How to budget time between Vocab, Grammar, and Kanji

[SoreWaMaichiru]

Stop using so many resources imo. Stick to the bunpro vocab deck for now and do it alongside bunpro for grammar. (tango n5 is gonna contain the same vocab anyway and only has like 2k words so no point) I say do 20 words a day

You can also stop using WaniKani- learning kanji through vocab is much faster and easier on time. If you really wanna do kanji individually then ok…but I don’t personally see the point myself.

As for grammar overall, do like at LEAST 2-3 grammar points a day-I didn’t personally follow any textbook path either, just did the bunpro standard order until finished

[algebro]

Thanks for the advice. I agree it’s too many resources, which is why I wish there was a Tobira I deck which would allow me to replace Anki entirely

So it sounds like the Bunpro Vocab Deck and the Tango deck are roughly equivalent? The more I can consolidate reviews on Bunpro the better IMO.

Unfortunately I need a grammar resource in addition to Bunpro because I find the explanations on Bunpro confusing a lot of the time, so I’m going to keep Tobira for the moment.

[SoreWaMaichiru]

No problem!
Yeah, I would say get rid of Tango for now-it contains 2k of common vocab you will see all of in the Bunpro vocab decks anyway. At the end of the day, once you have like 4-6k words + decent grammar you can ditch Bunpro vocab and use anki to create your own deck for words you find when reading (a mining deck).

As for using tobira, if you are struggling with Bunpro explanations then that’s a good idea to use multiple resources for sure. Don’t stress too much on getting all of your grammar 100% perfect before you start reading though, as when you start to read native content it’ll all be consolidated anyways.

Extra info (for the future):
A resource you should save for the future (when you have a decent amount of vocab and grammar memorised I’d say to n4-n3 level) is https://www.satorireader.com/
It may be helpful if you are scared to jump straight into reading native content as it contains clickable word definitions and full grammar explanations of the grammar used in each story on the site.
Also NEWS WEB EASY NHK easy news may be of use to you if you want some extra reading material more factual based.

Make sure you utilitse the Yomitan reading extension-allow you to look up words on the internet with a simple hover of your mouse

[kenni]

TLDR:

1. Figure out what you struggle with the most relative to what you’ve learned in Japanese
2. Place greater emphasis on what area you struggle with, deprioritize/put at maintenance/tread water/put into vacation mode/slowly learn any areas you excel at.
3. Once you’ve made enough progress in your weak area, go back to Step 1.
4. Go slower than you think when using SRS; it’s really boring at the beginning, but really pays off later down the road.
5. Find other ways to study outside of SRS memorization tools. SRS is great for specifically focusing on areas, but I’ve seen very few SRSs that can help with multiple areas at the same time. Online tutoring sessions, sentence creation, listening drills, reading NHK easy, etc. can all contribute to learning.

Full Answer

Awesome, AWESOME question.

This is something that everyone needs to figure out eventually. Learning Japanese is hard, and there’s a lot of proverbial ocean to boil and a lot of proverbial elephant to eat.

Regarding prioritization, I would encourage you to think about what aspect of Japanese you struggle with the most relative to what you know about Japanese. Do you struggle with memorizing vocabulary? Spend some time focusing on learning new words and drilling existing words. Do you struggle to form sentences in Japanese? Write sentences and get them checked by the community, a friend, a tutor, or even a tool like bunpo-check.com or sapling.ai.

For me, I struggle to remember all of the verb conjugations quickly, and it makes me sound like I don’t know Japanese when I’m in conversation with others, so I’ve resolved to work on rote memorization of common verbs and conjugations so that I’m not trying to calculate the conjugation of verbs in my head all the time.

Once you figure out what you want to prioritize, figure out how much time you want to allocate daily (or weekly) and work backward from there. Set realistic goals and discipline yourself to go slower. If you know you have time to do 100 SRS reviews every day but want to focus on grammar, don’t just spend those 100 reviews on Kanji reviews. That’s like doing bench press exclusively in the gym and hoping your glutes and hamstrings will grow. Don’t also over-exert yourself consistently. Just like how most people can’t do full body workouts with multiple exercises per body part and multiple sets for each exercise every single day, your brain is not going to be able to handle giving full effort doing 100 kanji reviews a day, 100 grammar reviews a day, and 100 vocab words a day. Be smart. Figure out what is minimally effective for incremental gains and retention, then prioritize from there.

