A reflection on the journey so far

Japanese Language
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Hello everyone, :smiley:

My name is Enigma, and I’m a bit new to the forum, but quite old on the WK website :joy:

I’ve been reading a lot of amazing posts on here lately after accidentally stumbling on the forum after the last update. These posts have ignited something in me, that I think I wanted to do for a long time, but maybe never had the time to do :thinking: or maybe it was a motivation thing, but here goes nothing.

I believe that a reflection from time to time is very important, especially when one is embarking on a long journey such as language learning. It helps guide you, or at least keep you on the right track to achieve the goal you’re aiming for.

I think, as a person, I always had a nack for languages (as long as they were interesting and not feel like I’m being forced to learn them). I tried throughout my life to dabble with some languages and try them out. The problem was always to stick with them. A lesson I learnt through my language journey, is that in order for you to be able to rely on a language, you have to always keep in touch with it, otherwise you’ll just forget it with time or will have to put much more effort to be able to attain it back at some point.

At the beginning of 2022, I set a challenge to myself and also to challenge a concept or a myth in general. I knew that I would be turning 30 that year and I really wanted to achieve “learning Japanese” as a goal and to challenge the idea, concept or myth that “you can only learn languages when you’re young” or “you can’t learn languages when you’re old” and so on.

At the beginning, I set a realistic goal for myself. I know that I can only commit about 30 minutes or so to Japanese on a daily basis, since I have to work and do my other daily routines. I gave myself five years as a reasonable timeline to at least be able to read manga in Japanese and understand it, watch an anime in Japanese and understand it, listen to Japanese music and understand it travelling to the country and trying to do everything in Japanese and maybe telling myself that I finally maybe have a hard language under my belt per se.

Everything went smooth at the beginning. I enjoyed hiragana and katakana, and the motivation skyrocketed. I was using the apps “memrise” and “busuu” to help with the language too, and things were going amazing. Furthermore, I think I tried out WK in Ferbraury 2022, and it was too advanced for me at the time, I thought. Six months in (around June or July 2022), I hit a wall, when I tried to take on the kanji. Kanji was hard and I felt helpless. At the same time, the information introduced by both apps was starting to get hard for me for some reason. That was the time when I just sorta gave in to the frustration I was facing and wasn’t able to do anything to improve and just kinda gave up on the goal. I kept doing just minimal things in the apps, in order to maybe stay in touch with the language. This time was hard for me personally, and it was the hardest time I faced in learning Japanese. It just felt helpless and as if everything around me was just darkness :sob:

Things kept on like that until around December 2023. Around that time, I got a strange email telling me that WK is doing a special offer on the lifetime subscription they have. The spark ignited in me once again, and I was handed the dragonslayer sword, which might help me defeat the dragon known to me as kanji. After some thinking, I bought the lifetime subscription and told myself that this is my chance to get back at it again. Since the end of December 2023, I started using WK on a daily basis and started to understand why everyone who used it would definitely recommend it for kanji. It was fascinating how some of the hardest things I thought I faced, could just turn out to be quite simple, when one has the right way. I told myself, WK is what’s gonna teach me Japanese.

As usual, I had more motivation at the beginning and started taking things in a more rational approach and a realistic rate. I also decided to restart everything in “busuu” and give it another shot. On some days, I had enough time to do a lot of things. On others, I was barely able to do the minimum, or I just had to rush a couple of stuff just to “mark that I did my daily routines”. Things were progressing, maybe at a slower pace, but progressing nonetheless. At some point I tried using Satori reader, but gave up I guess. I bought this year a couple of books about Japan and a book or two that are for beginners to read (containing two languages to make things easier). I started a bit and then kinda gave up or just didn’t continue. Sometimes there are ups and sometimes there are downs, but the most important thing is just to keep moving forward, one step at a time. I tell myself sometimes that life isn’t usually easy nor forgiving. Sometimes, you just have to roll with the punches and keep going.

I told myself earlier this year that I want to travel to Japan next year and try to do everything in Japanese. Now, I question whether that’s still possible. All that time I was convincing myself that WK is what’s gonna teach me Japanese and doing some lessons or vocabs in “busuu” would be enough. I had a feeling that shouldn’t be enough, and that was confirmed through the posts I read here. I’ve been on this journey for a long time, and I just feel that I have nothing to show for it. Not only that, but I also want to do different things that have the Japanese language and to enjoy them in their own native language. It would be really amazing and fascinating for me to listen to a song from Wagakki band and just understand the song as is.

A reflection is important and in my own reflection on my journey, I found that I failed in some parts, I progressed in some parts and I convinced myself of a solution to the whole task, but never wanted to admit that it was a partial solution. There’s a lot more to do and a lot of work to do, if I really want to achieve the goal I challenged myself to do.

