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Achieving Your Japanese Goals – April 2017 — 27 Comments

  1. 1. 5 new J-J sentences per day.
    2. 5 sentences from Jalup Immersion stage 2 per day.
    3. Continue with 2 kanji per day. Currently working on grade 6.
    4. Daily immersion. Passive listening and read manga every night.

    This will have me at around 8700 sentences by the end of the month.

    • All goals met. I have always struggled the most with getting enough immersion, but I finally have some passive systems in place that are making it easy to do lots of it.

  2. On the weekends:
    make 70 J-J cards

    Daily:
    Get Reviews down to 0 everyday.
    Add 20 J-J cards, 10 intermediate through NEXT, 10 self-made J-J cards through ANKI
    Read 星の王子さま and underline unknown words: on weekends… based on the underlined words.
    Watch an episode of Anime a night.

    *Overarching Goal: Wake up at 5:00 AM every morning!

    Tools:
    Anki, NEXT, 星の王子さま, CrunchyRoll, Netflix, goo.dict, Mac’s Dictionary, Weblio possibly… Jalup Series and The One deck for sentence mining…

    Strategy: Get up and Read, then try to get Anki and NEXT done before leaving for the bus. Finish up with Anki and NEXT in the evening and watch an episode of anime.

    Also, add 10 cards and do reviews for German based on a pre-made sentence deck using Morphman app to learn in +1 order.

    • I ended up achieving the equivalent of adding 70 cards per weekend. I added over 300 cards to my learning queue.

      100% streak getting reviews down to 0.
      I lost 2 days of adding J-J cards.
      I lost 3 days reading.
      I lost 1 night not watching anime.

      I did pretty good about getting up around 5:00 AM. There were at least 5 days this didn’t happen though.

      I dropped German and started obsessing over Latin for some reason.
      I started learning Kanji Kingdom cards. 100 a day. Missed 3 days so far. But that’s okay. I’m getting back into it.

      This month, very rough with respect to school. It is the end of the semester and everything is hitting me all at once oh and that obsessed with Latin thing was a real drain of my time a Sunday here a Tuesday there, so that made things a little harder, but it is starting to settle down now that I have a better grip on how I am going to move forward with that. I don’t think there were any lessons to learn from this month except that I need to make sure I don’t procrastinate on my studies in order to indulge my obsessions.

  3. Finish KK stage 2. 6 new cards per day to be conservative. May increase if I don’t die from 6.

    Failed last month tackling 2 decks at a time, even with low card counts. Did not account for me being lazy and/or evening events I needed to attend.

    • I’ve settled in to 5 Kanji a day and I’m very happy with my progress. Slow and steady wins the race.

  4. 1. Finish Intermediate deck on Jalup NEXT. 8 per day should get me there by the end of April.

    1. 5 new Kanji per day on Jalup Next. That should be enough to finish that deck by the end of October. (It might seen like it’s far away, but October is coming whether I like it or not, so I might as well just stay at 5 per day and wait for October to arrive). I love that new goal setting feature btw.

    • 1. It took 3 tries, but I finally finished the intermediate deck.

      My advice for anyone on their first attempt at intermediate: slow, slow and slow. Go as slow as you are comfortable with for the first month or two. Five per day or slower is absolutely fine. When you hit J-J change your goal from ‘X number per day’ to ‘change the way I think’. Forget how you studied in the past, when you hit intermediate, your only goal is to focus on the Japanese definition of that one new word. Put the effort into understanding that definition. If you break and decide to translate it (chances are, you will) re-read the Japanese definition and make sure you understand it after you checked the translation. A lot of times when I broke and looked up the English translation, I found that the word used in the sentence was actually not the first English translation (many words have multiple meanings, be absolutely sure you read the Japanese definition because it might not match your translation source). It’s a little tedious (hopefully not for you) but do not cheat yourself, the Jalup decks were made the way they are for a reason.

      2. Failed. Kanji are small, but man are they mean.

  5. Currently in the middle of a challenge to memorize 1000 Intermediate J-J sentences in 20 days with instant recall for 90% or higher, to be finished before April 10th, and write each and every one including the paired Kanji.

    To finish up the last 200 Kanji in RTK I’ve been putting off for the last 3 months.

    Add and drill all of the onyomi from the Intermediate Sentences into the Kanji itself and add to my RTK study

    Begin another challenge of 100 daily mistakes a day and using what I’ve learned.

    Tools: Anki, Jalup sentences intermediate, Memory Palaces
    Last goal: HelloTalk, Japanese friends, iTalki, my mirror

  6. After last month’s hullabaloo, I’ve reevaluated how I actually learn stuff and changed my goals up a bit.

    PRIORITY 1: IMMERSION

    My brain will only bear so many new sentences unless I immerse lots. And I learn more through lots of immersion + small number of new sentences than the other way round. So I want to:

    – Read Fairy Tail every day. I’m really enjoying it so that’s no hardship. I want to see if I can get through half a chapter per day, but without worrying about that over much.
    – Watch SOMETHING every day. I’m not good at sticking to watching things, honestly.
    – Watch all of the Nihongonomori JLPT N3 Grammar lessons (these are taught in japanese). I love these! Puzzling out new Japanese in japanese is so much fun!
    – Drama CD in my ear as much of the time as possible. My bluetooth earphones are great for this.

    Anki:

    – I’m not going to worry too much about my pace, as long as I definitely finish JALUP beginner and actually start intermediate. Going to start at 10 a day and see how I go, dropping to 5 when I start intermediate
    – I haven’t decided what to do about kanji yet, but my days off reveals that (unlike with RTK) my kanji retention with Kanji Kindom is pretty decent! I’m not especially good with kanji until I encounter them in a word, though, so there’s no point rushing this one. As long as I do a few a day I’ll be happy.

