Yea for conversations if we keep up the SRSing you’ll be able to read almost anything in Japanese, but replying to it in the proper manner, that’s another story. But i think that will all come into play if you keep the immersion and try speaking with Japanese ppl, even if you’re levels are low. But one thing i noticed is that, I myself think i’m at a low level still, not where i want to be. But when i tell some of my Japanese friends about my progress, they are like nooo way!!!!. But since there always busy i never get the time to practice lol. So i’m thinking, i’m still at a low-level but there’s nothing wrong with practicing output in basic terms and getting massive input at home,etc,etc.

Oh-dude, could you tell me if that’s right? I’ve never heard confirmation on that sentence. Dunno if it should be 解らない or what.

Additionally, forums would inevitably lead to group think, and a sort of ‘best method’ being agreed upon by the entire community. When you adjust the method right now, you’re disagreeing with Khatzumoto and only Khatzumoto, and even then, he’s often left things so vague that you have to just guess on how to do them, so you’re not disagreeing with ANYBODY. Imagine if you walk into a forum and say “I’m going to forgo X to do Y,” and an entire thread full of posts tell you you’re full of ****, and that nobody does Y and you should feel bad for even suggesting X, which THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY loves, is possibly flawed-let alone so wrong you’d do Y. Of all things, Y! Y is the worst idea to come out of a person’s head since W. W was so dumb, once all the people who do it get on the forums and find out about X, they all drop W and cling to X with the cling of a young monkey on his mother’s back. And now you suggest Y? Y? YYY? GET OUT. GET THE F*CK OUT.

—you get the idea

(may’ve spent a little too much time on forums)

lol forums, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. But i guess it was create so much debates, but as well useful info on other people’s progress. I’ve always wanted to know, in a year or so someone else progress in detail. Like how is there output level, input level, reading level, writing level. Can they write+reply to majority of a Japanese conversation. Little specifics on what they noticed in a few months of doing AJATT and 6, 8, 12, 14, 18 months things like that. Step-Step on what they noticed on each of the skills needed for proficiency in Japanese. That is hard to find, and not everyone willing to share that info(for some reason). But that would help me alot. I’ve gotten used to SRS+immersion right now. Yea i can’t wait till this semester over, just want to relax and do SRS+immersion+ work so i can get some electronics(yea ipod classic 160gb!!! fill that up with all japanese stuff, and some manga on the side-which is already coming haha). I think in a years time (by september 2010 i’ll consider that 1 year mark-for SRS sentences+immersion, kanji i started around end of june 2009). I’ll write some specific details on my SRS+sentences+how i did the things in detail(if possible). I would love to know these details, especially for someone starting out in the method. Since it’s hard to find i’ll just make my own thing, once i get to 1 year mark of doing AJATT.

Also it’s no problem, I’m willing to help anytime(if possible lol-refering to school taking majority of my time and all).

Thank you so much for describing your process for me. Khatz is probably right not to have forums here, but I feel like this sort of thing is too difficult to find because of it. Insight into someone else’s process, especially someone who seems to be on top of things, is pretty valuable.

Good luck with your end-of-semester (mine’s kicking my ***), and of course, good luck with your Japanese.

次世代の高容量携帯電池を使えば、充電（補給）しなくても、何週間ももつかも知れない。
[じ][せ][だい] の [こう][よう][りょう][けい][たい][でん][ち] を [つか]えば 、 [じゅう][でん] （ [ほ][きゅう] ） しなくて も 、 [なん][しゅう][かん] も もつ かも [し]れない 。

I know what you’re thinking “Why do a long one? and is it possible to retain majority of it the first day?” from my personal experience i tend to do these ones more than my usual regular sentences, but i do let the SRS do the work for the readings. So for this one i did a few times, and the rest (for shorter sentences, the srs anki will do the rest). I do like to long sentences rather than short ones, but by no means this doesn’t mean it’s better than the shorter ones, i’m just the type of person who likes to do massive amounts of kanji, but i do enjoy the smaller sentences. So my advice would be shorter, rank it hard, longer ones do it more!. 30/day isn’t too hard, but all depends on the person who’s doing it too. You’re probably a busy person with school,etc,etc cuz i’m sure everyone does have there own lives to continue while doing this of course. For me i’m finish this semester of post-secondary school(how come university can get annoying at the end? cuz they always mash everything near the end and i tend to get lazy!) lol. Also if you’re wondering about the output thing, i’ve found out that if you do massive+correct input, the output will work itself pretty good. It;s just that easy, i’d admit in the beginning i found doing the SRS sentences hard, but overtime i’ve gotten usec to it and the immersion thing as a whole, so all you can do now is to fix the small stuff in anki+do you’re own amount of sentences(i don’t do 100 per day always, well as of now at least cuz of school and all). Also by giving it time, i’d say around a year you’ll be pretty happy with the results(this is what i’ve heard from most ppl who’ve done this for a year)

I want to jump on “The only thing i wouldn’t know are the readings(SRS corrects this over time without much effort).”

I’m finding I might have a tendency to over-learn sentences when I first meet them. What do you count as ‘added’ ? I use Anki as well, and I increment ‘New cards per day’ by 5 or 10 or so at a time as I do my reviews, or after I do my reviews (Haven’t decided which I like better). There’s such a delay for my queue that I’m basically seeing that sentence for the first time again, so I get a good look at it, write it out, and hit ‘again.’ And I keep hitting ‘again’ every time it comes up that session until I get the reading and meaning down. After that initial encounter (of which I really can’t do more than 30 per day), I’m more lenient on the readings, putting down a ‘hard’ if I mess it up, ‘good’ if I get it with some thought/delay, ‘easy’ if it comes straight up in my mind.

