free flow immersion at stage 1, seems futile

[tiny perch]

hey, so, i have completed around half of jp1k deck (plan to do core2k/6k deck after jp1k) and as refold says, i did about 1hr of intensive and 2 hr of freeflow, but free flow seems kind of pointless, i cant understand most kanji and it straight up feels like a waste of time, so i did something like combining them both, like i watch anime with subs and look almost all kanji/vocab of sentences only, which seem easy in grammar (around 5-6 lookups a minute). Is this reasonable, or could this be ineffective, {i am currently doing around 50 new cards a day and i plan to do freeflow after getting around 3k to 4k vocab under my belt)

p.s. - forgot to mention i am around n3 in grammar (i did genki 1,2 and quartet 1)

[neat turtle]

I recommend reading this article explaining the purpose of freeflow
https://refold.la/roadmap/stage-2/a/types-of-active-immersion#Free-Flow-Immersion

Also, idk when you started doing anki, but I don't recommend 50 new cards a day. You're going to drown in reviews soon if you're not already if you don't lower that number soon.

[limpid hamlet]

I would like to add to this post if that's okay. Freeflow, although it may seem futile at first, is the most important part of your routine, believe it or not. For starters, Freeflow, as it says in the link above, builds automaticity. Because you're being exposed to Japanese in real time, you're building up your recall and your understanding of vocab and grammar until it becomes second nature, similar to how it is in your native language. Also, you're not going to be able to go up to someone and ask them to repeat what they're saying and ask for definitions for all of the words; that's just never going to happen. Freeflow gets you accustomed to real Japanese at real speeds. Even if, at the beginning, it may seem useless, doing freeflow from the beginning allows you to understand sentences in real-time, acquire words and see how they're used in different contexts (Understanding what is going on through not only what people are saying, but through other things like visuals is what matters too, so that should help for when you don't know what all the words mean in a sentence), and it'll allow you to build the automaticity of a word in your head, allowing you to recall it as if it were second nature.

I would also like to propose an alternative to your current routine; one that'll allow you to do freeflow and intensive straight away after with little to no hindrance.

I will use bunny girl senpai as an example for this.

For this, I would like you to follow this guide and install ASBPlayer. If you have good enough internet, you should be able to stream Japanese media and immerse online rather than having to download your anime.

https://bit.ly/3KQ4iFo

Once you're done, your setup should be like this.

First off, I want you to do freeflow immersion. This can be achieved using any anime but it would be preferable if it were an anime that has subtitles available on https://kitsunekko.net/

Again, the guide will teach you how to setup subtitles if you haven't already.

Find a 20 sided dice online somewhere. However big the number of dice rolls that you have rolled, that's how many look-ups I want you to do for the whole episode.

Then, during the episode, I want you to watch the whole episode whilst only doing however many look-ups the dice says that you should do.

Once you do however many look-ups is said, freeflow the rest of the episode

It doesn't matter if you can't read kanji or that the subtitles are too fast, try your best to understand what is going on and let go of whatever you cannot understand.

After you have finished the episode, assuming you've followed the asbplayer guide, you'll see in another tab that the subtitles of the episode appear in a list of some sorts.

Like this. Here, I want you to read the subtitles from start to finish.

Here, you can do as many look-ups as you want to.

Try your best to look-up everything you don't know and understand the sentences and what they're saying, word-for-word, to the best of your ability.

This sort of counts as raw reading practice, but if you double click on a subtitle, you'll be able to hear the audio for that subtitle, and if you go back to the video player (https://zoro.to/) in your other tab, you'll see that the video itself has loaded the timestamp that the subtitle is loaded at.

This should allow you to do freeflow and get in some intensive reading immersion for the episode that you had just watched.

While you may argue that you can just do intensive first using the subtitles and the video, you can do that, that is fine, but I suggest doing freeflow first to get an idea of what they're saying and how everything sounds. The intensive immersion in this case counts as raw reading practice.

Try to experiment to see if you enjoy doing freeflow first or intensive first.

They both have their merits and downfalls.

Doing Intensive with the subtitles in a list should look like this btw.

I hope what I'm saying has helped and I hope you consider implementing this routine into your own.

Oh and don't do 50 new cards a day unless you can handle it.

The reviews will eventually stack up and you will become drained.

Anki should only take up a portion of your routine.

[tiny perch]

absolutely dude

this is actually is amazing

thankyou for taking out your time, for sharing this with me

[limpid hamlet]

No problem. This routine is from Shoui's 30 day Japanese guide. Although it has some things that I personally disagree with, such as the subtitle tutor method, I recommend checking it out.

It's a great way to get started as a complete beginner.

https://learnjapanese.moe/routine/

[tiny perch]

thats alr i am prepared for the 50*7 = 350 reviews every day

[tiny perch]

alr will check it out

[limpid hamlet]

If you say so. Just be sure not to miss a day though. Reviews will carry over.

[opal kraken]

Anything beyond 20 new cards a day will result in a net loss. You’ll start missing words and your review counts will keep climbing, and you’ll burn out very quickly. Doing more than 20 cards is only recommend for people at higher stages because it’s easier to acquire new words at a faster rate, which means less words missed in Anki reviews, which means less time spent in Anki.

[tiny perch]

i am aware of this but i have done such a thing before as well, and didnt burnout at all, and i dont mind spending 1-2 hrs on anki everyday

but other than burn out are there any other consequences of doing this?

[narrow wyvern]

Lots of great info here. this video on why we immerse from day 1 might also help. It doesn't cover your exact question but it explains the importance of early immersion, and the above answers explain why free flow is an essential part of immersion.

we want intensive immersion to really slow down and analyze. But we also want free flow to get TONS of potential exposure to the things we want to solidify in different context so it signals to our brain it's important to remember. There is a section in this video where I cover a little bit how contextual our brains are and why continuing to "hunt" for new context and novel uses of the same word/element is important.

https://youtu.be/m0GfLNQeRvI

[tiny perch]

great video dude, perfectly explained the importance of free flow

thanks a lot