I apologize if this felt like a rant or disconnected at some point. I have a lot on my mind and wanted to write this, while I still have the motivation and confidence to do so (I wanted to write this about 3 times so far and convinced myself otherwise).

I wish all of you always the best :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed: ,

Enigma

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Enigma,

That was a very interesting post. I agree that reflections are a useful tool, and I see you’ve learned a lot from the challenges you’ve faced.

I encourage you to keep going with your studies. It’s very rewarding when you can actually start enjoying material in another language. For instance, I’m reading Jules Verne in French now after 5 months or so of study using the refined learning method I’ve come to following many years of experimentation. It’s a wonderful experience to see such a tangible outcome.

For me, having a clear goal was essential. Every video you’ll watch will tell you to set a goal, and I sort of did but never really said “OK this is my goal and what I’ll use to measure myself against.” For me, at least for French, it’s reading fluency. That’s it. I want to be able to read Verne, Dumas and others in the original. Simple. For Japanese, I’d like reading fluency but also listening fluency for anime and other things. And I have other goals for the other languages I want to learn or have learned.

I also caution against doing too much at once, such as using too many different apps and learning tools. And I caution against frequent restarts (I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve started WK more than anyone else over the years). I’ve settled on a specific set of tools, I use them daily, and I just make daily incremental improvements. I’ve found this has solved my motivation issues (along with having a clear goal).

So I wish you well in your studies. It’s very rewarding when you see the results, and worth the effort. :grin:

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Thank you very much for your supportive reply, Aleithian :grin:

I really appreciate it. In times of darkness, even the smallest light can make a difference and your reply is more than enough to shine bright light in that darkness.

I’ll try to set a goal for myself and I’ll try to have some evaluation or comparision criteria over the time to see how much I’ve been progressing to show that it’s not all doom and gloom.

I really appreciate the advice and I’ll try to do my best :folded_hands:

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As a reference for future me doing some comparison.

At the time of the message I was level 9 on WK with about 1k burned items. No progress on satori and working on strengthening my vocabulary.

Future me, I believe in you :heart:

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You’re welcome.

I’ll try to set a goal for myself

Whatever the goal is, let your interests and dreams guide it. Don’t be “practical” with your goal - be a dreamer. When I started Japanese, I fully intended in my heart of hearts to go to Japan. It never happened, but at the time it fueled me to acquire >6000 words, get to level 54 on WK, learn beginner-level grammar, and achieve an ability to read NHK Easy level material. It helped me establish a foundation.

When my goal wavered due to other commitments in life, I drifted. It was the fundamental reason I entered into the next 8 years of back and forth on Japanese. But now that I’ve established a new goal (in conjunction with other goals for other languages), I’m fueled back up to make progress.

I’ll try to have some evaluation or companion criteria

For me, I think about evaluation in terms of capabilities. How many words can I recognize? What specific material can I read? What videos can I comprehend? And for each of these, I can measure progress. And I use these capabilities as milestones. For French, I focused entirely on basic grammar and vocab acquisition at first. When I hit around 4-5000 vocab, I started reading Wikipedia. I would deliberately read content from different categories (history, astronomy, maths, art, etc) to expand my word recognition capability. Each article read was a win. Then when I hit 9000 words, I started Jules Verne. I’m 1/4 through Around the World in Eighty Days. When it’s done, I can say I have achieved the capability of reading Verne. I also watch various videos on YouTube, and each is a capability achieved. Etc.

For word count, I use Migaku. Why Migaku? Because it’s increasingly expanding functionality allows me to watch content in ever more languages, read websites, create flashcards, and generally do almost everything I want to do in one place, on desktop and mobile, with my consolidated known word count appearing in each of those media.

For people who follow this sort of input based approach, I know some track the number of hours they’ve devoted to it each day. I tried that for awhile and didn’t find it useful. But maybe it would help you.

No progress on satori and working on strengthening my vocabulary

Satori is probably too advanced right now. I’d recommend simply blasting vocabulary till you hit around 5000 words (you can supplement WK using Anki or Migaku or whatever), reading Tae Kim, and watching a boatload of stuff in Japanese, even if subtitles are on. Keep your passion involved. And for words, focus less on burning and more on reaching Master level. By then you probably have a solid grasp on it. Comprehensible Japanese is a great channel for beginners and you can pick up a ton of vocabulary from it, as well as basic grammar comprehension simply from watching.

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I kind of feel bad for coming in and saying the same thing as someone else who said it better, but definitely I also encourage you to really focus on why you’re learning the language and ensuring that your learning plan exists to serve that. From the first post, it seems like you do have some really good goals/aspirations, so I think the next thing is to take some time to work backward from those goals and figure out where you feel like you’d need to be six months before that, and then a year before, and then when you get close enough to now, start working forward to reach that first milestone.

Fortunately, it seems you’ve got the self-evaulation part down, and the dedication part looks solid as well. Keeping the motivation with the goals and regularly evaluating where you’re at and where you’re going and making changes when you think it can be better is that third component.

