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(Final Update) Jalup Group Challenge 14: One Thousand J-J Cards in Three Months — 37 Comments

    • I had to look this one up to get the reference :P

      For those not aware, Sekiro is a very difficult Samurai video game that made news recently(?) for being “too difficult” haha.

  1. I have no guess for my level. I’m well into Jalup Expert Stage 6, but lately I’ve only been adding a card a day. To multiply that by 10 I’m going to wake up an hour earlier and set Anki to mix new cards with reviews.

    • I started this challenge with a handicap of over a thousand cards due, which took most of the month to complete. However, I was still able to add 250 new cards along the way. Mixing new cards and reviews helped a lot, but I was also lucky to hit an easy patch in Jalup Expert.

      To complete the challenge I’ll have to add 375 cards in the next two months, but I’m in a much better position to do so with those overdue reviews gone. Recently it occured to me that my immersion time has almost vanished, so I’m going make a point of watching more Japanese TV and Youtube; a little bit of incentive to learn makes a big difference.

      • 400 cards to go. I’m a little behind but feeling confident; my immersion time is up significantly, although not so much from videos as from games and books. To complete the challenge I just need to stay the course.

        • I finished on the 18th. Even though I started J-J 2 years ago, it’s never really become comfortable for me. Completing the challenge was difficult and very time-consuming, but I feel that I’ve improved significantly by doing it. Not just in Japanese, but as a person. I would not have been able to complete it without improving my stress, time, and sleep management along the way. I feel happier, healthier, and ready for the next milestone in my studies.

  2. I’m in of course! This will be hard, but I think I can do it.

    My goal is to complete Intermediate plus the first 250 cards of Advanced.

    I’ll use the Jalup app and add 10 cards every day.

    • This challenge is already helping me! I’m ahead of my schedule.

      My goal is to get to 400 cards in Intermediate by the end of April, 700 Intermediate by the end of May, finish Intermediate by the end of June and get to 250 cards in Advanced by July 21st. Should be hard but doable.

      My biggest problem will be to keep up with review. After this challenge ends, I’ll need a new challenge where we work to get our reviews down to 0 ;-)

      • I’m mostly on track so far! Currently at 525 Intermediate cards and I should be able to get to 700 by the end of the month. As expected, I’m not able to keep up with reviews, so I’ll focus more on that in June. I love the challenge, it really motivates me, so thanks for starting this, Adam!

        • I’m on track to finish Intermediate by the end of June. Still not up to date with reviews, but I hope I will be by the end of the challenge.

          • I’ll call this a half victory. I did add 1000 cards, but was unable to keep up with reviews. I also have a pile of reviews for RTK to work through. Now I’ll take a little break from adding cards and work on reviews for a while. I really liked the challenge though, and I never would have gotten through 1000 cards in 3 months without it!

  3. I’m in!

    By April 21st, I’d be 130 cards (currently at 830 intermediate cards) into the advanced deck so the challenge will be to reach 130 cards into expert.

    My level is around 30 perhaps, all things considered. I intend to keep my current pace of 30 new cards a day + hours of active immersion.

    Goodluck and have fun everyone! :)

    • May 21st update:

      I’m currently at 910 advanced deck cards. Only had 2 days so far where I didn’t learn any new ones but I did my reviews for the most part. Used the vacation mode feature for some number of hours while I couldn’t do any reviews. Going to finish this challenge soon with 130 cards into expert. Pretty happy with my consistency overall!

      • I just want to add that immersion is steadily becoming more fun along with increasing recognition of vocabulary in the wild :)

        • May 28 update:

          Finished the 1000 J-J card challenge today, reaching 130 cards into the expert deck. I’m very happy that there have been only a few setbacks since I restarted studying Japanese.

          Moving forward, I plan to just continue what I’ve been doing for the past two months which has been surprisingly effective for me. I feel like I’ve found my groove. I hope everyone’s doing well in their studies!

  4. Adam any chance Jalup Hero will be added to the app in time for the challenge? My current plan is due to extensive travel I am going to break on new cards while the challenge is going on and then dive into Jalup Hero by the end of July (either app or anki depending on what is available).

    But if you were by chance close to adding Jalup Hero to the app I may push myself and try to get through Jalup Hero for the challenge instead…

  5. Ok this sounds like the challenge I need.

    After smashing my face against Jalup Intermediate on my first go round, I’ve just completed a full review of Beginner and am ready for a rematch.
    I’d say my level is 20-21ish
    Don’t know if I will make it the full 1000 cards by the end of June will give it a good go.
    Weapon of choice will be my tried and tested Anki :)

  6. Level: 未知
    J-J Experience: ~8000 J-J Cards + 1000 J-E from beginner
    Game Plan: Study 2 hours a day from about 4-6pm. I’ll learn however many new cards I can after my reviews are done, saving 10 minutes to edit leeches.
    Weapon of Choice: Sentence mining from Terrace House and the book 「宇宙を語る : ビッグバンからブラックホールまで」.

