Am I doing enough?

[CursedKitsune]

@simias

still add more lessons to your SRS but instead of just picking the next lesson in the bunpro pile you pick a lesson that corresponds to something you encountered in the wild and you want to practice.

Entirely agree. This is how I use Bunpro (and colelct vocab) and it is very effective.

@collie77

Kaniwani

@wct

Vocab on BunPro

To offer a different perspecitve, I think doing cloze style cards or a style where you need to input the answer for vocab is overkill. I am certain it leads to burnout for most people (or just a very slow pace). Better to get the gist of vocab from non-cloze style flashcards and then get lots of reading and listening in. If you absolutely need to cram the ability to output certain words then maybe it is fine (although just having conversations that use the words is probably better anyway) but for long-term learning it just seems like another timesink that takes away from interacting with the language itself. It is perfectly natural to be able to read a word but not be able to recall it when speaking. If I had to guess my passive vocab has basically always consistently been twice as large as my active vocab since I started outputting.

Equally, the Wanikani word list is not that useful for conversation (there are thousands of words you should learn to use in conversation before some of those words) and the Bunpro list is focused on the JLPT (it is more useful than Wanikani though, for sure). You need to ask yourself what you are learning Japanese for and what you need to be able to output. Things you need to be able to say often will just naturally become automatic in the same way as things you read a lot will become easy to read.

(Note: Obviously this is all personal preference but just offering a different opinion so OP doesn’t feel like there is only one path)

[imsamuka]

I think that’s a good routine, overall, except for duolingo.

Personally I felt duolingo was only holding me back. It takes ages to introduce anything new, so you can be N3 and be using only grammar introduced before て form. I’m my opinion it harms more than is useful, at least for Japanese. My progress really improved after I used that time on other resources.

@lieath

Lately, I started to get tired of my everyday routine

It may not be much for you, but even if you don’t gain all that much time or progress, you still reduce your daily routine chores one bit, and you don’t lose much of anything.

[Superpnut]

It isn’t about doing a lot, it’s about doing it well. Your personal goal doesn’t really matter much, all that’s important is the parts you get good at.

If you are doing all that amount there and doing it all well, not just simply doing it to do it, then that is that. But if you are just doing it because those are the amounts you said you’d do instead of doing it because that is what you can do well then I’d say it’s a bad method.

[eek]

let me start out by saying that you’re doing way more than the vast majority of language learners. My 1st year of japanese (just hit year 2 lol) I think I did a similar learning pattern to you, you’re probably doing even more, and didn’t quite realize how much more progress I was making, especially compared to other people. Once I got into the real world with my japanese and met other learners, turns out I was just as good as a lot of people that had been studying for 6 years. (not to say those people weren’t studying hard- they were doing great and definitely had a passion for it)

Anyways what I’m saying is it’s easy to see all these amazing people on the internet and not realize that most people don’t actually study 25 hours a day, so first off give yourself a pat on the back for how great you’re already doing

Now here’s what I have to say about your routine:

1. I really don’t believe in duolingo…
   I started out as an avid duolingo user but honestly I’ve seen so many weird
   translations and I’m not the biggest fan of the way they teach either so I
   stopped using it. Sometimes I like to do the level skip tests though, it’s kinda
   fun to see your level (and you can brag to your friends that you beat duolingo
   lol) but I bet that you already know all the grammar from bunpro so I think at
   that point you can go a lot faster if you spend that time doing something else.
   Ofc, if that’s something you do on your phone when you can’t use a desktop
   I’m all for it, most of the japanese programs I use don’t really have the best
   mobile versions.
2. Add vocab. Wanikani is great and I know they advertise that they’re teaching you vocab through the program but a lot of it is very formal and it’s hard to know what situations to use it in. I bet you’ve been getting most of your vocab from duolingo so far, so if I’m right then I highly recommend downloading anki (it’s free on desktop) and a vocab deck at around your level. (Look for ones with audio files- I think it’s very helpful) There’s probably a duolingo deck and maybe you can play around with the tool and set those words that you know to learned, so if you decide to stop duolingo you still review those. Anki has hands down been the number 1 mvp in my japanese learning, would still be n5without it.
3. find a way to practice speaking. Otherwise you’ll go to talk to someone and the words won’t word anymore trust me. Even if you can think in your head, at least in my case it’s just way harder to talk to real people. This can be shadowing those videos, doing some kind of language exchange or maybe finding a tutor online if your budget allows it.

Those are just my recommendations so if your goals are different or you don’t want to do these things then you’ll definitely still be fine. In reality you really only need to get like 20% there with the routine and the rest is just hard work.

And finally, since you asked, here’s my routine:

1. 1 review on bunpro for the streak
2. Wanikani- as many lessons as I can keeping apprentice under 100 + all my reviews
3. go back and do the rest of the bunpro reviews + 2 grammar points
4. All my anki cards. Right now I have it set to 10 new cards a day but I have had it as much as 60, I just don’t reccomend if you have a job/school and want to do other things with your life cuz it takes so much time
5. get home and read/watch videos/lesson with a tutor depending on mood, to do list and day of the week.

My routine hasn’t really changed except for the amounts, usually takes like 45 min but if you want more it has taken me up to 4 hours if I change the new cards and new grammar points.

[imsamuka]

If you would so far as to add Anki, I need to recommend jpdb.io as well. It doesn’t seems like much people know or use it here all that much, but I’m not joking if i say it’s pretty much the most important thing for me along Bunpro. It can replace Anki, Wanikani and Jisho with relative ease, and is donation based.

I fell I’m repeating myself a little much on jpdb through the forums here… maybe I should create a post on it already and link it when necessary…

[lieath]

I’ve heard about jpdb.io before but got the impression that it’s just an Anki deck generator for various Japanese media.

I would love to read your post about it if it’s far more than that.

[rdennison7]

Okay I didn’t read this entire thread. But the simple answer you should have got was, “yes”. Okay, we can close the thread now.

[imsamuka]

And I thought it was just a worse Jisho and a media difficulty database; jpdb.io doesn’t advertise itself very well on the front page.

@lieath

Anki deck generator

It can’t export Anki decks, but it can import them.

Well, for anyone that’s curious about it and don’t want to wait until I possibly make a better post someday, I recommend:

• Create an account
• Add a Prebuilt deck or import a Anki deck
• Start a review to see how they work
• Read the settings page - there’s tons of settings to match your tastes
• Read the FAQ
• Paste a japanese phrase into the search bar. It serves as a text parser like Jisho and company, but you can add new words to your decks instantly if needed.

For a quick list of what it can do: you can create new a deck from a bunch of text (also satori reader and shirabe jisho) instantly, it will teach you all the vocabulary used, all subvocabulary (国際関係 = 国際 + 関係), all kanji used in the vocabulary, all kanji used inside the kanji, and components used in those kanji. You can change mnemonics, keywords, example sentences, add or deactivate word meanings. You can remove any part of the process, and learn in the order you want (local frequency, global frequency, chronological), and in any amount as well. You can see how hard it would be to watch/read something that’s included in the database, by how much of the vocabulary you already know.

It’s not a hassle to setup (and create new decks) as Anki, but it’s not as infinitely costumizable. It doesn’t hold your hand as Wanikani and you can learn in any pace or order, but it doesn’t have a clear direct path. It doesn’t have all features as other dictionaries but it connect very well with your actual knowledge base (and you can just use them when needed).

It’s not for everyone, but for me it’s all I need.

[Rukifellth]

I am trying it based on your recommendation. I gotta say, it looks really promising!