Rhythm's Study Log

[rhythm2107]

Day 19 of Leveling Pause on Level 40
It’s funny…two days ago I wrote about how I’m changing the rules for my Old Anki Deck, to reduce the workload and that I will likely delete it towards end of March altogether. Well, I am deleting it right now.

My recent thoughts, and the kind words from Yandros and GolyBidof, helped me remember a little of how I was thinking at the very beginning, when I started this yearly plan of studying & working. The goal was to do it differently than before. Previously I would follow one path, firmly believe that I have to follow it in order to reach the finish line, and when I lost enjoyment for it in the later stages, I would still force myself to do it until burnout. I believe I need to do things differently to avoid burnout, and make the hard decisions of switching things up when necessary. Well, it’s necessary now. At first I thought that refreshing old kanji from Wanikani by re-doing them in Anki will be a great idea, after all I took a long 1 year+ break from studying Japanese, so most of these were long forgotten. I was actually positively surprised, how 30-40% kanji still stuck with me after 1 year break. I went through the deck and definitely remembered & retained a lot of them, but now that cards with 2 month intervals are coming back down, I am once again failing them and confusing them with visually similar ones.

Ultimately, I realized that studying kanji in isolation is not a great way to learn. It’s a great way to go over the material, so that when you encounter it while reading, it’s easier to look it up & retain & continue reading, than if you had to learn it in that moment. It doesn’t break the “flow” of reading that much, and therefore it’s more enjoyable. So isolation study has it perks, and definitely isn’t useless, but I genuinely believe you reach a “glass ceiling” with it, where eventually the effects of pounding over and over the same kanji in isolation are diminishing heavily.

I also firmly believe that if something gets boring, your brain just doesn’t “want” to remember the information anymore. Studying becomes a drag, information is not sticking, you learn slower and you feel like shit because you are doing worse. In the end, I have to ask myself the question: Do i want to just cross off days and be proud I was at it for X days? Or do I want to study Japanese in enjoyable and efficient way?

I think the answer is a balance of the two. Keeping up a habit is important, but enjoyment and efficiency are just as important, if not more so. Taking breaks when feeling burned out is also important, it’s part of the process and not “failing to meet your goals” or “slacking off”. It’s recharging batteries, and quite literally part of the process of studying. I need to keep reinforcing this way of thinking, and I honestly think this study log, putting things on paper is helping me adjust my mentality and learn a new, health way to study

I don’t enjoy Anki overall and isolation study in it, but Wanikani is gamified with levels, and the gamer inside me enjoys that. Bunpro is honestly quite lovely to use, and learning with context sentences feels really rewarding and enjoyable. So I think the goal is to: reduce isolation of Anki, keep Wanikani but maybe slow down, continue Bunpro at same pace and maybe add graded readers or some japanese TV shows with JP subtitles.

I removed the deck just now, it will free up around 15 minutes per day, most of which I will dedicate towards business. I might add graded readers on Bunpro soon, or increase the future Anki deck to go through it a little faster, as I would love to delete this one around end of April/early May too.

[rhythm2107]

I also decided to apply the same rules I applied to my Old Kanji Deck, to my Future Kanji Deck. So, now that I deleted the old one, I will periodically suspend cards in Future Deck that reach high interval, and bury cards that are heavy leeches and don’t stick through isolation in Anki alone.

Again, the Anki approach is just purely to “go over” the kanji. Some of them will be extremely easy and I’ll retain them likely forever (ex. 卵 is extremely distinct, 興 and 桜 as well are really easy for me). Some of them will be coming back repeatedly (ex. 嘆 has 9 lapses, 34 reviews already and I struggle with that one so hard).

Rules
Suspend: 3 Month Interval+
Bury: Lapses >= 4 & Reviews >= 20 & Interval < 1 Month

With those rules in mind, I just suspended 47 cards, and buried 11 cards.

I think it’s the right way to go about it, I will see those kanji on Wanikani as well, and since that Anki deck is based on WK, if it doesn’t stick then it doesn’t stick. Failing it in two places will only increase my workload, and isn’t efficient.

Today’s decisions about Anki are my first actions towards moving from Anki & Isolation learning to Active Reading & Active Listening study instead.

Edit:
I just learned Anki unburies cards next day, so I will suspend the leeches instead as well, and give them a tag of “buried”.

[rhythm2107]

Last Update for Today
Before and after today’s backlog pile of 230 reviews. Some guru fell down increasing apprentice, but overall looks good to me.

