#Re-Entering Japanese learning

17 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

void quail
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Before the summer started, I was doing my core 2.3k deck and was at just around 700 cards young/mature and it was going smoothly until (I'm heavily summarizing this because it's not important to learning) I had to do this program which also had a side effect of not allowing me to have my phone or pc or anything so I couldn't do any anki and I barely had any time anyway so I basically read nothing of the Tae kim's guide I printed out and now that I've gotten back it's been a month and I still haven't gotten back into learning, looking at those 600+ reviews is terrifying, I won't remember 90% of them and my japanese knowledge (even though it was already quite low) has basically been set to 0 besides recognizing a couple words in anime here and there.

How would you guys approach this? How can I re enter into japanese learning and any other general advice/tips would be greatly appreciated

mighty canopy
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If I were in your position, I wouldn't even worry about Anki right now except for setting your new cards to 0 if you hadn't already. That will stop the reviews from multiplying further. After checking that, the first thing I would do is just get back into immersion. Do something low pressure and relaxing for a week or two. This will help you start remembering things again. After that, it'll be easier to tackle the review backlog. Set a timer for 15-20 minutes a day and just work through them. If cards leech and get suspended because you don't remember, so be it. Don't worry about that for now. Just worry about getting back into a routine. It'll give you a clearer idea of what to do next once you have your routine down again for 4-6 weeks at least.

void quail
mighty canopy
# void quail Thanks for your response, I'll definitely try it and report back in how it's goi...

Sure thing, the general consensus is to just leave them alone. The card got suspended because there's something currently standing in your way of acquiring that word. In other words, your brain just isn't ready and there's no need to force it. Cards in premade decks are just way less memorable anyway.

Once you get through 1000 cards in the Core 2.3k, consider starting to sentence mine. Making your own deck from scratch and handpicking your own vocabulary to learn in memorable sentences is really when the fun begins.

void quail
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Oh yeah I'm very excited to get to that point, I think I'm gonna try to come back to each one after a while and just slowly integrate them back in and if they don't work well whatever I'll try again later, once again thanks for your advice I really appreciate it

mighty canopy
hazy kettle
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I'm kinda in the same place... if not actually worse XD I was really going hard a few months back and then just one day ran into a block and stopped doing my anki reviews, switched subtitles back on because there was a show I really wanted to understand, and I was just a bit tired...

... a couple of weeks later, I looked at my anki and saw I had 200 reviews built up, and closed it in horror.

A couple months later, two days ago, I was sitting here after dropping my kid at school for the day and thought to myself "I've actually got to do something about this."

I've got JP friends in my city, I know a couple of Izakayas here too, and I'm meant to go to this huge board game convention in around three weeks to meet with designers, and there's one I have already met from Osaka who's going to be there. Last time I met him, I was able to at least sort of speak with him without his translator helping (which felt INCREDIBLE) but... it's been months. I felt like I'd forgotten everything... and I don't want to meet the guy again and suddenly be unable to string two words together.

So, I bit my tongue and opened anki again. 200 reviews. I felt sort of okay until I remembered the settings where the max daily reviews is set to 200... so my actual due list could be thousands, I genuinely don't remember how far I was through it...

Anyhow, it's taking about half an hour per day to clear my anki, with the 20 new words and 200 reviews. I remembered a surprisingly large amount, actually way more than I expected, although some I feel like I should know are actually no longer in my head. I turned subs off on my anime and went right back to slice of life stuff, and stuff I'd watched when I was learning German, so that I already know the rough story beats on some stuff and can concentrate on what I'm hearing more. I managed to order a bunch of mochi from a girl at a market the other day in Japanese, because she was struggling with her German, and that also felt pretty good... but then she started asking questions and I flailed around a bit XD Need to try harder, obviously hehe

But, long story short... don't fret. It'll feel like hell for a week, but you're just relearning what you already knew, and after a short time it'll come back and you'll get to grips with it again, and catch back up to where you were before your break. Just put in the effort, and you'll reap the reward sooner rather than later. I'm honestly surprised how quick I've picked it back up, given how much I felt like I'd forgotten or slacked on. I'm hopeful I'll be at least passable when I get to the convention and can chat a little, maybe take a different friend to a restaurant because he doesn't speak German or Japanese, and I think it'll be fun to blow his mind lmao

void quail
hazy kettle
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Oof... we're now a fair few days of study beyond where I wrote all that lmao

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So, I'd say I definitely had a bit of a 'priming' for Japanese; I've been watching anime, mostly subbed, for almost 15 years or more with great regularity. Actually studying to learn and speak, via Refold? I did a bit about 2 or 3 years ago but (much the same as before) sort of dropped it after about maybe 2 months of working on it. I felt like I'd had enough of a break (and bought a new computer) that any progress I'd made before was probably completely scuppered, so I started right from scratch again

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According to Anki, that 'from scratch' point was Sunday 12th March this year

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I kept it up til May 14th and then everything went to heck. I think I'd had my chat about a week before then? So, a lot of 'priming' to give me a fascination with the language, about 2 months of solid study with Anki, hours of immersion per day (I always aimed for at least 2)... I mean also it was a very simple conversation lmao "Are you Tomohiro-san? Awesome, welcome to the cafe! What would you like to order?" and then when the inevitable question of what the hell how do you know Japanese?! came up, "I learned by watching anime and reading manga" lol

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I mean if it'll help, I'll gladly whack some numbers in here for how I'm currently getting on. It might give you an idea of the sort of progress you could expect with similar amounts?

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17-09-23 = 252 Anki Cards, Unknown watch-time
18-09-23 = 240 Anki, Unknown time
19-09-23 = 240 Anki, 3 hours watching
20-09-23 = 240 Anki, 5hr20 watching
21-09-23 = 240 Anki, 2hr49 watching
22-09-23 = 193 Anki, 57mins watching
23-09-23 = 61 Anki, 3hrs watching
24-09-23 = 60 Anki, 3hrs watching
25-09-23 = 100 Anki, 1hr11 watching
26-09-23 = 92 Anki, 3hrs watching
27-09-23 = 0 Anki, 0mins watching
28-09-23 = 144 Anki, 2hr11 watching
29-09-23 = 88 Anki, 1hr35 watching so far

Total cards according to Anki: 652 new, 302 young, 1148 mature, 61 suspended (notes, super easy ones I'm not going to forget, etc)
Total immersion time so far: 26 hours 28 minutes, over 11 days. Averages out at 2 hours 42 per day so far 🙂

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Like I say, I usually watched with subtitles when I was watching for fun, but I know from my experience using Refold to learn German that I just... will not learn properly with subtitles on 😛 So I turned them off of my anime and went for it. I'm fine with the ambiguity, but anything I really want to watch and know what's going on (cough The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses cough) then I turn them on for the one episode and back off again... and I'm actually doing fine. I'm missing some stuff, but I'm actually picking up an awful lot of what's being said, and even if it's only a snatch of the sentence, I know it'll all come together eventually

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I figure I'll be able to manage at least some small polite chatting at the board game convention in a few days, and maybe if I find a Japanese place for dinner one day I'll manage to order something without sounding like a complete fool... XD

red flame