Level 22
Tomorrow became “three days from now”, as is a common occurrence in life. Sometimes I get busy, sometimes I struggle to find the time to write one of these up.
I’m in the process of trying to convince WaniKani to give me my reviews during the day (before 6pm) so I can use my evenings to study grammar, which has resulted in fairly strange days. I was able to get all of my reviews to show up at 9 AM and 9 PM (somehow), just need to get the 9 PM ones moved up.
After taking the time to vent my frustrations the other day, I’ve really turned around this level. I should be able to get it done by the expected time (end of the month). I guess it was just weighing me down!
A few other things worth mentioning. I have created a mostly Japanese YouTube account, found 20 channels to subscribe to. These range from grammar discussion, listening practice, studying techniques, language shadowing, and casual content like vlogging. The only channels not entirely in Japanese are the grammar discussion channels. I also joined the English-Japanese Language Exchange Discord server. Whenever I get more confidence with expressing myself in Japanese, it’ll go there. I also plan on using that server for reading practice!
Immersion is going well. I’ve listened to 4 hours so far today, and that feels good to be able to say.
If you haven’t played Tomodachi Life on Switch yet, you should totally play it. I’m hooked.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by! The goal is to see you tomorrow, but we’ll see! :]
Level 22
Howdy! It’s been raining lately. I guess that’s the joy of April in the midwest.
Let’s talk some Japanese. I normally concoct my plan for the month on the last day of the previous month, but I’ve decided to take some time to brainstorm for this one. I have more resources than I had before, but limited time. Here’s where my goals are:
- More dedicated grammar time every day.
- Maintain the ~4 hour immersion time every day.
- Only complete WaniKani lessons and reviews in the morning and afternoon, anything after 6pm I’ll leave for the next day.
- Find some time every day for reading.
Pretty solid list. I had some manga lined up to read, but I couldn’t find where to read it (legally, of course). I have two volumes of よつばと that I can at least get started with. While I’d like a physical collection of manga, I know for a fact that reading on my phone is going to be more convenient in the end, so I need to gather a backlog of manga to read (legally).
Hopefully the subtleties of legality don’t break TOS on here…
Immersion went great yesterday. I felt focused, which definitely depends on the day, but it felt good. I love my music, but now that I have this great selection of content, there’s so much to keep my ears and brain working throughout the day.
Edit: I’m hopeful to find the time tomorrow to go through one of the videos I’m using as immersion and break down a handful of the sentences to put some work on my comprehension. I need to make this leap. Also, I need to use the English-Japanese Exchange Discord to grab some sentences from and learn from them.
Thanks for stopping by. It’s my work weekend tomorrow, so I probably won’t post. See you next time! :]
Level 23
It’s the end of the month! April was a really long month for me, I feel like the weather played a part in that. Tons of rain, strange temperatures. One day it’s 80, the next it’s 30, it’s rough.
This one is going to be short as I create a full list of everything I’d like to do next month in regard to my studies…for tomorrow’s update. I think I’m going to evaluate what I want out of my studies a bit more frequently than monthly so that I can effectively hold myself accountable more.
Immersion has been going well. I haven’t dropped a day for almost a week, so here’s hoping I can keep the up for the long-term. I’ve also been breaking down real sentences from real people every day, which is kind of like a puzzle.
That’s it! Thanks for stopping by, see you tomorrow! :]
Level 23
rubs eyes Hold on, tomorrow was…yesterday? Huh? I’m going back to bed.
Time for my favorite part of the month…the end of it! Let’s go over some issues I had in April and my goals for May.
In April I had a fairly tumultuous month. Lots of shifts in confidence, some new studying practice, the true introduction of immersion. My WaniKani work has slowed down somewhat, which doesn’t have to be a negative aspect of April. Yet again, I tried something new with grammar but it never went anywhere. I had a pretty major schedule change this month. I no longer study ANY WaniKani at home unless I feel like I should. I do as much WaniKani in the morning as I can, so that once I get home I have time for other forms of study. The goal with this was to dedicate more time to grammar, but that still is failing.