For example, say that you have a pretty good grasp on all of the grammar concepts you’ve learned up until now and you feel comfortable with your knowledge of Kanji but you struggle with vocabulary recall. Put any grammar learning at maintenance, where you are just slowly reviewing existing concepts (or learning one or two concepts every few days) and focus on training your vocabulary muscles.

Do this for a period of time, no shorter than a couple of weeks, no longer than a few months, then repeat the process.

Falling behind is a common feeling among those using SRSs. Go slow. Don’t feel bad about using vacation modes in your learning tools. You’ll be surprised with how much your brain retains information after 1 week of a break.

SRSs are great. But any good SRS is usually hyper-focused. Bunpro is focused on grammar, Wanikani on Kanji, Renshuu on vocab, etc.

Think of SRS like exercises that target specific muscles, like the bicep curl or the triceps pushdown. These exercises are great for training a very specific area of muscles, but other exercises exist that can train a wider area of muscles.

Try and find other ways to study that hit multiple areas of Japanese at the same time. Memorization is not the only way to learn. Don’t neglect creation, speaking, listening, etc. see Blooms taxonomy for more info.

For instance, writing sentences is a great way to train both your grammar knowledge and your vocabulary knowledge at the same time. If you write the sentences by hand, then you could also work on your Kanji skills.

Getting those sentences reviewed by a person, and then recording audio clips of you reading those sentences will help you out with your speaking skills.

You could then take those audio clips and translate them into flashcards in Anki, and help you with your listening skills.

Use this in conjunction with wise and disciplined use of your SRS tools, and you’ll start to see amazing growth.

This rambles a little bit, so I’ll leave a TLDR at the top.

Hope this helps.

[skullclutter]

For vocab, you can look up words from Tobira here and manually add them to your reviews. That way you won’t need a separate Anki deck and you can keep all your vocab srs in one place.

[algebro]

For vocab, you can look up words from Tobira here and manually add them to your reviews.

That’s a good idea. I was holding off on doing that when I heard Bunpro was going to support custom decks in the future so I wouldn’t have to make them twice, but maybe it’s worth doing if it’ll be awhile. @veritas_nz any chance you could give us an idea of when to expect this feature? I’d love to help beta test or get the Tobira deck started if y’all need help.

Thanks!

[casual]

My favorite time budgeting approach is to dedicate 8 hours per day to kanji, 8 to vocab, 8 to grammar and 8 to reading.

Or, on those days shorter than 32 hours, at least to try to read a couple of pages of a novel.

[Bjoneson]

Learning Japanese can be super overwhelming, and I’ve definitely drowned in reviews doing SRS, and burned out from it as well. Especially when you’re in the early stage, it can be defeating to do a ton of SRS. Because you don’t have enough material behind you to see the full benefit of it yet. So I would advise to try and focus on what your goals are, and what could further you towards that. Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the use you have for Japanese, and get lost in progressing through SRS resources. Everyone has their ‘thing’ that encourages them. Be that perfecting your accent, learning a large volume of kanji, breaking into reading novels or enjoying anime. I think once you understand through trying different learning methods and focuses which you enjoy, you’ll have a better idea of how to go move forward.
As you progress and find yourself lacking in one area, you can focus on that. For me I spent a lot of time initially focused on reading and kanji, and found my listening was lacking. So I’ve been spending a lot of time intensively watching documentaries and TV shows in Japanese that I enjoy, and have been making good progress.

The main thing with moving forward is don’t stop! If you find your workload too much, don’t be afraid to let some things go, but don’t let it make you stop altogether. With a language as dense and difficult as Japanese it can be easy to want to find the best way to study. But that’s nigh impossible. You will likely make mistakes, and probably waste time at some point too. But the important thing is that you’re always learning, and moving forward. Even if it isn’t ideal, the more you chip away at things the more the pieces come together.