  7. Sounds good!

    I’ll tackle Jalup Intermediate :) I will do the most work inside public transportation, and the rest at home during morning and evening hours.

    For those who are not sure how much work that will be:
    Including the start and enddate, it will be 92 days, so you will need a pace of 11 cards/day. With that:
    On the worst day you will have around 128 reviews, and on average around 90 reviews. (I’m using my anki settings and data here, so it might change from person to person)

  8. I’m Level 14 here (though I just started counting 2 months ago). I’ve completed around 200 JALUP Intermediate cards at this point using Anki. Right now I’m adding 5 J-J cards per day, but when the 21st rolls around I’ll turn it up to 12. When I reach the end of Intermediate I’ll continue on to advanced.

    • I’ve managed to add 490 new cards from intermediate since the 21st of April, feeling pretty good! Given my other responsibilities in life, it’s definitely a blistering pace and very free-time consuming, but on good days I really feel the progress in my abilities.

      I’ve been mostly keeping up with the reviews, building up small backlogs of reviews when things are busy, but knocking them out when I have chunks of time.

      I’ve noticed that there are some words whose pronunciations will NOT stick in my head. Maybe 5% of them, I’d say. The end of each study session is just a big frustrating wad of these problem words, so I’ve started hand-writing flash cards with just the problem words and drilling them constantly throughout the day until they stick :)

      I’m well ahead of schedule at this point, so I am hopeful that I can pull it off.

      • 803 J-J cards into the challenge now. Perfectly on track to finish. It’s been a little tough keeping up with the reviews lately because, you know, life, but I managed to get them caught back up a couple days ago.

        Still feeling good about things. There are still a fair number of words that I have trouble making “stick” even with repeated exposure, so after I hit 1000 I am going to simple review for a week or three until I am feeling like I have the foundation totally solid again.

        • I finished the challenge today!
          I’m 203 cards into Advanced at this point. This challenge has really helped advance my vocabulary, and has highlighted a few things for me:

          – I need to review my Kanji. I previously completed RTK years ago, but haven’t properly maintained it. I think I’ll run through KK alongside further studies.

          – I am not so good at stuffing vocabulary in my head. I think the most efficient speed for me is somewhere south of the speed I was going. I feel a bit overextended right now and will be spending a couple weeks mostly just reviewing before continuing.

          – I miss immersion :) I didn’t have a ton of time for it while doing this challenge (combination of busy life and such), so I’m looking forward to just jumping into stuff. Clannad comes out on Switch this week so I might try my first VN.

          It was a good push, and I enjoyed it. It is noticeably easier to read sentences in Japanese, and I was fortunate enough to have reading definitions click early on for me.

  9. I’m around Level 20 and I have about 50 cards into Jalup Intermediate. Since I intend to keep learning before the start of the challenge, I will give a quick update on my current status on the 21st April. I will finish Jalup Intermediate by learning 10-12 new cards each day. Once I’m finished with Intermediate I plan on continuing with the Advanced deck.

  10. Just finished Jalup Beginner in March and tried the first 5 cards of the Intermediate deck, so about Level 20 (lower kanji wise) with 1000 J-E and 5 J-J. I’m planning on doing 10-12 sentences a day with the Intermediate deck and if I make it far enough I’ll add 5 of the Advanced deck. I probably won’t add anymore sentences before the 21st because I mass restarted Kanji Kingdom to my old level and want to finish Stage 2 and let things settle before tackling this monster.

    • 345 J-J so far so on track. Yay!

      There are some really challenging milestones that develop quickly. Like recursive definitions of challenging concepts within definitions.

      Should I not worry about looking each word of a definition up and just concentrate on looking up words in the main sentence and being able to read/pronounce the definition? I feel like all the similar words with unknown definitions of their own are dragging me down when trying to look them up in anki search.

      I originally wanted to do 10/day but couldn’t maintain the cognitive load. After some experimenting I switched to 20/day Monday-Thursday and do reviews Friday-Sunday when/if I feel like it. This has made anki so much simpler and less stressful. I’ve been dealing with the backlog by repositioning them within a month. I also stopped grading like I did in the beginner deck and have just been passing things as an experiment. Not super sold on the just passing idea but I’m not allowing anything to mature that isn’t ready.

      The feeling I get when I just know a word with context or the definition provides a light bulb moment is very addicting.