    • Well, I’ve just finished Jalup beginner, so that goal I met! (Just)

      I haven’t done any immersion stuff consistently, but I did do more than last month, so I’m counting that as a win. In particular, ripping the audio for イタズラなキッス was an excellent plan, as hearing it just makes me happy and I can understand portions and remember what was happening when I watched it.

      I’m doing 4 new kanji a day right now, which seems very achievable, and I’m nearly finished kanji kingdom stage 3 so I’m not even especially behind with it. Maybe if jalup intermediate forces a slowdown in terms of new cards I can up the number of kanji to 6 or 8 for next month.

  7. 1.Continue through Jalup Advanced, doing 20 cards a day
    2.Finish reading スイッチを押すとき and start ドアD
    3.Watch at least 3 Japanese shows or 20 minute you-tube videos a day
    4.Keep up with daily reviews

  8. 1. Doing as much RTK as possible until my next semester at uni begins (4月18日) and doing at least something each day for the rest of the month.
    2. Starting to add J-J sentences and finding a good pace for me.

    Bonus (if I’m motivated enough):
    3. Begin building my immersion device.
    4. Read!

  9. 1. Finish off Expert 6 and about 50% of Expert 7. I don’t want to push myself too hard on new cards, but it’s good to have some progress.

    2. Reading immersion. I’ve been making progress on manga reading lately. I’d like to finish one or two more and then start a novel! Reading and understanding a book will represent a ‘coming of age’ for me. It’s further than I ever really believed I would get with Japanese, so I am super psyched.

    • Finished of Expert 6 in about 3 days. It seemed like I had eternity to then get half way through Expert 7, but it didn’t happen. I got close though. There were just so many holidays in April (in Australia) and I spent heaps of time camping, which is not conducive to doing anki.

  10. 1. I haven’t ever watched a Jdrama, although I’ve watched many movies and even more anime. This month, I’m going to finish a drama without subtitles. (…any recs? :P )
    2. Finish reading end of コンビニ人間. Buy a new book and make progress in it.
    3. Zero all reviews (including reviews for Korean decks) every day.

    Bonus: start fundraising for possible volunteer trip to Kumamoto in August.

    • I finished コンビニ人間 today. While I won’t spoil anything for those who might read it in the future, it presented an interesting perspective on what it means to be a person who does not quite fit the “normal” mold of society, and left me contemplating how people relate to each other both in and outside of that mold. I enjoyed getting to look at the world through Furukura-san’s lens, and while it took me a while to finish the book, I’m glad I did. There were a fair amount of kanji I didn’t know, but I love it when there are kanji I don’t know because it means I can learn them!

      Now to find a new book. :D

    • 1. I watched three episodes of a drama without subtitles amd was having no trouble understanding the storyline or what was going on, but I never got around to finishing it.
      2. Completed. I ordered The Hobbit in Japanese, but it has yet to arrive.
      3. I did not zero my reviews every day, but I did a good job of not letting them pile up either.

  11. 1. Do the よつぼと cards from the immersion deck (About 75)
    2. Read the Tae Kim grammar guide completely
    3. Read 3 manga, including volume 1 of よつぼと after finishing the cards.
    4. Watch 8 TV shows.

    Lower goals for new cards this month as I was getting burned out by so many reviews last month (200 + on some days) and wanted to reduce the amount of reviews so I have energy to do other things. Also getting frustrated with the difficulty of understanding some cards and hoping learning more grammar will help.

  12. Just going go keep it simple. Get to 2250 J-J cards (restarted my deck a whilee back). And go through my reviews daily.

    Also, read every day. Either real books or visual novels.

    • Finished my goal at like midnight last night… nice to finish early. Did a TON of cards though on some days. Now I can work on my May goal to finish Advanced :)

      As for reading, I haven’t done it EVERY day but what I have done is read a lot of subtitles while bingewatching anime, so that counts for me. Going to be reading a lot when I go to Japan next week as I expect to have free time on trains and waiting for my friends to wake up in the morning.

      Also working on getting to 900 RTK cards which was a goal I did not expect. I’m just powering through it temporarily (45 cards/day for 10 days) and I will lay off soon, but I’m just general surprised by how much Anki time I’m willing to put in recently. Ultra motivation, helps that I got some other personal goals sorted out and I’d like to leave my job within a year or so…

  13. 1. Keep up with Anki reviews
    2. Learn 10 new cards a day (Jalup intermediate)
    3. Actually immerse in things!
    4. Figure out passive listening strategy.

    Immersion options include anime, youtube, Japanese video games and manga, but I find it hard to focus on active immersion too long, it makes my brain tired.

    I also need to figure out a passive listening strategy. I don’t usually listen to things with words in English, and constant background talking annoys me in any language.

    • It takes time to get used to the passive immersion, especially if English listening annoyed you. But it is possible, and you learn to experience it in a different way.

    • Partial success! I kept up on Anki reviews. I can’t figure out how to find the numbers for this, but I feel like I made good progress learning 5-15 new cards daily.

      Immersion, not so much. Found a couple of podcasts that are comprehensible enough to be enjoyable (mostly from the podcasts post), but need to practice making time for them. I also need to make time to watch Cardcaptor Sakura more, since it’s great.

  14. 1- Watch an episode a day
    2- Try Harry potter, or something else to read
    3- Start studying Sao Matome/ Kanzen
    4- Start seriously planning the honeymoon: I’m looking for “typical Japan”, not too touristic. I’m currently thinking mid-Feb to beginning of March. I don’t know if it still going to be too cold, but I would really like to avoid the popular seasons.

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