My goals for May:
- Continue with 4 hours of immersion daily
- Continue with my morning focused WaniKani
- Turn sentence breakdowns into a daily task. I enjoy pulling sentences, or sentence exchanges, from immersion videos and the English-Japanese Exchange Discord server, breaking them into their pieces and seeing what I can understand. I think this way is the path forward for grammar. Learning by input is one thing, but breaking down and understanding the input is another, which should lead to another goal of mine:
- Writing sentences and verifying them with a native speaker. I think this goal is very likely to not happen, as I tend to struggle with failure…we’ll certainly see if I commit to this one.
- My last goal is to READ A MANGA. I’ve said for two months that I’m gonna do it, and I’m doing it. I don’t really know the pace I should go…
In terms of numbers, I did worse this month! 4390 reviews in March, 3842 in April (500 less), with over 150 lesson difference between the two months. I think that setting myself to a standard, instead of allowing the reviews to continue to grow, is important for the longevity of my studying so that it doesn’t feel like a chore.
That’s it for today! Thanks for another month of Japanese, on to May! See you…maybe tomorrow? I haven’t really decided when the next post will be…hmm. :?
Level 23
I’m dedicating this post to the kanji 職 which looks a lot like 識 to me and also a little like 謝. In order to remedy the issues I have with these three kanji, I first must rip them into little pieces.
職 (しょく), 識 (しき), and 謝 (しゃ) all have readings that start with し, so if my brain is too fast or too slow, I’ve already run into a problem.
謝 is the easiest to distinguish from the three by looks alone. It’s got some 射 and some 言. It shares nothing with 職 and should be entirely out of the question when I see 職.
識 only shares 言 with 謝 so I never should’ve gotten them confused in the first place. Since I did get them mixed up in my brain, I now have to play the “can PlayTheSaturn remember that 謝 and 職 are nothing alike” game.
識 and 職 I’ll give myself an excuse for. The 耳 and 言 somewhat look similar when they’re all squished in next to 音求.
This is a call out post, 職. I’m taking you down, once and for all!
Anyway, thanks for reading that…and stopping by! See you all next time! :]
Level 23
Goals for the week of 5/8-5/15
Hello! I think I’m going to start keeping track of my goals for each week, so that I can effectively reflect on my studies and react quicker to what needs changed. Weird that my weeks start on a Friday, but that’s going to change every month based on the first of the month.
I didn’t study as much grammar as I should have this week, and I think that’s entirely because the way I’ve studied grammar before was with big long sessions (2+ hours) dedicated to it. I’m going to experiment with 20-30 minute sessions and see how I do. I’ll get started with that today.
Immersion is going well. I need to find more time for active immersion, as I haven’t spent much time really absorbing the Japanese as I should. I won’t have a ton of time for active immersion each day, so the goal for this week will be 4 hours total. I think that’s a decent starting point. I recently started playing トモダチコレクシュン on my DS and I’m understanding a decent amount. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m familiar with the series or because I’m generally decent at figuring things out, but I am noticing that I’m genuinely understanding vocabulary (even words I haven’t necessarily seen before). It’s a nice feeling.
I think my new WaniKani studying method has some pros and cons. A big pro is that my evenings feel more open, as I don’t have that impending alarm to go off at 6:30, 7:30, and 10:30. There are other times where I’m still catching up in the evenings because I didn’t feel like I did enough during the day, which is fine as well. I did notice, however, that doing lessons is becoming more difficult due to less structure around doing them.
Basically:
- New target time of 4 hours this week for active immersion
- Shorter, more frequent grammar study
- Start reading.
- Play more トモダチコレクシュン
That’s all, thanks for stopping by and I’ll see you next time! :]
Level 23
I’ve had a wild week. Busy at work, busy at home, took some time off to visit some family. Did some reading…although a very light amount. It’s going to take some time getting it into my routine.
My goals for the week last week remain my goals this week. I need to read and continue with my immersion.
Short one today. Thanks for stopping by, see you next time! :]