皆さんこんばんは。
Here I am on day 130 - yay! I have really been studying hard doing all of my "chain items" each day continuing with the study habit recommendations of NihongoShark.com. Each day there are three types of studying you have to do:
1. Study your flash cards or whatever you're using for vocabulary study.
Right now I'm using a combination of Anki, AnkiApp, and Memrise.
2. Listen to at least one audio lesson per day.
I'm utilizing my JapanesePod101.com subscription and have been faithfully listening to at least one lesson per day, sometimes more. I like the video lessons as well through their site.
3. Make sure to speak Japanese everyday, and spend at least a little time studying grammar.
I have several grammar books and Tae Kim's guide that I've been studying a little each day.
This past week my husband and I invested in some of the grammar books and other study materials we've been looking at for a while. We had checked some of them out at the library first to try them out. It's been exciting to have all that I need right at my finger tips and not all of it online. Sometimes it's nice to have a good book.
I've been making progress on my vocabulary. It's going pretty good, but it's a little more difficult than how I had been doing things before. I have three Anki decks that I have set to give me 35 new cards to study each day. One of those decks is for Kanji that I already studied using a JLPT app, but I thought I would continue studying them using the Anki deck so that I can keep them in my memory even better while I'm still beginning. The other two decks are very similar to each other but are slightly different. They both have a lot of the same words (at least that I've noticed so far) but the study styles between them are different and it helps me to have both even though there is a lot of word overlap.
My goal is to know between 8,000 to 10,000 words by my one year anniversary of beginning Japanese. That will be on September 21, 2016. I'm trying to learn 35 new words each day to reach my goal. It's been a little hard this week starting my Anki deck and being better at studying. I've really been trying to get down the various readings that can be associated with each kanji. The deck I downloaded and that I consider my main study tool really focuses on all the different words and thus different readings all involving the same kanji. It's been harder at first for me but I know over time it will be worth the extra work and effort to really know these things.
Until next time!
じゃまた。
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Four Months a.k.a. 123 Days of Japanese and 65 Days of Kanji
Well, here I am on January 21, 2016 - my 123rd day of learning Japanese. It also happens to be four months from the day I started learning on September 21, 2015.
I'm very excited to say that I have completed the initial learning process of knowing at least one or more English meanings associated with all the joyo/common use kanji. Since I have been using apps that included all of the 2,136 joyo kanji along with a few other common kanji, it is safe to say that I am able to recognize all of the common use kanji now without too much difficulty. I'm still practicing!
I actually finished this past Monday the 20th, but I've taken these extra few days to study extra to make sure I really "know" them. Of course the more recent kanji I've learned aren't as solid in my mind as the ones I have been practicing for longer. I know that as I continue to review and move forward with my vocabulary now that I can more easily incorporate the kanji into my vocabulary learning process I will know them better and more fully as time moves on.
Something worth noting is that the better the "story" you can come up with for each kanji to help you remember, it doesn't matter as much how much time you spend memorizing and practicing if your story is memorable enough. I have had many kanji where the meaning and story in my mind were clear enough that it only took that first time or so to really get the particular character in my mind and not forget it. The characters that stand for things and words that I don't even use in English are the hardest for sure. Also when encountering groups of kanji where they seem very similar at first, it takes some time and memorizing to keep them each straight.
Along with reviewing and studying all of the kanji these past few weeks, I've continued to review my vocabulary here and there to keep in my mind the words I've learned so far. I haven't really expanded my vocabulary more than by a just a few words the past few weeks, but I've spent time understanding and noting the kanji that is part of the words I've learned over these past four months. So I guess you could say that I've been in a way re-learning all the words I've studied already and am now more fully incorporating the kanji so that I can recognize and know the words in more than just hiragana alone.
On my last post I talked about how I prefer Memrise for learning vocabulary. While that is still mostly true, as I've worked here and there on making some courses I can see that it might not be the right long term choice as far as making my own custom stuff. Yesterday I decided to work on some new AnkiApp decks again and I've worked out some of my issues with their system. Sometimes it just takes time to understand a system and find how to make it work for your needs. So at this point in time I'm going to start using AnkiApp some more.
