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Achieving Your Japanese Goals – June 2019 — 24 Comments

  1. In May, I finished adding cards in RTK. Unfortunately I was unable to keep up with reviews. My goal for June is to get my RTK Anki reviews down to 0.

    My second goal is to finish Jalup Intermediate, currently at 650.

    My third goal is to spend some time with immersion and just enjoy Japanese.

    My strategy is to keep doing what I’m doing, studying throughout the day whenever I have a chance. It has worked so far!

    • Get RTK Anki reviews down to 0: Done. It was hard and it took way more time than I thought it would, but I did it. I still have way too many daily reviews to get thorough and it takes more than an hour every day, but I hope that by the end of July my reviews will go down too. At least I no longer have to add more RTK cards!

      Finish Jalup Intermediate: Done (That is, I currently have 50 cards left, but I’ll get through them by the end of the month). Because of the mountain of RTK reviews I haven’t been able to keep up with Jalup reviews, and now I have a backlog there. My goal for July will be to get through the Jalup backlog too.

      Immersion and enjoy Japanese: I did listen and read a little, but not enough. I hope that I can do more of that in July too.

      All in all, I’m happy with where I am. I want to spend more time enjoying Japanese and less time doing Anki reviews, but I know it’s a necessary evil right now. I’ll get my rewards soon enough.

    • I did it! Just. I raced through 6 at the beginning of the month, read 3/4 of 7 and then forgot all about the goal until yesterday, so I had to read like mad to get to the end. Not sure how much I actually understood of the last chapter!

  2. My goal for June is 900 cards, plus the usual immersion from many different sources.

    Btw Adam, thanks so much for your awesome awesome timing on the Hero deck which worked out quite well for me! I was so happy to see that update because I was already preparing the switch to Anki haha.

    • June had more setbacks than I wanted. This past week I didn’t add new cards at all, and my reviews were okay but I used vacation mode more times than I cared for. This was all due to unforeseen circumstances but I’m hoping for July to be much better. I’m currently at 900 expert deck cards. I want to put more effort into immersion this month as well.

  3. My goal for June is to start timing my flash card sessions using a stopwatch on my computer. I’m shooting for 30s per card and 1m for new cards. This should help prevent me from distracting my self with the computer and from stagnating on any particular card as I am trying to beat the clock. It also gives me a competitive incentive to close out the cards as I want to do them in a good time.

    I’m also going to briefly try studying kanji without writing them all out every time. While the writing is fun, I’m lagging behind my other card set because of it and I’m not able to do it when there isn’t a notebook near. I would like to try and get to a place where I am more consistently adding cards, but that isn’t a goal for this month.

    While I don’t like setting flashcard adding goals, I would like to finish up jalup beginner this month. I think 30 cards a week is achievable if I stick to timing the study sessions. As always, this will be with the incoming card count taken into consideration so I don’t overload my review session later in the week/month

  4. Was recently laid off from work, so I’ve decided to take some time off to focus on learning Japanese. As such, my goal is to get through 2,000 cards (all of Jalup Expert and Hero) in the month of June. After I finish Jalup Hero, I’ll have to decide whether I want to move to Anki and continue with Jalup Master, or just spend the extra time reading light novels while I wait for Jalup Master to come to the Jalup App (on that note – Adam, are you planning on bringing that series to the app, or is it going to remain anki-only for the foreseeable future?)

    I’ll be studying from when I wake up around 7:00am until the time I would normally get off work, sometime between 5 and 6. Every hour or two I’ll take a break to watch an anime episode (un-subbed) to help me keep focus while I’m studying, gain some benefits of immersion, and keep my motivation up.

    Biggest risk is if I start something that would keep me from focusing on studying first and foremost, such as a new game. I think I should be able to follow through with my plans, though.

  5. A different month for me since I am in Japan all month. My focus is the following in order of priority:

    1) at least one Japanese conversation a day
    2) keep up with all reviews
    3) try to make progress on my Grammer book

    • Great and very different month for me. I had at least one Japanese conversation everyday and a bunch of little ones when at restaurants or stores and such.

