Japanese in one year?! - Not your usual study log

[NeoArcturus]

I have to admit, I just feel like you opened my eyes with that

@GrumpyPanda

More than the peak workload, you have to think about the opportunity cost: Any time you spend doing Bunpro and KaniWani reviews, you are not spending on other things. How many hours is it going to take you to learn and review all those N1 items? How many new words could you have learned in that time instead?

@GrumpyPanda

Looking at the big picture: What is going to make you fluent in Japanese? Using the language. A lot.
All the SRS in the world isn’t going to get you there, it’s only the stepping stone that enables you to use the language. So the goal should be to get to the point where you can watch shows/read books/listen to audiobooks/… a lot and actually understand things.
What is going to get you there? Core grammar and core vocabulary. N1 grammar is so infrequent that it barely makes a difference in your understanding. The top 2k most frequent words appear all the time, learning those makes a giant difference.

@pm215

in order to be able to read, write, listen or speak reasonably smoothly, you need your brain to be working purely in Japanese[*]. You can’t start with a thought in English, mentally translate it and then say it, and you can’t read by mentally translating into English. Memorizing English → Japanese mappings feels to me like it’s trying to go down a path where you still have English as a part of your Japanese language activity.

That makes so much sense! I’ll continue with Bunpro, but I think I might drop KaniWani. I feel like if I continue with it, my brain will get used to that “English → Japanese” mapping, which is not really a good thing to have if I want to get fluent. Trying to produce Japanese text is probably way better than KaniWani, and essentially does the same thing, but not SRS-isolated.

And, as you said, I could learn more vocab instead of doing additional reviews, and vocab are the most important aspect of using a language. I will finish N3 at my current pace, but I think I’ll tackle N1 slower then. I’m not sure regarding N2, as I feel like this is the point where I could handle everyday conversations (at least grammarwise). If I stick to my pace, I would be finished by beginning of April. Finishing N1 grammar in July or August is still fast enough, but what about N2? Any advice?

@GrumpyPanda

(Sorry for the unsolicited advice, after years of learning Japanese I’ve developed some pretty strong opinions. It’s hard not to jump into these kinds of discussions )

No need to apologize, I appreciate every single advice that I get, even if I don’t end up following it