The methods on JALUP are designed to level you faster than any other methods out there. But for some people, they want something more. They don’t just want to level, they want to power level. They want to have an advanced level right now. They can’t wait years. They have a deadline. They need it right now.
For the most part, people react to this with highly cynical “Impossible. You can’t get that good in Japanese that quickly.” This is true . . . mostly. However, there are ways to power level yourself to a very high level in a short period of time. But just because there is a way, doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do it. Learning Japanese at a normal rate is already difficult enough. Take that and double or triple your speed of learning. What do you think will happen?
I’ve never power leveled myself for an extended period of time, but have done it for short bursts. However, I know and have worked with people who have, and quite successfully. So I thought it would be useful to create a quick guide on this to those out there who are considering this tricky path.
Let me preface this post by saying that for most people I don’t recommend this. Your chances of burnout and quitting Japanese are too high. There is usually no reason for rushing, as the normal method already brings results quite fast. But if you are going to pursue this, you must be prepared for the all the trials that await.
Concrete Urgent Goal
Throw out your “I want to watch anime without subtitles,” or “I love Japanese culture and Japan,” or “l like Japanese music.” These goals are perfectly fine for ordinary studying, but not enough to push you through power leveling. You need urgent and specific goals that are life changing. The two (and maybe only) main examples I can think of:
– You need great Japanese for a specific job or job interview coming up. For example, you are entering your 4th year of university, graduating in May, and you have a job lined up. When your future job is on the line, you are willing to do everything you can to work for it.
– You will be living in Japan (for example as an English Teacher) with a precise start date on D/M/Y. To the dedicated learner, this creates a strong goal to get your Japanese up to an advanced level before you go, because your experience will be a whole different game if you go into Japan knowing the language.
– Any others you guys can come up with?
There can’t be any vagueness here. For example, take the two above and turn them into “I want to absolutely have a job using Japanese by February (even though you don’t have an interview or job lined up)”, or “I will definitely live in Japan by 2013,” even though you have no firm plan of getting there.
RTK Speed
Since RTK has always been the key to the fastest acquisition of kanji, picking up the pace on this is an absolute must. While normally you can go at a somewhat casual pace of 10-30 new kanji a day. You don’t have time for this. While not common, there are people out there who have done 100+ new kanji a day, allowing them finishing within a month.
What this results in are massive amounts of reviews due every day. Deal with it. While you will be forgetting new kanji constantly due to all the new kanji, keep reviewing them, failing them, reviewing, and failing, and eventually they will stick. Even once you finish RTK, your failure rate will be significantly high. Ignore this and just keep reviewing. Have faith in Anki. It will cover for your speedy ascent and eventually level out.
J-E and J-J Pacing
Similar to blasting through RTK, you need to at least plow through your J-E 1000 sentences. Before your immersion environment really starts to get kicking, you need the basics of Japanese (vocabulary and grammar) set up. Make it a priority to finish the J-E 1000 as soon as possible. Remember, this isn’t where you really start getting into Japanese, but it is just solidifying your base. Try to also finish this in less than a month.
Once you get to J-J, you can slightly slow down. You need to, because regardless of the power leveling, you still have to be ready to face the massive challenge of going from J-E to J-J. If you try to power level at this transition, I can see a super high failure rate, since the failure rate of doing it at a normal pace is already rough. Start off slow. Get your first 1000 J-J cards out slightly slower than your blast pace. As soon as you get used to it and into the groove of J-J branching, resume throttle speed.
Immersion
This is the most important force you must control and the determining factor of whether you will succeed or not. You have to take every single free minute of the day (yes every minute) besides sleeping time, and be listening to Japanese media. No gaps in passive listening. None. If you are with other people, one headphone in one ear. No excuses. You must rack up the hours here.
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Is this enough? No, not even close. These are the obvious observations. You are going to have to be prepared for a lot more changes and challenges.
Continued in Part 2: Reasonable time frames and forming your perfect environment for success.
