Should I Rush or Take it Slow? What is Best in Your Experience?

Bunpro
#1

I originally had the idea that I was going to rush to take the N3 in December, despite being completely new to Japanese. In my mind it seems boarderline impossible, but wanted to give it a try anyways because I like a challenge.

Currently, I am beginning to feel a potential burnout cooking in the background. And I know I won’t be able to attack learning with the same intensity when school starts again in September. But I believe if I really wanted to get it done, I can muscle it through.

I am currently doing 6 new grammer lessons, 50 new vocabs, and I get about 400 reviews daily. This feels very much at the edge of my mental capacity.

So I been thinking, I could lower my goal to N4. Which would be much more lax, enjoyable and fun. I could get away with 5 grammer and 40 vocabs a day, and take off days when I am busy. And I feel like I would be more confident in passing N4.

It would be great help if I can hear some opinions or experiences! Should I rush and go for N3 or take it slow and just do N4?

Right now I am leaning towards doing the N4 because I think that is more realistic and healthy. But maybe there’s something I don’t know. Is learning Japanese a skill you can improve at? Could I get better at it so that my current study load could feel like a piece of cake?

Thanks for reading! And I very much look forwards to any responses.

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#2

It’s incredibly important to be fast, reckless, and zero abandon for refinement or elegance. Your goal? 50 grammar points per day and maybe 80 kanji.

Immerse yourself probably 30 hours a day in Japanese.

I recommend moving to Japan permanently, perhaps manipulating a local to get a visa through marriage.

If you do that, maybe, just maybe you can reach your goal and then some.

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#3

Ahem…but seriously, probably don’t do that. Your mental health is important.

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#4

I don’t know why rushing for N3 seems to be such a trend. Even if you scrape by and pass the test, you won’t actually be at an N3 level. What’s the point in that? Striving for N4 as someone new to Japanese is already ambitious enough.

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#5

If I were you personally, considering that it seems that you have a little bit more time now before you resume your studies, I would aim to have completed maybe half of N3 or so by the time the JLPT rolls around, but take the N4, not the N3. Studying a bit of extra N3 is not going to lessen your ability to pass the N4 at all, as you will still see most of the N4 grammar points extremely often due to how common they are, and you also won’t burn yourself out from trying to actually get all the way through the N3. This will set you up with a little bit more forward progress for whatever your goal next year ends up being.

In saying that though. There’s nothing wrong with just sticking to N4. Especially if your other studies are going to require a lot of your mental capacity. Only you know you :blush:

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#6

It sounds like your goal is the test, rather than learning the language. Are there other goals you have in learning Japanese aside from the test as a challenge to yourself? That might frame how much and what kind of work you want to put into the language – Bunpro is a great tool but doesn’t stand by itself.

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#7

You are gonna get even more daily reviews if you keep this up. A lot more.

I’ve been at it for almost two years and I don’t go above 30 words per day. Maybe I could, but I don’t want to do anki reviews all day. I want to read and watch things for fun. I don’t mind doing anki, but it is not particularly fun. It’s just a morning routine.

Learning new words is a lot easier when you consume Japanese a ton, but consuming Japanese is very difficult in the beginning and makes most people pretty exhausted. This is roughly why it’s called a marathon and not a sprint. If you can find your marathon pace you can run forever, but if you’re wanting to sprint you’re gonna get exhausted and need a break eventually. For many, this break ends up becoming way too long to be worth it (months/years).

I can’t tell you what to do, but if you are interested in the language and not just passing a test since you are talking about being at the edge of your capacity, I would slow down. You can be proud of your sprint and take a walk from here until you feel ready to go for a jog.

Also worth noting that most of the words in my new cards I have seen like 2-50 times before I even get to it because I am watching and reading all day. It makes picking them up in my reviews so much easier. It does in fact get easier over time.

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#8

Sprint and pause is a valid strategy, but not everybody profits from this style and a lot of people actually do very badly doing so.

A lot of kids in school learn like that, binge learning shortly before their exam, doing the bare minimum during class and forgetting evrything during holidays… still some will become able to speak and use the language just fine after a few years in school. The majority won’t touch the language after school though, unless they need it for something.

Without the external force of school a sprint and pause style often fails in the pause phase, as folks just aren’t restarting after the pause or have pauses of months/years :sweat_smile: they can also easily fail in the sprint phase if they try to sprint for way too long. 3 weeks of sprint are usually way better than 3 months.