[d11]

Based on my experience (studying since 2016; currently aiming for N1 in July), I would have the following high-level meta-learnings for someone at your level:

• Kanji and vocab are under-appreciated. It’s likely the case that no matter how important you think they are, they’re even more important. Your goal is to be able to read anything. The problems caused by kanji and vocab that you don’t know are bigger than you think. Read “What 80% comprehension feels like” to understand this on a visceral level.

• As such, I found that sprinting to the end of WaniKani (i.e. finishing the whole thing in ~1.5 years) was worth it. Every session do all the reviews and lessons you have, no matter how much time it takes. (It should take a max of an hour a day, usually less if you focus and concentrate.) Being able to pronounce and get the vague meaning of any word you see feels amazing. I don’t think WaniKani is the best possible tool (e.g. its SRS algorithm is bad and it has too much esoteric vocab without enough context). But it’s a pre-packaged program you can use to learn all the kanji in ~1.5 years and that’s worth the time to me.

• It’s all about efficiency. I think Bunpro is extremely inefficient compared to Anki and other modern SRS systems so I would ditch it for vocabulary. Similarly, a lot of people say that sentence-mining to create your own Anki cards is good, and it is, but for efficiency, nothing beats the pre-made decks.

  To share some data, I’ve been doing 20 cards/day of a pre-made N1 deck since March, average 56 minutes of Anki/day. And it’s been super gratifying. Almost every time I read something I’m seeing a word that I’ve recently learned.

• In the efficiency theme: you should have two modes for Japanese studying. 1) flashcards or reading practice in idle time (elevators, toilet, teethbrushing, etc.); and 2) super-focused study time where you are 100% concentrated and going through your SRS tools as fast as possible. Never waffle around while doing your SRS, swapping tabs to read Reddit or stare out the window. If you’re capable of doing your daily WaniKani in 30 minutes, then it should take 30 minutes; if you let that time expand to 1.5 hours then you’ll get frustrated with how much time Japanese practice is eating in your life.

• For grammar, go relatively slow. There are only ~950 Bunpro grammar points. If your goal is, e.g., N1 in 3 years, that’s less than 1/day. I found setting JLPT level goals useful, i.e. by this date I’ll finish Bunpro JLPT level N5 or whatever.

• The missing factor is non-SRS, whether that’s podcasts, reading practice, textbook exercises, watching anime (with no subtitles or Japanese subtitles), … You should try to have some of this. Ideally something fun that you enjoy. I’ve struggled to make time for this personally, although signing up for the JLPT often forces me to spend at least a few months of daily JLPT workbook time. If you’re able to carve out time for this early and incorporate it into your routine, I think you’ll do better than I have.

And finally, if you want a bottom-line recommendation, I’d say something like:

• 1 hour/day Anki vocab
• 0.5-1 hour/day WaniKani
• 0.5-1 hour/day non-SRS
• 0.5 hour/day Bunpro grammar

in this priority order. (I.e. if you have plans for the day and can only do 1 hour of studying, then do Anki vocab.)

Mandatory disclaimer: the above is basically all advice aimed at my past self. Your language-learning brain, and lifestyle, may or may not match my past self very well. But, hopefully it’s helpful.

[Asher]

Grammar

• If you’re following the pace of a textbook, then it is indeed a good idea to just add the ones to Bunpro that you are seeing in the book, and only go at a pace that you feel is manageable. The standard on Bunpro purely from a stats point of view is people adding between 2 and 4 new grammar points a day. This usually slows down a lot once people get past N3, but it seems to be the pace that the most people can handle. We have no statistics on what other services they are using unfortuantely, but I would wager that the ones studying 4 or more grammar points a day are focussing on grammar, while the ones doing 2 or less are using Bunpro in tandem with other resources.

