NOTE: The conclusion post of this project is here.
Hello.
TLDR: I will revise the basics and focus on easy input (多読など). I will write about it in this thread for accountability. Perhaps I will get bored and quit. Hopefully not.
Detailed Context: Due to my job and life circumstances I probably have a foreseeable 1.5-2.5 years where I can dedicate a reasonable amount of time to getting good at Japanese, after which I am planning on getting much busier with work so Japanese will be put on the backburner although still be a major part of my life. I live in Japan and don’t plan on leaving so getting good at Japanese is important for my work and life (and also I just like studying it). I have been studying Japanese for a couple of years and change now and have been in Japan a year and a half and would say my ability is around a weak N1 (meaningless self-assessed level - from what I have seen some N1 stuff is pretty easy and some of it I have no clue on so…). I actually don’t have a large amount of interest in the JLPT itself as a test but I am going to take the N1 in December this year and plan on doing it without studying specifically for the test. To that end, I will also be taking the N2 in the summer just to see what the test is like and how the test day itself works. Naturally I do not plan on studying explicitly for the N2 either.
Larger Goals: Long term, I would like to get very very good at Japanese. Having a large active vocabulary and a wide, creative and natural range of expression is important to me. I also like reading and would like to be able to read anything I want without a dictionary and with very very very few unfamiliar words, the same as English. In the medium term, this year my focus is on moving from feeling like a learner of the language to someone who simply uses the language.
This Study Log: My Japanese ability has been improving nicely this year and everything is going well but, as is common at the intermediate level, I feel a bit adrift despite all that. I flirted with the idea of various challenges to sharpen my focus and give myself a sense of direction (reading, kanji writing, listening, JLPT study, speaking, etc). Ultimately I decided I would like to do a last pass at the basics before moving on to focusing on advanced domains and topics. As such, this log will be somewhere I can track and keep accountable for a sort of “back to basics” study challenge.
I will be focusing on improving my understanding and intuition of the most common parts of the language. By my definition (which is based on my experience and not meant to be universal, please don’t read too much into it) basic Japanese is roughly N5-N2 in terms of grammar, top 10k in terms of vocab, about 1k “deep” kanji knowledge, and about 1.5-2k “shallow” kanji knowledge. So in terms of explicit study and SRS I will be trying to do the following:
- Only mining words in the top 10k of my frequency lists (this will probably reduce my new vocab load by quite a lot as I already know most of those words, I would think)
- Add 1000ish kanji production cards (example word(s) on the front with a cloze style blank space; no keywords or English)
- Skim through Bunpro N5-N2 and mine any grammar point which I feel I need to revisit (currently I do no Bunpro or grammar study) then read through “A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar” beginner and intermediate editions and mine for any nuances I wasn’t aware of or am weak on (e.g., have a card testing the difference between 間 and 間に (although not this as clearly I already know it))
In terms of input, I will try and shift to extensively reading as many easy books as possible and listening to as much easy content as possible. I like hard stuff so probably won’t give up harder stuff completely but I will try and reduce the amount. Here “easy” books mean 95% comprehension (with no dictionary) minimum and ideally around 98% (still with no dictionary), so children’s books and LNs aimed at a younger audience will probably be the majority of my reading for the time being. For listening the target percentages will be similar - luckily lots of regular TV and youtube videos are around that level so no torturing myself with stuff made for learners. I will use a dictionary when reading but probably will not do lookups often when listening. That is just how I have always done things.
The goal here is to really make sure I am picking up on the nuances of the basics and to inundate myself with common patterns and vocabulary. When tackling harder content naturally I improve at the basics but I would like to set aside some time to kind of really mentally focus on filling the cracks and getting that stuff down so I can better focus on more difficult things, like a musician doing scales or playing standards and thinking carefully about technique. Hopefully my reading speed will also increase. Basically everything will be revision or a form of revision except for the kanji writing as kanji writing is something I have only done intermittently.
Anyway, today is day 0 or -1 or something as I won’t properly start on this until tomorrow or the day after. I will try update at least weekly and hopefully daily. I have always been prone to quit these kind of tracked challenges or whatever but I am hoping that by talking about it “publicly” it will stay on my mind and I will stick with it. The main thing I am likely to go back on is the kanji writing, honestly, as the rewards are seriously delayed for that one. This challenge is time limited (100 days, as the title says) and if by some miracle it goes well then I may repeat the same format with a specific advanced domain.
Thanks for reading - feel free to scold me if I slip.
よろしく
NOTE: As of day 23 the goals for this challenged were changed to those listed below.
As such, my goals for this challenge going forward are:
- 500 kanji production cards
- N2 vocab deck (1659 cards total)
- Check Bunpro N5-N2 for weak grammar points
- Read through the basic and intermediate editions of the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar and mine for detailed nuances that I am not firm on (
- Read 15 books
- Maintain my mined vocab deck
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