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Achieving Your Japanese Goals – July 2017 — 53 Comments

    • I found the vocab and grammar on the test very easy. Only tricky part was the listening. I find out my score in October. Pretty confident I did well.

  1. This month I am going to get through as much as 1250 cards from the expert deck. It is likely that I will barely make it to above 1000, but if I am successful at adding 40 new cards a day, I will make it to 1240 by the end of July.

    I don’t really have to make it a goal to have a Japanese conversation everyday because it is pretty much a given now that I am Wwoofing in Japan. So, instead my goal is about keeping up with the tasks that I am required to do for the Wwoofing stay so that I don’t lose my opportunity to speak Japanese everyday.

    • I’m going to scratch power leveling this month to learn Laravel and Vue so that I can help get expert uploaded to JalupNEXT in whatever way I can. I definitely enjoy learning the cards much more through NEXT than anki. And with Anki, I am too tempted to use its customization features to cheat. You can’t really cheat with NEXT.

      If I get through the tutorials fast enough, I’ll see about volunteering this month to help out.

  2. Ok here we go:

    1. Maintain all Jalup Beginner cards
    2. Finish 4 new cards a day for July from the Jalup Intermediate deck. This will enable me to finish another stage by the end of this month.
    3. Catch up and maintain Japanese Core 10K. (fell behind because I have been changing out English definitions for Japanese)
    4. Pick one new anime and watch 1 episode a day.
    5. Listen to podcasts every day for my commute

  3. Never took part in this before, but as I feel motivation decreasing, I’ll give it a shot and maybe it will help :)

    1. Continue doing Kanji, 5 new ones a day. With this pace I should be at ~650 at the end of the month.
    2. Finish stage 2 of Jalup intermediate. I have about 180 cards left, so if I maintain my usual pace (10 cards a day, and stopping to add when I feel I’m not keeping up), I can do this :)
    3. Watch at least 10 episodes of japanese series on Netflix with japanese subtitles only.
    4. Finally get to finish reading 魔女の宅急便. I have about half of it left.

    • What series are you planning to watch on Netflix? I just recently got Netflix and I’m curious to see what is one there.

      • I just finished Samurai Gourmet and now I’m 2 episodes into Midnight Diner – Tokyo Stories. Both are pretty relaxed and offer Japanese audio and subtitles.
        The other day I read a recommendation for Terrace House which also is available on Netflix. I also briefly tried Hibana Spark and Good Morning call, but they didn’t seem like my cup of tea ;)

        But honestly, there is a lot more of Japanese stuff on Netflix – after watching the first series, the recommendations Netflix gives can just carry you on :)

      • Please watch Itazura Na Kiss (the recent J-drama version), it’s so good and it’s easy to understand.

        Also, a lot of marvel stuff is dubbed into japanese – I’m particularly impressed with Jessica Jones because the voice actress *kills it*. After I watched Itazura na Kiss netflix gave me a bunch of recommendations. I’ll even rewatch some stuff I’ve seen and like in english if there’s a dub, but honestly I’ve barely watched any English tv in years…

  4. As I didn’t move forward at all in my japanese studys last month, I want to tackle a lot of stuff all at once. Not getting any results leads to a terrible feeling of burning out, with only reviews coming in.
    So here it is:

    1) 6 learning new Cards Jalup Intermediate
    2) 4 learning new Cards Kanji Kingdom
    3) 1 watching a new Anime Episode a day and adding it to the immersion device if its listen-worthy
    4) Maintaining contact to my tandem partners
    5) 1 Story/day Finishing the Jalup Beginner Storys

    6) Balancing all that while doing my everyday life studies >.<

    • Since I’ve stumbled upon this Topic:
      How fast do you guys go through your Anki/Next Cards? I’ve read about some Med-Students going over their Cards in a speed of 300 Cards/hour. Instead of really thinking about it, if they don’t have the right answer popping up in their head, they would just hit Repeat for that card and move on.