      As I expected since I have almost no speaking practice it was slow going. Reading went great. Listening okay. Talking had it’s good moments and bad. But I had a number of conversations I was proud of over the month with extended back and forth all in Japanese.

      Restaurants and stores was pretty easy.

      I do feel like I may want to start doing more focused listening practice. I am sharing doing lots of immersion, but I feel like I may need something a bit more active. I have some ideas but if you have suggestions I would love them.

      I did great on my other goals too. Kept up with all reviews. I am basically finished with my Grammer book too (Japanese the Manga way). Chapter 30/32. If anyone is looking for a Grammer book for people who don’t like Grammer I highly recommend it. It was easy being this far into jalup and I didn’t learn anything new. But it cemented a ton of concepts. Explained things I kind of knew, etc.

  6. This month I want to finish Rising of the shield hero volume 2 of the light novel. When I finish that I want to start reading the first volume of 世界から猫が消えたなら

    • If you like 世界から猫が消えたなら, make sure to also check out 億男. Also there is a very well acted audio book of 世界から猫が消えたなら on audiobook.jp that I just listened to, that was very enjoyable.

  7. Summer break at last! Gonna buckle down and focus now that I have no other stuff.

    Goals:
    *Keep up with Anki
    *15 new mined sentances/day, J-J if n+1
    *at least 2 or more hrs of immersion, at least 1 hour listening
    *1 hour of MangoLanguages a day till finished
    *If finish Mango, 45 min shadowing a day

    Resources:
    Pokemon Ultra Moon JP language
    Xenoblade 2: Torna, the Golden Country JP voice
    Hollow Knight JP language
    The Magician’s Nephew JP ver
    ゲームなんとか podcast
    Sound Library podcast
    Various random Japanese kids books

    My goal is to be n2 in 3 years time (n1 is a veeery far stretch goal) so I really wanna start good habits over the summer that will carry through to the rest of the year and hopefully the next few.

  8. Finish Jalup Hero (ETA 900 cards left).
    Do well at Japanese school (Minna no Nihongo).
    Talk in Japanese to baito coworkers.

  9. Goals: finish making Anki cards for elementary grammar points, keep up with reviews (kanji, vocabulary, sentences), learn 30 to 50 new kanji, begin producing (writing) Japanese sentences.

    Resources: Genki I & II, Wanikani, JALUP Beginner, Anki, language exchange apps (HelloTalk, iTalki, HiNative, etc).

    • I reached all my learning goals for the month. The biggest struggle for me at this stage is just getting used to a vastly different style of grammar, such as 助詞 particles determining roles and relationships of words in sentences, though it should get easier with more exposure and practice.

      From this point, I’ll be working on the grammar I’ve seen, learning new kanji, and reviewing JALUP Beginner before starting JALUP Intermediate.

  10. 1. 100 new cards (finish expert stage 2 50 cards left + 50 from expert stage 3)
    2. Read 宇宙兄弟 20 and a few pages from こそどの森の物事語 (first time trying a novel)
    3. Watch 10 episodes — working on Good morning call from netflix episode 7, goes up to 17 so finish the season.

  11. 1. Try to finish JALUP Beginner (about a third through)
    2. JAPUP
    3. Daily regime of review during lunchtime and new cards in the evening

    • I could complete JALUP Beginner level by sticking to a daily regime. I did reviews usually in the morning before starting work, and learned new cards either at lunch-time or in the evening.

      I think the challenge is getting into (and maintaining) a solid routine, despite the work/life pressures. The value of a routine is huge.

  12. Just starting to get back in to learning japanese seriously after a long wishy washy period. My goals are as follows:
    Learn 2 to 6 kanji a day with vocabulary from kondansha kanji learners course.
    Go through the last 8 chapters of genki2.
    If possible read a little of yotsubato before bed.

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