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I am seriously struggling to learn the verbs (can be found on download page). I am using Anki, selecting 3-4 verbs beforehand to study for short term memory, and just studying hard in general. At the most, i have only 30% of the verbs memorized. I have been studying for almost a week on this.
Any tips? Pointers? Im going to keep at it, im not defeated yet! But all the same, i feel like i am bashing myself against a wall.
Every drop in the bucket helps fill it!Just keep reviewing in Anki and let the SRS algorithm work its magic. It’s really quite surprising sometimes, you’ll fail a card many, many times in a row, and then at some point it goes from being this seemingly impossible feat to just… working; everything slots into place in your head and you answer it correctly :D
You’re still a beginner, so I wouldn’t say 30% memorisation after less than a week is that bad. Over time, you’ll forget some cards you know now and remember some cards you don’t, it can be quite a fluid process from my experience.
Also, what do you mean when you say “selecting 3-4 verbs beforehand to study for short term memory”?
what i meant by that is before i study on Anki or anything, i will try to focus on learning 3-4 new terms. That way when they come up, i will (hopefully) remember and know them.
Every drop in the bucket helps fill it!Are you using things like mnemonics and learning verbs in context?
Plus, don’t forget that verbs are actual actions. Try to associate the word with the action itself. It’s easy to go “Japanese word = English word” but when you learn it in a linguistic vacuum, you’re just going to forget it. However, if you remember that “Japanese word = action”, you’ve got something to anchor it down.
Try to associate the word with the action itself
I will definitely use this approach.
Every drop in the bucket helps fill it!As Joel said, acting out the word while whispering it to yourself works…although it will also make you look a bit odd. If you have a friend who’s also studying Japanese, setting up a study session with competition will help as well. I had one arrangement (learning Korean) where if I couldn’t remember a target amount of vocab, I’d end up buying my partner a drink.
You’d look especially odd if the word was, say, 殺す =)
Plenty of time to learn vocab in jail ;)
I’m very visual, so I picture scenes in my head or even draw them when I’m having trouble remembering something. A few random examples:
To Wake up: おきます- A man sitting up in bed saying “oki! oki! I’m up already!”
To teach: おしえますー basically a teacher taking a shit (oshie) on a student. I know, it’s horrible, but graphic/ lewd images are supposed to retain better. Check out the book “Moonwalking with Einstein”, they talk about this for memorization.
To think: おもいます- I speak french too, so “moi” sounds kind of like a quebecoise way of saying “I”, so I’ve got the image of a chauvinistic guy kind of speaking loudly “omoi”, (kind of like “to me, I think…” or “in my opinion, I think…”My favorite isn’t a verb, but I thought I”d share anyways: Buddha: ほとけ Hotoke , and it’s a very fat sweaty buddha and people are like “yo buddha, what’s taking you so long man?!” and hes like “it’s hot ok!!”
Try to have fun with it, funny images stick in your mind. Basically if you see the word and have no idea, that’s tough. But if you see the word, and you’re like “hotoke, that kind of sounds like “hot ok” then you have a hook, a link, that you can use to claw your way to the meaning. And in the beginning you’ll have to use this bridge a lot, but eventually you’ll just know what it means without having to take the long way in your mind.
Hope that helps.
Erici have the same problem. ive started textfugu 20 days ago and am in season 4 chapter 7 (i new kana before that though), remembering kanji, grammar and words associated with grammar was easy, but plain verbs and adjectives are piling up on my review/learning list :(. it seems that the problem with verbs is that *ます with 1-2 syllables are hard to distinguish one from another because they sound similar, while longer ones are easier to remember(atleast for me). tried making up my own sentences but it didnt work. will have to try visualising or making up funny stuff, i guess.
hopefully it will be addressed in future so its easier for new people to learn it.
or maybe people could share their pictures/mnemonics that they use to remember verbs/adjectives.-
This reply was modified 10 years, 7 months ago by
アーノルド.
I would like to tell you all how I memorize every word in Japanese.
I use a method called “memo” which is described by a former Norwegian world champion in memorization (a competition in memorization for people with totally average brains). You can read about it in the book called “Memo: The Easiest Way to Improve Your Memory“.
Some people says that the mnemonics don’t work for them but I think they just don’t know how to use them. The method uses mnemonics and a way to join them together with things you already have stored in your long term memory. Mnemonics alone are only in your short term memory in the beginning.
I’m not sure whether you want me to explain more or not so I’ll cut it here. I’m not going to explaing how the whole technique works, mainly because it’s the authors livelihood, but also because I don’t want to explain a whole book here.
I can just tell you it that it works. -
This reply was modified 10 years, 7 months ago by
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