      Do you guys , especially the ones with the insane new-Card amount, do the same, or how is it?
      Usually I do spent a bit of time thinking about the cards and everything :D

      If someone does it like this, how is it with the cards that keep repeating a few times a day then? Isn’t that much more work timewise?

      • For me, the time I spend on cards varies. If I’m feeling energetic and I have a lot of time I usually slow down, otherwise I go pretty quickly (I don’t have actual figures but I know I rarely spend more than a minute on a card unless it’s brand new). I’ve found that I’m able to retain and learn much more if I spend more time on the card, especially if they are new. If I just mark it right or wrong depending on if the understanding pops in my head or not, I find that I’m not really learning anything new rather I’m just testing my current understanding. Which is fine for older cards, maybe not so good for younger cards. The hardest part for me is doing the analysis in Japanese. I try to do this by just reading the definitions out loud or in my mind and try not to let any English into the equation. (I still cheat from time to time however). For listening I use the complete opposite strategy and don’t analyze at all. I get it or I don’t. Speaking is just too quick for me to try to analyze.

        Repeating the same cards multiple times per day does increase my workload. Sometimes it may not be worth it and I just mark the card correct knowing I’ll see it again the next day with a fresh mind. If I’m feeling energetic I just keep marking them wrong until I finally hammer it into my mind. This probably doesn’t work well for everyone though. It’s really important to listen to your motivation and discipline levels and what you can tolerate without quitting entirely.

        I definitely don’t have insane new card amounts, but I thought I’d share my thoughts anyway.

        • I think you are on to something when you say you take more time when learning new and young cards. I can go a lot faster on old cards than new ones.

          With respect to power levelling, I believe I was able to power through the rest of Advanced because, one, I have enough free time to do so. And two, I had completed Jalup Beginner twice, getting more used to the grammar and I also completed Jalup Intermediate twice beforehand, making understanding the Japanese definitions easier because I effectively got used to reading and parsing them. Also, there were quite a few words I had already learned through school and other sources. They were the minority of cards but, there existence helped keep my moral up while powering through the cards.

          • I do think it is much easier to power level through cards that you are already familiar with. There is a huge difference between having to learn, understand and memorize than just having to memorize. To go back to the original example of med students. The cards they are making are probably from things they have learned in school. Their professors probably talked about those topics over and over, they studied them through homework, quizzes, textbooks, study groups and labs. By the time they enter them into Anki they probably have a thorough understanding so they are able to zip through them much faster. We, on the other hand, may not have had any exposure to a new card so our process is a little different. We must first try to understand what the heck that new card means before we can even begin to memorize it. Even after our first attempt at learning it, we may not have a complete understanding of it and only a fuzzy feeling so on subsequent reviews we almost have to go through that process again until we have a firmer understanding. I have tried to power level on cards that I wasn’t familiar with and it eventually led me to starting over (twice). I know for a fact that there are others who didn’t go through that, but each one of us needs to figure out the best way forward.

      • I seem to be at a steady rate of about 3 cards per minute with Anki. For sentences, I try to break down the requisite parts of the sentence so I understand WHY everything is where it is, rather than just trying to parse the whole sentence. I can crank out 100 reviews in half an hour if I’m really focused…I’m rarely that focused though and will get distracted and that will extend the total time studied to 2+ hours.

        I think I’m a little slower with Kanji Kingdom cards because of the need to draw them (mentally or with my finger)…but I’m not sure as Jalup Next doesn’t have the stat report that Anki has.

  5. My main goal will be to finish Immersion stage 3. I will also do daily reviews and keep up my immersion.

    • I managed to finish Immersion stage 3 as planned at 5 cards a day, and fortunately stage 4 was released, so I continued with that. I have done that at 5 cards a days as well, and even pulled in some extra cards, so quite happy with that. Immersion has been pretty good as well, and I’ve really experienced some improvements in comprehension the last 2 months.

  6. 1) Finish RTK. There are 6 lessons left and 5 Sundays in July, so it’ll be one lesson a weekend, combining the last two, since they are short.

    2) Add 100 new cards to Anki.

