Japanese Progress for August 2010
Cardcount: 3880
Repcount: 21390
Retention: 92.2%
Lately, I’ve been more aggressive with the grading of my cards. I think I’ve been to hard on my self when it comes to grading my cards in the past. I very rarely gave myself a perfect score on my cards even when I knew them fairly well. I have to keep reminding myself that the 10,000 sentence deck is for passive understanding and I shouldn’t grade myself badly if I feel I can’t output that word fluently yet. A lot of cards I know keep wasting my time and I should focus more on the brand new words that I encounter.
If any of you are interesting in trying the ajatt/10,000 sentence method I can say at this point in my learning, I’m over the rough part and can delve into much more interesting reading materials. The biggest obstacle in learning a foreign language is simply accumulating a massive enough vocabulary to not have to look up words every single sentence. When you get to the point of having about 2 new words a paragraph, it’s much more comfortable to deepen your knowledge and pick up words organically from context and their kanji.
School has started back up for me now so there will be less time throughout the day to devote to Japanese study. I’ll still get in my ~10 new sentences a day and do my sentence reps. I can also squeeze in time for watching Japanese youtube videos are reading something in Japanese when I’m waiting between my classes. I’m also keeping up with my “fun kanji deck” as it’s easy to do and I put no pressure on myself with getting a certain number of cards there. Only when I’m in the mood or come across a new kanji I think is interesting do I add to it.
