Achieving Your Japanese Goals – May 2020
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 May
Initial Instructions
Leave a comment by May 1st and include:
1. Your specific goal(s)
2. Resources you will use
3. Game plan/strategy
Completion Instructions
Reply to your comment by May 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 April 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.
Hope everyone is getting a lot of study in with Coronavirus. I noticed when syncing Anki this morning I had to wait as I got a message the server was overloaded. First time I saw it; maybe lots of people are using their downtime to study. My goal:
1. 100 new cards from expert stage 7. This would
Be through card 150.
Ended up doing 250 cards so finished stage 7.
Hey everyone, I finished the first 1000 Kanji Kingdom cards sometime early this month and have been just doing my reviews since then with some Jalup beginner story reading. I’ve also been reading the graded Japanese reader stories someone on this site recommended, I think that’s been a great resource as well.
1) For May I mainly just want to stay on top of my reviews and digest the 1000 Kanji and JB cards I’ve learned while finishing the stories (currently on #9).
Goals:
1) finish Jalup Advanced (starting today)
2) be able to understand all that I actually can’t
3) read lots of manga and understand most of it
4) create a more immersive enviroment to achieve someday fluency
Resources:
1) Anki flashcards
2) manga
3) Jalup blog for inspiration
4) all avaiable content I can use for immersion
Strategy:
1) Daily anki flashcard review
2) immersion whenever I can as long as I can
3) read and read a lot
4) make japanese a part of my daily life
See you at the end of May!
I see you have some big goals for the month which is great. However, I would to just suggest that you maybe change goal 2 and 3. They aren’t really specific and so it is hard to quantify. If you have already specified these outside the site on your own then great, otherwise i suggest maybe saying “aim to have a 95%/98% comprehension of x material”. That way when the month ends you can see how well you progress, because after finishing jalup advance you will not understand everything or 100% of almost any material, however that doesn’t mean your understanding won’t grow a lot because it will. Also, good luck on Jalup advanced, it is better than intermediate for sure. I am sure you will crush it!
Sorry for late response, the late weeks of May and the beginning of June was a really busy time for me, actually I haven’t been so busy in a lot of time.
About my goals.
– Completed all Jalup Advanced and started to work on Expert before June started.
– I became able to understand all the things I could not before. I know this is kinda vague answer but a lot of loose ends got all tighted together, to the point in which I can now watch anime without troubles having an understanding of above 70/80%. Also I read a manga wich I never knew before called “コンビニのマリア” and was entertaining, that manga helped me to make a great breaktrough to my understanding, like I said, loose ends became together. Maybe next month I can finish reading it or at least volume one haha.
– Immersive enviroment: found a VPN server wich allowed me to connect to netflix Japan, so I started to watch my favourite tv shows such as “friends” “prison break” and “rick & morty” dubbed to japanese, which it was great ! I pretend to keep up with netflix japan. I also ripped the audio of several anime shows I like and put it on my phone, so now on my way to work or maybe when I’m playing video games on my computer I put my headphones and hear them. also, i downloaded and played legend of zelda completly on japanese.
Thats about it, I’ll keep it up on June!
can i ask which vpn? I have tried a few with no luck…
It seems like Express VPN works with Japanese streaming services but I would need someone else to verify that.
It’s always worked for me with no problems. I’ve been using Express for 3-4 years now.
I use vpn hub the same guys who created pornhub, it comes with a 7 day trial and then a 13$ monthly membership. Try express vpn too, i’m no expert on this field so don’t limit your options
Since I do not know how my work situation develops, just two explicit goals this month (as usual no explicit immersion goals because they make me feel bad).
1) Keep going with Jalup Hero, no more than 15 cards. Will probably hit that limit a couple times more often this month because review numbers have dropped quite a bit the last couple of days and already some days the number due sparked a feeling of boringness :-)
2) Add at least 4, expect 6, want 8+ selfmade branches from interesting cards from immersion. I might drop this goal soon as well because it sometimes makes me add cards just for the goal, even though I don’t feel I need this specific word in anki (mostly because I already understood and just used the dictionary lookup to verify). We will see.
Stay healthy!
1) Did 10/day except maybe for 2 or 4 days where I did 15. Just crossed the half-way point in Hero. Need to figure out how to get the remaining two decks soonish ;-)
2) Did exactly 7. Was a bit of a rough month in that regard, in the beginning I struggled to find interesting enough words, but towards the end I had two rushes. My personal deck crossed the 100 cards limit this month
Most of the month I had to fight to motivate myself for the immersion, but this mostly is that I couldnt find something interesting/enjoyable enough to want me to do this. Towards the end I found some things I really enjoy and the time jumped back up. I guess I have to start digging really hard to find the fun stuff from now on :)
Last month I made enormous progress and gonna try to keep the momentum going in may. Like last month I have a detailed plan so I am gonna list it.
1. Finish Konosuba vol 1 on the 1st
2. Start vol 2 on the 2nd reading at a pace of a chapter a day adding the 100 most frequent vocab words from that chapter each day.
