I’m not quite sure how I want to check in here, yet, but here goes nothing. I’m still spending a bit more time on cultivating my study program & working on templates in my database than I would like - but things are getting more and more dialed in as I integrate all I’ve learned about immersion in language learning.
I have a pretty good cadence down at this point throughout my week:
- M-F (my heavy clinic days) I basically just keep up with my SRS and do passive immersion on my daily walks (30m x2). I’m spending about an hour a day on SRS vocab between Anki (Kashi 1.5k deck) and WaniKani (getting close to L7). My passive immersion on these days is usually JapanesePod101 lessons, sometimes just comprehensible input YouTube videos - but audio only.
- Thursday is my biggest study day, I generally do about 6 hours. I do my same hour of SRS, then do around 2h of structured learning (Kanshudo Lessons, Genki, Human Japanese lessons, etc). I’ve been shooting for 2h of intensive immersion (not all at once) and then about an hour of more freeflow immersion, or sometimes I do more focused grammar study depending on the week.
- Friday I have to run my business, so often have a lot of meetings. Still, I’m able to get around 90m of intensive immersion, another 30-60m of structured lessons and my regular hour of SRS in. Some weeks the business requires less of me, so I have more time for immersion or grammar deep dives. I will also often do some output on Fridays, just 30m or so of trying to make sentences and checking them with the Kanshudo sentence correcting tool.
- Saturday & Sunday ebb and flow based on what’s happening at home. I always get my hour of SRS in, of course. 90% of the time, I get about 4 hours of other study done on each day. 90m of immersion, 30-60m of structured lessons. On the weekends, I like to do calligraphy, more meta stuff like listening to Japanese history audiobooks or doing deep dives into Kanji. Less cognitive load on the weekends or I burn out.
This is the basic flow at this point. Sometimes my SRS takes me longer than an hour because something isn’t sticking. This new Anki deck is really context rich, so I get provoked to investigate things a bit more often. Sometimes I spend a bit more time with structured lessons or grammar, that stuff is really hard for me, so it just depends on how my brain feels.
I do passive immersion most of time I’m walking or doing stuff around the house/yard. JapanesePod101, Pimsleur, YouTube videos, Japanese language podcasts - that kind of stuff. If something really catches my ear, I’ll sometimes stop and make a note in my Daily Note in Obsidian to follow up on it.
I work in my Obsidian database all week, no matter what. Sometimes it’s mostly looking things up, adding a line or two to a note, pretty minimal. Sometimes, I spend hours in there interlinking content, developing conjugation tables, writing sentences and correcting them in Kanshudo, and stuff like that. I’ve also been working with another tool, TheBrain, which is a multi-dimensional mindmapping software. I’ve found it pretty helpful in mapping out how kanji and vocabulary sets relate to one another. I really like that tool, but it’s a bit messier than Obsidian, so it’s not my primary knowledge hub.
I’ve been shadowing along with any audio most times. I find some output and speaking practice to be important to keep my brain engaged.
I’ve also just started to create a physical rotation box (index cards in a box set up to do a sort of manual SRS system) for Zen & Acupuncture terminology. I get tired of being on devices all the time, and this gives me a chance to practice my handwriting which is important to me. When I first started learning Classical Chinese, we were forbidden to type characters and did all of our homework by hand. So, it’s sort of embedded in me that writing is part of the deal, even though I know not everyone does much of that. I find it very enjoyable.
I’ve been surprised this week with how much of the Comprehensible Japanese videos I understand without lookups. While I know there is all this tension within the Japanese language learning community about which methods, which websites, which books “work,” I’m finding that mixing together ALL of the things is working best for me. While I am often annoyed that I’m not learning more common vocabulary in WaniKani, my Anki deck takes care of that. AND, I find that the words I’ve learned from WK “stick” more, and the systematic learning of radicals → kanji → vocab really works for me. Perhaps partly because of my Chinese background.
I’m feeling good about my program, my progress, and what’s to come!
