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Achieving Your Japanese Goals – January 2018 — 27 Comments

  1. Immersion,

    Binge on Crunchyroll when possible, otherwise just a couple episodes a day. Passive immerse all day: MP3 player.

  2. 1. Finish the remaining two hundred or so cards in Jalup Advanced

    2. Complete at least half of the BunPro N3 section with 121 grammar points this should end up being around 15 cards a week or 3 cards daily

    3. Finish volume 3 of Fairy Tale

    4. Review 600 new cards from Core2K or about 22 cards a day

    5. Branch 10 cards a week

    • Results:
      1. Let’s see I completed Jalup Advanced earlier this month. I’ve also decided to take a break from adding new cards

      2. I currently only have about 40 grammar points remaining in the N3 section of BunPro of the 121 grammar points currently available

      3. Sadly I stopped reading Fairy Tale for a few days, which then turned into a few weeks so I have not finished reading volume three yet

      4. I ended up going at a slightly slower pace than 22 cards a day. I only ended up adding about 500 cards to my reviews this month

      5. Along with quitting Fairy Tail my branching has also fallen by the way side this month. I maybe branched ten cards this month if that

      Going Forward:
      I’ve decided to change up my study habits quite a bit. Both Jalup Next & Core2K will be taking a backseat as I focus more on BunPro and a lot more on kanji.

  3. – Finish Jalup Immersion stage 5 – should take about a week.
    – Continue Beginner Situations stage 2 at 1 card per day.
    – Lots of immersion, especially listening.

    I will probably add more kanji and J-J cards on my own as well based on immersion, but I’ll consider that bonus goals :)

    • 1. Done.
      2. Done.
      3. Sort of. Lots of reading, but I feel I should have done more listening.

      On the plus side, I have been adding new kanji and J-J cards at full speed all month and am quite happy with that.

  4. Restart on Intermediate deck, start back up with J-J and increase my immersion tenfold. I really need some help in this area and I am definitely open to suggestions. Currently, I am watching my hero Academia season one with Japanese subs. I am looking for shows good shows with Japanese subs. I am open to anime or dramas. also, I want to add more thing to my immersion playlist as well it has become stale. Hit me with your favorite shows!!

    • For immersion, podcasts may be the way to go. Japanese Listening Advance might still have a site up so you have scripts to reference.

      As far as shows, Netflix really hits my sweet spot since it has JP subs for originals and you can rewatch shows like Black Mirror dubbed in Japanese. I finished Million Yen Women and Midnight Diner. Still working on Samurai Gourmet and Terrace House: Aloha State. The anime Ajin has JP subs.

      Good luck!! I’m still figuring out my goals.

    • Finished MHA season one. Finished Inuyashiki the last hero, Started and caught up with black clover, Finished Devilman crybaby. I also bought a small mp3 player and try to stay immersed when I can even at work. I stopped the intermediate deck only to start my own J-J sentences. I’m 42 sentences in and I’m feeling great.

  5. – Read one short story
    – Watch 12 episodes of not-yet-chosen anime
    – Catch up with the long neglected yomikata deck. At just about 300 cards due, I might as well finish it this year
    – Get RTK deck down to 0 at least once a week, preferably every day
    – If Anki review load goes below 50 a day start adding 5 cards a day. First add the 322 cards required to reach N2 level while suspending the rest. On top of that, un-suspend cards for words when they are learnt by immersion.

    • – Read 果てしなき多元宇宙, done within first 2 weeks, it was a breeze. Feeling ready to step it up a bit with reading, so I ordered 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱.
      – Watched entire first season of Psychi-Pass, total 22 episodes. Watched the first episode of the second season but didn’t get into it so I stopped there.
      – Done, and now it’s part of the main deck so it’s taken care of daily.
      – Done everyday.
      – Reviews stabilizad on 50-60 range for quiete a while so I just figuered if I don’t start adding new cards as long as it’s over 50 it might take too long, so for about a week now there’s varying numbers of new cards a day, depending on the learning new words from reading pace. If there are no words from reading I just learn what’s left of JLPT N2 list, which is already below 300.

      Wow, actually cleared all goals this time, I’m so fuckin awesome

  6. First of all, happy New Year’s Eve to everyone! 2018 is going to be an awesome year for sure.

    Kanji reviews (and adding new cards) from Kanji Kingdom are currently taking more than 80% of my Japanese study time. Since we’re on holidays, I can manage it right now. But I’m starting on February my hardest college semester (a lot of subjects that are really hard), and I want to lower my kanji review influx before things start to get really messy towards April so I’m gonna have to do a final push up on Kanji Kingdom in order to reach 2000 kanji before March ends; then I’ll take a rest from kanji and will finish the 300 remaining cards from the deck once summer comes.

