@Jonapedia I really do appreciate and respect your personal experience, so I hope you don’t feel like I’m trying to negate that – I’m just saying that by correlating the CEFR levels to your own standards, not the written descriptions, you’re no longer referencing those same levels. Most typical tourists don’t have long deep conversations in a country that speaks another language, but need to communicate basic things of immediate relevance.
B2 is understanding complex topics (including ones of your specialty), and communicating with some level of fluency and spontaneity. When I got to B2-level French this described exactly how my level was.
(At this point I got a job with a French company in my domain, and also enrolled in university)
Your experience shows that you’re probably generally a tourist!
I guess that in attempting to come up with a personal term to summarise what the B2 level allows, I’ve unintentionally created something that’s less clear and not necessarily accurate. It is true that most tourists don’t have to handle what I mentioned, even if I think it happens from time to time. In any case, you have a fair point, and the official descriptions are definitely much more precise (and are the very definition of what those levels really designate).
I’ll now respond to some other posts:
On-topic
I don’t have any experience to back this up, but my general impression is that you really don’t need kanji to make yourself understood in conversations. I use kanji to help me store new words in my mind, but my impression is that it’s a lot more useful to know what a combination of sounds means in context. (And in all honesty, there are some Chinese words I understand even though I’m having trouble writing them because I haven’t used them in text for so long, so… yeah, kanji aren’t that important for daily interactions.)
Rather off-topic
I used Assimil’s Le Français en pratique from their Perfectionnement series. I’m not sure if it’s useful for you if you’re aiming for the C2 though, because I feel like it gave me a wide range of words that allowed me to enter the C levels in almost any domain. More of a C1.1 level at which you become completely autonomous and just need a dictionary to help you. Have you already done a C1 certification, out of curiosity? (Just to get an idea of where you are.) Assimil gives you a good general introduction to all advanced French, more or less. I took my DALF C2 in the sciences and I prepared by watching Mythbusters in French for a week. I ended up talking about GMOs for the oral section.
There isn’t much grammar left at the C1-C2 level, unless you’re like me and want to play around with the passé simple and imparfait du subjonctif, which I only really use to prove that I know French grammar in formal settings. (It’s not useful in daily conversation.) You just need to go hunt for lots of material on the fields that interest you. For the sciences, you can watch videos from Inserm, listen to programmes from Arte, read articles from newspapers like Le Monde… maybe look for lectures on Coursera? For the humanities… read political analyses, perhaps? There was one in Le Monde about how mask-wearing in France would be a sociological revolution or something, because a citizen of the Republic is envisioned as an enlightened individual who does not need to cover his face, which was something common among the hated aristocracy… Languages are also a potential topic, though they’re probably not the most common pick. You can also try to check out French philosophers if need be: Rousseau, Montaigne, La Boétie… other European philosophers like Hobbes and Locke might help too. Quoting classical thinkers like Plato might help as well? (Honestly though, I’m probably just spouting all this because of the French-Philosophy lessons I had to take in France.) I don’t think the C2 will actually test you on something that specialised, and you’re expected to pluck ideas out of the dossier anyway.
In the comment section of that video the youtuber himself states that he doesn’t believe in this method anymore by the way (the one explained in the video).
To OP: This is coming from someone who is most probably below your level of japanese, so take it with a grain of salt. From my point of view your goal seems to contradict your methods. You say you don’t need to know japanese for your job, nor are you looking to take the N1. Instead you wan’t to interact with natives outside of work. In my opinion, studying kanji is the least important thing you can do for this.
What you need is listening comprehension and speaking practice. Knowing kanjis isn’t going to help you have a conversation at a bar or on a date, nor is it going to help you understand the fast-spoken japanese that natives use everyday or the set phrases that aren’t really translatable word-for-word.
I have a similar goal as yourself and I’m currently doing one WK level per ~20 days. This means that I only need to spent about ~35 minutes everyday doing reviews and lessons. The rest of my study time (roughly another hour) I focus on new grammar with both listening and speaking practice. Most of my vocabulary is also learnt here. And it is learned in context with new grammar and sentences, which makes it stick a lot easier (although ‘learning’ a vocabulary in WK and then seeing it in use makes it stick pretty much instantly, so I’d say WK teaches me a lot of vocab as well).
