Hello! Fowl here,
I decided to make a study log to track my progress with the language and maybe interact with some people too!
In this first post, I wanted to introduce myself a bit and lay out some of my goals for learning the language, along with the tools I will be using.
‣First off, about me!
I’m Fowl, a 22 year old from Saskatchewan, Canada. I started learning Japanese in October 2022 but I had to set aside my studies for almost 2 years due to the amount of moving I was doing along with health complications. But I’m back at it now! I decided to wipe my WaniKani progress and start fresh, and thus began my new chapter in language learning.
‣Next up: Goals.
My long-term goal for fluency in Japanese is to be proficient in reading and listening, I’m most interested in being able to consume media and being able to write and speak in natural sounding Japanese is not as big of a goal for me, though maybe that will change during my journey. I’m hoping to reach my desired fluency by the end of 2027, but I’ll see where I end up!
As for short-term, my goal is to learn between 4000-5000 words before the end of 2025. I know that’s very ambitious, but I have an abundance of free time that many other learners don’t have, so with the time I’m willing to dedicate I think it’s reasonable to achieve. Working towards that, I have been learning 40-50 new words with SRS every day and so far have found the workload pretty manageable. In total I aim to spend 3-5 hours every day learning between SRS, lessons and immersion.
‣Tools of choice.
Before I had to take a hiatus from learning, I was a big fan of JapanesePod101 and I’ve been enjoying it for learning once again now that I’ve taken it back up. The lessons they have are great of practising listening, learning new grammar, and discovering new words to add to my decks.
Speaking of, I personally use Kitsun.io for all things SRS that aren’t a part of WaniKani, I got the lifetime subscription back in 2022 and I find that making and using new cards is much more enjoyable and streamlined than using Anki. Along with my own personal deck that I fill out from JapanesePod and immersion, I’ve been using Hinekidori’s 10k deck as my core learning deck, hibernating duplicates from WaniKani as needed.
For learning grammar I have found JapanesePod101 to be the best way for me, but I use Bunpro to help me retain and apply what I’ve learned from my lessons. As my learning advances maybe I will look into other tools like Migaku, but for now I’m happy with what I have.
So far, I’m just over 3 weeks into my resumed learning journey and I’m feeling extremely motivated and happy, and I’m excited to keep learning well into the future.
Let’s all do our best together!
and have a good amount of free time.
I love aquatic birds so I will definitely be following along with your updates!