    My goals for January are:

    -Reach 600/1000 cards on Jalup Intermediate [291 new cards as of now]
    (current progress: 309/1000)

    -Reach 1600/2300 cards on Kanji Kingdom [291 new cards as of now]
    (current progress: 1309/2300)

    Once February comes, my card count between Jalup Intermediate and Kanji Kingdom will grow out of sync, since I’ll maintain the same pace on Jalup Intermediate (300 new cards) whereas on Kanji Kingdom I’ll only be adding 200 new cards, or rather 2 new kanji chains a day instead of fluctuating between 2 and 4 new chains a day (which is what I’m currently doing). This will help easing my reviews before I stop adding kanji in April, since my subjects are gonna take a lot of my study time.

    皆、頑張りましょう!

    • Okay, I got to 640/1000 in Jalup Intermediate (which means I went over my goal), and only reached 1507/2000 on Kanji Kingdom; but this is because I decided really early in the month that I wanted to lower the pace back then instead of waiting until February. That’s 200 cards, just like I said at the end of the post I’d be achieving, so overall I’m glad with how I did this month.
      I felt a slight difficulty spike on Jalup Intermediate towards the 500 cards count, but I think I’m past it and I’d say now I understand J-J definitions a little bit better! Which is, of course, always an amazing thing.

  7. 1. complete the N4 vocabulary deck
    2. finish Genki Chapter 13, 14, and 15 (using Anki as well)
    3. start reading the Japanese version of the novel “Kafka on the Shore” and see how far I get (depending on when it will be delivered) + add most important words to Anki deck
    MOST IMPORTANT: WORK ON THAT BORING ESSAY FOR SCHOOL XD

    • Thought the month is not over yet, I want to document my made progress. I finished the N4 Vocab deck and Chapter 13, 14 and 15 of Genki. Now I will start working with the Kafka On the Shore book.

  8. Since there isn’t a post for goals of the year I will include it here
    0. First and most important, stick to japanese through the whole year!! I have always been a “serial restarter” as I like to call it, but now for once I have been at it for a little over two months! I have never spent a full month on japanese, so this is great progress. Hence why my goal 0 is to stick to it all year!
    1. Finish Jalup Intermediate & Advanced, and make it to at least 1500/2000 from Expert!
    2. Finish Kanji Kingdom – as I immerse more and more I realize how important kanji is, so after I finish intermediate, I intend on shifting my focus towards finishing kanji.
    3. For immersion, just to keep up with it! As I get further I want my focus to switch from watching to reading, so I want to read lots of manga and introduce light novels too once I reach advanced!

    Goals for January:
    1. Bring reviews down to 0 EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
    2. This month I want to try to finish Jalup Intermediate, so my goal will be 15 cards per day of that, but keeping the kanji at only 1 sequence per day, so 3-4 kanji. If that is not maintainable I will go down to 10 sentences but hopefully that will be ok.
    3. Now immersion wise I think I am doing very well so far, so my only goal is to fix my passive immersion. By that I mean go through what I have and remove parts that have annoying sounds or long periods without speaking, AND also start a new system to keep adding new passive immersion to my phone. Gotta make sure it is varied and doesn’t get boring!

    • Massive change of plans: I have come to the realisation that I need to go back and finish doing kanji, because it is getting increasingly harder to progress without proper kanji knowledge. So, I have decided to stop adding new sentences (will still do the reviews), and focus on learning new kanji (through kanji kingdom), at a 15+ kanji per day pace (so around 5 kanji chains). On top of that, I realized that I had been unintentionally cheating in my reviews; I would only pay attention to the one kanji being tested in the card and that was it, but in reality, I have to be able to read the whole sentence including the older kanji too. And so, while it takes a lot longer, I will now be going through the entire kanji chains when doing my reviews, not strictly the kanji being tested, as it is supposed to be. I am hoping that doing this for the next 2-3 months will help me go back into sentences and have an easier time!