    I set low goals this month since I have some important project to complete by early August and it haven’t seen as much progress as it should have, partially because I’ve been spending a lot of my time working on my Japanese instead.

  7. The great slump continued into this month, but I might be nearing the end. I started running again recently, and I know anytime that happens I usually become more productive in every aspect.

    Japanese Goals:

    1. Get up to 620 in Kanji Kingdom using NEXT. I started a new strategy where I stop forcing myself to use an arbitrary number like 5 or 10, and instead I use the sets that are provided in KK. On the KK cards there is usually a group of like 3 or 4 kanji and I usually just focus on one single set and it seems to be working really well.

    2. I’m going to try to get to about 180 in the advance deck. The strategy I’m using for the advance deck is similar to what I’m using for Kanji Kingdom. I’m just focusing on one or two chains and then I stop. I’m not really keeping track of how many I’m doing. I just keep going until I get to the end of a chain. I just focus on the chain, and make sure I understand each new word in the chain and how they relate to each other.

    Spanish Goals:

    Anki is so much more efficient than textbooks. I hate you anki.

    1. Input my textbook into anki up to chapter 5 (I have 2 and 1/2 in anki now).

    • 1. Got up to 597

      2. Got up to 113

      1. Got up to chapter 3 input into anki

      My priorities have changed quite a bit this month. I’ll do the best I can to maintain.

  8. I blew it out of the park last month! Huge kudos to everyone who commented on that thread and helped me out. The last few days of the month have been slower, but I’m having a super busy week and that’s okay! Because I always get my reviews done.

    So for this month (once I come back from my trip on Monday):

    1) Keep up with 10 cards KK and 10 cards Intermediate per day. The way I’ve been doing this – getting up early, getting my reviews out of the way first, and then adding cards as I have time – has been working really well. There’s the odd day when this doesn’t work out, but that’s okay because I always get my reviews done. Been kicking ass on this lately; I’m just starting stage 2 of Intermediate and it’s getting much faster and easier to add new cards. At this pace, I’ll finish Intermediate stage 2 and get halfway through KK stage 5 by the end of the month. I’d still like to be going faster but with work ’tis not to be.

    2) Keep reading – I’m reading a lot right now. Put down NGNL and picked up Harry Potter book 1 again, found it shockingly easy (comparatively). There’s plenty of new words of course but I understand what’s going on in every sentence, and I’m able to use the kindle J-J dictionary to learn new pronounciations and even figure out some new words if the explanation is simple. I also ordered a bunch of new light novels from amazon.jp. Postage was expensive but super fast!

    3a) I was going to play the Witcher 3 anyway, but I (basically by accident) installed it in japanese! Now, there was no way I’d understand or enjoy it with Japanese dialogue, but I’ve ended up with english dialogue, japanese subtitles, and japanese explanatory text (there’s a LOT of that). But I’m really pleased, because I had bookmarked my gaming time as non-japanese time and I’m happy to report I learned a bunch of new words already. Also, TW3 is a game with LOADS of replay value so once I’ve completed the story once in English I’ll switch the dialogue over to Japanese for the replay.

    3b) I want to select and install a visual novel, though, because I need as much text+audio input as possible because my reading comprehension is so far beyond my listening and there’s loads of words I understand but don’t know the pronounciation of. Not sure which one yet. Goal for this month is to try out lots of different ones, set them up, and pick out a few I like to continue with.

    4) As far as audio immersion goes, ひいきびいき is pretty difficult for me right now, but I’m working towards it. Right now the thing that’s working best is ripped audio of J-dramas I’ve already watched, so this month’s goal is to stick loads more of them on my phone – and obviously keep up with watching as many as I can. I’m still not great at watching stuff, but I’m managing a few episodes a week right now, which for me is pretty great!

    All in all I hope to have another great month like last month! Thank goodness for the JALUP community, honestly.

    • Hah. HAH. Observe the naive optimism of my previous comment! Instead, work and joint pain have eaten my life, I’ve barely done any new cards, and I’m super behind on my reviews. Aaargh. This is probably not helped by my phone being broken, as that’s where I’m used to using anki, and my brain is struggling to transfer to doing them on my tablet for some reason.