Kanji

• I did between 5 and 3 kanji a day the whole time I was studying them. I now only do 1 whenever I find one I don’t know. 5 worked for the first 500 or so until they started getting more complex and reviews piled up. I took a different study path than WaniKani though, so can’t really speak to that. Here’s a bit of a breakdown of how I studied kanji. I wouldn’t recommend doing it this way unless you find high value in it like I did. I studied kanji for 2 (and a bit) hours every single day for two years

Vocab

• If you are not in a big rush, I would say that Bunpro vocab is great, especially for the reason that it uses level appropriate grammar over and over again in the sentences to make sure that you are getting enough exposure to grammar as well as the vocabulary itself. In that respect, you won’t find a better resource anywhere (not biased at all). It also has highly contextual sentences. As for the SRS timing, I would agree with @d11 that it has a lot of room for improvement, but would also stress that language learning is a bit different than most memorization tasks that people use Anki for, as it carries with it the assumption that the learner is actively seeing things over and over again in their daily lives while they are immersing in the language, rather than trying to memorize something as quickly as possible for the purpose of test taking. We are however working on a new component to our SRS that we hope will make the SRS more valuable specifically for people that are learning languages.

For vocab, I also strongly recommend adding some sort of passive listening practice to your study, as getting used to listening and training your ears to hear Japanese is a unique skill in itself that will turn into ‘free practice’ once you get good at it.

As for your priority order, it will shift a lot depending on where you are in your journey. The biggest limiter in the beginning will be kanji if your goal is reading. The next will be grammar, and the next will be vocab. Between N4 and N3, grammar becomes maybe the most important in terms of giving you bang for your buck with understanding things. I personally studied grammar, then went all in on kanji, then redid grammar at the same time as learning vocab, which I was able to study really quickly due to having already studied all the kanji quite thoroughly. I would say 3 hours a day absolute max for study so that you can keep your sanity. If you’re super gung-ho, then you could do more of course, but that’s person to person. I would say 3 hours is the max for a typical person to get sick of things.

[rururun]

Read carefully so as not to misunderstand.

Kanji:

You don’t need to study kanji in isolation; it’s a waste of time. Just learn vocab. You will learn kanji just by learning words that contain them, and as you learn more words that contain a particular kanji than you will learn more about how it’s used and the different readings that it has. Just learn words.

If you want to learn handwriting than just learn the basic stroke order for radicals and keep a journal.

Anything like heisig, kklc, wanikani, kanji in context, drill books, kanji tree or other apps, etc is a major waste of time. Especially heisig.

Vocab:

Your best bet for learning vocab is by reading and looking up words that you don’t know or learning in context. There are studies that suggest extensive reading is the best way to learn a language (including your native language). So read often, and read for long periods of time. Look up what you don’t know and keep on reading.

SRS is great and there’s studies which show its effectiveness but it’s important to remember that SRS is just a supplement, it’s not the primary way through which you should be trying to learn. A lot of people forget this and overload themselves with Anki reviews. This leads to burn out, and it wastes time that you could have spent reading. Take advantage of SRS, but remember that it’s just a supplement.

If you are to use SRS for vocab I would recommend Anki and just mine cards from whatever you read. But seriously, be careful with how many new cards you do per day. Eventually I deleted my deck after I hit 16k words because it wasn’t until that point that I had realized it was wasting my time and that I could have been reading.

Bunpro vocab is garbage, don’t waste your time.

Grammar:

My statement about SRS applies to Bunpro also. But Grammar is a little different than vocabulary. Reading about and memorizing grammar rules is beneficial, but there is a difference between memorizing grammar rules and acquiring the understanding of how it works. We learn grammar when we read explanations from resoueces like textbooks or Bunpro. We acquire grammar when we read books and see it in action in the wild. Both are important.

Conclusion:

If you made it this far than you probably realized a common thread throughout this post: reading.

Reading is the most essential thing. When you plan out your study schedule you should dedicate as much time to reading as you can. Dedicate some time to bunpro also, but not as much. SRS should only be given a small amount of time (10-15 minutes per day).

And don’t give in to pressure and think that you need to rush through grammar. Just do a few grammar points per day and spend the rest of the day reading. You will finish the grammar studies in no time, consistency is more important than how many you do per day.

