Alright, it’s Sunday again, so I feel like I should post an update!
First of all, I leveled up yesterday, as usual, which means I’ve now cleared half of the painful levels of WaniKani. My impressions so far are far from being painful: At around level 11, I finally started being consistent with doing 25 lessons every single day, without exceptions, and because of that, I actually found the painful levels to be less painful than the last three or four levels of the pleasant levels lol
My first burns are getting nearer now: A bit less than two months have passed since I enlightened my first items, which means I should get my first burns in a bit more than 2 months. For anyone curious: My first burns are scheduled for May 22nd. I can’t wait for then!
Talking about May: My exams were cancelled, so no exams this month. However, I plan to do Latin and History in May, when the next exams start, along with Chemistry and another subject that I haven’t decided yet. I might go with Ethic, but well see!
Back to WK: I also just recently crossed 1000 englightened items! Since I still have about 2 months before my first burns, I expect it to go above 2000 and stay there. My current enlightened count is 1042 lol
I also noticed that I have way less items when leveling up now, compared to a few levels ago. I assume this is because I already have most of the kanji unlocked when I get to a new level, which means I already unlock most of the vocab of my current level before moving on to the next one. I only had about 80 new lessons the last two times I leveled up!
I’m also currently testing a WIP Version of a great new userscript. The author warns that it’s best to not quite use it yet, except for giving feedback and suggestions, which I am doing! If you want to test it, too, you can find the thread here: WaniKani Custom SRS - WIP Early Release
It allows users to add their own radicals, kanji and vocab to the regular WK reviews, which opens millions of possibilities! I can’t wait for the first stable version, as it will give users finally the opportunity to add the remaining N1 kanji, and Joyo and all kanji that they want!
As you might remember, I posted about having problems with games here, so I limited myself. I stopped infinite craft entirely now, but I’m still doing too many wordle variations… So, I now decided the following: I will allow myself to do the regular wordle and chessguessr, because I’ve been doing the latter one for months now, but no more than that! At least I was able to control myself well enough to not neglect my studies in Japanese nor school, but I’m still wordling too much, so that has to change!
So, let’s move on: How did this week go? I personally am pretty satisfied, especially with my reading progress!
I’ll start with grammar, though. I’ve been able to maintain my pace of half a lesson, or about 11 grammar points, every day. I should be finished with N3 grammar in five days (including today) if I can continue maintaining my pace. After that, I will start going through all the grammar points again from N5 to N3 to master these as good as I can. I also planned to write sentences with every single grammar point, although I’m pretty sure that I’ll put more than one grammar point into these sentences when going through the first part of N5. I also want to do cram session regularly with the grammar points, for even further practice.
Another aspect that will help me practicing grammar is, of course, reading! And this week, I made another jump regarding the difficulty of the stuff that I read. As you might know, I usually read only the NHK Easy articles, but this week, I tried to translate an article from the “normal” NHK news, and it went surprisingly well! So, because of this, I plan to read “normal” NHK articles more regularly now. They are very hard for me, but doable, so I see no reason why I should hold back! Since grammar doesn’t seem to hold me back anymore (except for keigo lol), and since Yomitan is my life saver when it comes to vocab, you can expect me to translate more NHK articles from time to time (I’ll continue stalking @nyxqueenofshadows for that matter, since she said that she doesn’t have a problem with that ). Also, I finished the second part of Markus’ Ascent just yesterday, which is also very nice! I’m not having too many difficulties grammar wise so far, and I also recognise a lot of vocab, but as you might have read, there were a few chapters that were really challenging for me.
I also tried out iKnow last week, and I decided that I’ll use it for the 6k core vocab, and for vocab beyond that, I think that a combination of reading and jpdb will be a good combination! However, I might also use the Custom SRS userscript for that, since it is just perfect for that! I’m currently not advanced enough for that anyway, since I still have to go throught the 6k core vocab, but I think it never hurts to plan ahead!
Regarding handwriting, I’m now at the level 6 kanji. While I originally planned to go at a pace of two days per level, I believe I’ll have to slow down, as the kanji get more strokes now, which means writing a whole row of them is taking longer. What originally took me 25 minutes is now taking me almost 45 minutes, so, I guess I’ll have to adjust my speed there.
Btw, for all the handwriters out there: What do you do while handwriting? I personally always listen to music, especially piano! There’s nothing better than to end a study day with some relaxing handwriting while listening to great music
For listening: Well I don’t have a lot to say there. I mostly did nothing for that again, but at least I did some practice once in this week, which is better than last week lol
Last, but not least: Production! Well, it didn’t go too well there this week, but I opened my Japanese only thread in the Natively forums, as I had promised. Related to production, I also plan to add speaking to my schedule, and to keep me motivated, I will join the Speak/Write Every Day Challenge. Feel free to join me at joining it!
Alright, this turned out longer than I had expected, but it’s time for stats now:
Table time!
月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
WaniKani | |||||||
Bunpro | |||||||
iKnow! | |||||||
Reading | |||||||
Listening | |||||||
Handwriting | |||||||
Production | |||||||
Speaking |
See ya around :3