So why is it a good idea to complete all n5/n4/n3 topics in two months? (my log)

Bunpro
#37

Entirely agree with you. Also, knowing a word and being familiar with a word is also something that strangely only comes at a certain rate. So while I still believe it doesn’t hurt to do more studying, I also believe it’s just not linearly proportional with the speed of acquisition. But more effort is always better than less :slight_smile:

Also, don’t know your situation, but OP you squeeze 7-8h per day, also try to keep a way to be able to absord “day off” if you have any. If you have 400 reviews per day in Anki for example, if you miss one day you might very well having 800 the following day. Of course, it’s possible to avoid most of the time days off at all, but it’s more easily avoidable if you have less reviews in the first place.

Downscaling your workload can also be a challenge if you need at some point, so don’t forget to anticipate that. For example, if I know I’ll have 1-2 weeks of less time to study, I’ll start to reduce my new cards 1-2 weeks before that, to reduce the amount of reviews ahead in time.

So as long as you understand that Spaced Repetition is more like a train that once it’s moving you can’t really stop easily and that if it’s too fast you’ll just keep totally momentum, it’s fine. In general I try to tend to ~half the time I know I can spend on reviews only, the other half time is spent on “flexible things”, like reading articles, listening to podcasts … Because those things, if I skip them, they won’t “snowball” the following days :slight_smile:

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#38

Wow I didn’t think about this “srs snowball” thing about this before…
I’ll take this information into consideration!

I don’t really know if I can add less srs stuff butt I’ll think about possible stops and reducing damage in those days.

#39

To give you an example, I have 2600 reviews planned for future in Anki right now, and I do around 160 per day. But I have 1100 that will happen in the next 20 days. So if I do a 20 days break, I have around 6-7 days worth of reviews to catch up ! Of course, if those have longs intervals (for example if most in Bunpro are “Seasoned”), it’s more or less OK because the ~300-400 I’d do today won’t reappear before X days. But if they were reapparing the next day, my number of reviews to catchup might sum up to something way bigger than 1100 (Because the 400 I would do the first catch up day, would already re-appear a few days later, while I still need to catch up the rest).

But if your family/work/life situation is very stable, you should not worry about it. Just keep that in mind if you know you have to skip doing reviews for more than a few days :slight_smile: Personally I went ~20 days in Japan this summer and I was doing my Anki reviews even there. For Bunpro, the SRS system is more gentle than Anki, so it’s fine to skip days without too much issues, in my opinion

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#40

OMG I remember that! haha

Here is a different view: If you can go through N5 and N4 very quickly maybe its a good thing. Japanese is structurally different than some languages. If you can go though the foundation (N5 and N4 maybe some N3 as well) at a very high speed it should hopefully give you a perspective of how Japanese works.

After this I would highly recommend to reset everything and go at it again ( at a slower pace if possible).

This way, new patterns and how the language works would make more sense. Things should be a bit easier and if you have questions about something, they will be more relevant. Also it will give you a chance for your vocabulary level to keep up with grammar.

N3, N2 and N1 have a lot of grammar points which are building up from N5 and N4, rushing too much may leave you with gaps that hurt you long term…

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#41

That sounds like a great plan, and I feel like it is the right thing to do so.
But challenges are the things that drive me, so I don’t know if I want to do what you propose or just continue 7 topics/day even after n5/n4 and some n3.

Anyway, I guess it all depends on my goal. Maybe it would make more sense to learn 80-100 words/day instead of grinding a bit of grammar + words. Or add more listening + reading to passively learn everything somewhere on lingq.com to learn more words in context.

I think I’ll decide after n5/n4 which I decided to complete until 01.10.2024

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#42

And what was going on in JLPT thread a few years back?)

#43

Totally understandable feeling.

I also think that is doable!

Just to be clear, the point I was trying to make is that 6.5 hours of SRS a day for 2 months (plus hours a day after that period in order to maintain everything) is not a great idea, in my opinion.

