. I love it. The book is “Understanding Chinese: A Guide to the Usage of Chinese Characters” by Rita Mei-Wah Choy. (There is also a companion book for individual hanzi, which is nice but this book specifically I’m finding more useful).

what i really like about Listening-Reading method, and reading, as study activities: no matter how I do them it is only improvement. I have a tendency to ‘redo’ material i don’t feel i fully mastered, or refuse to move on. So when i have duolingo, flashcards (sometimes i can move on if i ignore reviews/make myself do new stuff), books, grammar guides, self guided classes - i have a tendency to redo the material. over and over. and not progress and challenge myself. whereas with reading - every time i look up a word its useful because its new or something i clearly Need to review (not something i’ve actually learned and can move past reviewing). so whether i reread material or read new stuff, as long as i run into things i find somewhat challenging (feel the desire to word look up), i know i am running into new material i can learn. Same with listening-reading method: whether i finish a book or just skip to random books, any new chapter i do will give me new words to learn/remember (until i’ve reached a point of perfect listening comprehension which is a WAYS away). There’s no way for me to mess it up. I can give up a book im bored with, i don’t have to stick to one resource to the end. 

someone tell me why professionally made chinese audio books almost NEVER line up to the chapters???? whyyyyy ;-;

Even More Notes lol:

So I read so much in Pleco, which auto pronounces, I have COMPLETELY forgot. 得 地 - for these two, when they’re attached after a description like 淡淡 慢慢 高兴 etc, when are they pronounced di versus de???? i’m pretty sure  得 is pronounced de when its an adjective like ‘-ly’. but for  地, i don’t remember if when part of a describer if its pronounced di or de????