Cardcount: 3581

Repcount: 19473

Coverage (non-new cards): 99.8%

Retention: 92.3%

Current Japanese ability assessment:

My ability to understand Japanese has improved a ton. I’ve been working a lot on listening lately and I’ve really noticed the benefit. However, my output of the language is still badly lacking in skill. I’ve made a new experimental anki deck to see if I can improve my output. The basic idea of the deck is to put just a picture on the front that reminds me of a sentence or dialog that includes a specific grammar point.  This way I have to pull the sentence entirely from memory instead of just reading it passively. I’m hoping this will allow me to better call upon these grammar points when outputting the language in natural situations.

For Japanese learners wanting to improve their output skills quickly, spend a lot of time working on the “tara” form. Practice using it on all verbs until it becomes second nature. There are so many uses for the “tara” form and it will add some much needed complexity to your sentences.

I’m also finding that learning some sentences without full kanji is helpful for learning. Sometimes I know a word with the kanji, but if i see it somewhere written just in kana, i have no idea what it means. Because of this, I’ll try to mix in some random kanaized sentences to hit words from all different angles in order to best remember them no matter which form I happen to encounter them.

This month I’ve noticed I’ve finally gotten over a hump. I can now watch basic television shows without subtitles and read simple texts such as manga without much difficultly.  I can’t understand something like a psychological drama in Japanese yet, but it’s something definitely to strive for.

My upcoming goals will be to continue working on building a massive vocabulary to aid in comprehension of Japanese media. Also, listening comprehension of the words I’m learning will also be a priority.

I got more work done this month than last month due to being out of school.

A couple days before this post I decided to change the timing of my reviews to get more in. Instead of the 5 minute decremental timeboxing, I’m doing 10 minutes, then skip down to 5 minutes, 4, 3, then another 3, then I’m finished with sentence reviews for the day. It sounds a little complicated but now I get in 25 minutes of review time in instead of 15 which helps a lot. I tried a straight 10 minute decremental review but it was way too long for me to stay interested. It also takes a while to find good sentences to keep up with adding at least 10 a day. All in all, it’s probably about an hour a day dedicated just to SRS sentence work.

I’ve been watching a lot of videos on niconico douga as well. These are ideal for learning new vocabulary because there are comments scrolling across the video from japanese viewers. These comments are corresponding to the content you are watching so there is a lot of repeat usage so it sticks well into the memory. The comments going across the screen are distracting at first but I think they actually add a lot of entertainment value once you get used to them. You can also use them to work on increasing your reading speed because they are scrolling. I wish you could copy and paste the comments but they are done in flash. If anyone knows of a way to copy and paste from that site, it would be a big help. Especially because I don’t really feel like looking up kanji I don’t know manually.

This month was a tough one due to all the time I had to put into studying for my finals, but I still got a fair about of Japanese study done. I was able to keep up with my SRS reviews as well as add a handful of new Japanese sentences to my deck each day.I’ve implemented a new timeboxing system for getting through my reviews and it seems to be working well. Here’s my sentence review routine now:

I start with 5 minutes of reviews, then 4 minutes, 3 minutes. 2 minutes, 1 minute…done.

That adds up to around 15 minutes of time dedicated for sentence reviews, so I usually get like 55 reviews done each time. I read the sentence aloud, trying to mimic as much of an authentic Japanese accent as possible, while also trying to get the meaning and nuance behind it. I save my writing practice for my kanji deck I play around with on the side.

• Cardcount: 2666
• Repcount: 14500
• Interval:
o Mean: 5.8 months
o SD: 7.8 months
o CV: 133.9%
o Median: 3 months
o Max: 4.4 years
• Coverage (non-new cards): 99.5%
• Retention: 94%

Well, another month of Japanese study has gone by. I’m closing in on the end of my junior year of University so there will be a lot to do. Hopefully I’ll have time to keep up a decent pace on my Japanese studies.

I decided to post my stats from my Spaced Repetition System this time. As I posted on twitter a while back, it’s cool to start seeing cards I added during my first month of Japanese study and how incredibly simple they were. One of these cards is shown at an interval of 4.4 years which means I’ll probably never see it again.

I’ve done 14500 sentence reps so far. I wonder what the average number of reps if for someone who has completed the 10,000 sentence project. If your SRS shows stats like this,(even if you haven’t completed it) feel free to post them in the comments as I find them quite interesting. If I divide the 14500 reps I’ve done by the number of 2666 cards have I have, it comes out roughly to 5.44 reps per card. So if I do 5.44 reps per 10,000 cards, I should end with roughly 54,400 reps. Yikes… however, it’ll probably be even more than that to know each card well enough to not have to review it for a couple years.

I’ve been reading some intermediate grammar books and picking out some good example sentences when I find them. There are some annoying aspects to this book I’m reading which include sentences on what not to do. I recommend not reading sentences like these because they only confuse you and waste time. Focus on the correct sentences only. They also aren’t clearly labeled so be careful of annoying sections like that when harvesting your example Japanese sentences.

I find it encouraging that a lot of grammar entries I’ve been reading, I already know from just doing normal sentence work. Most of the grammar you’ll find in Japanese is simply knowing how to use different particles to change the nuance of the thought. Once you get the hang of this, Japanese grammar isn’t as difficult as people say it is.

I’ve also been working on a project to increase my knowledge of Japanese vocabulary. This is because I think I’m actually over relying on the Kanji to know the meaning of a sentence. Therefore, I’ve been building a spreadsheet with words in hiragana/katakana only, and then on the other side of the paper an example sentence with kanji and everything that I can hide and check to see if I was right. I can also use this to try to remember what the kanji was from memory. I might post a tutorial on how to make a random vocabulary list like this in Excel. I plan to randomize the words every so often and just print out a page to take with me so I can work on it between classes and such.
がんばまりましょう

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of me starting serious Japanese study. I’ve done at least some study every single day, some days less than others due to University.

So far, I’ve done 2240 SRS sentences of the 10,000 sentence project. Lately, I’ve been doing a 10 sentence a day pace to make sure I’m making progress with my Japanese skill every day. Doing Heisig last summer made me slow down on my sentence progress, but it also gave me the skills to write almost any kanji I see by breaking down the radicals. Also, Heisig gave me the skill to make up mental pictures using the radicals to better remember new kanji I come across.

I estimate that I’ll be able to take my Japanese to the next level this year. If I keep up a constant pace, I’ll be able to more than double my vocabulary, increase my reading speed, and make my speaking skills more fluid. Right now, I can read basic manga with the aid of looking up some words and some furigana.

Some people have asked me what my plans are concerning taking the JLPT. Unlike a lot of people in the Japanese language learning community, I’ve not really worried about the JLPT. I plan to only take it once I’m confident I’ll pass JLPT level 1. I don’t really wanna mess with the other levels. I live far away from a testing center and don’t have any spare money right now for the other levels.

今年も頑張りましょうね。