The next stage of my learning will be very focused back on what I had been doing prior to studying the kanji heavily. Although before studying the kanji I had been doing a pretty good balance of different learning techniques, I am even more solid in realizing how I need to progress from here. Thanks to NihongoShark.com's Hacking Japanese Supercourse, I know how to keep myself more accountable in my studying habits and keep motivated even more than before. If you're learning Japanese I really recommend taking a look at NihongoShark.com and Niko's methods. They work. The fact that I went from thinking that it would take me years to recognize the kanji or that I might never learn them and yet now in less than 65 days I am now able to recognize them all really says something. Japanese doesn't seem as daunting now and each new word I learn doesn't seem so scary. Learning new words has actually been easier now that the kanji are all familiar to me.
I plan to use a combination of JapanesePod101 and Rosetta for listening and other practice, and Memrise and AnkiApp for my flashcard and memorization practice. I plan to use my Genki and other books more to get myself speaking Japanese out loud more frequently than I do currently. I go in spurts of time where I'm really good at speaking more, and then I go back to not being so good. I know I struggled with that back in college when learning Spanish. It can be hard when you don't have someone around all the time to practice with. I just need to talk out loud to myself more and not worry about feeling weird sometimes.
I can't wait to see where I am on my next progress update! Thanks for reading!
じゃまたね。
I'm very excited to say that I have completed the initial learning process of knowing at least one or more English meanings associated with all the joyo/common use kanji. Since I have been using apps that included all of the 2,136 joyo kanji along with a few other common kanji, it is safe to say that I am able to recognize all of the common use kanji now without too much difficulty. I'm still practicing!
I actually finished this past Monday the 20th, but I've taken these extra few days to study extra to make sure I really "know" them. Of course the more recent kanji I've learned aren't as solid in my mind as the ones I have been practicing for longer. I know that as I continue to review and move forward with my vocabulary now that I can more easily incorporate the kanji into my vocabulary learning process I will know them better and more fully as time moves on.
Something worth noting is that the better the "story" you can come up with for each kanji to help you remember, it doesn't matter as much how much time you spend memorizing and practicing if your story is memorable enough. I have had many kanji where the meaning and story in my mind were clear enough that it only took that first time or so to really get the particular character in my mind and not forget it. The characters that stand for things and words that I don't even use in English are the hardest for sure. Also when encountering groups of kanji where they seem very similar at first, it takes some time and memorizing to keep them each straight.
Along with reviewing and studying all of the kanji these past few weeks, I've continued to review my vocabulary here and there to keep in my mind the words I've learned so far. I haven't really expanded my vocabulary more than by a just a few words the past few weeks, but I've spent time understanding and noting the kanji that is part of the words I've learned over these past four months. So I guess you could say that I've been in a way re-learning all the words I've studied already and am now more fully incorporating the kanji so that I can recognize and know the words in more than just hiragana alone.
On my last post I talked about how I prefer Memrise for learning vocabulary. While that is still mostly true, as I've worked here and there on making some courses I can see that it might not be the right long term choice as far as making my own custom stuff. Yesterday I decided to work on some new AnkiApp decks again and I've worked out some of my issues with their system. Sometimes it just takes time to understand a system and find how to make it work for your needs. So at this point in time I'm going to start using AnkiApp some more.
The next stage of my learning will be very focused back on what I had been doing prior to studying the kanji heavily. Although before studying the kanji I had been doing a pretty good balance of different learning techniques, I am even more solid in realizing how I need to progress from here. Thanks to NihongoShark.com's Hacking Japanese Supercourse, I know how to keep myself more accountable in my studying habits and keep motivated even more than before. If you're learning Japanese I really recommend taking a look at NihongoShark.com and Niko's methods. They work. The fact that I went from thinking that it would take me years to recognize the kanji or that I might never learn them and yet now in less than 65 days I am now able to recognize them all really says something. Japanese doesn't seem as daunting now and each new word I learn doesn't seem so scary. Learning new words has actually been easier now that the kanji are all familiar to me.
I plan to use a combination of JapanesePod101 and Rosetta for listening and other practice, and Memrise and AnkiApp for my flashcard and memorization practice. I plan to use my Genki and other books more to get myself speaking Japanese out loud more frequently than I do currently. I go in spurts of time where I'm really good at speaking more, and then I go back to not being so good. I know I struggled with that back in college when learning Spanish. It can be hard when you don't have someone around all the time to practice with. I just need to talk out loud to myself more and not worry about feeling weird sometimes.
I can't wait to see where I am on my next progress update! Thanks for reading!
じゃまたね。
Saturday, January 9, 2016
Progress Update - Day 111 - Kanji Madness!
