I Have Been Learning On and Off for 10 years. Advice needed

Japanese Language
1

Hi all,

I am looking for some advice on how I should structure my study days.

Context - The SUPER short version of my story.

Like many of you, I grew up loving Japanese pop culture. When I transferred universities my sophomore year, I had a language requirement to graduate. I didn’t want to take Spanish again, knew I was passionate about Japanese, and my uni offered it. I took a few semesters of it before I got the opportunity to study abroad in Tokyo (changed my life. If you have the means to do so, you absolutely should!).

I took a Japanese class while I was in Tokyo too and tried to immerse myself as much as possible. I was always trash at speaking but got pretty good at reading and writing. I would say around beginning N3 level. After getting home, I took one more semester of Japanese. So at that point, I had gone through Genki I, most of Genki II, a little bit of Tobira, and started using tools like Wanikani, and Bunpro.

That was 8 years ago…

Since graduating from Uni 7 years ago, I have been studying on and off (“off” meaning 8 months - 1 year+ sometimes doing next to no studying). Needless to say, my proficiency fell off a cliff. Now I am once again looking to make a push in my studies again.

What’s the issue and what’s different this time? (Skip this section if you don’t care)

Many people drop or struggle to get anywhere in their studies because of lack of knowledge, guidance, and/or discipline. Sure, I have had my fair share of those over the last decade but after working through those, my biggest hurdle just ending up being priority. I just couldn’t justify the time I was spending on studying from both a practical standpoint and an enjoyment one. I simply always put other life tasks ahead of it and studying got the scraps of time that were left.

However, for the first time in my career, I am dropping down from full-time to part-time in job and have consistent time back that I can dedicate to studying again!

Thoughts on my study plan

I am looking to dedicate (at least) 1 hour everyday to studying. My thought is that I can allocate the time like so:

25 minutes - Wanikani Reviews
20 minutes - Bunpro Reviews
20 minutes - ?

I want that last slot to be focused on applying the language. I am thinking 10 minutes reading (nhk easy news, Japanese io, graded readers, manga, etc.) and then maybe 10 minutes of passive study? Watching Netflix with Japanese subs. I was also thinking of maybe just using jpdb study decks for an anime or visual novel I am interested in watching. I would love to hear others’ thoughts on what this last time slot could be used for.

I am curious to hear from others that also have taken long breaks away from studying and have come back. What was your experience like? For others, what does your study schedule consist of? What tools and resources have been helping you lately?

I am eternally grateful to anybody that read this post.

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Welcome back ( ◠‿◠ )

I came back after 4 years hiatus and I was surprised to find out I was able to understand way more than I expected. The first three months were more about speaking (I went to Japan) but after that I decided to keep going and I already surpassed the highest level I’ve reached on wanikani and other apps.
One of the first things I’ve done though was picking up a beginner graded reader and I couldn’t believe I could still read. From what you’ve described you have the basics, so it shouldn’t take you very long to get back to where you were at your pick abilities Japanese wise. I think it took me about 6 months after I came back?
One of the things that really helped me was switching my Switch to a Japanese UI and playing ACNH in Japanese while transcribing the screenshots, it’s text heave and it really gave me a push. It’s really important to find something you enjoy, and if you reached N3 you’ll be able to handle reading and listening again in no time.
Personally it was a joy revising everything from the beginning since this time around I wasn’t struggling with a pile of unfamiliar well everything so I was able to deepen my understanding.
I doubt the apps I use are relevant in your case (Lingodeer and iKnow) there are lots of books clubs on the forum if you’re interested. Just find your passion within the process and everything will sort itself out.

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I lived in Japan for a while, moved home and didn’t study for nearly 5 years until returning to Japanese - I’ve definitely experienced a long break and the drop-off of language ability you describe. Though it will be difficult looking back over content that you’ve already studied in the past, be patient. A surprising amount will return to you while you study – not all at once, but you’ll notice over time just how satisfying it is when the pieces click back into place little by little.

If you were N3 before, start somewhere that is likely to give you a confidence boost, like N4 content/textbooks, or even N5 if you’re shakey on N4.

Based on this, 45 minutes of your 1hr+ are being dedicated to SRS reviews. I would have you ask yourself “What do I want to do with Japanese first?” Do you want your first big goal to be reading novels? Watching anime unsubbed? Maybe to be able to speak casually or take on the JLPT? Identifying your first ambition will help you tighten the focus of your studies. Here on the forums we get a lot of first-timers who say they want to speak fluent Japanese, so how many Wanikani lessons should they do at a time? But speaking and kanji are not necessary for one another at all, making their WK subscription useless for reaching their speaking goal.

If you’re looking to build your reading skills above all other skills first, you’re on the right track. I would fill that last 20min slot with progressively challenging written content. This could be Satori Reader, manga, Tadoku books, novels, or NHK News like you mention. Personally, I would give the written content a bigger time emphasis than SRS reviews, but that might be different depending on where you are in your skill-building.

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I would suggest also that even if you do want to focus mainly on reading that this is too great a proportion of your time spent on SRS compared to everything else. SRS works, but it can be a boring, brutal slog and if you ever get behind and let the reviews pile up that’s super demotivating – so you want it to be the “this is the thing I do on the side that helps with my other study and use of the language”, not to feel like “ploughing through reviews is what language study is”. Plus 15 minutes is a really short time to spend on reading or on working through a textbook or anything else – you want that non SRS work to be at least 30-45 minutes of focused work at a time. If I were you I would try to calibrate my SRS usage to the point where I could do it with say 15 minutes max in the morning and then a couple of 5 minute catchup sessions on your phone in otherwise “dead” time later on. I would also suggest a setup which lets you answer yes/no or no/easy/hard rather than typing to further keep the time commitment down (“Anki mode”).

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With your background, I would dedicate more time to reading than to doing bunpro. The reason is that you already know how to ride the bicycle, you just forgot how to do it. I would still do wanikani though, since you will need to remember the kanji. But the structure of the language and its grammar, you already know.

After focusing on reading for a while you will probably get a lot of vocab back, which will enable you to start doing listening. But listening can be done more leisurely than reading IMO, since you can watch some anime or whatever.

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I second what everyone else has said - you are going to bore yourself doing 45 min of SRS daily (plus, do you really need to spend that much in Bunpro? I’d cut to 10 minutes-ish and do less lessons/reviews daily).

For me, I also started with SRS and a grammar base when I returned to learning JP (dictionary of japanese grammar + SKM books), But what really gave me a boost to learning was the applied study time, either listening to podcasts or reading. This time last year I was struggling to read one of my first JP books, at a pace of less then 10 pages a week; meanwhile I finished a ~150 page book I was interested in in 5 days last week.

So, my tip (and I recommend this because you already have a previous JP background) is definitely to identify what you want to do with the language and invest your time in it; then, use SRS to build the skills around it

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Thank you everyone so much for your answers! It’s always great to hear others’ experiences. It seems the consensus is to choose something I’m passionate about and use that for study since I already have a foundation of grammar, kanji, and vocab and use SRS to support that passion instead of the other way around.

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That makes sense, thanks! I was actually just debating if I should go Anki mode or not. Keeping the time commitment down and making reviews infinitely easier to do on mobile because I don’t have to type sounds like the best approach for me.

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