Level 60ies

So… How long did it take? Could you have been faster? Why? What have you done for grammar, sentences and everything else that the Great Crabigator (peace be upon him) does not teach? :slight_smile:

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I went ahead and moved this to WK because I know some level 60s that dont check campfire (I think). May get you more replies this way.

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I’m not 60, but I’d like to recommend https://bunpro.jp/ for grammar. I love it at least =)
Nice free resource with WaniKani type of review :wink:

Beware: I am unable to write anything short or concise!

WK Levelling:
I don’t quite remember how long it took, but I was pretty close to the optimal speed of 7/8 days per level and half of that for the short ones… I could have remembered a few more kanji on the sorter levels and been done maybe a week or two earlier? Not of much consequence anyway.

Grammar
First I went through Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese Grammar, drilling the sample sentences with Anki. That left me with a pretty solid foundation. I also studied the Core 6K/10K sample sentences.

Just recently, I’ve started watching the Japanese only content on the nihongo no mori youtube channel. I make flash cards with the sample sentences and japanese explanations, and am hoping this will work as well as Tae Kim did for the elementary grammar.

Non-WK vocab and kanji
Nowadays I just add all the words and kanji I look up to my anki deck and drill them that way. I make my own mnemonics for the kanji and add 10 a week. That seems to work pretty well.

I’m too impatient to drill complete sentences anymore, but just a few days ago I’ve started looking things up in j-j dictionaries as a first resort, so with luck, the answers themselves will slowly be replaced by sample sentences of sorts…

Reading
I started reading stuff as soon as I was able to. I started with the graded readers, then moved on to simple manga and video games. My current reading practice is making sure to read at least 2-4 pages in a real book each day (still plugging through the No 6 series i started last summer).

I recommend keeping a list (mental or otherwise) of stuff you want to read one day, and then check in once in a while (you can often read a few pages of manga/books on amazon or other book stores, and you can check games using let’s plays, called 実況プレイ(じっきょうプレイ)in Japanese).

Listening
Said 実況プレイ have always been something I’ve found to be a pretty relaxed way to get some listening practice in, since it was usually fun even when I didn’t understand anything at all! It’s also rewarding to go back to them later and notice that you can understand a bit more.

I’ve also written my own listening practice SRS web app.

Writing/Speaking
I’ve found two chat buddies using the hellotalk app, and write to them once in a while. I also have one hour spoken conversation practice each week using community tutors on italki.

Whew… I think that about covers it!

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Well, thank you so much :slight_smile:

I’m curious… Just what do you level 60s actually do with WaniKani after you’ve burned everything? Do you still study any of your old kanji or vocab cards?

Isn’t like 95% of the content on the site Japanese only?

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After reading the response from @crihak , and being so lazy that I’ve done none of that, I really worry about my chances at fluency…

It seems so. But I did watch a few of the really basic ones a while back, which had english subtitles. At the time though, those were too basic, and the all-japanese content was still beyond my level.

Ahh, if I recall correctly, a long long time ago they had N5(+N4?) content which was all in Japanese, and then redid some N5+N4 content in English and a few other languages.

When I first started reading N2 grammar and things like Shin Kanzen Master flipped to all Japanese, it was very intimidating (doesn’t help that Japanese people make a big deal of it),

When I was starting on N4, I found out that I could actually understand what was going on. They always make sure to make gestures and explain things using different words… so even if one doesn’t understand half of it, the probability of understanding is pretty high.

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