こんばんは。
Well, here I am on day 111 of learning Japanese! I've been working crazy hard on being able to recognize and know the English meanings of all the joyo kanji and it's been going well. I've still been doing some vocabulary on the side but not as much. I pretty much have eye strain all the time from looking at all the kanji characters so much.
Right now I know about 2175 vocabulary words, so even though I've slowed down from the pace I had been doing I'm really happy with that.
As for the kanji, out of the 2136 joyo/common use kanji characters, I'm able to recognize about 1215 of them reliably. I test myself on them all constantly. I'm surprised my eyes haven't popped right out of my head!
When I started being really serious about learning the kanji back mid-November and decided to have faith in myself that I could remember them, a big part of that was buying and reading the Hacking Japanese Supercourse from NihongoShark.com. I re-read some of the book the other day and looked at the next section (the section for after you know the kanji characters) and it got me so excited that I have been working even harder. I really thought that it would get harder the further I got, but it's actually been getting easier. Even if you haven't studied the kanji radicals/components specifically like in my case, the characters make more and more sense as you move forward.
I was on NHK News Easy last night and even though I didn't know all the words to a couple of articles, I was able to know exactly what was being talked about because I recognized the kanji. There have been a few things I've read recently that used some of the more "advanced" kanji characters that has made my learning so much easier. Seeing the characters in everyday use helps me remember them so much better.
Following the Hacking Japanese Supercourse recommendations of learning the kanji in about 97 days, I've been working hard toward my "deadline" of February 22. Since I've been finding it easier to remember the kanji and it's all coming together better the more time I put in, I will likely "finish" much before then, move ahead, and dive in to the vocabulary more than i had before.
I have been wanting to make a custom deck or course for quite a while since I don't like a lot of the ones out there I've come across, so I've been working on that as well. Once I can reliably recognize all the joyo kanji I want to really go for it on vocabulary. I've tried Anki. I've tried another Anki app that is a separate company, and a few other things. What seems to work best for me for whatever reason is Memrise. I know everyone just LOVES Anki but it just does not work for me. At all. It makes me feel so bored that I don't even want to bother with it. So I've been working on getting my own course set up for me and my husband on Memrise to use so that we can customize it to learn words that are more relevant to what we need. Fingers crossed!
Can't wait to see how things are going when I next update!
じゃまたね。
Well, here I am on day 111 of learning Japanese! I've been working crazy hard on being able to recognize and know the English meanings of all the joyo kanji and it's been going well. I've still been doing some vocabulary on the side but not as much. I pretty much have eye strain all the time from looking at all the kanji characters so much.
Right now I know about 2175 vocabulary words, so even though I've slowed down from the pace I had been doing I'm really happy with that.
As for the kanji, out of the 2136 joyo/common use kanji characters, I'm able to recognize about 1215 of them reliably. I test myself on them all constantly. I'm surprised my eyes haven't popped right out of my head!
When I started being really serious about learning the kanji back mid-November and decided to have faith in myself that I could remember them, a big part of that was buying and reading the Hacking Japanese Supercourse from NihongoShark.com. I re-read some of the book the other day and looked at the next section (the section for after you know the kanji characters) and it got me so excited that I have been working even harder. I really thought that it would get harder the further I got, but it's actually been getting easier. Even if you haven't studied the kanji radicals/components specifically like in my case, the characters make more and more sense as you move forward.
I was on NHK News Easy last night and even though I didn't know all the words to a couple of articles, I was able to know exactly what was being talked about because I recognized the kanji. There have been a few things I've read recently that used some of the more "advanced" kanji characters that has made my learning so much easier. Seeing the characters in everyday use helps me remember them so much better.
Following the Hacking Japanese Supercourse recommendations of learning the kanji in about 97 days, I've been working hard toward my "deadline" of February 22. Since I've been finding it easier to remember the kanji and it's all coming together better the more time I put in, I will likely "finish" much before then, move ahead, and dive in to the vocabulary more than i had before.
I have been wanting to make a custom deck or course for quite a while since I don't like a lot of the ones out there I've come across, so I've been working on that as well. Once I can reliably recognize all the joyo kanji I want to really go for it on vocabulary. I've tried Anki. I've tried another Anki app that is a separate company, and a few other things. What seems to work best for me for whatever reason is Memrise. I know everyone just LOVES Anki but it just does not work for me. At all. It makes me feel so bored that I don't even want to bother with it. So I've been working on getting my own course set up for me and my husband on Memrise to use so that we can customize it to learn words that are more relevant to what we need. Fingers crossed!
Can't wait to see how things are going when I next update!
じゃまたね。
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