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Wow! I feel Adrenaline just by reading this. Where’s the key to my Ferrari again?..?
Something that has always confused me is this whole blasting through anki cards. By going at a rate of 100 instead of 25, for example, are you really learning that much faster? Your reviews will be compounding on each other every day regardless. I feel as though, in the end, you’re in the same situation, if not worse. Instead of having new cards, you’ll just be reviewing a ton more than you would be if you completed it at a slower pace. Or am I missing something?
Then again, I guess if you have the time and anti-burnout ability/drive/etc. It won’t matter.
You’d be surprised. While yes, your card failure rate is much higher for a short while, it really does level out quickly, and you are already on the next phases. Reviewing Anki cards is easier than learning new ones, so the thought of still having to learn N new cards can be very daunting. So you are speeding though the learning new cards phase to the reviewing cards phase. The reviews will be harsher when you finish, but all you have left to do with RTK is review.
Also, let’s say you slowly go through 1000 RTK cards with a temporary retention rate of 90% as opposed to speedily going through 2000 RTK cards with a temporary retention rate of 65%. When you are entering the J-E phase you will have the following:
90% x 1000 = 900 kanji knowledge
65% x 2000 = 1300 kanji knowledge
And even if the numbers are slightly different, if you go at a slower pace, you are left with time that you can’t use. You can go through J-E cards, but once you are finished with that, it would be a real pain and not beneficial to hit up J-J cards before you finish RTK.
Remember, this is power leveling. Burnout is high. But there are people who can do it.
hehe, I’ve been “power leveling” for almost 2 years straight… took ~3 month break total. :P Currently, I’m at a point in which I can learn 400~600 words a day, in no more than 3hrs. I’ve been burnt out before but not with Japanese (with mathematics). I know what it feels like so… I stop learning when I’m in the “dim flickering like area” before the “total blackout”. Gradually pushing my limits until, the “total blackout” is no more.
2013 will be my 3rd year of self-study and my short-term goal was and still is…
ー＞ To encounter everything (and remember most) in Tagaini Jisho within 3 years, (learning) from ground zero. http://www.tagaini.net/about
I’ve never used RTK before, but in my opinion… it seems like a waste of time. Since learning radicals are an after thought, I think they should stay that way. The benefits are scarce and they’re main use is with a dictionary. （ー．ー；）When one knows how to learn kanji, they’ll realize that RTK slows down their overall progress. ~though, to each his own method
P.S.
I mix several languages, regularly… to improve comprehension, application, and etc. :P
Personally I really haven’t had great experiences with doing the whole immersion iPod thing because it always makes me feel very overstimulated. Also, if I do it for awhile it has a clear positive effect on my listening comprehension, but then if I stop it just kind of dies off which makes me feel like it has more of a temporary effect. Has anyone else had the same experiences with it?
Also, I have a hard time believing that it always has worthwhile effects compared to active listening. If I was going to be power leveling I feel like it would have a net positive effect on my results if I allowed myself some time to take a break from the Japanese input to avoid burnout. For example, maybe decide to watch four hours a day of television as actively as possible and then allow myself to fully relax at the end of the day and hang out with friends or watch a movie in English. Am I the only one that has come to this conclusion? Do you really think I’m missing out that much by not using full immersion?
The times that I have finally progressed the most have generally been the ones where I have a specific target for the day and after I have accomplished that goal I let myself chill out and do other things to recuperate. Even when I went through a period of extreme study mode and was doing 100 J-J cards a day for a few months, I felt like it was extremely beneficial for me to take much needed breaks from Japanese after accomplishing my goals for the day. I’m really curious about this because sometimes it’s hard to tell if I’m just not willing to push myself as far or something.
Hey, Jeff.
I see where you’re coming from. I have been finding ‘breaks’ to be beneficial as well. They allow time for things to seep in and let your brain do some crunching of its own, much like what an SRS is all about.
