100% OF WINNING IS SHOWING UP

The title of this post was borrowed from http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/showing-up

This is a re-post from a recent thread in the LingQ Forum http://www.lingq.com/learn/zh/forum/46/4850/

I don't know much about Antimoon, but I did read Steve's post on some of the things that Antimoon recommends and I don't think that Khazumoto's method resembles theirs at all, except for the SRS learning, which I think is helpful (in some form - I prefer Spaced Repetition Listening because it's more natural than flashcards) at an advanced level to target increasingly specific vocabulary and break through plateaus.

Admittedly, up to now I haven't concentrated on one language exclusively, but I have also never achieved near-native level in terms of VOCABULARY in any language that I've studied, although I've attained it in speaking fluency in German. For this reason I'm particularly interested in Khazumoto's experiment and also his idea of 'laddering' languages once you've achieved an advanced level in one of them, that is, learning L3 through L2, L4 thorough L3 etc., as mentions in this facetiously titled post: (http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/how-do- i-learn-500-languages-at-once)

As Khazumoto says:

'All your learning of Japanese (or any other language) is, is simply a string of moments in which you learn something and remember it in the next moment when you’re learning the next thing, such that you know more in the next moment than you did in the previous moment. You know more now, than you did one second ago; you know more one second later, than you do now. You know more today than yesterday and more tomorrow than today. That’s it. The key here is the moment. You don’t have to spend ten years, you only have to spend this moment, right here, right now.'

So if we can at least slightly impede the process of forgetting what we've learned by understanding how memory works and taking advantage of that understanding by using something like an SRS, then it will (a) take much less time before we reach a level at which we can understand and appreciate authentic content, (b) accelerate our arrival at a state of critical mass, that is, the point at which you start speaking naturally without having to 'try', and (c) increase the rate at which words pass from being passive to active, as the 'activeness' of a word or expression depends to a great extent on how frequently you've heard/read it (hearing the words and expression, of course, is much more important to the beginner).

In this sense I agree with you completely that consistency is key, and with consistency you WILL reach your goals at some point, even without SRS, and that goes for anything in life that you want to achieve or learn. As Khatzumoto says:

'You don’t have to run tomorrow morning. You just have to have your shoes on and be standing outside... 100% OF WINNING IS SHOWING UP.'
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/comfort-zone-growth-zone-panic-zone
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/showing-up

As long as you put your running shoes on (sign in to LingQ) and walk outside (choose a lesson and have it open on LingQ) every day, you will more than likely learn something. And the more consistently you workout (and have fun), the better the shape and disposition you'll be in:)