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Achieving Your Japanese Goals – February 2020 — 19 Comments

  1. Goals for Feb, keeping it simple as I’m going to Japan beginning of March (first time!)

    1. RTK – Another 105 cards (takes me to 900)
    2. Erin.ne.jp – Complete all lessons (currently at lesson 7, so far each session has been around an hour)
    3. Do JALUP/RTK reviews every day

    I’m taking the pressure off myself for this month, just want to keep things rolling.

    • Goals for Feb checked off :)

      1. RTK – Another 105 cards (takes me to 900)
      – I’m at 892 (end of chapter, so happy with that)
      2. Erin.ne.jp – Complete all lessons (currently at lesson 7, so far each session has been around an hour)
      – I have watched all 25 episodes of Erin Ga Chozen on Youtube, I got up to lesson 9 – I’ll call this a half-win
      3. Do JALUP/RTK reviews every day
      – Check and check

    • Addendum

      I just read this bit of the blog post
      “Your experience (issues, struggles, discoveries)”

      So for point 2:
      I was initially excited at doing Erin website lessons, I found that I was able to understand quite a bit having recently completed intermediate. In particular I could read the questions in Japanese. I found this excitement dwindled quickly, and my motivation to go back to it dropped off.
      I think this is because the questions are similar from lesson to lesson, and the novelty wore off after a few lessons.

  2. Not much new for me as well:

    1) Keep adding new cards, now from Jalup Expert (omg I am at Expert already).
    Will try 15 cards per day. As I mentioned 20 would be doable but the reviews would probably become too much after a month or two of doing 20/day. 10 of the other hand feels too little, so lets see. Will not consider this one a failure if it is any number between 10 and 20.

    2) Carry a Japanese book or something else to read around whenever I leave my house.
    I need to read more. With this goal I want to ease the access to reading immersion during the short downtimes throughout the day. Have been doing this for the couple of days, worked well so far.
    Also want to figure out a way to get ebooks on my reader (whole chain from finding a appropriate store to the thing displaying everything correctly). Otherwise, if someone can recommend an good android app for reading Japanese ebooks I would appreciate :-)

    3) Keep adding selfmade cards. Was a lot of fun (even the frustration of branch-drowning, it is kind of a puzzle) last month. So want to keep doing it. I want to do a bit more than last month but not force myself too hard, so different goal levels:
    a) I will consider this a failure if I added less than 4 cards in total.
    b) I reasonably expect a progress of 6 cards in total
    c) Super-rainbow-unicorns: 8 or more new cards

    • Saved by the leap day to post this in time :-)

      1) Did that but at the lower end. I am – before adding cards on the 29th – at 450 cards, starting at around 100 if I remember correctly. Still a success by the standard I set at the beginning of the month.

      2) I did that! And it did in fact get me reading in those smaller breaks (e.g. in the bus), at least for the first half of the month. But I also figured out that I really need to find an interesting book to get me motivated – when the one I was reading suddenly turned into something much more interesting than it appeared from the first half it was much easier to finish it. So probably I should figure out how to find interesting books in Japanese…though I already struggle with this in German and English

      3) I did 5. Considering how busy the 2nd half of the month got I am still happy with only making the lower goal level (in the end thats what this was for).

      Overall the month got really work-related stressful which cut into my Japanese time (or motivation to do sth when finally arriving home). To frame it positively, still having done everything I set out to do shows that I managed to properly set up routines for integrating Japanese study into my life :-)
      Language-wise the whole month I was struggling (and still am) with the knowledge that I am on the right track but the journey has come down to “do what I am doing for a very long time” which feels dull. Maybe I need to shake things up, but on the other hand I *am* progressing, so why change.

      • Finding something interesting to read is a big challenge for me, too. I went a few times to a Japanese bookstore in Düsseldorf. But it is too overwhelming and difficult to choose a book in a store. I do not like it for German books either. I think, I will try to switch to Japanese Kindle, if it will work, so I can choose a book more thorough. Perhaps there is also the possibility to read an extract before buying.

  3. My goals are the following:

    Books: Reading 2 Light Novels (Most likely 狼と香辛料 Volum 2 and 3)
    Manga: Reading 15 Manga Volumes
    Learning 15 Anki Cards each day
    Listeining to 2 Audible Audio Books (転生したらスライムだった件 Volume 3 and 4)
    Don’t switch back to English playing Final Fantasy 14

    The toughest Part will be reading 狼と香辛料 dont know if will switch to a more simple one but I will consider it a success as long as I read 2 Novel Volumes. Will definitly be tough to finish all that reading but it will be a nice Challenge.

