Comments

Achieving Your Japanese Goals – March 2019 — 29 Comments

  1. 1。目的
    Finish RTK! [1657(余)からゴール(巳)まで]
    2。教材
    RTK、ノート、暗記(情報カードのアプリ)
    [i.e. https://imgur.com/a/WY3qfo8 + スマホ]
    3。勉強法
    daily reviews and ~20 new cards/day Monday-Friday (weekend for mental breather / catch-up as needed)

  2. A month ago I decided to finally jump into JALUP using the Anki maximum package, and rushed through the beginner deck for review (my real level being somewhere around intermediate). It’s been totally worth it so far!

    1.) This month I plan to make the J-J leap with the intermediate deck. I’d like to do at least 300 cards. I also intend to read through よつばと! Vol. 2

    2.) Anki + JALUP Intermediate, Genki 2, Tobira, JPod101, よつばと!, ちびまる子ちゃん

    3.) During what’s left in February I will be doing a modest number of J-J cards (~5 / day), then increase that to 10 per day in March. Reviews of the Beginner deck will be ongoing as well as textbook work with Genki 2 (for review) and tentatively busting into Tobira.

    For immersion I will spend free time reading よつばと! and watching ちびまる子ちゃん.

    • With Hanne in that the transition to J-J was tougher than anticipated. I managed 125 cards this month, not the 300 I had aimed for. It felt like my brain was turning into oatmeal a few times, but I started gaining some traction around the 75 card mark, and things started to get a bit easier.

      The hardest part for me is the temporary insanity-like feeling I get when learning a synonym of a word I have already learned, and obsessing over what subtle difference the Japanese definition might be hinting at! I’ve learned to be a bit more relaxed about tha sort of thing and just move on with the cursory understanding I’ve gained.

      I read through Yotsubato vol 2 as planned, and got through the first chapter of Tobira as well. Happy with this month, I leanred a lot.

  3. Just like YoukaiCountry, I got the Maximum package and rushed through JALUP Beginner for review even though my real level is Intermediate. I also spent some time on Beginner textbooks in February. Now it’s time to start working on Intermediate level resources!

    Goals:
    250 Jalup Intermediate cards
    250 RTK cards (going from 1000 to 1250)
    Do some immersion most days and add words to my vocab deck.

    Resources;
    Doraemon, Yotsubato, Terrace House, Jpod101, JALUP, RTK, Intermediate textbooks.

    Strategy:
    Keep up with reviews! It’s OK to not add cards daily, but reviews must be done every day.
    Remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s OK to go slow and enjoy learning! No need to rush things.

    • I seriously underestimated how hard the transition from Jalup Beginner to Intermediate would be, so I only added 100 cards this month. Better to go slow than to quit though.

      I did add more than 200 RTK cards though, so all in all I’m happy with how this month went.

      • I was in the same boat. The transition was super tough for me too but your brain gets used to the ambiguity just keep at it.

  4. February didn’t go so well for me, but that’s okay. Just gotta keep going.

    Goals: finish Mango Languages course, over halfway done now.

    Continue ~1 hr immersion/day. Really enjoying listening to the ひいきびいき podcast, which I understand a surprising amount of!

    Hardest one: do anki every day. I’ve got over 700 kanji reviews piled up, and I just can’t seem to find the motivation to get through it, as I really don’t have the time to just sit down and get through all of them at once unfortunately.

    Hopefully I do better this month. :^)

    • I was unable to find Mango Languages, because they want back and added a ton more new stuff to it, which is good but I probably won’t finish till mid May at this rate.
      Totally dropped immersion, got really busy with school and just couldn’t find the time to fit it in.
      I got caught up on anki all the way!
      Started adding 5 new mined cards a day to a new deck. Learned a ton of new vocab and grammar!
      Overall, I did quite well I think. I motivated myself by saying I won’t buy the new Joker DLC for Smash Bros. if I can’t do and hour of Japanese practice everyday until whenever he’s released (sometime in April) I’ll have to wait until my birthday at the end of this year to get him.

  5. It’s been a while. But I’m back in the game and I want to get back into setting goals as well.

    I have started everything over with the new Jalup app. My current progress is 690 cards into Jalup beginner and 445 cards into Kanji Kingdom. I expect to be at 700 and 450 by Friday.

    Goals:

    – keep up with reviews
    – add 200 new cards from beginner
    – add 80 new cards from kanji kingdom
    – Forest of Piano 1 episode

    Strategy:

    I plan for a pace of 10 beginner cards and 4 kanji cards a day on week days. The weekend can then be either relax time or catch up time.
    Forest of Piano is on Netflix and has Japanese subtitles available. In the past I have had a hard time motivating myself to immerse because I didn’t understand enough. Hopefully subtitles will help with that.

    • Nice I do a mix of stuff with Japanese subs and no subs. I can tackle much harder things with subs on so it’s a nice mix. I get practice listening and I get practice reading. I think it has sped up my reading comprehension doing that as well.

    • Success!

      I accomplished all of my goals.

