I originally wanted to ask about anki but this is probably going to be a ‘please critique my routine’ post.
My Japanese learning routine consists of bunpro and wanikani everyday, I also read 1 NHK news easy and 1 satori reader article every day. I also have 3 custom anki decks I routinely add to, one for sentences I’ve mined, one for verbs and their conjugations, and one for vocabulary. I just add to these decks as/when I find unknowns in the wild.
I have 2 kids and a busy job so this about my max. I’ve almost comfortably completed N4 grammar in bunpro, so I’d say I’m N4.
My wife is Japanese so I’ll also ask her for advice ad have conversations in Japanese (although I’m really bad for constantly slipping into English with her). I lived in Japan for a couple of years, so I’d say my vocabulary is pretty good, but I’m still terrible at stringing a sentence together.
Anyway, I feel like at my rate, adding to anki whenever I find words I don’t know, and just going through these custom decks alone will be very time consuming and inefficient.
Has anyone ever used anki 6k core decks before, and would they recommend them? In your opinion would I get anything out of them based on my level?
While I have not used the Anki deck you use, for me, reading about your IRL circumstances, I’d wanna say a word of caution, not to add any more SRS to your daily routine, as that’s bound to get stifling sooner rather than later.
Instead, just start a google doc for words and kanji you find and list their meaning and reading and any useful comment. As your own learning tool that you can, but also can not choose to go back to.
Because, you don’t have to prioritize all of this at the same level. SRS makes it all first priority, and that seldom works for me at least. So 1 SRS is more than plenty I feel. Having 3, that’s a ticking stress bomb.
You just need more air in your own daily schedule I think. Time to just do fun stuff. Sometimes, those things might be watching something in Japanese that you truly enjoy, and that’s great. But, I think it’s healthy to not push learning too far, but make sure it stays like that: fun and relaxing - to some extent at least.
It’s often forgotten. They’re not as efficient, but they’re key to listening practice (if you like watching some Japanese youtuber, anime or movies), but also just to get a real sense to the kanji and vocab I feel.
It’s certainly not an exaggeration to say that doing immersion is key to actually learning any language. You need to find real instance of language use to ground what you learn through SRS. And that cannot be done through more SRS. ^^’
Edit: not sure what butchery my typing and posting did to my original reply, but here’s another try:
Their partner shouldn’t be their main thing for language learning. Because, that will get exhausting real fast. ^^; There are plenty to choose from when it comes to media consumption however. Something that might lead to a conversation in japanese?? with your partner? That sort of thing!