      Sigh. Ah well. Some modified goals:

      1) Catch up on my reviews.
      2) Start doing cards again at whatever pace seems workable while work is this nuts
      3) Keep reading as above!
      4) Do select and install a visual novel, though I’m unsure if I’ll get to play much of it
      5) Step up the audio immersion! If I don’t have time for much watching/reading, audio it’s gonna be. I tried PlayOn to get episodes to rip audio from, but it’s not working on Netflix; I’m gonna try Crunchyroll, but honestly it seems like a hell of a faff. Anyway, my phone being borked makes this difficult, so I gotta put stuff I like on my tablet.

      Ah well. Such is life.

      • Well, I had to pause for a good while at the end of the month – funeral and travel, you know – but I’m still pleased that I did as many kanji reviews as I could. I did fall off the wagon, but not as hard as I could have done; I listened to some japanese and looked at some japanese every day, even if not for long.

        I’m now packing to move house! So I gotta keep my goals reasonable till then. Thanks for your support, folks. It would have been easy to get overwhelmed and not do any at all.

  9. After a two year break, I am finally back to where studying Japanese has become an every day thing.

    Goals:
    1) Keep up that momentum! Get my reviews done every day, no matter what.
    2) At my current rate, I should be done with the Beginner deck by mid-July.
    3) Start on Intermediate. Setting a lower goal of 10 cards per day, so 160 new cards learned by end of July.
    4) Keep up with Kanji Kingdom, 25 a day, until I have a whopping 775 cards done by July 31st.
    5) Keep up that immersion. At least an hour of passive listening a day.
    6) Start making active immersion a habit and watch at least one show in Japanese without English subtitles a day.

    Resources:
    1) Anki and JalupNext
    2) Netflix Japan aka the greatest thing ever
    3) PlayOn to rip videos from Netflix so that I can convert them to audio and add them to my ever-expanding immersion playlist on my phone.
    4) Tae Kim’s Grammar guide to help with those pesky grammar points.
    5) Kindle Japan

    Game Plan/Strategy:
    1) Break up Anki/Jalup study sessions into smaller chunks, rather than trying to do 100 card reviews all at once.
    2) Take advantage of breaks/slow times/lunch at work to bust out some cards.
    3) Listen to immersion playlist on the drive to/from work and while doing Anki reviews.
    4) Watch a new show on Netflix Japan after work while eating dinner
    5) Keep adding new shows to the playlist as I watch them.
    6) Tae Kim’s grammar guide is my bedtime reading until those grammar points stick.
    7) Then, once intermediate hits, Yotsuba& is my bed time reading.

  10. Average of two hours of Anki and two hours of immersion per day. This time I have a few more specific goals:

    40 cards added per day. This can be any combination of new kanji and J-J sentences.

    In addition to my immersion playlist, I’ll watch an episode of something each day.

    • 121.6 minutes of Anki per day
      45.8 cards per day
      …much less immersion per day

      Great month for active study, but I’ll have to reconsider my immersion resources.

  11. Let’s do better than last month!

    1. Speak in as much Japanese as possible at new waitressing job at a local Japanese restaurant. Most of the staff are native Japanese speakers. They talk to me in mostly Japanese and it’s really great for immersion.
    2. Overcome the Anki avalanche. I have a grand total of 1241 Japanese and Korean reviews sitting in Anki right now, and I know that if I don’t do them as soon as possible it’ll only get worse.
    3. Make a list of things that I want to accomplish while in Japan this August. I know that I want to buy a Japanese-Korean dictionary if I can find one, and there’s a lot of manga that I want to buy in Japan since I don’t have to pay international shipping fees while there. ;D I want to practice my spoken Japanese as much as possible before the trip so that I won’t be disappointed in myself for having a speaking ability like 20 levels below my reading ability. Sigh.

    • 1. This is going really well. I don’t work every day, but I speak in just as much Japanese as I do English while working and am immersed in the language while working. It’s so much fun,
      2. I’m getting there. My reviews are down to less than 600 now.
      3. I have made a list. It has a few volumes of manga, a Korean-Japanese dictionary, and iTunes gift cards written on it. Hopefully I’ll be able to buy everything on the list.