What do you think? Too rigid? It was worse before. o.o

I appreciate you taking the time to help out. This is a pretty big area of concern for me right now.

I WISH. That’s all I can say. I wish I could do that much, or more accurately, I wish I knew what I could change to be able to do that much. Even in a sentence-rich environment where I have a ton of un-answered questions sort of waiting in the queue, if I go beyond 30 new ones, they just start falling out of my head as soon as I put them in. How frequently do you have to redo cards when you first put them in? And where did you get your time-expander that let’s you have time for a million billion reviews?

Lemme tell ya, my best source of sentences outside MFSP has been the Japanese version of Chrono Trigger. It’s all natural sounding Japanese dialog, and it’s a game I’ve played so much that there’s almost no place where I don’t know what’s going on. Even then, my rate of sentence pulling from there is about 25 an hour, and even then, by the end of that hour I’m about spent, just skipping past dialog to get to the fighting. “Yeah yeah, this is the part where he’s like ‘four people end of time blabhlabhlabhalbh.” How you do 100 AND reviews for 100 per day, I have no idea.

I average around 500-700 sentences per week lol. Although I’ve been really busy with school lately, haven’t gotten much time to finish my reviews or even add new cards to begin with. Yea it’s a good thing to collect sentences you enjoy very much. At first i massively added 100 per day sentences method for a while lol It got really boring after a while .So i decided i might as well go with music,dramas,games, anything that interests me in japanese and just get the sentences for them. That way i can learn really fast and enjoy it. As of now i’m around 4300 sentences. 6.2 months or so of the method. (those months include kanji 3.0 months, and rest is immersion+sentences). I think that matter is that, yea we shouldn’t really worry too much about what other ppl think, cuz in due time you’re skills will show all that!!!!. As for getting those skills sooner, you need some pretty heavy input, not just sentence wise but immersion to music+everything japanese. I’ve noticed that the mind links all these things without much effort. I remeber watching a drama that had all these kanji i didn’t really recognize the readings. But the meanings made me understand it all, it was only confusing cuz it was some medical kanji that i haven’t seen. Also yea i agree with you do you’re own thing, you don’t necessarily need to copy everything khatz did, everyone is there own person. So everybody does things differently. But as long as ppl keep the foundation solid then the rest will come. What what i’ve heard is that. It should take around a year or so to start noticing some major, major, major results depending on how much exposure, input you did to gain those major changes unconsciously too. So it’s better to find ways of enjoyment through this and once you have that, doing the method itself should be a piece of cake. All it takes is that motivation inside to continue on and not to care what other people think. Just let the skills do the rest once you’ve gain a high level of japanese!!

Forget ‘other people’ fast. Real fast.

If you’re talking about other AJATTers, there’s a very wide range of speed here. I was astonished to read that one of the commenters here does 1000 sentences per month! I spent 5 months on Kanji and 2 months on sentences, and I’m at 500 sentences. Granted, I got off to a way-slow start where I was a little too picky about collecting sentences (garbage in, garbage out is totally the way to go), but it’s still disappointingly slow. I have a laundry-list of excuses, but they’re all beside the point. I don’t let it get me down. I’m annoyed at my situation (and partly wondering how Khatz did so much in an arguably worse situation), but it’s far more useful to revise and look forward.

If you’re talking about ‘other people’ in general, like your typical class-room learner, they’re learning on a completely different path than AJATT. They rush to (bad) output and (bad) grammar, we take it slow and build from the foundation. Yes, they can have a “Hello, how are you” conversation after a semester, but after two years, the difference between an AJATT learner and a classroom learner is like night and day (or so I hear–I’ve never met an AJATT learner right at the 2 year mark).

Of course, there’s always reason to examine your version of the process. Nobody does it just like Khatz, so if something isn’t working for you, change it. Or maybe you already changed something and it was a change for the worse (I do this often). The nature of experiments is that you don’t know exactly how it’ll turn out, so if it turned out poorly, change it. Nothing says you have to do it blindly.

http://www.sasugabooks.com/

they accept paypal!!!!(which expects bank transcations yea yea!)

Also @Marshall I’ve been doing this for around same amount as you. 6 months(3 months of kanji+3.5 months of sentences+immersion)
-For me, my understanding has improved greatly+readings, but as for ouput(speaking+writing all those sentences filled with kanji, not much). But what i’ve found out for myself is that, you need massive amounts of input, and i mean massive to produce some good quality output(writing+speaking). I’ve noticed that so far. For example i;’ve been trying to let’s say write sentences that i’ve seen in my SRS anki for a while but obviously sometimes i cannot really write it all down due to memory. But after I kept seeing it over again in SRS anki+japanese sites+drama;s,etc,etc. It’ll connect with you’re mind and you’ll be able to write it down and say it properly. So i’m pretty sure if you keep at it and do heavy input, sentences wise, listening wise, and immersing yourself alot in japanese, output will come. Can’t really give it a date as I haven’t gotten there as well lol. But alot of people say 1 years a good point for some crazy unimaginable improvement in you’re japanese ability(all forms) Hope this helps!

I think that’s kinda the idea behind building up a Japanese library… I started building my library long before I went AJATT, but I set a goal date for myself for completing RTK, and once I completed that I started into AJATT with a massive library of manga, books, DVD’s, and TV series on my computer.

I don’t know where you are, but in California there are a few book-off stores that sell used Japanese books and manga for about a dollar a piece. I’d just buy anything that looked like it might someday be interesting, so now I’ve got a big library and if somethings to easy or hard I’ll move on to something else.

beginner/intermediate/advanced are kind of subjective terms, so it would be really difficult to classify much of anything in my opinion. But flipping through a book I can tell about what level it is in relation to what I know now.