But how slow is our progress, actually? How far are we, and how long will it take us to get to something resembling actual fluency? While it may be a bit depressing to find out, it may also give us some perspective and point out the areas we should focus on.
In some areas of study, it may be hard to estimate how far we are, but in others, there's some good hard figures to be had. This is my impression of where we are:
- Reading and writing
- Definitely our worst score. We know hiragana and katakana, but to read and write fluently, we need to know some 2000 kanji. In reality we know about 20, a mere 1%.
- Speaking and listening
- This one is hard to estimate and may vary among us. Personally, I'd say I can pick up about 5% of a given text, and can readily produce about 5% of a coherent sentence.
- Verbs
- We've learned some 18 different forms of verbs (like the dictionary form, polite past etc) when according to the Japanese Verb Conjugator, the total is something like 47. That makes 38%.
- Vocabulary
- This depends a bit, but I'd say we know some 300-500 words, when about 3000-5000 words of vocabulary are a rough minimum to be able to process a language more or less fluently. 10%.
- Particles
- Based on the previous post, we know some 35 uses of particles, when the Particle Workbook lists 178. Score: a little under 20%.
The average percentage (if we weigh all areas of study equally) is 15%. We started studying in September of 2008, which is about 15 months away. That would mean we still have 85% = 85 months away, which means that at this rate of study we'll be fluent in about seven years... I'd love to hear your thoughts about how we can lower that number.
That is seven years if we really study enough to take in what we are taught. So your numbers actually represent what we are exposed to, not what we know.
ReplyDeleteShort answer to your elaborate analysis: we need to make Japanese friends. It is mentally the biggest obstacle. It is one thing to memorise kanji at home, another thing to mingle with native speakers. It would not only take care of listening comprehension and fluency, but we would be more motivated in general. Once we are confident that we can actually read and understand something, we'd be more compelled to learn the kanji along the way.
I suggest we prepare a notice to be posted on the bulletin board to fish some native speakers. We could in return offer to help with their English or Dutch. Is that a good idea? We don't have to do this in a class or lesson setting. We could agree to going for drinks, going to a film, shopping in AH, etc, etc.
That sounds like a splendid idea. I was generally thinking of some setup in which you, me and caline would get together on a regular basis and quiz each other on a set day of the week. The discipline and obligation toward each other would keep us sharp, and the interaction would reveal questions none of us could answer. caline, how are you with all this?
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