      • I’d say you need to find a balance where you look up just enough words to keep a steady pace. But don’t worry too much about similar definitions. They become clearer over time.

        • My strategy kind of blew up in my face and I’ve been trying to get reviews under control ever since. It was a fun strategy to try but I got bit. At this point, I’d be happy to catch up and get to 500 total cards by the end of the challenge.

          I realized how bad my error in judgement was when I tried adding a new set of sentences and couldn’t understand the majority of the words including the new stuff. Thanks for your help last month Adam. I have not given up yet but I’m not sure if I can realistically make it.

  11. Level is 13.
    Experience in Jalup is 75 Jalup Beginner cards.

    So I’m going to go from 76 in JB to 75 in J-J.
    My plan is to do 11 cards per day.

    I think I’ll post this in Jalup Group Challenge 2, where maybe it’s a little more appropriate.

    Tom

  12. Hello everyone – I’m pretty new to the JALUP effort and I’d like to join this challenge – I’m focusing on finishing KK first though if that’s ok.
    I’ve completed 700 J-J Intermediate and 1341 KK cards.
    I plan to focus on KK first as I find it much easier to put together JJ cards when I am familiar with all the kanji.
    My main goal above all is to study some Japanese every single day. Sometimes I don’t finish all my reviews…life gets in the way..but I make sure I don’t let that happen for more than a few days. I always sacrifice learning new cards over getting the reviews done as I think that’s more important.
    My plan is to study 10 new KK cards a day, and ramp up to 30 a day when I can. I have an opportunity in May where I’ll have about 3 weeks at sea with plenty of downtime so I should be able to take a good chunk out of KK there. Now that my KK is up to 1300 I will start adding JJ cards 5 at a time – and then eventually when KK is done switch to 10-30 JJ cards a day.
    If I can get KK done by mid-June, I think reaching 1000 new JJ cards by July 21 is doable.

    • I’m at 740 JJ and 1617 KK so an average of about 10 new cards per day. I had to focus completely on KK as my memory retention of Kanji really stopped working after about 1400 or so. I have some previous Japanese knowledge which I think has carried me this far – I was only air drawing the kanji – but now I’m dealing with Kanji I haven’t seen and which are often more complex..or really similar to each other. So, I switched to writing out new kanji, only air drawing reviews if I really don’t have a situation where I can write. This brought my memory retention way up, and I if missed it became only once instead of 5 times like before. My thinking is that once I have the KK at about 2000, I could then do 20 or 30 JJ cards a day. However, that may not be the case either as I could run into the same problem, hit a wall of brand new Japanese I’ve never seen in JA, and just slow to a crawl. 10 cards a day of new material seems to be a doable pace and is hard enough as it is.

      I have a good rhythm down with the Kanji – should I just stick it out til the end and tackle JJ later? That is honestly what I think I’m inclined to do. I’m not burn out, but I really want to be done with new KK and get to just reviewing them. I enjoy KK much more when I get it right :) Then dive in to JJ which I find much more enjoyable in general.

      With my current pace I don’t think I’m going to make my original goal, but I am happy I’ve developed a good study routine each day even if progress is slower than I thought.

      • It sounds like a reasonable pace and a good strategy your enjoying. That is key to developing long term good study habits that work for your life.

        Also I’m not surprised at all doing kk first feels right to you. I did rtk before j-j and it makes the transition easier for sure. If something changes and you can squeeze in more j-j to hit the challenge, awesome. But if instead you decide to finish kk I think that’s just as commendable.

      • Thanks laddr – I ended up focusing on KK – had a few setbacks where I went too fast and had to backtrack a bit – Keeping up with reviews is definitely the hard part but I’m getting there.
        1900 KK and 780 JJ so still averaging about 10 new cards a day. I found when I read a bit each day my retention was better – started seeing kanji in a more natural context and so that cemented some of them a bit more. (Reading Kiki’s delivery service at the moment). I know I probably should read more but at the moment its all I can do to keep up with the reviews and keep 10 kanji going a day. Plus I really need to finish KK :) So, plan is to finish KK, then ramp up JJ and reading at night.

        • Ok so I’m at KK2020 and JJ810
          Lots of setbacks and challenges – but I did keep a pretty steady pace and I think I’ve sorted out the bugs in my studying.
          Things I’ve learned from this challenge:
          -Plan for the days you can’t study
          -Keep up with reviews no matter what
          -Immersion helps immensely…more focus needed on immersion
          -Bruteforce only gets you so far
          My plan is to keep solidifying KK and try to finish the full 2300 by end of August while reading as much native material as I can. Then pickup where I left off with J-J.
          Kudos to everyone who completed the challenge! Not a feat to be underestimated.

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