I also did Bunpro, but whenever I take a break recently, I only do 1 additional point per day off instead of all 3 for each day. I feel like that would quickly overwhelm me, and I’d retain less of it. So today I did 4 points (3 for today, 1 for yesterday day’s off).

Doesn’t look that bad, especially now that my Wanikani is much smaller and Anki Old Deck was removed. I will still, most likely take a break around 120-130 grammar points for a week or so, as I imagine by then my ghosts will be around 25-30, assuming I keep up the pace.

[rhythm2107]

Day 21 of Leveling Pause on Level 40
Leveling pause… 完了!

After 21 long days, I’m back to leveling on Wanikani.

Next pause is on level 43, which is also the first fast level.
This 21 day pause on level 40 actually reduced my workload by a lot. My Enlightened passed 1000, a lot of Guru I went to II, so my daily reviews are usually around 110-120 now.

This is a picture before I picked up lessons.

Right now I’m expecting the break on 43 to be around 7-10 days, but I might delay it more if circumstances change.

Bunpro
Passed the 100 mark
Honestly that’s big, it truly feels like the finish line for N4 grammar is around the corner!

I was waiting for some grammar points to start giving me trouble, and here we are. The recent lessons introduced so many of very similar points like ように/ような, そうに/そうな, らしい, みたい. They all describe appearance or different degrees of certainty/formality. They’re the main source of Ghosts on Bunpro for me right now, and I’m struggling to figure out which one to use. And even in times where I figure out which one to use, I often forget that I need to add な/に depending on what’s following them. I’ll definitely need to spend an hour learning these through some other resources, to learn the differences and how to distinguish them.

That said, encountering a grammar point or a group of points that would give me trouble was bound to happen sooner or later. That’s what happened in N5, I had bookmarks which I had to reinforce later on. I did start N4 with harder points, to get them out of my way from the get go (ex. てくる, ていく, せる, れる). But it’s still surprising, that it took 80-90 grammar points since then, to encounter something that wouldn’t stick. Outside of watching the Game Gengo N4 grammar video and doing Bunpro, I didn’t supplement grammar lessons in any other way, so I think it’s going great so far.

Anki
With the Old Kanji Deck removed, the amount of workload reduced a lot.

Currently halfway through level 47 kanji on Anki, with 465 remaining. I also suspended 2-3 cards today for reaching interval of 3-4 months~ and 1-2 leeches. This “both-ends” approach, where I suspend highest performing and lowest performing feels great, it feels like I continue to make progress and am efficient about it, because I don’t waste time on leeches that clearly need a different approach.

I might consider increasing new cards in Future Kanji Deck to more, as it’s currently at 5 and previously was 8, even 12 once. But for now I’ll stick to 5, as I want to take it a bit easier with Japanese and focus more on business end.

Others
I also started a small reading habit, there’s an app called “Seasonal Calendar” that my partner is using. It gives you a small short story about something, often just a few sentences. It does teach quite a lot of advanced words though, including poetic words that are rare and don’t exist on Wanikani.

We started sitting down every day, reading them and deciphering them together, looking up the words we don’t know and it’s been really fun. This activity just again, reinforces my thinking that I need to mix it up and make it fun again, so learning doesn’t become a drag.

[rhythm2107]

Small Update with Numbers
Been having a bit less time to write updates, but still doing my reviews & lessons. Bunpro is progressing nicely, but slowly starting to feel that the workload is getting out of hand. I’m literally at the beginning of that feeling, it’s still doable to maintain, but I might end up doing that short break after all. Maybe instead of 120~ points, I’ll do it around 130 or 140 for a week, and then finish the remaining 30, before taking a longer break.

I passed some things to Expert recently.

WK is progressing nicely as well, a lot of new vocab from yesterday that still didn’t stick though. I’m limited on time, so I’m not doing leech studies on WK for now, and considering that my second break at level 43 is around the corner, I don’t feel in rush to do them anyways. I’ll have time to solidify them, and workload shouldn’t get much bigger before 43.

As for Anki Future Deck, I increased the number of cards per day from 5 to 6 to speed it up slightly. The workload is managable, almost done with Level 47 kanji there.

I haven’t had the time to do the daily stories on Seasonal Calendar for 3 days now, but we screenshotted them and will do all of them today. It’s honestly a great way to learn and solidify things, for example つぼみ (flower bud) is a vocab that I didn’t know, but learned in a story few days ago, and it’s still stuck with me. Just one story and the vocab is stuck in my memory as if it’s Master on WK. We also saw a word ふるさと that we needed to translate, and funny enough the next day I got it on Wanikani.

Small situations like these really solidify some vocabs in my brain