If there’s a day where you only have enough time for one thing, spend that time reading not doing SRS.

[Asher]

Agree for sure that reading is king. You can never do too much, and it will act as a good indicator for you of other areas of study that you need to focus on when you notice that one particular aspect of your Japanese is lacking.

[algebro]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! So would you recommend reading immediately, or getting some vocab under my belt first? I tried satori reader awhile back before taking a break and found I had to look up every other word pretty much, even on “easier” content. I had a similar experience with flying witch. Is there something even easier I should try first or just stick with the reading practice in tobira and bunpro vocab sentences?

[Siesta]

I spend around 30 minutes a day on Anki vocab and about 1.5 hours on Bunpro grammar per day. After I finish N3 grammar, I’m going to take a break from learning grammar and spend almost all the grammar time learning Kanji. Do what works for you.

[veritas_nz]

We’re hoping within the year.

We don’t have a definitive timeframe though.

[FullMetalAlba]

Just want to bump this comment as the best in this thread by far.
In regards to the comments telling you to scrap wanikani and learn through vocab instead, I’d say this is more of a niche opinion and underappreciates the value of kanji in helping you to understand and retain vocab in the first place.
If kanji study is really demotivating you then look into other options but otherwise good luck!

[FullMetalAlba]

For your first steps trying out native content I’d say reading first will be the most challenging. In terms of difficulty I’d say it ranks like this: videos (anime & youtube), listening (podcasts etc.), reading (considering the kanji factor).

At N5 if you spend too much time on this it’ll frustrate you more than it helps.
Near the end of N5 I started watching youtube accounts like “Comprehensible Japanese” which really helped and then moved onto podcasts like “Nihongo con Teppei” during N4.

I’ve recently completed N3 and have only just began to find pure reading possible without pulling my hair out but I can recommend joining the beginner book club on BunPro if that’s something you’re interested in at an earlier stage!

Good luck

[Noxsora]

What I recomend for your SRS is to pick 1 vocab deck
Bunpro, Tobira or N5 tango.
Kanji: Some People love wanikani, some people hate it . If you love it than keep doing it. If you hate it dont.
Do your paper textbook exercies in tobira, no more than 1 lesson a week. And add any vocab/grammar to SRS if you like.

Here is what I did

1. I took Japaneses classes all through HS and College mostly using Genki 1. A beginner textbook has a valuble mix of grammar and vocab. And is my bedrock and foundation of my future Japanese knowlage.

2. I did 5 cards of kanjiDamage and 5 cards of vocab from Genki and 2 (Summer 2020-Spring 2022)

3. Added about 10 listening or vocab cards (Spring 2022- Winter 2023)

4. Winter 2023, I know the next step is to do immersion, but I’m nervious so I pick up Bunpro. I still remember Genki 1 grammar from step 1, get through Genki 2 over a couple a months.

5. Now that I’ve run out of Genki on bunpro, the reviews aren’t sinking in. At this point I need to either pick up an intermediate textbook to study from for 10 years (how I spent the past 10 years on Genki) or study with immersion

[sunflowii]

Thank you so much for this!

[CursedKitsune]

There has been a lot of good suggestions in this thread but just to emphasise some points I think are important.

• You should do what works for you and what works for your goals.
• You should be realistic about what is achievable given the time and effort you put in (Japanese takes thousands of hours to get okay at).
• Your main source of learning should be using the language naturally (input/ouptut).
• Input comes before output (but you still have to practice output).
• If native sources of input are still too hard for you then use every trick available to you to make it easier (rewatching, yomitan, grammar study, cramming core vocab, graded readers, anything).
• As per all of the above, SRS should exist in service of actually using the language (so don’t burn yourself out on it for no reason).
• Above all: just keep going and don’t stop.

In terms of dividing time, I would strongly suggest just trying things out and see what you like. Try something for a few months and see how you feel. As you can tell from the replies in this thread, everyone has their preferences. Preferences also change over time and along with goals. If you are earnestly studying and at least somewhat doing what I laid out above then you will get okay at Japanese sooner or later. Good luck and keep going!