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Japanese Language Study Logs (Public)
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みんなさん、 こんにちは!

It’s nice to meet you all. I’m Nascitura (if that’s a mouthful, you can call me N) and I’ve been practising WaniKani for around 2-3 months now. The reason why I started was that I have been studying Japanese on and off for many, many years in different academies, in group & private lessons, online and in person… and I always seemed to lose the motivation due to several things, among which was, without a doubt, The Kanji :tm:

A friend told me about WaniKani a couple of years back and I decided to give it a go. At the time, for some reason, I didn’t really get hooked, so I never even finished the first level. This year, however, I decided to give it another try, and I am happy to report that I have completed level 4 and I am practising every day! I am extremely happy with my progress in such a short time compared to all the years I spent trying to learn kanji differently, so I would like to take this momentum and get involved in this community as well, as I think it’s a fantastic way of learning about other people’s resources and methods for their Japanese study journey.

As for this post, I simply want to get started somewhere and share what I’m currently doing to improve my Japanese knowledge and what I’d like to start doing in the near future. Here we go!

Long-term goals

  • Japanese N3-N2 proficiency.
  • Being able to communicate in Japanese & read untranslated Japanese literature.

What I’m currently doing

  • WaniKani daily, at a rate of 5-15 lessons per day (depending on how busy I am). I don’t have a specific Level 60 completion time in mind, I’m just trying to be consistent and enjoying the journey :slight_smile:
  • Online Japanese group lessons at an academy. This is helping me a lot on the grammar side. I also like being able to ask when I have doubts about something.
  • YUYUの日本語Podcast: Sometimes, when I go for a run, I listen to a couple of episodes of this podcast. I don’t understand most of what is said, but I believe it helps me train my ears in terms of pronunciation, and I try to listen for vocabulary and grammatical structures that I already know. It also helps me not focus on how tired I am while I’m on my run :joy:

What I’d like to start doing

  • Getting more involved in the WaniKani community (starting with this post!). I’m excited about things like book clubs & other resources – I simply need to sit down and calmly look into it with time, as it can be a bit overwhelming.
  • Creating a syntax spreadsheet! I saw this idea in @Akashelia 's level 60 celebration post (if I’m not mistaken) and absolutely LOVED the idea! I am a big fan of organisation, and I think it will really help me consolidate some knowledge that is currently just floating around in my brain.
  • Shadowing practice with NHK Easy News. I’m usually quite good at pronunciation, but I find the Japanese pitch & rhythm difficult to master.
  • Finding a way to practice my speaking. Right now I only have my one lesson a week, in which I barely say anything (as said, it’s a group lesson), so I need to find other ways to practice.

I think that’s all I have so far! I don’t know yet how often I will post or how study logs work in general, but as said, this is just a way for me to start posting and keeping track of my progress ^^

Let’s do this!
Nascitura :dizzy:

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Welcome to the study log crew! :smiley:
Awesome that’s it’s going well and that you’re having fun!

Mine was very functional and not pretty at all, but if you are interested in making it look nice you can check out those two options:

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Aaaah thank you very much, really appreciate your reply! My main concern is functionality, but I would love to make it look pretty after I make it make sense, so I will absolutely keep these in mind :slight_smile:

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Hello Nascitura, welcome to WaniKani :dizzy: Can you speak Italian ? Your username made me think about it, I had to check it up but apparently it means something like “a child that still has to be born”

If you want to read effortlessly the NHK News (and anything else on the Internet) there is this great extension on Chrome, Rikaikun. Perhaps you already know it but if not it’s really an incredible tool, I like it so much, strongly advice it

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Hi Kokinshu, thank you for your reply!

I don’t speak Italian (I am Spanish), but there’s an explanation for the username – I studied Latin & Ancient Greek in university, so I played with the Latin legal term nasciturus (with the exact meaning you mentioned) and made it into the feminine version, which is typically not used in those contexts and makes for a great username that is rarely taken :slight_smile:

And thank you very much for the extension, I will definitely check it out! I really appreciate you guys helping me out with resources, I am already so happy that I decided to write this post ^^

2 Likes