However, where I find to be the drawback is, when you give yourself that kind of break, it’s easier to rationalize that ANOTHER little break isn’t going to hurt. And then another. Eventually this can lead to a build up and you lose focus, not putting enough time into your overall goal.
But, if you can control yourself, keep your breaks limited, then it seems to be okay.
It is a dangerous road to cross, so be wary.
Agreed. In normal leveling breaks are necessary. But as you said, minimal and controlled. Most people have trouble with this, which is why as you mentioned to tread carefully.
I can definitely see what you’re saying and I have similar fears about it. Nobody wants to risk stopping a project like this after putting so much time in. But, particularly after one has made some solid progress, is there that big of a problem with taking another break? Is there always really that big of a chance of stopping for good? I think that after putting in a lot of time, the desire to continue progressing is a lot stronger than the chance of stopping and letting the time spent go to waste. I’m starting to feel like I often guilt myself into doing more in Japanese when it’s not always completely necessary. Do you have similar feelings or do you really feel like you are regressing and/or taking a big risk when you take a break?
It does take time to get used to the constant immersion. But I’m telling you from experience, eventually you will love it. You will actually feel lonely when you aren’t constantly surrounded by Japanese. You aren’t immersing yourself with lessons and drills. You are immersing yourself with your favorite TV shows, movies, music, and anime. While at first you have slight frustration because you aren’t understanding it, as time goes, and you slowly start picking up more and more, your immersion becomes that much more special to you.
And another natural progression is this relaxation time that people need will eventually be done in Japanese. The more you fall in love with Japanese culture and media, you will enjoy relaxing to it that much more. You won’t need to take a break from your studies because your break is your studies. You will eventually come home from a long day at work and actually want to relax by watching the newest episode of your favorite J-dramas or variety shows (and this sensation will come way before you are fluent).
It’s all about giving it time. It is a complete 180 degree change in lifestyle. I’ve found that those who benefit the most and succeed at it are those that realize this.
But again, it’s all really how bad you want it and how quick you want it. If you are in no rush to be fluent in Japanese, there is nothing wrong with that at all, and there is no need to rush. Enjoy Japanese at a pace that is comfortable and enjoyable to you.
I agree with everything you said completely. I’m actually fairly far along at this point (started this whole project about 4 years ago and I’m currently at 9500 cards) so I can understand most of the things I read and watch, but definitely not everything. I watch and read Japanese throughout every day, and I miss it when I don’t come into contact with it for a day. I take breaks to watch Japanese TV shows and movies because I love them and enjoy watching them.
But what about after you have watched that new Japanese TV show or movie and you still have 3 hours before you go to bed? Do you stick to a philosophy like AJATT and never let yourself interact with media that isn’t in Japanese?
For me I love Japanese media so I’m not going to stop reading/watching it everyday, but it can still be pretty exhausting not understanding everything. I guess this might be remedied through a different mindset, but after studying for this long I’m starting to feel like it might not be worth forcing myself to only do things in Japanese if there are things I want to do in English as well (as in, the benefits of having this more laid back attitude might actually have a net positive effect on my Japanese progress because I’m always more excited when I do watch Japanese TV shows or movies).
A big part of this is because I’m starting to feel pretty strongly that up until an advanced level when you can understand most of the things you are reading and watching, your time and energy is much better spent learning new vocabulary because that is almost entirely the reason you can’t understand the TV show or movie that you would love to watch. Do you agree with this?
I guess I’m mostly starting to get confused about why it seems like the online community of Japanese learners is so set on the idea that once you decide to study Japanese, doing things in English becomes a sin. And that painfully slogging through barely comprehensible books in Japanese is without question a better use of your time than learning some new words each day and maybe reading an easy manga before going about your life in English. Obviously once you have learned a hell of a lot of words and the world of Japanese is truly open to you, it makes sense to be watching/reading more but I’d be surprised if this didn’t happen naturally for anyone willing to put in the time to learn.