I read language schools with shorter durations, but taken regularily are more effective than one long language school for example. Cause when motivation is high, you can power through more in shorter time, but when motivation fades after a while, it doesn’t make sense to force this high speed, cause motivation is also key for retention. In addition it seems to lead to burnout for a lot of people, explaining the long pauses after an excessive sprint.

Pauses where you do nothing are also not the most effective ones, though it’s still possible if you don’t care to much about effectiveness. Engaging with the language in some way that’s easy, casual and fun for the level you reached while doing reviews without adding new things gives the brain time to relax a bit and settle what you’ve learned.

Personally, I’m the sprint and pause type of learner myself. I think a lot of people are. My brains gets bored when I try to stick to a routine and then I can’t learn anything at all anymore. Schools seem to be all about drilling the importance of consistency into young heads, even when a sizeable portion of the students won’t deal well with that.

Having said all that, trying to rush all the way through to N3 in such a short time when you already feel a burnout on the horizon is not how you do sprint and pause learning at all. There is a severe lack of pause to let the brain decompress, motivation and egagement goes down. You probably already noticed a retention drop and maybe even a feeling of dread when you think about your review pile.

The question only you can answer is, do you thrive on habits or do you despise them? If you do well with habits (like keeping on top of your reviews for years) then just slow down, you’re in the marathon group, pace yourself and let the habit take over. If you have trouble maintaining habits, then pause until your brain is fresh again (takes longer after burnout, so avoid that at all cost!), and then go for another sprint, just make sure you’re not trying to run with the marathon group. Lots of sprints can get you the same distance in the same time.

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#9

May I ask you why do you want to learn language?
As well as why you need n4 or n3?

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#10

When your total number of reviews to be done reach about ~500, you’ve got a problem in my experience. The day will come when you don’t feel like spending your entire day to get it down to 0, and the next day it will become unattainable. Then suddenly you find yourself with thousands. It’s very hard to climb back up from that position.

I say this as someone with multiple Anki card decks piled up to thousands, Wanikani piled up as well as bunpro. What tends to happen is that you will start a new run if you get tired of this one.

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#11

Hilarious response! And thank you for your advice.

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#12

That’s a really good point! In hind sight, the goal was set without proper knowledge of the work that goes into it. I think it is definetly biting off more than I can chew. N4 would be a more achievable, but also still challenging goal. Thank you for your response!

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#13

Thank you! That is a good plan, I will try to do that.

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#14

Thanks for everyone’s replies. I wanted to respond individually, but I thought that would be too spammy and clog up the forum. So I will try to respond to everything all together. I have been blessed with some insightful and I will take them to heart.

Amount of studying and review cards stacking up @adorable @Kinerae - I agree with what everyone is saying. Too much studying is just no fun, and trying to keep up will get exhausting eventually. I also think (atleast for me) that there is a drop off of retention after 25 new lessons/cards. This convinces me to slow down, probably 30 new vocab, and 5 new grammer would be good!

N4 or N3 in December - I will follow everyone’s advice and go for N4 instead. I think that is more healthy, and I would have more fun. I intend to keep learning Japanese after the test in December, so the test isn’t the end goal for me.

Goals for learning Japanese @shadowstar @homa - I want to find an animation internship in Japan for next year summer. I heard that typically work requires N2 Japanese, but I think the animation industry is a might be a bit more lenient on that. I wanted to get as high of a level as I can to help my chances of finding that internship. But the end goal is N2 Japanese and be fluent enough so I can work in Japan (which I expect would take couple years at least).

Learning strategy @Chimmsen - I don’t think I work very well with the sprint and pause strategy. It does give me results, I could do pretty well on exams with short studying time. But it is so mentally taxing for me and I don’t retain the knowledge as well. Taking it slow and consistent would be best I think. Thank you for your reply, it helped me reflect and choose what is best for me.

This was my first post on the forums and I’m surprised by how many helpful and kind people there are here. Thanks again to everyone’s responses.

P.S. I will respond properly in one reply next time, instead of many small replies. Sorry about the spam

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#15

Just enjoy the journey. Japanese is a wonderful language that deserves a slow and well-organized study method. Personally, I’m studying for N4, and my study plan is to dedicate six grammar, twenty days to vocabulary, and five kanji. The most important thing is to avoid overstudying. If you experience burnout, as I have, you’ll start forgetting words, grammar, and other concepts. Take it easy; this language requires at least three years of consistent study, in my opinion.

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#16

Is there a particular reason you choose to do so much srs study?
As I understand for now 5 point + 25 words, that’s quite a lot I would say.
You didn’t mention and seams like no one asked yet, do you do other stuff things except srs? Reading, listening, writing, speaking, learning texts, learning phrases, learning songs?