  12. Sure, I will do this this month.

    I’m currently about 120 cards into Jalup Intermediate. The transition is a bit rough, so I have been trying to average about 10 new cards per day. As there are 31 days in July, I’m hoping to add 310 new cards to review!

    As for kanji, I hit 1400 in June. I’ve really slowed down on adding the past month, as I want to get my daily reviews down to 100 or less, as I want to spend more time with sentences. I’ve almost succeeded in that regard. I usually add new kanji cards if I find a new one in Jalup or in my reading (currently reading the Pocket Monster Special manga), which adds up to about 10 per week.

    I might be having a job interview in August, so one of my goals is to at least show that I am trying to gain competence in Japanese. My current Japanese level might be way too low for it though.

    • Ok, more or less I hit this goal, except that I forgot I was going on a trip at the end of July! Therefore I’ve had to take a hit on my adding at the end of the month, so I got to about 250 intermediate cards. I guess there is still a few more days left in the month, I can still come close to 310 that I initially stated. I am still well on track to hit my goal of finishing Intermediate by the middle of October.

  13. Goals:
    1. Read all of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (in Japanese duh)
    2. Get my self made deck up to ~400 cards (currently at about 90). This will mostly happen as a result of adding words from Goal #1.

    Over the last month I’ve blasted through Expert 8 and Immersion 1. Now its time to actually do some immersion. I’ve started reading harry potter, and its challenging but great fun. My main problem though is I’m so slow because I keep stopping to add words. I’ve found an excel sheet with 5000 words from that book ranked in order of their frequency, so I’ll add the top 100 or so to Anki over the next week to help me out.

    • 1. After about half an hour of Harry Potter tonight, I will have ticked this one off. Yuss! First novel in Japanese. It really helped that I knew the story so well for sure. I’m stoked I got this done as I spent a fair bit of the month camping and rock climbing which doesn’t go well with reading a book. As a side note I’d forgotten how fun the HP books are.

      2. I didn’t add many cards unfortunately. It was kinda nice to let my reviews drop down, so I’m secretly pleased with myself for not meeting this goal lol.

  14. Now that is summer holidays I’ll try to do more immersion and less “being bad” doing L1 stuff.

    Goals:
    – Finish Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. I started time ago but I didn’t continue.
    – I’m upper-intermediate but still doing Heisig. I’m using the JALUP modification (only learn kanji used in words I know and use a Japanese keyword). My goal is to finish kanji in this month, or at least reach kanji 1857. (I’m using my own division, it would be reach “level 10”) I think this is my third attempt to Heisig. This time I’m finishing it.
    – Watch at least 250 episodes of anime, or it’s equivalent in minutes (example: a drama episode counts as 2 anime episodes because it’s 40min)
    – Try to reach 1500 sentences (not very important tho)
    – Finish 寄生獣 (the volumes I have)
    – Finish a game (not very important)

    Good luck to all!

  15. Goals:
    – Finish the first volume of 黒魔女さんが通る
    >>> I started that ages ago and dropped it for a while but recently started reading again. There’s roughly a third left of the first volume. My understanding of sentences in detail is really really poor, which can be a bit frustrating at times, but I do get the overall plot somewhat.
    – Reach ~450 cards in Jalup Intermediate at the end of the month.
    >>> That means I have to start a bit over 150 new cards during the month or 5-6 cards per day. I’m having a bit of a SRS fatigue currently, but that should keep reviews fairly low and hopefully manageable.

    Bonus goal:
    – Review all the second year Kyôiku Kanji with “Kanji Study” App
    >>> I can’t really decide whether I want to study kanji separately or not. I usually burn out on studying separately after a while, so I’ll have to see how it goes. So far I’ve started reviewing the 80 first grade and ~60 of the second grade kanji, so to reach that goal I have to review another ~100 kanji. I usually add new ones in stacks of 10, so that would mean a new stack every 3 days.

