Achieving Your Japanese Goals – August 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 August
Initial Instructions
Leave a comment by August 1st and include:
1. Your specific goal(s)
2. Resources you will use
3. Game plan/strategy
Completion Instructions
Reply to your comment by August 31st 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 July 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. 2 new kanji per day. I should be close to 1500 at the end of the month.
2. Learn all J-J sentence cards produced through the other goals.
3. Lots of immersion, especially listening.
1. Done
2. Done
3. Did OK, but could have done better.
1. Your specific goal(s)
– Reach card #250 in Jalup Beginner.
– Reach card #250 in Kanji Kingdom.
– Start into some initial immersion; watching Neko Samurai season 1 both passively and actively as time allows (I would like to spend at least 30 minutes each day, but life as a parent makes that difficult sometimes).
2. Resources you will use
I’m keeping it easy by focusing on using Jalup Next. I’ve already ordered Neko Samurai season 1 from Amazon.co.jp — yes, I’m getting the native Japan release. :)
3. Game plan/strategy
Keeping it simple! I do my Jalup reviews/learning usually in the morning, unless my day is too busy and then I try to catch them before I go to sleep at night. I plan to make my half hour of TV watching a pre-bedtime ritual. :)
Okay this month I am back to studying hard. I am going to try and finish Jalup Intermediate. I am just hoping my reviews don’t get too high (close to 200). As long as I avoid that I think I can manage. (~18-25 cards/day).
I am also starting some Pimsuleur japanese II audio lessons in the car. If I get through 10 lessons that would be nice. But that is a secondary goal for this month.
I want to continue my passive immersion audio loop. I won’t have much time for immersion otherwise. I aim to change that starting in September.
I really worked hard this month and it paid off. I finished jalup intermediate today! Even better after card 499 I went cold turkey and no matter how lost I felt I didn’t cheat once and use Google. It felt great. Sure tons of difficult periods, some bad days, and still a dozen or so words that feel pretty hazy even now, but I can say I’m officially fully j-j only.
I also upped my immersion a bit this month. I’m realizing how far behind I am with listening. I stopped reading yotsuba for now. I need more listening and talking practice not reading. So I started watching a new anime with no subtitles. Food wars. I understand only words here and there but trying to improve my listening skills.
I am also doing my immersion loop more often in the background though I still feel like I’m not doing it nearly often enough.
I also restarted doing shadowing while running. Recently I tried shadowing japanesepod101. I think I may try that for awhile unless anyone has better advice for my level.
I continued my in car pimsular Japanese 2. Up to lesson 9. So happy with that. It gives me listening and production practice I just don’t get otherwise.
I am busy for the next week and then will start shifting my focus in September. I want to go from 5% immersion 95% studying to closer to 50\50. I am going to take my time on advanced and finish by the end of the year so I can get much better with listening and speaking as well.
Congrats on finishing Jalup Intermediate and making it to official (no assistance) J-J :)
I’m hoping the heat wave that has been affecting my health goes away by August 1st, then I will return to adding sentences. I’m pulling stuff from Genki. I am in chapter 18, and I am hoping to complete chapter 20 by the end of the month.
My health did not improve this month, so mostly it was just keeping up with reviews. I did finish up chapter 18 of Genki, though. The crawl up to 1000 self made sentences is pretty slow, but it should be pretty easy to get to it next month.
Anki reviews are still high so no new cards for now. Follow this algorithm:
– If daily reviews fall below 50 start adding new cards
– If daily reviews go above 65 stop adding new cards
Hopefully this will keep it from overflowing.
Reading: Finish off 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱. Currently at page 150, about halfway through. As an incentive I’ll treat myself the new Zelda (in Japanese, of course) once done with the book.
Shadowing: Keep shadowing any new NISJ as always.
Anki – Managed to go below 50 and added 30 new ones in total
Book – Finished the book very early so I probably really wanted this game :P
Shadowing – Neglected :( 3 pieces due. Can still achieve this though, just need to take care of this by tomorrow
It was not a goal, but I also started to grind down the RTK deck that was left to pile up for a few months. It is now at 660 after being over 1100.
Last month was surprisingly productive with a ton of reading so I want to keep that up. I’m gonna:
– finiah intermediate 3, ofbwhich there are like 95 cards left. Finally. Whew!
– start intermediate 4! It really, truly took me this long (nearly 700 whole cards) to get comfortable with J-J definitions. I’ve heard people say it was faster for them; that it took them maybe 250 cards or 400, but in case anyone is really discouraged: me, I didn’t really get to grips with it til nearly the end of intermediate 3. Absolutely worth it, though.
I’m not going to try too hard to get a certain number of cards done – pretty sure the victorious feeling of having finished intermediate 3 will keep me going.
– read more Naruto! This won’t be hard, I have another two volumes plus up to 10 in the mail, and I’m really liking it. The manga definitely has something the anime didn’t; comedic timing maybe?
– actually get back into Hunter x Hunter; I was enjoying it a lot and then I just…didn’t watch any more? For some reason? Bleh. Anyway I’m literally giving myself a goal of 1 episode per week, even I can meet that.
– do *something* about my immersion listening thing. Like…I listen to some japanese music and the odd episode of ひいきびいき but I’m not super great. I had some drama CDs, maybe I should try those again, see if I understand more of them now. If I can get literally anything set up I’ll be pleased with myself.
What about picking up a bluetooth earbud for listening? They are small and not very visible. You can wear them almost all the time and have Japanese buzzing in your ear and it’s easy to pause. Many people will think it’s a hearing aid and not think you’re rude haha.
If it’s a matter of listening content, I found an awesome way to get content if you’d like to me to share.
Anyways, keep up the great work!
Work has really piled up on me, but last month I climbed out of my high level blues I got after finishing Expert. I suspended 200 cards I was having trouble with.
With this being the busiest time of year for work, my goals are simple:
– Suspended cards: unfreeze and relearn 5/day
– Add 10 new J-J cards/day
My new vocab is coming from the 1800 recommended key words from the children’s dictionary I have. Not every word is worth memorizing (when are you going to talk about 後書き?) but there are a ton of useful words in there I have yet to learn. It has been fun pouring through this dictionary for sure.
Will try to focus more on immersion rather than adding new cards this month.
1. Read 宇宙兄弟 6, 7 and 8
2. Watch 10 drama episodes
Yes, did them all .
I almost forgot to set up new goals, but they’re still similar to the ones I had last month.
1) Continue reviews, keep introducing 20 Expert cards/day.
2) Read となりの関くん第3巻.
3) Continue listening and keeping a log of what I’ve listened to.
Kind of a terrible month in progress for me. Reviews are sucking the life out of me, and I had a crisis at the start of the month that put me on catch-up.
I’m caught up in reviews, and I met my bare minimum for listening, but I only made it like an 8th of the way through となりの関くん第3巻. On the plus side I guess, I did read some extra stuff that wasn’t related to my goal, so I guess it isn’t all a wash.