3. Take the 7th to reread vol 2 and add the 100 most frequent words from vol 3.
4. On the 8th start vol 3 continuing at a chapter a day and adding vocab.
5. Reread vol 3 on the 12th add frequent vocab from vol 4 same as point 3.
6. on the 13th start vol 4
7. finish vol 4th on the 17th
8. Add the most frequent idk 50 words let’s say from vol 5 and read the whole book (it’s my birthday and i want to relax and enjoy my hard work…with more work?)
9. Take the 19th off for reviews
10. For the rest of the month i am thinking of rereading vol 1-5 as well as reading vol 6 at a pace of a vol every 2 days while adding maybe 75 words from the chapters i am reading to get my unknowns per page down as much as possible.
My reviews are gonna be crazy at the end of the month. Also I hope I can actually retain all of these words…it will be crazy.
Pretty much did this besides 10. I started a different series that is easier. It is a novel but is based on a web novel called i kid you not kuma kuma kuma bear. I’ve been do 100 words a day from that and reading 10 chapters a day, about 2-2.5 hours. My reading speed has improved quite a bit so i am quite happy.
I am looking to continue with month 2 post-Jalup. Everything is starting to click. I see my methods changing a little more often now that I am past Jalup but nothing crazy. For instance as I am doing more production I am seeing where my grammar holes are. I am going to go back to my “Japanese the Manga Way” grammar book this month and review. I have all the good stuff highlighted so it should move fast. Just a refresher.
In no particular order this month:
1) Shadowing 15-30 minutes a day. I was going to start my second shadowing book this month, but I think I will hold off one more month and keep with volume 1 review to really help nail down the new chapter 4-5 vocab. Also the new book will probably have a lot of new words and I want to keep deck building but not too fast. I added around 110+ words last month. I still want to get reviews down and immersion up.
2) Review “Japanese The Manga Way” for grammar lessons. Add new words to my deck from this book this month. Stretch goal is the whole book. But I will be happy with half of it.
3) Immersion – 20 Terrace House episodes – through episode 75
4) Daily Moments post in Hello Talk and continue all active conversations daily
5) Keep up with reviews
This month went well. I had to really push to get it all in but that is okay! I was able to hit my stretch goal and finished the entire grammar book for a second time. I found it super helpful and I was able to immediately benefit my production practice. I did leave it though realizing some nuances I am far from having down well. The only downside is again there was a lot of great vocab words and sentences in the book I added to my deck. So reviews are still higher than I want compared to immersion time. The positive is it has been WAY easier than I thought to find and add words. The process is a little slow but finding the words is easier than I thought.
In detail:
1) Shadowing 15-30 minutes a day. I was going to start my second shadowing book this month, but I think I will hold off one more month and keep with volume 1 review to really help nail down the new chapter 4-5 vocab. Also the new book will probably have a lot of new words and I want to keep deck building but not too fast. I added around 110+ words last month. I still want to get reviews down and immersion up.
DONE – These are feeling pretty easy now, time to move on to my next Intermediate shadowing book.
2) Review “Japanese The Manga Way” for grammar lessons. Add new words to my deck from this book this month. Stretch goal is the whole book. But I will be happy with half of it.
DONE – Finished the whole thing, yay! I have around 400 new cards now post Jalup in just two months. More than I wanted to add this fast, lol oh well.
3) Immersion – 20 Terrace House episodes – through episode 75
DONE – Terrace House is cancelled. I get why, sad though for many reasons :(
4) Daily Moments post in Hello Talk and continue all active conversations daily
DONE – This continues to be some of the most productive time I am spending to improve
5) Keep up with reviews
DONE
Last month I didn’t really have a clear goal, I had the feeling I needed to brush my japanese habits to better embrace my current level. So I stopped learning new items in Wanikani at level 35, and downloaded anki for the first time since a while!
I decided to go directly J-J, not sure at first but ten days after, it was definitely a good call.
For this month:
1) Add 2 Kanji cards and 4 sentences cards per day to my Anki deck, and keep up with reviews
2) I still think Bunpro is good for having grammar reminders, so I’ll stick to cram 20 old Bunpro cards per day
3) Immerse myself 1 hour a day, at least
Things I want to read: クロノ-クロス (it’s hard but I love it), 魔法の宅急便
I let Jalup fall by the wayside over the past year and half. Turns out I’m not good at keeping up with Jalup while taking Japanese classes. Now that I’ve fulfilled the class requirement, I’ve been easing myself back into Jalup. First, I froze all of the decks. Then, I started unfreezing them bit by bit. From Kana Conqueror to Intermediate, I was able to handle unfreezing cards 100/day (throughout the month of April), but Advanced is full of words I’d totally forgotten, so unfreezing cards is now like learning new ones. I’ve been unfreezing the Advanced deck at only 50/day for the past week, putting me at 250 unfrozen cards. I’d like to maintain this pace, but since I’ve gotten almost all of the previous 250 cards incorrect, I may need to take some days here and there to just focus on reviews instead of unfreezing more cards. With this in mind, my goal is to completely unfreeze Advanced by the end of May.
Come June, I’ll have to figure out what to do with Expert. I learned Expert in Anki instead of Jalup, but I would prefer to have all my Jalup cards located in the Jalup app. I know there is a way to transfer Anki decks to Jalup, but since I haven’t looked at any of the Expert cards in over a year, it may make more sense to just start the deck from scratch in Anki.