    • So here comes the end-of-month report!

      – Finish the first volume of 黒魔女さんが通る
      Done! Actually I finished that quite fast after writing the post, and the more I read the more fun it was. That was pretty cool!

      – Reach ~450 cards in Jalup Intermediate at the end of the month.
      Done! Only reached that goal a few minutes ago (I am now at 456/1000). I skipped a few days during the middle of the month and had to play catchup for a bit, but I’m pretty happy I reached that goal! I might take it slower next month though.

      Bonus goal:
      – Review all the second year Kyôiku Kanji with “Kanji Study” App
      NOPE. As I anticipated I found it to be a pain, but I think I will still continue using the app when I feel like it.

  16. My biggest issue is that I have a really hard time hearing Japanese at times, I’m going to school in Fukuoka, Japan at FFLC… but they prep you for JLPT with some crazy recorded audio from Minna No Nihongo and they speed those things up… and I already have a tough time hearing everything… immersion doesn’t work as well as it could for me personally because my brain wants to decipher everything heard… and while it does that it basically forgets everything said, or simply doesn’t hear it… really tough stuff. I’m great at kanji and my vocab tests, but chapter tests and listening beat me up.

    • One thing I’ve tried to improve my immersion experience is to basically sit there with my eyes closed for a couple of minutes before I even start listening and consciously push out, or stop all English monologue and thought. I make sure my mind is completely blank and quiet and there are no random English words popping into my head. Once I am satisfied with that, I then turn on a tv show or whatever and start listening. It took me a while, but eventually it became second nature. I sit there with a blank mind (Japanese is welcome) and I listen. Either I understand or I don’t. I accept that there is a lot I don’t understand. When an English word or phrase comes into my mind I chase it away. When a Japanese one comes in, I let it in. Maybe that won’t work for you or you have already tried it, but I hope it will at least give you some ideas on how to proceed.

    • Don’t let lies that you say to yourself about your nature confuse you. “My brain wants to decipher everything heard”. That’s probably because you didn’t listened enough Japanese. We all start immersing with the idea of “I want to understand all!” because of the ideas we were taught by society. Listen a LOT of Japanese, even doing another things, even don’t paying attention because you are doing other things. Maybe at first “your brain” will try to understand everything, but it’ll give up because it’s so much Japanese, constantly. You eventually will get used to not understanding everything, and you’ll start picking up things.

      PS: Maybe this is not very important to you, but just in case: if you want better listening abilities (aka better pronunciation because of the input->output rule) you want to focus on listening more than reading. You say you are far better on vocab and kanji. If your reading ability surpass your listening ability very much, your reading ability will “fill in blanks” when your listening ability doesn’t get some word when listening, so, if your vocab knowledge can help you while listening, why would your brain get better at “pure” listening ability? Because of that, your listening ability wouldn’t get as good as you would want. I repeat this is only if you want a really good pronunciation. If you are OK with a decent-good pronunciation, don’t bother and ignore all of this PS hahaha

      Good luck!

  17. 1. Finish Jalup Advanced and reach 105 (or more) new cards in Jalup Expert Stage 1. To hit my goal, I plan on adding 10-15 new cards per day. Last month was a killer, so I need to let the reviews settle down a bit and recharge.

    2. Read for at least one hour a day.

    3. Watch J Netflix for a minimum of one hour per night.

    4. Keep listening to J podcasts for 3+ hours a day.

    5. Shadow for a few minutes each day.

  18. 1. Read 日常 1 and 2
    2. do the immersion series cards for 日常 and ドラゴンボール
    3. Watch 6 dramas

  19. I’m back again after dissapearing, returning and then immediately dissapearing again. I’ve finished a year doing Japanese at Uni, which was basic and the new stuff I learn was mostly about the culture, history etc and some more vocab.

    I started studying for the JLPT N3 since last month and I’m wondering about buying a JALUP deck maybe now I am an adult at least some money. I’m not sure which JALUP deck would be useful for N3 though? Currently though I’m mining for sentences based on specific N3 grammar points using 2 N3 textbooks and the maggisensei and occasionally Tae Kim site, and for sentences based on N3 vocab from Tangorin and Jisho online dictionaries. Also working on my reading skill a bit by reading loads of manga.