The problem with srs is that it’s almost always used a utility for learning useless information. Bunpro makes it easier with different contexts, but still, you are learning sentences not related to your life, and you have no interest in then, they are blank for you, adding that you are doing it for 3-5 hours a day, and brain stops receiving new information after a few week, it becomes one mass of data that has nothing new, interesting, or related to you.

With this all brain starts taking it all just as random stuff and saves it for just period of time, and when you stop srs it throws out all that stuff that wasn’t used in practice or maxed necessary for you in another way. Another thing is that with srs amount of “ok I’ve seen this word 2 times, now I know it” moments renders to about 0, because everything in reviews becomes one gray mass without unique form to each element.

As I see it the problem here is not srs but the combination of factor met that renders brain to learn well or not.
According to my latest thinking proses those factors are:

  • interest in pace work being used (book, anime, textbook)
  • interest in word/grammar
  • usefulness of word/grammar for your life
  • novelty (of both context and method being used for learning, new things just activate brain much harder)
  • focus, one of the most important things, everything above makes it so much easier, without those things brain starts fumbling in the mope and finds something new outside of the learning process.
  • deep understanding of the subject (of course we know about ci hypothesis, but going deep into one thing makes retention so so much better, because the subject just becomes part of the learner)
    When those factors are included in study, the extremely cool feats like remembering word for months/years after just a few encounters can be archived on regular bases.

Hope this will give some food for though in order for you to work on your learning method

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#17

You said yourself, you’re completely new to Japanese and already feeling some burnout. The Tortoise and the Hare isn’t just a funny story about animal races.

Even going for the N4 in 4 months is …ambitious. That’s the equivalent of an 8-9 year old’s level in less than 1/2 a year.

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#18

8-9 old is more like n1じゃないか？

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#19

I’m on my second month of bunpro and have been “studying” Japanese for about three years prior using Duolingo. Actually I’m phasing out the Duolingo because, except for vocabulary, I was just wasting my time and not really learning anything. But I digress.

Using the Genki I and II decks, I can see that I still have a long way to go to even get to N4 level, and I am doing all my lessons and reviews every day. So sitting for N3 in just a few months, based on my experience, seems very unrealistic. I’m planning on sitting for it Dec 2026, but I’m not certain I’ll be ready even then.

So you may want to manage your expectations a bit. My $0.02.

2 Likes
#20

A high rate is sustainable for short periods. For example, you can blaze through N5 at an obscene rate with some dedication and perhaps prior exposure to Japanese via anime/manga or having Chinese/Korean as a second language. You may be able to carry this into N4. But beyond that, it will be very difficult. Even the fastest learners don’t push more than 30 words per day initially and the ones that can do 50+ can do so because they are voracious readers and have a lot more experience with Japanese which enables them to create better memory pathways for remembering words. From what I understand, they start at a reasonable number like 20 and then ramp up to 50 after their reading ability takes off.

I like to keep track of people who speedrun Japanese in order to define limits and place myself somewhere (reasonable) within those limits based on what I know about myself. Currently, the fastest person to reach N1 JLPT that I’m aware of did so in 8.5 months which equates to 40 words per day on top of learning the necessary grammar. It was done during COVID when everything was shut down and he had many 12 hour days of just Japanese. Of course, you’re only aiming for N3 which is more reasonable IMO but the pace that you’re pushing (6 grammar terms, 50 wpd) is quite high. Only you know if you can sustain it, but from available data there is very few that can do this. I myself have spent many 6+ hour days focusing on only Japanese (work from home software engineer gives me more leeway to study), and I could only focus on grammar or vocab, not both, when I was speedrunning.

When I ran the 2K core deck in Anki, towards the end it took almost 4-6 hours a day to finish all my reviews at 20 words per day. Bunpro was also easily 4-6 hours a day doing 6 grammar points a day and often my memory could not keep up without doing a lot of cram sessions. At my peak, the most I did was 6 grammar a day, 15 words on wanikani, 20 words on Anki. This was very short lived (I dropped Anki). Everyone is built different, so I will not tell you what the optimal number is for you, but according to what I’ve read on various forums and reddit, your rate would be at the absolute highest end in terms of pacing.

I think speedrunning has its value as it’s worth pushing as hard as you can while you’re still motivated. As long as you define a reasonable endpoint and don’t entirely drop the language, you should be ok. Dropping the language entirely would nullify your speedrun efforts.

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