In other words, I don’t necessarily believe that during the long (long, long) path from beginner to advanced, someone who is learning 10 new words and reading some manga/watching an easy TV show with Japanese subs each day is really going to be progressing much slower than someone who is learning 10 new words each day and has changed his or her environment completely into Japanese. Because when it comes down to it, the media isn’t going to start coming into focus until the learner understands the words, regardless of how much he immerses. Does this make sense?
I guess I should probably preface this all by saying I wasted a significant amount of time and energy (years) when I first started learning Japanese after finding AJATT because I focused almost entirely on immersion and very little on vocabulary
and I’m still an incredibly bitter old man about it.(Sorry I keep writing so much! I would seriously just love to hear other peoples’ opinions on this because I think about it all the time. Also, thanks so much for the long and detailed response.)
You’re a lot further along than I am, and have been at this for quite a bit longer as well (I’m approaching the 1 year point), but I have to say that I’ve learned a good bit of vocabulary from doing just that, listening to music, watching dramas, playing games, watching Japanese people talk among themselves, or to me on occasion — not that I can really talk back all that well ^^ — without having the aim of learning vocabulary. It is more of an “Oh! So that is how it is said in that situation.” and since it struck such a strong response, I tend to remember it fairly well. And if I do end up forgetting it, I know exactly where I can go back to find it in most cases. Sure, I had to understand a good bit before I could learn meanings of words without looking them up (or even seeing them in some cases), but am still far from where I want to be. Also, while it didn’t happen as often, I did still learn words near the very beginning of my journey through watching drama without a good handle on vocabulary.
I would go as far as to say that a large portion of my vocabulary / phrases has come from my immersion environment, and isn’t something that I actively studied — not that I’m trying to put SRS down; it is works wonderfully in conjunction with an immersion environment, I think. Not only that, but it is responsible for the other large portion of my vocabulary. =p
Thanks for the response どうして. I’m envious of your positive approach towards everything. For me personally I still have a lot of trouble with the idea of fully taking the dive into immersion, but I can see how if I focused more on the things I did learn from immersion than how darn (I used stronger words at the time) frustrating it was, I probably would have gotten/would get much more out of it.
I answered the rest of your great questions in the newest (and definitely unplanned!) post here: http://japaneselevelup.com/2012/08/19/questions-from-a-skeptic-immersion-learning-doubts/
I want to use anki on a daily basis, but it’s easier to do things on the go while my day is in progress. I don’t have anything like an ipod, so I can’t use an app? Any suggestions, as I want to continue speed leveling (not neccesarily as fast as power leveling, byt faster than my normal pace) my Japanese during the school year. Perhaps I will just bring my laptop. If only there were a vocal anki I could use in the car…
A lot to think about.
Another motivation… going to Japan for a short while is a real life test of skills. Last time I went I felt depressed, yet invigorated to study because of me poor speaking ability. This time, being in Japan, I feel so happy. My effort paid off, as it’s an extreme improvement. Anyone who is going once, then again a year later or less has that time period to really power level.
Do you not have any means to access the internet? You don’t need an app to do your reviews.
http://ankiweb.net/account/login — login here and you will be able to do your reviews online.
Is there a way to connect my online deck with my computer deck? I created an account awhile ago, but couldn’t find a way to do so.
I guess I will do some experimenting with the site and try to integrate anki more into my life.
Yes there is!
Open Anki on your computer, and click settings, then preferences, then on the network tab. Enter your account information in there and set your sync settings as you like.
Open the decks you’d like to be synced and in the File menu hit sync on each of them, and they will be uploaded to your ankiweb account.
If you have it so it automatically syncs each time you open/close a deck (or anki itself) then it will keep everything up to date for you. Just don’t do reviews on ankiweb and on your computer at the same time. =p
Thank you for explaining! This will be very useful. I wonder if I can use AnkiWeb on my 3DS when I connect to the web.