    So my goals are based on there being 24 days left of July:
    1. Review 240 N3 kanji cards
    2. Review 240 N3 vocab cards
    3. Finish making and then review all the grammar point cards I’m making… I don’t know how many there will be… 240 would be nice.
    4. Mine some sentences from the 2 volumes of Gantz I read.
    5. Read 3-4 more manga volumes.
    6. Listen to a big chunk of the intermediate jpod101 stuff while at the gym, playing Darkest Dungeons etc. to actually use that subscription I got lol.
    7. Finish watching first season of Jojo
    8. Choose a new drama to watch and watch a season of that too.

    • Wow I actually found today this site called Animelon where you can stream anime with Japanese subtitles, click on words to look them up and then get little tests at the end.Jojo’s not on there so I may have to change the anime I’m going to watch for goal no.7

      • EVERYONE NEEDS TO VISIT THIS WEBSITE IT’S AMAZING

        I haven’t watched anime in ages because I’ve been frustrated at not being able to understand any of it (while I can get lots of some jdramas) but this will really help!!! I can make a bunch of anki cards for them!

        Thanks so much for telling us about it :)

    • Btw, oh god, please buy the JALUP decks. They are So Good and I’d have really struggled with the transition to J-J without them – especially since N3 is about the level where you want to do that. In fact, at the end of the beginner deck I found I was basically just starting N3 grammar so you could just get the first intermediate deck and see how you fare with it. The first 50 or so cards are quite difficult because you’re getting used to J-J and also being taught a bunch of “dictionary definition” words but after that you get the hang of it and by about 150 I was running along smoothly.

      Anyway, good luck.

      • Yeah I was thinkig about buying intermediate but the 100 card sample seemed really easy to me actually so i was worried i was gonna spend my money on something that I wouldn’t too learn much from until maybe the second half. I mean, Adam says it takes you to about level 30 and I’m somewhere between 20 and 30 so… I don’t know how I would switch to J-J without JALUP decks though, absolutely. All of my current N3 cards are J-E even though I should probably be J-Jing everything by now. The JALUP decks are really expensive though. Like a textbook is £30ish but JALUP is about £70 a stage. That’s a bit much for me considering I think I would move through intermediate very quickly and want to buy advanced soon. I’m only 19. My mother does not have that money so I have to consider whether I want to spend the money I have on that. If I was certain which level to buy maybe I would but right now it seems like I’d be committing to £140. He needs to offer a student discount lol.

        Currently I’m just hoping that if I study N3 J-E then I will have enough to work with to start J-J after that. Still sounds daunting though.

        • The N3 test is still 6 months away, so I think you could start J-Jing now and be fine. If it is the cost that is scaring you away, the manual, DIY method is always free. It is a pain in the ass however. I’ve tried it and it is hard, but it’s free. I think the sooner you do J-J the better, and you might find that 70 pounds is worth it after trying to make those j-j cards yourself.

          • I would have done the same thing in your position :’) And don’t forget that Adam gives refunds! If it does turn out to be too easy for you, you can get your money back! hurray right? There is nothing to worry about. (You have to get the refund within the first 30 days of your purchase…)

            • So far in stage one theres plenty of cards I already know but also enough that I don’t and I think the amount of unkown stuff can only go up so I think it will work out.

              I tried starting to J-J the decks I was making cards. Grammar cards were very easy to J-J, vocabulary less so. I could do it without too much branching by trying to find the simplest definition amongst 3 dictionaries, but it still was annoying. My mum then convinced me that I should invest in myself because conserving time can be as important as conserving money, which is usually my attitude too. I had to say to her that she wouldn’t pay for it if it was her, but anyway, I was convinced. I had to remember particularly that at one point earlier this year I did something as reckless as buying a pairof jeans for £90 and this is far more sensible in comparison. Hopefully this really works and streamlines my study.

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