My practice sentences...

[Mike Cash]

I still need a way to practice efficently

This isn't it. This is counterproductive.

too boring to go through more than a few minutes at a time

Learning Japanese is largely years upon years of slogging through boring stuff. You'll be one of the multitude who quietly disappear when you realize how much boring work you have to do.

 

[zxuiji]

What I give up on is getting any proper help from you guys, clearly you guys have no intent of doing the very thing you appear to be on this forum for which is help & teach the slow learners like myself. I'll just have save up some money to go on an actual course where the people are willing to actually help.

 

[Mike Cash]

And when you do, you make sure to insist they do things your way and ignore everything they tell you, just as you have done here.

We have a long track record of helping people. The problem isn't us. The problem is you.

Your being a slow learner isn't an issue. We can work with slow learners. What we can't work with is a slow learner who insists on climbing Mount Everest before he can crawl and who just absolutely will not listen to people who are trying desperately to help him. You want to leave? Then leave. But don't act like the problem is us. You want to stay and get some help? We'll help you. But you're going to have to accept that you have to start in the kiddy pool instead of insisting on jumping off the high dive into the deep end.

 

[mdchachi]

What I give up on is getting any proper help from you guys, clearly you guys have no intent of doing the very thing you appear to be on this forum for which is help & teach the slow learners like myself. I'll just have save up some money to go on an actual course where the people are willing to actually help.

There are many people here willing to help. If you were actually following a structured method and asking for help in a step-by-step fashion on the concepts you were learning, you would have plenty of help. Your so-called method of just jumping in to try to translate something is not just inefficient, it's not going to work even if we all had infinite patience with you.

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

Learning Japanese is largely years upon years of slogging through boring stuff.

I don't agree with this at all. I never felt I was slogging through boring stuff. I mean, sure, if you just look at the English translation of example dialogs, they don't make something you'd read for pleasure.

However, that's not the point. The point is that you're learning how these things are said (or written) in a different language. That in itself should be interesting to you, at least if you're learning Japanese (or any language) as a hobby. (You might have other reasons to learn in which case maybe it just will be a boring thing you have to do.)

In any case it shouldn't be more than a year or two of dedicated study before you can start tackling native materials. It'll be slow going and some more advanced materials will be impossible, but at least it's something interesting in and of itself and not just for being a means to learn the language.

 

[Mike Cash]

If he is too bored by the most baby-step basics to look at it more than a few minutes, it doesn't bode well for his future success learning Japanese or for his prospects of suddenly finding it fascinating.

 

[Toritoribe]

I agree completely.

too boring to go through more than a few minutes at a time

If you feel boring to read the site, you must have the same feelings towards almost all textbooks including Genki. Decent textbooks have more detailed explanations compared to Tae kim's site, but it is absolutely necessary to read it in order to understand the language.
Here's Genki's official site. You can check if you really can bear to read through the textbook by using their sample pages.
Genki – Page and Audio Samples

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

Yes, of course it's a serious problem. I'm just suggesting that the OP (or any other learner) could strive to take a different attitude towards their learning materials. In fact, I would say it's essential to do so in order to learn anything.

I don't really know how to do that, even though I did so myself with regards to both math and history. The most I can say, is you have to just dive in and involve yourself deeply enough in learning that you don't have time to think about whether or not you're bored, and having done so, take the time to realistically recognize and congratulate yourself on your accomplishments. If you can feel the satisfaction of making more and more progress, it's much easier to dive in again next time until you no longer remember how you could have been bored by such an engaging activity.

 

[Mike Cash]

I would like to encourage you to try creating sentences with the stuff you learn from Tae Kim and to post them here. If you have any questions regarding the explanations there or need some help with it, please ask.

 

[zxuiji]

Took a break from the forums to prevent myself from saying something I might've regretted. Still studied via memrise during that time and am almost finished the 2nd unscripted course (will do scripted after completing third course)

As for practicing using what I know I simply couldn't think of anything to say in the first place, this next one however is the first to come to mind today:

私はこうひいちゅどくどす
I'm busy until sunday so won't respond until then

I'm on my break at work, did the desu earlier in a rush so didn't notice it turned into dosu, only got 5m left of my break so will do this next one in romaji

boku no toshi wa ni juu hachi desu

Hope I got that right, haven't yet seen the example in memrise. Back to work now

 

[Toritoribe]

私はこうひいちゅどくどす

私はコーヒーちゅうどくです

boku no toshi wa ni juu hachi desu

It's not wrong, but 僕は28歳（にじゅうはっさい）です is more common when telling your age.

You should keep using hiragana/katakana/kanji.

 

[zxuiji]

私はコーヒーちゅうどくです

I didn't notice I had forgotten to add that う after ゅ, not sure if I needed it pointed out to me but probably helps reinforce the point that I still need practice to reduce the error ratio. As for the katakana thanks for reminding me, I forgot that foreign based words use katakana.

It's not wrong, but 僕は28歳（にじゅうはっさい）です is more common when telling your age.