  9. 1. 100 new J-J cards. This will finish expert stage 7 and start stage 8.
    2. Read 1.5 manga (しろくまカェフェ)Finish the one I’m currently working on and as well as a new one.
    3. Needs some opinions on immersion. I was thinking my new goal was to watch 1 new movie a week. However, I was going to get them from Amazon and I don’t know how to download the audio only. I have 50 hours in my immersion player already so won’t run out of things to listen to during passive immersion. Is it okay to watch things only once and not add to the passive playlist?

  10. With the new year, I am hoping to finish up my Joyo Kanji meaning deck by mid-March. I currently have 326 cards left, so if I go five new cards per day, I should be able to accomplish that (accounting for the fact that there will be days where I can’t do reviews. For January, I’m hoping to add 130 new cards. Since I was adding 10 cards per day during the Christmas break, my short term review count is getting pretty high, but I expect it to go down a bit during the month when I am adding fewer cards.

    Since I finished Jalup intermediate during the Christmas break as well, I’m going to start making my own cards in Anki. I’m going to crank down the starting ease to 130%, and see if this works better than my previous attempts. Going through the Jalup decks have given me a pretty good idea of the kind of sentences I think will aid me in my learning quest. I’m also thinking of trying an experiment, where the newly added word will be underlined and not using the kanji – so that I can improve my recollection of the kanji words. I know that the Jalup method says you should learn to read the kanji, but I find that this isn’t working well for me, and I always forget the pronunciation, and cannot connect a particular reading to a particular kanji easily for new compounds. My thought is to have the word written in kana (i.e. if it is a purely hiragana word, I will write it in katakana and vice versa), and have the learning word underlined. I then write down the word and see if I get it right. I’ll see how that goes and report at the end of the month. In addition to the dictionary definition, I’m hoping to add some context to the answer side to help things along, since dictionary definitions are really dry. My goal is to make 75-100 cards this way, being realistic with my time.

    For passive learning, I’ve been slacking a bit. I’m going to try and listen to NHK News podcasts again at work.

    • It is almost the end of the month, and I have attained my goals in terms of kanji (adding about 130) and sentences (creating 100 cards). I only started on the new cards last week, as I was still getting about 100 Jalup reviews per day most of January, and I didn’t want to get overloaded. I started getting sentences and vocabulary from a book with vocabulary designed for the JLPT N4 test. I’m hoping that I will be at a level to take this test in July.

  11. 1. Watch at least one episode of a Netflix original each day.
    2. Read my remaining volumes of Dr. Slump, Dragonball and Naruto to get my mind caught up to speed on reading again. At least 20 minutes a day.
    3. Power level RTK for a week at 50 new cards a day and then drop back to 20 each day.
    4. Week 3: start Theme deck at 3 cards a day for Branching the J-J definitions.
    5. Passive Listening: NHK, old Kojima episodes, and a film podcast I found.

    I’m focusing on active study for two hours a day, starting in the morning after my routine. I’ll listen to podcasts throughout the day, replaying the same podcast episode each day.

  12. Now that RTK is out of the way, I want to expand my vocabulary and study up on grammar. I’ll be looking for new immersion material as well, and hope to get better at my listening skills. Familiarizing myself with kanji readings will be another priority. I’ve found a lot of Japanese news sites and such that can aid in my reading practice and help me to accumulate new words. Simple flashcards have proven to be the best way for me to remember everything, so I’ll be using a mix of Anki and Quizlet for that.

  13. – Get reviews back down to zero

    – Start all the cards in Jalup Intermediate (81 cards to go)

    – Get started with Jalup Advanced (let’s make 20 cards the goal!)

    – Read the first two storylines in 黒魔女さんが通る!! Vol 3

  14. This month I’d like to finally get out of this study slump. I spend quite a bit of my free time immersed in Japanese, but when it comes to actually studying I’ve had trouble building momentum. However, with the start of the new year I do feel some energy, so I will try my best once again.

    Japanese goals:

    1. Get my 446 Jalup reviews back to zero.

    2. Finish Jalup beginner situations stage 1 (writing practice).

    3. Participate more in Japanese twitch chat (vague goal but still). Those who practice, are the ones who are getting better.

    4. Finish Chapter 2 of my intermediate text book.

    Spanish goals:

    1. 99 anki reviews to zero.

    2. Finish chapter 4 of my beginner text book.

  15. I just got the Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Course for Christmas, so I’d like to start using that and get serious about my kanji study. Not sure what I will use to study sentences yet, but I have the Memrise app that teaches some helpful vocab. Hopefully I can get my hands on a real textbook soon lol.

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