Achieving Your Japanese Goals – April 2018
We all have goals, big and small. Things get in the way, preventing you from achieving them. Not any more. This time you are going to win.
Task
Write down specific goals you want to achieve for the month of April
Initial Instructions
Leave a comment by April 1st and include:
1. Your specific goal(s)
2. Resources you will use
3. Game plan/strategy
Completion Instructions
Reply to your comment by April 30th and include:
1. Which goals were you able to accomplish
2. Which goals did you fail (how far did you get)?
3. Your experience (issues, struggles, discoveries)
If you don’t come back and leave a reply, it will be assumed you didn’t meet your goals for the month. Pressure. But sometimes a little positive pressure can be a good thing.
Complete your goals, finally.
* Make sure to update your March goals!
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
1. Add back the rest of intermediate cards (750). These are all review after restarting my Anki deck so feel I’ll be able to do it.
2. Read 2 manga
3. Watch 8 tv shows
1. Not, 330 short
2. Almost, have 20 pages left to go.
3. No a few shows short although did watch some Japanese shows with my kids that month.
1. 1 card per day from Intermediate Situations.
2. 2 new kanji per day.
3. 6 new J-J sentences per day.
4. Lots of immersion, especially listening.
1. Done
2. Done
3. I’ve dialed this goal down a bit, so I complete all the J-J cards I produce, but that is not necessarily 6. I think I’ve average 4-5 per day.
4. I could have done better, but I got a fair deal in.
1. Begin Power Levelling!
2. WaniKani, Anki, A Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate Japanese Grammar, NHK Easy News
3. Finish learning new cards from Jalup Beginner (50 remaining)
Begin Jalup Intermediate, 30-40 cards a day, depending on how hard the transition to J-J is
Begin Core 10K, 20 words per day
Read 1 NHK Easy News article every day and look up new grammar in A Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate Japanese Grammar
Reach level 17 on WaniKani (currently level 13)
I’m a little bit late, oh well.
Jalup Beginner -Done.
Jalup Intermediate -Decided not to stick with it. I now learn grammar from the DOJG Anki deck, which I find is better for me.
Core 10K -I started it, but only added 100 cards so far.
NHK Easy -Never got around to it.
WaniKani Level 17 -Done
1. Finish the ~200 remaining Kanji of the RTK Deck – Marking the end of my hiatus of studying nothing besides Kanji.
Almost there!
Did it! Yes! I’m a little bit proud of myself. :D
Does anyone have a recommendation where to go from here with the kanji studies?
There are still quite a lot of jouyou-kanji I have not seen yet. Should I learn them only when I encounter them in the wild, or should I learn them directly?
Congratulations! I would say at this point you should just learn them as you see them but its completely up to you.
My main goal is to ensure I get through all my reviews every day, and to add at least 100 new cards to my sentence pile. I have to go to a conference for about 8 days, so if I can maintain my current add rate of 5 new cards per day, that will be something. I’m thinking it is unlikely during that period since conferences are always busy. My work is going to be pretty busy until the end of the month as well. Still, 100 cards will pretty much get me through the main lessons in Genki 1, just in time for going to Japan at the end of the month where I will get Genki 2.
I have to admit I didn’t quite reach my 100 card goal for April. It was even tough to keep up with reviews, as I was busy for a couple of weeks and didn’t even have time to do reviews. By the end of the month, I was caught up though.
Finish review Genji II
Genji II
どんな時どう使う
A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar (Basic/Int.)
The game plan is not to cry through it. No, seriously this book needs to go. I know most of the vocab already. The main push is going to be in refreshing kanji and learning the grammar points.
-aiming for lvl 6 on wanikani but reach at least lvl 5
-adding ar least 100 new cards from jalup beginners to my reviews
-jalup beginner
-wanikani
Just keep going
This month, I’m kind of redoing how I study Japanese into a more structured form.
1) 30 new kanji/day, bringing me from Heisig# 330 to 900
2) 10 new Jalup Beginner cards a day, phasing out cards from my old, slapped together deck as I come across duplicates.