Well, the reason for this thread is that I indeed do want to spend more time on other skills, but I think that reading is essential to general language ability. WK has made it easier to acquire vocabulary and general language skills both directly and by enabling more extensive reading. I’m getting conversation practice with multiple iTalki teachers (this is the silver lining of the lockdown), and listening practice comes from streaming TV and direct listening exercises. If your level badge is accurate, you are still in the manageable zone - the demands begin to get heavier in the 20s, assuming you sre leveling up near max speed. Brace yourself
Congratulations on hitting level 60! I agree that SRS is over emphasized online, which si the reason I’m looking to streamline it, but I wouldn’t want to try to absorb the kanji themselves any other way. It does work.
I’m locked down in the US too, and can’t move until this is over - if that ever happens. Not that we’ll know since the CDC is out of the picture. Ugh.
I’m anticipating having much less study time once I move, so that’s the rush. I want to make the best possible use of my time now, whcih includes keeping up the pace of learning kanji without being lopsided about it.
I know the company well, as I already work for them in the US :). No issues there. I know I’m not going to be fluent the day I arrive or anything like that, but I don’t want to end up as one of the people that live in Japan in a sort of English bubble. I’ve been to Japan quite a few times and am always astonished at the sort of willingness of some people to live in a separate world like that. I see a huge value in integrating as much as possible. I don’t want my social life to be limited to other foreigners or people looking for English practice!
Oh wow, that’s quite a lesson queue! I’m using Tsurukame, which includes some reordering capabilities, to keep my leveling at 7 days, but I’ve still been mostly clearing the lesson queue every week. I want to stay at my current pace so I can hit the ground running in Japan and focus on the real world input and extensive reading, conversation, etc. without worrying about SRS as much. My output is pretty weak as well - my teachers are very impressed with my reading speed and general grammar abilities, but once it’s time to speak freely, I’m like anooo etooooo ;).
This I can understand. In France, I’ve always wanted to be part of the wider community (though of course, as a student in a course that’s taken almost exclusively by French people, I have no choice). I’ve heard all about the ‘uchi-soto’ split, and some people say that foreigners can never really integrate into Japanese society… but I think it’s definitely worthwhile making some inroads with a few local friends. Living in a bubble which almost none of mainstream society is part of probably gets lonely after a while. Plus, actually speaking the language will allow you to more deeply appreciate the culture, for better and worse – because there will always be some beautiful quirks that you can only discover through authentic exchanges, and some unpleasant facts that only get sanitised in English. I hope you manage to come up with a routine that’s efficient and works for you.
I’m trying to have it all :). I want to focus on conversation, but don’t want to sacrifice progress in literacy. Got to read to have something to talk about!
Word, keep up the good work clearing your lesson queue!
Well, given that context (that you want to keep up your pace regarding your lesson queue but also want to trim the fat off of WK, pick up the pace [in what, I’m not sure now], and reduce the workload), my understanding is that you’re looking to filter content you don’t care for out of WK by going the Anki route where you have more control over the content and scheduling. Is that right?
If that’s so, I personally can’t recommend it, because I think the time spent curating WK content won’t be as useful to you as time spent with more focused input from other contexts. You mention you want to hit the ground running in Japan with real-world input. Why not start now? I get that if you don’t curate the WK content you’ll need to compromise on your zeroed-out lesson queue in order to not take on too much work (full WK plus other input), so it really boils down to: which is more important to you right now, curated WK or other real-world input? (Food for thought–not trying to interrogate you.)
This the balance I’m trying to work out - increasing useful input without dropping explicit kanji study, and doing it all faster. I’m getting real world input regularly, usually in the form of TV streaming snd reading articles and stories. I don’t think the curation would take any more time, as the deck is premade - I would just hit suspend as things came up that I didn’t want to bother with.
How much worse does it get after the level I’m at now (25)?
I transitioned to Kanji Damage on Anki once I hit the free level cap in WK.
Same level of time commitment- Anki by default shuffles in new stuff with your reviews everyday so I don’t even have the option of letting lessons pile up until I have finished my reviews .