    • Didn’t manage as much as I wanted, stopped reading 狼と香辛料 after 30%. But then I switch to ハルヒ. And at least read 1,5 Volumes of that so at least i was around 2 Volumes. Manga Volumes I read around 13.

      But with the rest I managed my goals.

      I think my biggest Problem this month was trying to read 1 whole novel volume and then 5 Manga Volumes. It was tough because the switch meant not doing the other one for a very long time if I felt like continuing to read the next volume of the manga or the novel.

      So at the end of Month I change my approuch to always switch after 20% of a novel and 1 manga volume. Which made the expirience more fun and gave it a better balance

  4. WaniKani: Level 15 (524 Kanji, 1,636 Vocabulary)
    BunPro: Finish JLPT N5 Grammar Deck
    Immersion: Yotsubato (Vol.2), 2-3 hours a day of active immersion, 4-5 hours a day of passive immersion.

  5. Well after falling off the wagon for about a year and a half, then getting to 0 reviews twice, I’ve been continuing my JALUP journey recently.

    This month I want to continue the good progress I’ve had these past weeks and keep doing

    1) 8 Jalup Beginner cards daily to finish it on the 29th
    2) 2 chain links in Kanji Kingdom daily(6-8 cards)

    I’m pretty far behind in KK (356 compared to 780 in JB) so I’ll probably just do my JB reviews until I hit 1000 KK before moving on to Intermediate

    • Happy to report that I’ve completed Jalup Beginner! This feels like a big milestone in my Japanese learning journey, as maybe I can leave the perpetual beginner phase behind for good :D

      1) 8 JB cards a day was really not bad at all, though near the end the readings some of the vocab words were hard to memorize. SRS worked its magic though and my grasp of them gets better and better.

      2) 2 chain links daily quickly became too slow of a pace for me, and some days I did as many as 8 (12-16 kanji). I feel like this month was a true breakthrough in my ability to learn and remember kanji. I’m now 597 cards in as opposed to 356 at the start of Feb.

      Thanks for the amazing system and for these monthly goal pages, such a good idea!

  6. I am looking to continue on last month’s momentum. I do have a trip this month but hopefully it won’t derail me too much.

    In order of priority:

    1) Continue jalup champion, pace 12 cards/day. This should have me 2/3 of the way through by the end of the month!

    2) Continue shadowing, complete at least 1 more unit, but most importantly practice at least 15 min per day (ideally double that).

    3) Read accompanying manga to jalup champion as I finish the cards.

    4) Continue Terrace House Original, at least 8 eps again which brings me through episode 19

    • February went well, especially for a short month and the trip I had. I did 12 cards a day, only one day did I do 8 because I forgot to preload the next batch and I finished while out of town. Shadowing continues to feel like it is exactly what I needed. Way more often spoken Japanese is making sense to me and my processing speed continues to improve for spoken Japanese. I have way more to do here but progress is happening again so that is great!

      In Detail:
      1) Continue jalup champion, pace 12 cards/day. This should have me 2/3 of the way through by the end of the month!
      DONE – At Card 204 in stage 3 of Champion

      2) Continue shadowing, complete at least 1 more unit, but most importantly practice at least 15 min per day (ideally double that).
      DONE – not sure my average but probably 20-30 per day easily. I also completed 2 units again, double my goal and without rushing.

      3) Read accompanying manga to jalup champion as I finish the cards.
      DONE

      4) Continue Terrace House Original, at least 8 eps again which brings me through episode 19
      DONE – got a few extra in and ended at episode 23

  7. 2月のゴール:
    毎日2、3カードを学びます。レビューをします。テレビドラマを見たりポッドキャストを聞いたりします。シャドーイングもします。

  8. Will only keep track of cards, not immersion, as I was inspired by Adam’s prior post not to try to make immersion a duty but rather try to keep fun.
    1. 100 new cards from expert 6.

  9. I hope no one minds me re-using this thread for Feb 2022:
    500 kanji cards (690 unseen at the end of the month)
    5000 XP (I am using XP navi)

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