3) Read となりの関くん vol 1
4) At least 80 minutes of new active listening a week
5) Add past listening to a passive listening playlist
Update:
Made a ton of progress on beginner cards. I’m actually finished with them and doing 25 intermediate cards a day now, for about my third day in at this point.
Keeping up with 30 kanji a day. I’m around 1170 into RTK, because I couldn’t math at the beginning of the month.
My new active listening is keeping up with my monthly goal, but some weeks I do 40 minutes and others I do 140 to make up for the previous week. Not ideal, but I hit a few roadblocks with kanji and actually putting the material into my passive listening rotation.
Passive listening itself is something I wish I did more of every day, but if I’m trying to do it while learning new cards it just interferes with my understanding in both. I’m able to do it whenever I’m driving or cooking. I usually forget to switch when I take a shower.
I had to shelf となりの関くん for the time being… I’m going to try again in another month when I’m a bit stronger on my J-J cards and I’m more accustomed to my copy of 大辞林.
1) Read 2 books.
2) Get to 4400 vocab cards (currently at 3850)
I should finish the novel I’m reading by April 1st, so excited to start reading more!
1) I read maybe a third of a book. Finding time has been harder than expected.
2) Done!!
I’m pretty worn out after learning ~1000 cards in one month (never gonna try that again!) so let’s take it easy this April:
– Review Anki daily, adding new cards is optional
– Take care of the neglected RevTK pile currently at 319 cards
– Shadow every new NISJ
– Reading is optional, to be done only after taking care of the above mentioned tasks
– Apply to JLPT N1 by 4/25
– Got Anki back under control, 0 new cards added
– Not a single review, it reached 608 in the meanwhile
– Got all of them but the latest 2
– Didn’t read
– Applied
Again, I don’t have super concrete study goals this month. I just want to continue building good study habits.
1. Finish Intermediate Deck and last few hundred spanish sentences
2. Jalup Next and Duo Lingo
3. Maintain 30-40 cards a day on days Jalup when I have college/work and ramp up to 70-100 a day during upcoming 2 week break from college/work. Maintain 100 spanish cards per day.
*Optional Bonus goal is to make a decent dent into advanced as well*
**Edit: Duo not Dou
1. Weekly lesson with Japanese Tutor
2. Read 3 pages of either 1 リットルの涙 or ラモーナとおかあさん a day
3. Clear Bunpro Cards every day
4. Listen for at least 20 mins per day (Youtube or show)
5. Do a little Jalup intermediate everyday
My Goal this month is to build habits. After working hard last month I crashed the first week of April and barely worked on my Japanese. Hopefully sticking to this daily plan again will help me as much as it did last month. 今月も頑張ります！
This month was hit and miss again. Only my immersion and weekly lessons were fairly solid.
1. Done (except one missed week)
2. Hit and Miss
3. No longer doing bunpro
4. Done and Done
5. I tried, but not everyday.
Listening is definitely a solid habit for me. I need to build better habits of reading and doing Jalup.
HI,
I began using ANki for kanji study just this month.
Unfortunately, the koohii hints are often disgusting, laced with derogatory sexual innuendo.
The writer has apparently been able to sneak them in.
I wonder what Japanese parents would think about people who accepted such comments in their program of study? They are offensive to women, and inappropriate in a teaching program. They pop up frequently per day, and are very distracting.
I would like to continue using this excellent kanji study program, but find it difficult to scroll past the male chauvinistic semi pornographic comments without having to notice them.
Can you give some examples please?
That is unfortunate. Since I’m assuming you are doing an RTK deck in Anki, if it is offensive you might want to just create your own stories for the deck and not visit the Koohii site.
I’m in Japan for a couple of months, and I am making Japanese study a high priority. I’m aiming to do at least 10 new cards per day, and immersing as much as possible. Of course, the last week of the month I probably won’t do anything, as my wedding is on May 26! There will be lots of family and friends coming out, and I will be busy showing them around Japan.