I agree. Getting familiar with N5-N4 material from the start, even without a deep understanding of it, is super helpful just to have some mental map of how things fit together. I did something similar myself. I was “only” doing about 2 hours of SRS a day, including vocab, though so it was a lot more reasonable. Can’t say I enjoyed it and these days 20-30 minutes a day is the limit for me before I start skipping days. Some people are absolute SRS fiends apparently so who am I to judge :man_shrugging:

They are talking about this thread in which someone declares they will take the JLPT N1 after 6 months of study but they don’t seem to understand what that entails. They obviously then don’t do that and seemingly quit. I would say your goals are a lot more reasonable and your attitude is not the same though - you can definitely go through the N5 and N4 material in a couple of months if you’re careful how you go about it and you have that much free time.

Once you start learning don’t be afraid to post questions about things you don’t understand, by the way. More than happy to help, especially as some concepts are not immediately obvious.

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#44

Basically what @JamesBunpro wrote… Somebody declared something and yeah nothing happened…

I also agree (hope) that things are different this time. My main light worry is that you may hurt your foundation. N5 and N4 are quite important building blocks that are used in N3 / N2 / N1 grammar points. Maybe just review things after completing your challenge before going further. Just in case.

Challenges are great!

Supposedly quite a lot of people get N3 ready in 8 months by going to Japanese language schools. So what you are aiming for is quite realistic in a way if you have the free time…

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#45

Wow, that thread finished in one day…

Talking about plans I was thinking about registering for n2 in December :laughing:
6000 words in 3.5 month is quite a lot + 3h grammar as well as reading and listening :thinking: mb if it was 9h/day, but I still have no clear idea about this language so I think I’ll decide in a both if I even want to take any tests, or just learn language in way I like and it makes sense for me.
First goal is just unlock anime or at least YouTube. I can watch anime with my 1500 words in Italian with decent level of understanding, but from my experience with English, 4000 is where YouTube fluency comes and about 7000 is where fluency for almost all shows comes.

Ye, it’s time to sleep and I’m trying to response, so I’m sorry that it’s unstructured and brings not much sense to the conversation…

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#46

In this case, apply for the N4 this December. Most locations around the world are opening up registrations right now. There is still chance if you apply quickly while there are still open spaces (some locations fill in minutes).

Japanese is very different… There are a lot of ways to say the same thing, different speech patterns are used in different places. Some vocabulary on the N4 (or any JLPT exam) may not be that common.

On the JLPT exam, there no time, you need to answer and read quickly. Just passing the N4 in 3months and a bit would be impressive.

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#47

Wow, didn’t knew that it is so problematic to get to jlpt.
But I think I’ll register for n3 in case I want to.
I can agree that grammar is hard to understand, but vocab :thinking: isn’t n4 vocab includes around 1200 most common words + a few hundreds topics related words? I’ve been aiming to finish my core 2k deck in the next 45 days. Of course I need to practice them with reading and listening and I’m trying to do it at least for one hour, but after I learn kanji I’ll have 2 additional hours for this, and I think it should be enough :thinking:

#48

Your plan is ambitious, but doable I think. I’ve been grinding 5 grammar points a day on bunpro, and I started with N5 already done, so at the rate I’ve been going, it’ll take around 5 months to finish all the grammar, which means your goal of N5/N4 in 45 days is totally doable if you devote more time to it.

I also agree with what you’re saying in terms of vocabulary. After I learned the Kaishi 1.5k deck, I was able to start playing my first video game in Japanese (it’s a JRPG, bravely default 2). And my ability to understand anime with Japanese subtitles went from like 10% to like 50% after around 5 series post Kaishi 1.5k, so I agree that 1.5k words is more or less enough to get the basic understanding.

I started with N5 grammar already completed, and it’s been around 2 months now (I started in June).
The video game I’m playing I’m now understanding most sentences, with the amount of vocab lookups necessary gradually decreasing, so it’s possible to hit N2 by the end of the year I think.