      Just did the last 10 beginner cards this evening.

      Forest of Piano episode 1 went pretty nicely. I didn’t understand much at all in terms of exact understanding. But when the episode was over I had enjoyed the whole way and am ready to watch more.
      The subtitles really helped me get a small clue about what was being talked about since I could not catch much in terms of listening comprehension.

  6. 1. Finish 宇宙兄弟16 and read 17 and 18
    2. 100 new cards finishing expert stage 1
    3. Watch 10 dramas

  7. Hoping to hit my goals this month though I do have another 1 week trip this month so scaling back a bit to make it more realistic:

    1) Continue new Jalup expert cards, 10 cards a day. get to 600/1000
    2) Keep up with RTK and anki situation reviews
    3) Finish Pimsular Japanese 4 and start Japanese 5 get to lesson 10
    5) Immersion – Keep up with new SAO (~4eps) and do 10 episodes of Terrace House Opening New Doors through episode 24
    6) Start reviewing key phrases for my upcoming Japan trip in May
    7) 5 chapters Yotsuba reading

    • It was a good month, especially considering I was out of town for a week again. I hit every goal.

      1) Continue new Jalup expert cards, 10 cards a day. get to 600/1000
      YES – technically at 590/1000 but just because my math wasn’t exact, I did 10 a day and happy with that

      2) Keep up with RTK and anki situation reviews
      YES

      3) Finish Pimsular Japanese 4 and start Japanese 5 get to lesson 10
      YES – This was hard but got through to lesson 11

      5) Immersion – Keep up with new SAO (~4eps) and do 10 episodes of Terrace House Opening New Doors through episode 24
      YES – Kept up with SAO and got exactly 10 eps of Terrace House through #24.

      6) Start reviewing key phrases for my upcoming Japan trip in May
      Yes – Did it about 4-5 times, want to do more next month.

      7) 5 chapters Yotsuba reading
      Yes – Did 7 chapters

  8. Getting really close to finishing beginner. Just got to power through some of the studying each morning

    1) Have 24 days this month where I finish all Jalup Beginner reviews for the day and add 10 cards, which should put me at at least 900/1000 by the end of the month

    2) Keep up on reviews for kanji kingdom. Have 24 days this month where I add 3 kanji chains (9-12 cards)

    3) Use more free time at work listening to japanese twitch streamers. Watch at least 2 times a week.

    I know once I get past the beginner stuff I’ll have a bit of ground to stand on, but my progress is stop and go at the moment. So I guess my overall goal here is to get a more consistent pacing so I don’t spend one week doing great and the next doing 10 reviews a day.

    • Didn’t succeed, but I feel like I learned a lot. I got about 12 days in adding 10 cards per day each day, but I suddenly found myself reviewing cards that I had no memory of and the reviews piled up to well over 500. Clearing 500 reviews is hard enough when you get them all right, but I found that I scarcely remembered adding most of the cards. I believe this was due to the new concepts added in the mid 700s range that I was not planning for. Future strategies need to be much more reactive to the cards I’m getting and to my understanding of them. Watching Japanese twitch at work turned out to be less helpful than I had hoped so I abandoned it in place of either podcasts or watching anime after work. If I can’t give it my active attention, I find my attention split in a way that makes it impossible to do anything.

  9. I got the JALUP Maximum a week back and loving it! I was on and off the Japanese learning path previous years and very hopeful with the JALUP system. I had a 7 days heads up for March goal. With some knowledge of basics Japanese previously, trying to push myself in the early stage.

    1) Finish Kana Conqueror (KC) by the first week of March – at 190 now.
    2) Jalup Beginner(JB) 17 cards per day – end of March complete 500 cards
    3) The Kanji Kingdom(KK) – 9 cards per day

    I will focus on using the JALUP app for (Learning and Immersion(listening feature) this month. I want to get more confidence with the system and app before I introduce other resources.

    Learn the set numbers of cards for KC, JB, KK in the morning and review through the day or after work.

    • It was the first month with the JALUP App. I missed some weekend reviews and that adds up. I tried to not go through new cards over the weekend. It has been fun so far.
      1) Completed Kana Conqueror
      2) JB with 17 cards – didn’t meet the target of 500 and completed 420
      3) Kanji – 230 – I live in Hong Kong and walking around the city and reading the Chinese characters are coming alive and its good review process.
      I couldn’t do much of Learning and Immersion this month and will try on April.

  10. 1) Move up to 10 Kanji a day through Kanji Kingdom- 160 learned now
    2)Move up to 15 Jalup Beginner cards a day at beginning of March hopefully reach 600 learned cards by the end- 495 right now
    3)Complete Business Japanese course in Japanesepod101

    Resources- Japanesepod101, Jalup app,erin.ne.jp, some YouTube videos for extra practice on lighter days. Immersion will be Anime, Tokusatsu (Super Sentai, Kamen Rider etc.) Toku shows will a lot of the time be shows for kids so the listening is not super hard.

  11. There was a spreadsheet with a list of stickers to stick on top of furniture all over your house. Where is it now?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>