(And I’ll add that probably WK and busuu is probably not enough, but I’ve had the other problem of getting into too many different resources so I won’t suggest a golden path or anything. Besides, it’s your goals - you’ll need to understand them to figure out what is missing from your toolkit right now - but this is a great place for questions or advice from the people who’ve done this a lot better than me for a lot longer, so always feel free to seek the wisdom from the other folks here. And keep up the good work!

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I posted this video in my study log, but it might be worth taking the time to watch it as it relates to your reflection. I agree with everything said.

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I really really appreciate your reply and your advice :grin:
I think you describe something quite similar to what I went through. I think what drove me to this reflection is the fact that each goal is trying to pull me somewhere, or maybe because I’m finally trying to hold myself accountable for what I really wanted and still want to achieve. Furthermore, I think I need to really find what fuel me. I think this also explains the small drops of enjoying things or feeling rewarded at some points. I remember when I first started how I cruised through hiragana and katakana like they were nothing, or the small reward or happiness I feel when I come across or encounter a kanji I’ve learned or even when I’m listening to music and I hear a word I know. It’s an amazing feeling, but it could also be unhealthy and addictive to only rely on this as a fuel, so one should tread carefully :cry:

I think this is what I’m trying to establish now, and I think this is the toughest part, because foundation is the key to everything. If you try to build a house on a solid foundation, then you have nothing to fear. However, if you try to build a house on a risky or bad foundation, then you can say goodbye to that house.

I think your resilience should be really appreciated and cherished. Just to keep on going no matter what, shows the passion and fuel you have and that’s what will keep you going in the long term.

I think one way for me to find out how to really do comparison or what to compare is start tracking different things and see after a while what makes more sense to use in comparison or what can really be compared. As a first thought, the level on WK or the amount of words I really know, maybe the amount of things I can read (whether stories or articles), maybe my comprehension of a certain topic, maybe how good I think I can speak or even think in Japanese. I think my true experience will come through trial and error to see what would be most representable for me, or what would help me the best in making such a comparison.

I appreciate the recommendation and I took a small look at it and seemed quite useful :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed:

I thought of Satori as a good starting point for reading (which I’m slowly trying to get into), but the vocabulary suggestion makes more sense. I’m trying to be a bit more brave in entering new areas, or trying to get myself into reading and listening at least. Furthermore, I think even if my comprehension isn’t the best, it’ll build with time and help get rid of some of the lack of confidence and I have and maybe gibe me courage to pursue these things further. I’ll try to shift my concentration on words from being burnt to being mastered. The channel you recommended seems quite promising, and I’ll try to start making my way through it. I think it might be what I currently need. I found an anki deck that teaches Japanese including grammar from Tae Kim through snippets from anime, and it’s quite fun. Another Anki deck I found is about proper names, but it’s not quite as fun, since there are a lot of kanji I don’t know, and it’s making the learning process a bit harder, maybe.

Again, I appreciate you taking the time to reply to me with all these helpful tips :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed:

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I quite agree – it is, in my opinion, the easiest way to start reading!
Then again, I also agree with @Aleithian that it might be a good idea to learn more vocabulary first…
Personally, I’d recommend trying reading the free articles on Satori Reader and deciding for yourself whether it’s still too hard for you or not…

In any case, best of luck with your studies! wricat

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Please never feel bad for doing that. All people are always welcome to contribute :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed:

I think what you wrote is quite gold for me. I think at some point I got lost in some delusion and my goals just vanished or didn’t make themselves as visible as they were at the beginning per se. I think the backward thinking approach is something I have never even considered, and I think it’s a better approach to planning in hindsight. I always thought of things the other way around when planning something, but this way is more effective, if I’m not mistaken. I really feel I need to sit down with myself again and set these goals in stone and figure out what the best way to achieve them may be.I think that’s the right thing to do next, because otherwise everything will get lost somewhere.

I really appreciate this :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed:

I’m currently trying to use other resources, but I’m also trying to avoid being overwhelmed with the amount of resources I’m using, so that I don’t lose the motivation or what’s driving me to learn per se. I think two other posts are starting to form in my mind.

  1. the first one is a study log of some kind (I need to figure out how to make one and whether it’s exactly what I have in mind or not), which could help me a lot with comparison and evaluation, especially over long periods of time.
  2. the second is to ask everyone what the most optimized way for me to do what I want to do under the assumption of different things. I need to think more about this one and how to formulate it well.

I think having these two posts would help guide me and help me with the commitment I’m trying to obtain. I’ll need to think about how to do these two, and that should be then a move forward in the right direction.