My schedule has been:
5 grammar points on Bunpro per day (probably 45 mins total counting all the SRS, since it’s 15 mins of reading the grammar points and 30 mins to do the 55 reviews per day)
50 words in anki (takes around 45 mins)
rest of the time immersion with native material (right now only JRPG, but I did anime and books before too, total maybe 2-4 hours a day)

However, one caveat is that I already had some kanji knowledge from knowing some Chinese, so I didn’t have to spend as much time memorizing and distinguishing kanji. Of course still difficult since readings, vocab usage, traditional/simplified, Japanese only kanji, etc. means Chinese knowledge doesn’t help as much as you would think, but still probably saved a couple months from the total learning time.
Good luck!

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#49

Wow, 50 words in 45 minutes is amazing!
How do you do that? I mean is it kanji on the front page and kana or/and sound on the other page?
That is incredible speed, do you use any technical for this? Now I’m learning my second hundered words (just crossed 100 I would say) and it is like 15 words/hour. Of course this is one-kanji words which means they can sound similar and when it will be 2-3 kanji words it should become better + it’s easier to learn words with existing vocab, but still 50/45m is furious!

Also thanks for good words!

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#50

Lol I’m literally you but two months in the future. About to finish N2, still going strong. I believe in you. :grinning:

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#51

anki speed focus add on is so clutch. it probably doubled how fast i did my reviews. it makes it so it flips a card automatically. 50 new words in 45 minutes is too fast for me, but i can do 25 new words in 45 min to an hour pretty easy. you can get it here:
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1046608507
basically, you can set it to play a sound and flip the card after a certain amount of time. i have mine set to 3 seconds for the sound and 5 seconds for flipping the card, but yours might vary. it is the best thing i would recommend to someone with a lot of anki reviews. you might get a slightly lower percentage correct, but it will speed up reviews so much.

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#52

Yeah I put kanji on the front and reading and definition on the back using anki. I don’t do anything technical, but it only takes about 5 secs to review a card. So it takes about 45 mins to get through all my reviews for the day, counting the previous SRS and the 50 new words.

I think it should get faster as you get practice, it was a lot slower at first, but is getting faster. I started out at like 8-9 secs/card, now I’m down to 4.5-5 secs/card.

The more kanji you recognize, the easier it is to learn future vocabulary as well. Even just knowing one of the kanji in a 2 word compound helps a great deal since it gives you half the reading and a clue to the meaning.

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#53

Nice addon, unfortunately I use iPhone for all my studying (bought one for 50$ and it helps to concentrate hugely)

But I was already thinking about making a flash drive with a separate oc to study without instructions on my laptop.

When I was doing Italian I was going 25/hour on the peak (I still know only about 1000-1500 words so it wasn’t the best form yet). I hope to get to this number in a few week in Japanese as well.

Anyway, they started to stick at least.

#54

Wow that is huge.
I just finished my first 100 words in the deck (it was like 6 days since I started doing it) and I have avg time of 21s/card.

On deck with Italian I have 12s/card.

But actually, mb auto timer or just not thinking about the card if it immediately doesn’t appear in mind is the way to go :thinking:

I did too much knaji and now my brain works only to remember them :laughing:

#55

Yeah pretty much I don’t spend much time on a card, if I don’t get it within a couple seconds, I just fail the card and move on. I think that’s a better strategy and helps you learn more cards faster. 4.5-5 secs is far from the peak, for my other deck that’s all review (the kaishi 1.5k deck, which I highly highly recommend, since it’s highly optimized to teach you all the most common words to use in native media for immersion purposes), I’m down to 3.5 sec/card, and I’ve heard of people online who can go down to 2.7 sec/card.

If you’re at 21 sec/card and you’re doing 15 words/hour, then that means if you get down to 5sec/card, you could do 60 word/hour, which is the same pace as me at 50 words/45 mins, so really the key difference is just to reduce the average time taken per card.

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#56

I like to study for a long time too, but the vast majority of it is comprehensive input instead of SRS. I’ll happily struggle through a comic for 5 hours but the most I can do on Bunpro is 2 lol. It’s a wonder I haven’t burnt out studying so much, I’ve already been warned of it under my study log. I think it’s because I’m not afraid to just do less in a day when I realize I’m getting tired of it. A lot of people who get burnt out are the ones who force themselves through day by day, so make sure to avoid doing that. Good luck

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