Hey, I’m fairly new to WaniKani and learning japanese. I’m on a 40 day streak on Duolingo now, I’ve learned hiragana 100% and lets say katakana for 50% now and a few Katakanas.
Tomorrow I’ll reach section 2 in Duolingo, so I’d say for that timeframe I’m okay in terms of progress.
I have 222 Days for my next japan trip, now I’ll also learn with WaniKani, what do you think is possible of how far I can get with 1-2hours of learning a day until then?
Will Duolingo + WaniKani + watching alot of Japanese TV + my favorites shows and Animes on JP be enough? What else could I do if not?
Thanks alot in advance already :3
Edit:
What are some milestones I should set for myself?
Does redo every lesson in duolingo completely without romanji seems useful? I have the feeling I’m reading the romanjis for 90% of the time
First things first: I would advise you to disable romaji whereever possible, since you should soon be able to read kana at the same speed and that is the natural writing form.
Depending on how much Wanikani you do, you will be able to read a bunch of kanji till then, so that will be really helpful. I think supplementing some reading once you feel comfortable would be helpful.
Since you are going to Japan, listening and speaking will probably be the most important things. For listening you seem to be doing some things, but maybe some material you can fully understand, like Nihongo con Teppei Podcast on Spotify would be helpful. For speaking I personally don’t have any good advice, cause I have not found something good yet.
Since Duolingo does not really teach grammar well, you should also maybe think about getting some grammar resource.
Overall I believe within 222 days, with daily 1-2 hours, you should be able to navigate standard situtations quite well, so have fun and keep it up!
Thanks very much for your reply. And yeah, I see the point in turning of romanji completely whats kinda bad now since I’ve been learning for 40 days straight with it now.
Feels like starting from scratch, but yeah, thats what I couldnt point my finger on what was bothering me
Ahh, neat I’ll take a look, I have been listening to
but it was rather boring and meh, so maybe the Nihongo is better.
Thanks mate! I’m surpirsed that I am very motivated, and already managed to get a 40day streak on Duolingo, first time in 30 years I am actually learning something with such dedication lol.
Damn, just doing Duolingo without romanjis, and its like 10times harder feeling stupid havent done it that way from the start now
Still rocking it, although it now takes me nearly 20 minutes instead of 2-3 minutes per lesson, it feels a hundred times more useful, haha. It’s a pity I only started with this now. Very good advice!
I had very similar time for preparation before my Japan trip
My main resources before going:
I managed to finish Genki I book and review it later with ToKiniAndy
(check out the channel as an alternative to Duolingo grammar, no need to buy the books)
Wanikani lvl. 17 (that time I didn’t use plugins or cheat the radicals, I was too slow xD)
So how was my Japanese after around 200 days?
I spoke mostly in grammar forms
I could flex by reading menus at cafes/bars/restaurants
got jozu’ed like 5 times
my bad Japanese made locals less afraid of making mistakes in English they knew,
they really did open up and wanted to strike up conversation
I use these. It takes discipline to not misuse the “undo” button Keep in mind, if you progress too fast, reviews will pile up faster too and Wanikani can get overwhelming.
The last script is not related to Wanikani, but it enables you to put JP subs over anime at Crunchyroll.
I look for Japanese subs here.
I replied here. I don’t believe this is a good plan. After investing so much time in Duolingo and passive learning, you might be disappointed in how little you’re able to apply your learning to making conversation, while with more active learning methods you can get to a really good level in a few months.
Thanks mate! Gave you a reply back too, thanks for the honest reply since I think you are actually right. I’ll just repost my answer here, so we don’t have to switch between threads if you are going to reply haha
Thanks man!! I’ll install them right away haha
Also had my first WaniKani lesson with the first 15 Kanjis, thats actually quite alot to learn. How do you guys manage to learn them? I just wrote everything down, the Kanji, meaning, writing and the sentence to remember it. I don’t think there is a way around this? But man, that’ll be alot of paperwork in the future huh?
Ok, another question. When you’re reviewing your kanji lessons, are you guys actually a 100% honest, that if you dont know, you wont take a quick look into your notes? Will I mess with the whole SRS system that way and actually just fool myself if I take looks at my notes? Or is it “ok” if I sometimes help myself out a little with my own notes?
It’s not a competition and we can only cheat ourselves. Choose methods that suit you.
I sometimes cheat on “Apprentice” radicals and kanji items so I can progress ASAP. But it’s not for everyone. You can get too many reviews and burn out.
The key is to identify unique part of a kanji that doesn’t appear elsewhere to get the meaning and to remember a keyword for pronunciation (sometimes I make up funny ones with my native language).
I’m halfway through my first visual novel Aokana and I’m not getting PTSD moments from remembering I cheated that 曜 - “weekday” kanji (as in the word 日曜日 - Sunday) half a year ago
I’m getting the feeling I’m learning the wrong way or I am expecting too much of myself. Tried reading the first manga of Nagatoro I bought in Tokyo last year, and damn even the first sentence took me like 20 minutes with various apps, first re draw the kanji to identify the kanji and so on. Kinda frustrating
Well, let’s say I’m 100% safe in hiragana and reading is getting faster too, where to go from here now? Do wanikani as a regular next to learn more Kanjis? Since it’s impossible to read mangas due to lacking knowledge of kanjis this doesn’t seem like an option.
My approach was “learn to read first, learn the language itself later”.
If you want to be able to speak well on your next trip, this approach might not be suitable though
I’d say don’t stress it. Go full speed Wanikani, slowly get exposed to other aspects of learning over time. Do grammar lessons with ToKini Andy or/and keep doing Duolingo (I don’t think it’s bad platform, I learned Swedish there for 3 months )
Let’s say you have 3 hours/day of free time. Spend 2 of them doing Wanikani and grammar, 1 hour watching anime, listening or playing games in Japanese language.
Around Wanikani level 30 you could switch it around to 1 hour studying, 2 hours immersion/mining vocab. Or spend an entire weekend playing/reading/mining sentences!
Just make sure to be consistent and not quit like many learners!
It will get way more enjoyable later! ^^
For now if you’re struggling with reading speed I can recommend this handy tool to practice Hiragana and Katakana: Hiragana | Real Kana
You’re taking notes of kanji you learn? I did the same thing early on, keep at it! Also read some articles on stroke orders and how to identify kanji by radicals (and how to use online kanji dictionaries, it will be handy when immersing).
And don’t forget the memelord Dogen. Watch his first few lessons on pitch accent. It’s not super important, but it’s good to know it exists and prevent bad habits!
20 minutes for a manga sentence sounds very legit to me. On top of kanji and vocabulary, understanding a sentence requires knowing grammar. If you haven’t studied grammar, no way are you going to understand the correct meaning from the first attempt, so parsing the sentence takes extra time. Why don’t you join the Absolute Beginner Book Club in this community? At first it took me about that time to understand each sentence. Then I realised that the manga genre is simply still too advanced for me.
feeling stupid havent done it that way from the start now