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This is the video I didn’t know I needed the most. For me, this video hits me really hard regarding different aspects of my life and the things I went through. I think this video could apply to different topics, and it would be right about them. This is a video I see myself watching multiple time and resonate with everything said in it. I’m really thankful for you posting this video as it for sure helps a lot :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed:

Thank you very much again for all your help :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed:

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This is exactly what I’m trying to do currently :joy:

I’m trying to use it as a way to get used to reading or build a habit of reading, while taking things slowly. I integrated WK in it, which helps me see which words I already know. The beginner free stories are what I’m starting with, and I’ll be able to judge based on the experience.

Yeah, sadly vocabulary is what is almost always needed, but I’m trying to work on that too.

Thank you for the wishes and I also hope that everything will be ok :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed:

Thank you very much again :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed:

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I’m finally trying to hold myself accountable for what I really wanted and still want to achieve.

This is good, and I’ve learned that there’s a bleed over effect: the more you work to stay aligned with your goals in one area of life, the more motivated you are to replicate that commitment in other areas. I can say without hesitation that the lessons I’ve learned on my journey of language study over the past ten years have been fundamentally important to my behavioral improvements in other areas of life.

However, if you try to build a house on a risky or bad foundation, then you can say goodbye to that house.

I’ve found this not to be an issue with language study, honestly. I can see it being an issue for pronunciation if you learn to pronounce words without a native reference (e.g. if you are not listening to natives talk as part of your study). Another concern is if your foundation consists in inefficient behaviors, like Duolingo. But if your foundation is a simple, consistent, progressive, and self-conscious effort, I think it’s hard to go wrong.

start tracking different things and see after a while what makes more sense to use in comparison

You can also adjust your criteria as you progress. So, for the foundation, word count, videos watched, and chapters of Tae Kim read are good examples of serviceable metrics. But I imagine that an intermediate stage might include things like articles/books read, shows watched, posts written, etc.

I found an anki deck that teaches Japanese including grammar from Tae Kim

I’ll give a shoutout here to Bunpro, from our very own @ZenMaster

This service is the best flashcard-based Japanese grammar app I’ve ever used. I highly recommend it, and in fact I’ll be returning to it soon now that I’ve resumed by Japanese journey. Migaku is developing their own course that is similar, but I find Bunpro to be far more effective and it syncs with your Wanikani account.

This is the video I didn’t know I needed the most.

The YouTube algorithm recommended it to me the other day and since then I’ve watched a few more of his videos, and they are exceptional.

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I really appreciate you taking the time to reply :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed:

These are wise words. I also learnt that when you’re feeling that you want to hold yourself accountable, you should try and act on it as soon as possible, because it’ll only deplete with time, and you’re not sure when it’ll happen again.

I totally understand that. I think the hidden idea is that you’re making a habit of it in one area to the point where unconscientiously you’ll start trying to make some improvement in the other areas too :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed:

It’s all just a big mind trick :smiling_face_with_tear:

You’re right. I don’t think the metaphor was well applied for this case, but the general recommendation for having an easy way and not having too many headaches down the road, is to work harder in the beginning to build a solid foundation per se.

Yeah. In life, I learnt that nothing is absolute, everything is relative. This can apply to many different aspects in life, and especially in goal setting. Sometimes, I forget that and start defaulting into the absolute concept, and I’ll need then to wait for that feeling to ignite again within me :cry:

Oh, sounds quite good. I read about it on some other thread and I’ll give it a try for the grammar part and see how things go :grin: appreciate the suggesion :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed:

I rewatched the video twice, and I resonate with it a lot every time I watch it again. It’s an interesting one, and I’ll try to check the other ones too.

I’m also contemplating starting a study log, but still trying to figure out what’s the best way for me to start it per se. Do you have any advice or recommendation in that regard?

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If you look at my Study Log, which was based on @trunklayer, you’ll see I’m pretty minimalist or functionalist about the whole thing.

I divided it into categories. Under each, I simply bullet point the study sources. I expand the list as I find new resources that interest me. The only absolute is to do all my reviews every day. That absolute is driven by my current stage of Japanese study: I’m getting back into it, so I want to focus on vocabulary reacquisition. Meanwhile, I continue to advance my French daily with reading. So given this arrangement, I’m comfortable with the limited daily minimum. But as you can see, I often do additional study.

I update it throughout the day, simply placing a checkmark when I complete an item. And I allow myself a comment space either to comment on the study itself or on something in my life that might be impacting my study. It’s a good practice to verbalize the factors that can impact study, and perhaps reflect on them for the future.

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Thank you a lot for your reply :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed:

I took a look at it and It’s quite impressive :grin:

I’ll take a look around and give it some thought, and hopefully I’ll start mine too. I think the basics could be done soon, with different edits throughout the days to come to iron things out per se.

I think the idea of comments is a great one, and it helps a lot with reflection too :grin:

Here’s to achieving our goals :grin:

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As with yourself, see the log as being in a state of evolution :grinning_face:

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