Drill for Every Day (D4E: V5)

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Zen and the Art of Dictation

• Let's learn Japanese through drill and practice!
• You will practice 10 sentences in an episode.
• It's a very simple exercise. You just follow the audio you hear and type in roman letters.
• The first objective is to learn the basic Japanese sounds and hiragana/katakana combinations.
• You can practice as many times as possible. The more you practice, the better you will get.
• Please regularly contribute your time to this practice.
• It is important to practice every day rather than to practice a lot at once.
• The following is the psychological evidence of the importance of regular practice:
• Hermann Ebbinghaus (ca. 1885): forgetting curve

  $b=\frac{100k}{\left(\log \left(t\right)\right){}^c+k}$

  
  Figure 1: The forgetting curve described by Hermann Ebbinghaus.

  Here, b represents 'Savings' expressed as a percentage, and t represents time in minutes, counting from one minute before end of learning. The constants c and k are 1.25 and 1.84 respectively. Savings is defined as the relative amount of time saved on the second learning trial as a result of having had the first. A savings of 100% would indicate that all items were still known from the first trial. A 75% savings would mean that relearning missed items required 25% as long as the original learning session (to learn all items). 'Savings' is thus, analogous to retention rate.