So, happy birthday to me! It’s been a really long time since I’ve last touched WK, mostly because I was so fixated on other life stuff (school, work, family). As it happens, though, it took some life stuff (say, an internship) falling apart for me to remember my dreams of teaching English abroad and becoming proficient in Japanese. Since it’ll take maybe at least a year to teach abroad, working on my Japanese is the next best thing.
WK Review
Over the past couple days, I whittled my review back down to something much more manageable from the 300 I was greeted with. I also finally started on the final radical in Level 3, so I hope to start on Level 4 within a week or two.
Hiragana and Katakana Practice
To review what kana I’ve forgotten, I took Tofugu’s hiragana and katakana quizzes. My hiragana was around 90%, but after struggling halfway through the katakana quiz, I knew for sure where I’ll need to focus my study. So I made a kana AnkiDroid to work on that, starting with アイウエオ and カキクケコ. By next week, I hope to go as far as タチツテト.
Much Needed Pep Talk
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been away. There is always an opportunity to start over. You haven’t truly failed until you quit trying.
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ve tried it out a bit, and while I find it useful for quizzing, I find that my study preference is to have that spaced repetition. I think what I’ll do is use Real Kana to occasionally practice those kana I’ve mastered.
Level 3 has a few katakana-only vocabulary like リンゴ and コーヒー and some other vocab that is mostly katakana with 1 kanji. If they’re not already in your review rotation, maybe you could prioritize them using the lesson picker for extra katakana practice!
I don’t know if I’ll be recording a daily log after this Thanksgiving weekend, but I’m happy with the progress I’ve made today.
So I looked through my vocabulary, and it looks like I got to Guru level with the katakana vocab. I might need to do some research on how to force lessons, because it didn’t appear obvious for me. But thanks for mentioning it! I forgot that it was a possibility.
WK Review
I’ve been able to keep my 0/0 streak, even with 10 new vocabulary. It’s also nice to see that I don’t have any critical condition items either!
Look at that Guru level! I’m really pleased with how much I’ve remembered!
Kana Practice
I’ve done pretty well with my kana AnkiDroid. Even with adding サシスセソ, I only missed one card, and that was more due to typing in the wrong kana. Sure, it meant that I still knew it since I had to type it, but I don’t want to fall into the trap of “well, I know what I meant, so it’s okay”. It looks like I’ll surpass the goal I set yesterday, but since I’ll start traveling home tomorrow, I’m not going to try and push it.
Another Pep Talk
While it may be fun to speed-run learning, it’s best to go slow and steady. Not everyday is going to be a good study day. If you know that life is going to happen, give yourself grace to go a little slower.
I don’t know yet how frequently I’ll be posting, but I want to try a halfway point and see if that helps at all.
WK Review
Sunday and Monday, I kept making little mistakes, and I wondered why. Tuesday, I realized, “Oh, duh, I’m using my phone instead of a computer.” I thought it would keep me from remembering the pronunciation, since I was using the Japanese keyboard on my phone, but I realized today that typing the romaji is much more useful for me right now, especially since I keep forgetting it’s きって（切手） instead of きて, and きょ（去）instead of きょう. I still think the Japanese keyboard is good practice, but perhaps not for a while.
I’m happy with my progress, in spite of the typos (I’m particularly embarrassed by 方, autocorrect kept changing my “way” into “ear”)! Now I need to keep at the practice, so I can keep my apprentice items below 100. Now that I’m making sure to avoid typos (thank you, computer) and the pronunciation, I’m hoping I won’t be overwhelmed with them for long, if at all.
Another issue with doing it all on my phone was I didn’t get in practice with my Anki cards until today. I keep forgetting that I download the app and have access there, but it’s obviously a blessing in disguise. After getting back on that bandwagon (only 1 error! ), I went ahead and added タチツテト to the mix.
Pep Talk Ahoy!
Don’t fight what works right. Be humble enough to make the changes that will help you succeed! You’ll thank yourself later!
This is probably the case for Mac as well, but on Windows computers specifically you can add a Japanese keyboard and swap back and forth using a keyboard shortcut. WK’s kana parsing is the same as if you were using a real romaji keyboard anyway, so it’s also fine to just keep using that.
You can get really fast using the 12-key keyboard on a phone, and it definitely helps teach hiragana/katakana, but there’s nothing wrong with using a romaji keyboard even on your phone if you have the option.
It’s been a really long time since I’ve last touched WK, mostly because I was so fixated on other life stuff (school, work, family). As it happens, though, it took some life stuff (say, an internship) falling apart for me to remember my dreams of teaching English abroad and becoming proficient in Japanese. Since it’ll take maybe at least a year to teach abroad, working on my Japanese is the next best thing.
I also finally started on the final radical in Level 3, so I hope to start on Level 4 within a week or two.
Thank you for pointing it out!