Oddly enough that is similar to the first thought I had when I was about to type it, I ignored it because I wasn't sure if the が particle was needed, then couple hours later I saw the example on memrise not using the particle at all (which matched my initial thought based attempt) however I was still working (use the app when travelling from one part of the shop to another doing put-backs) so I couldn't post about it. I presume that kanji at the front is the one I use for ぼく?

Edit: Just looked up the kanji so no need to answer that question

You should keep using hiragana/katakana/kanji.

As I said before I was on the last 5 minutes of my break and didn't have time to rack my brains for the odd hirigana I don't immeadiatly remember, plus I was typing on my phone so was a bit awkward to keep switching keyboard in such a short space of time. At home I happily use the kana/kanji to write japanese.

Next sentence
僕はスウパアではたらいています
Gonna do some reading now then I'll go to bed as I have busy day tomorrow

 

[Mike Cash]

I didn't notice I had forgotten to add that う after ゅ, not sure if I needed it pointed out to me

It is an important point, as the presence or absence can mean the difference between it being one word or an entirely different word sometimes. Also, whether the character is regular sized or a smaller size makes a difference. It is definitely one of the points where it is important to pay close attention to it and develop good habits early on.

 

[Toritoribe]

Next sentence
僕はスウパアではたらいています
Gonna do some reading now then I'll go to bed as I have busy day tomorrow

スーパー, not スウパア.
As you can see in my previous post, coffee is コーヒー, not コオヒイ/コウヒイ. However, the long vowel mark is not always used regularly in loan words. For instance, プレーヤー and プレイヤー are both used for "player". You can also check loan words in dictionary.

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

I didn't notice I had forgotten to add that う after ゅ, not sure if I needed it pointed out to me but probably helps reinforce the point that I still need practice to reduce the error ratio.

You needed it pointed out, you *always* need it pointed out, as do I. The difference between long and short vowels is absolutely critical in Japanese, and is one of the hardest things to get right as a foreign learner... largely because of how easy it is to think 'Yeah, but it was right except for the length of the vowel.' This is dangerous thinking... the wrong length of the vowel is exactly the same as omitting a mora ('syllable') or adding an extra one.

I don't know what options your memrise decks have, but, constant mistakes with vowel-length finally got me to set my Anki deck to require me to type in my answers. That way I could never fool myself with any shady 'yeah, but except for the vowel length...' self-justifications, or simply not being sure which vowel-length I had meant when I had thought or said the word. The error would be right there highlighted in bright red and if I got it wrong, the card would go right into the priority pile until I got it right.

Edit:
Also, I want to say, these last few posts are really pretty good. You're attempting sentences that are within the range that you've studied, and if they're not perfect, they're at least perfectly understandable and there's only one error to correct making it a fine learning experience. It's also perfectly fine if you write absolutely mundane sentences to be told that they have no mistakes. There's a common saying that 'mistakes are the best way of learning', but this is demonstrably not true. Mistakes are an inevitable and essential part of learning, but *correct practice* of the skill you're trying to master is the *best* way of learning. It's just unfortunately impossible to be right every time!

 

[zxuiji]

I'll soon develop those good habits since the scripted courses don't use romaji to test a name, I'll try making a video with one of my other phones and upload it so you can all see

Bluetooth video transfer is going slowly so will be a while before can upload it

Apparently the video is too big for jref.com so I'm uploading it to my GDrive, it says it will take an hour and 10 min for a 5 or so minute video

 

[Mike Cash]

Wouldn't a few screenshots do just as well?

 

[zxuiji]

As a picture is worth a thousand words a video is worth a thousand or so more and one with audio is worth another thousand or so more so in this case I thought it better to just record the app in action and let everyone see for themselves how good (or crappy) the app is, once I've completed the 3rd course I should have enough vocab to ask most of my questions in kana while I go through the scripted versions and learn some kanji and some (if not all) kanji based grammar.

20min left. Ever wear something straight out of the dryer? Just put my work clothes on and experienced that "ooo yeah" feeling.

Finished uploading, just waiting for the processing to finish now

どうぞ
20170401_075627.mp4 - Google Drive
Gonna leave for work now so will reply to responses and questions after work (or during my break if I'm fast enough)

 

[Mike Cash]

How big is the file?

 

[zxuiji]

437MB according to google, didn't auto play when I clicked on it so you can just view the details from there

I have no plans to pull it down so if you wanna link to it elsewhere feel free to do so

 

[Mike Cash]

Don't you think 437mb might be a tad bit much?

 

[zxuiji]

I didn't adjust any settings when I began recording so it's probably in HD which would explain the size (8MP camera)

 

[Mike Cash]

I'm on a 10gb data plan so I'll have to ask to be excused from viewing it.

 

[zxuiji]

well it's still on my PC so when I get home I will try to reduce the resolution which should reduce the size

Apparently it was possible to reduce the file size to about 50MB by reducing the resolution, haven't done a side by side comparison but I didn't notice any drop in quality, it's currently uploading now so should be ready in a few minutes

Here's the new link, since the other one is unlikely to have been shared anyways I'll go ahead and remove it. Memrise_Fast480p30.mp4 - Google Drive

おやすみ

 

[zxuiji]

In case anyone wandering why I've gone quite it's because I'm reviewing words I've learnt until I get a 100% hit rate when trying to remember their japanese counterparts