What I do is when I see the question side I write the kanji, a vocabulary word (in hiragana if I haven’t learned the second kanji in the junko), and the on and kun readings in hiragana.
If any don’t match, I put it in the “again” stack in Anki, otherwise the “good” stack.
Got it. Since I last posted, I downloaded and experimented with the WK Anki deck. Unsurprisingly, it’s WK by way of Anki, which brings me to my last question,
I see what you mean. Are you cool with the presentation of WK content in Anki as-is (particularly vocab, the front side of which are still just basic flashcards, not sentence cards)? You mention wanting to learn “actual whole-grain Japanese,” and for this I find sentence cards much more effective. To each their own, of course, so if you are okay with the WK Anki content as-is, then I agree curation is a breeze.
In my opinion, the pacing doesn’t change much. There are local difficulty minimums and maximums, but on average the pacing is about the same, with the exception of some levels later in the program which can be completed in fewer days than the norm.
Thought I’d give my two cents here because I shifted from WaniKani to Anki about five weeks ago, I was on level 24, and am currently using a WaniKani anki deck (I’m a lifetime member). So a very similar situation to you OP.
My decision to shift to Anki was prompted partly by being very frustrated with WK because of how slow it is and how I felt like I wasn’t actually able to read/comprehend any actual Japanese. And I agree that the out of context vocab isn’t very helpful (I have a bunch of other gripes that I won’t get into here). In any case, I discovered Matt Vs. Japan’s videos / The Mass Immersion approach recently and after looking into it was generally convinced and decided to change my approach to studying Japanese to be more in line with that.
I have taken the WaniKani deck and am just studying the kanji meaning cards in Anki. Additionally I have a sentence mining deck with all the i+1 sentences I come across (or just vocab cards pulled from core 6k). So basically, by stripping it back to just the kanji learning system of WK, it takes up way less time every day, and I can spend more time on immersion/sentence mining. If I do come across a kanji I don’t know while sentence mining I usually make a sentence card for it as well as reposition that kanji to the top of my WK deck so I can study it next.
MIA/Matt’s current recommendation for Kanji is to do a modified RTK deck of ~1200 kanji and then just sentence mine the rest without independently learning the kanji, but I find this approach a little bit frustrating personally. I prefer to learn the kanji independently, though maybe I’ll feel differently with another few hundred Kanji under my belt. Should have all the WK Kanji knocked out in around 3 months so it’s not really a problem for me personally though.
The only reason I really have for sticking to the WK system is due to the fact that it was easy to exclude the kanji I’d already learnt. I mostly ignore the mnemonics and make my own (but occasionally there’ll be a good one in there). Also, it is familiar, so a good way to ease into Anki. I found this MIA guide and related plugins to be pretty indispensable. https://massimmersionapproach.com/table-of-contents/anki
Overall I’ve become much happier in my study since switching and my ability to comprehend Japanese has already increased a lot, I highly recommend switching over. Keen to see how you go OP! Good luck.
I generally think that everyone should follow the approach that works best for them, whatever that may be, but it does baffle me that the approach you linked to contains no apparent references to the extensive body of scientific research on second language acquisition and dismisses frameworks such as the CEFR, which has been developed and updated over decades by hundreds of researchers and is being used in practice by thousands of language professionals (which is not to say that it doesn’t have its flaws), as “still extremely limited” only to propose a new “model” that is neither based on research nor on any kind of extensive practical experience.
There are interesting points raised in the MIA/AJATT thing, but I wouldn’t buy into it entirely. I still think some explicit study is valuable, but no one is arguing “massive input” is not helpful. So yeah, immerse like crazy, but don’t fire your textbook tutor just yet. I myself would not go as far as to go all RTK via WK and then pick up vocab through sentences, as I think it would be much harder than doing a limited amount of direct vocab study, like WK but a bit more selective. Then read a lot.
In general, I’d be careful with extreme approaches put forth by those without serious qualifications. It has the whiff of “well this worked for me, so everyone should do it”. I do like the guy’s N4 Tango deck and his cool pitch accent Anki plugin, though.
tourist! 
I ended up talking about GMOs for the oral section.
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