That is, unfortunately, extremely common in most of the world, yes. The nearest sushi shop here has a massive red lantern that says Takoyaki on it. They don’t sell takoyaki. The person who put that lantern there likely doesn’t even know what takoyaki is. But the customers can’t read it anyway so its “fine.” (Their sushi is horrid to the point I’d rather have supermarket sushi than that but that’s besides the point.)
That’s about the level of the average “Japanese” restaurant in most of Europe, I feel.
I watched a lot of TV and read a lot. And my ability skyrocketed and also I was happier. But my Japanese study journey has also taught me that if I spend more than 30 minutes a day on flashcards I lose my mind, so that also makes a difference.
Couple of quick things, advice worth what you paid for it :
You’ve got a teacher, which is great.
SRS is incredibly useful, but only as an addition to studying a language. Your main focus should be on reading and listening. For anki vocab I’d use one of the real-world 1000 or 1500 most common word decks, preferably in sentences (I think refold had a good one, and copies must be kicking around or perhaps they sell it now).
I have a terrible memory for kanji, words, grammar, etc, etc, and I’ve found the best way to get around this is to read and listen to the same thing over and over. The basic approach I use is novelty + repetition. For reading, this means reading something, then something else, then going back to the first thing again, back to the second etc. For me, the pattern 1,2,3 / 2,3,4 / 3,4,5, etc. works best for reading - this can be at whatever level you want from sentences, to paragraphs, pages, chapters, or books/manga. For listening / watching I tend to listen to / watch (mostly watch, TBH) one thing until I really have to move on to something else.
An hour a day learning Kanji is, unless you have 4 hours a day to spare, too long IMO, if your goal is to learn the language. I’d do fewer lessons until the reviews shrink to a more manageable amount.
Graded readers. There are free ones. Start with level 0, work your way up to Satori.
Agreed, but with an asterisk: I think it depends how far into the journey you are.
If you’re only just starting and building up the foundation (you can’t read anything remotely interesting, don’t understand what you’re hearing beyond “This is a pen.” and the likes) then spending a good amount of time on SRS (kanji, vocab, perhaps even a little grammar) isn’t that bad.
At least, it was not bad for me
But yes, once you can dip into what you like with a little bit of confidence… decrease the time dedicated to rote memorization gradually to make room for natural acquisition from content.
I’ve gone from 2-2.5h to about 1h (perhaps a little more) with SRS and that hour is now (mostly) spread out within office hours, so it doesn’t really impact free time, not significantly anyway. I do appreciate that that isn’t possible for everyone…
My aim as well is to go down to ~30m at some point, but unlikely to happen until at least after L30 here and after N3 grammar.
Interesting!
Have you maybe also tried 1,2 / 2,3 / 3,4 and if yes, did you find it less effective than your current method?
I’m doing 1.2(x2) / 2, 3(x2) / 3, 4(x2) currently with Satori episodes and it seems okay, although I’ve not tried other approaches.
It probably depends how effective it is for you, and what kind of SRS you’re doing, and how well you cope with very simple reading and listening without getting bored. Bootstrapping with sentence based cards I found useful. Word and grammar point cards much less so.
If a beginner, barely post learning kana and what the hell a particle is, is spending an hour a day on WK, but it’s just fitting in 5 mins here and there where nothing else would be possible then it’s probably a good use of time. If it’s in a big block once a day plus Anki and nothing else, then unless they’re the sort of person who soaks up information from SRS and doesn’t forget it I think there are more effective ways of learning.
It’s mostly about not skimming for me. If I can remember what something says I have a tendency to just remember rather than read. Recently I’ve been too busy to read anything more than a bit of manga so I’ve been rotating through releases. Now I’ve got a bit more time I’ll go back to ねじまき鳥クロニクル which is hard enough that I cycle through fairly small sections - measured in pages.
Are you struggling with recognition or recall? Those are two very different skills. If it’s recall, something like kamesame or kaniwani will help. These will show you a word in English and you have to then type the word in Japanese. Both offer Wanikani integration. If it’s recognition, try to get exposed to the word in as many ways as you can. Read it, listen to it, act it out, touch it in real life, write it out, etc.
It’s actually possible to learn vocabulary purely through immersion. It takes more time, and can be more frustrating, so whether or not one prefers flashcards vs immersion will be different for each person. The downside of learning from flashcards is that it’s exactly what you said: mindless. It’s like learning in a vacuum. Immersion creates a stronger memory, but like I said it’s more time consuming and frustrating.
Genki worked fine for me as a self learner. The important thing was using Tokini Andy and the sethclydesdale website.
Animal Crossing! If you happen to already own the game, you can just switch your consoles language to Japanese and that will change the in game language too. It uses spaces and has full furigana, and it’s super easy to learn new words form context. I learned a lot of useful words early in my journey thanks to it, like pear, cherry, scorpion, maintenance, donation, museum, wooden, etc.
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