My goal is to go from n5 - n1. I currently am around n5 level as I used to learn Japanese, however I have lost a good portion of that knowledge. I am currently trying to spend about 2 hours a day using the anki 2k/6k core vocab deck (along with some other individual words/kanji decks) and bunpro’s grammar to learn. If you have any suggestions to help me learn quicker, such as good anki decks that have useful words (even in the 2k core vocab I often get words that I would rarely use in English), please let me know! My goal is to get to n3 for now, and once I am there I will try and continue onwards, but I think I need to go in smaller steps than that lol.
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Welcome!
As far as I know currently the Tango decks with target sentences are the best pre-made Anki decks in terms of quality and how useful the words are. Of course what is useful or not depends on what you are doing with the language.
If it is the 2k deck I am thinking of then this is because it is based on an old newspaper corpus. I am thinking about political words like 旧ソ連 or 副大統領 etc. Having said that, some words in Japanese are quite common and the English translation will look like something you won’t use even though it is a very common word in Japanese.
If you have any questions then feel free to post - good luck!
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For the Tango decks, do you mean " JLPT Tango N5 1000 Most Common Japanese Words in Sentences"? This is the main one on anki pro.
Thanks for the advice, I will try and incoporate it into my studies!
P.S. I will be doing updates on saturdays weekly only, as I want to focus my time on to the Japanese itself instead of onto making this study log
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Week 1 complete: Every day I did about 20 words on anki, then did at least 5 grammar points on bunpro (+ review). I am already feeling more confident with the language! To help improve my listening and reading, I have been watching shows and youtube in Japanese without subtitles, along with reading some basic mangas and using a dictionary to help me. Oh and also listening to Japanese music whilst doing other things to really help immerse myself.
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That sounds like an extremely productive week! Way to go !!
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using the anki 2k/6k core vocab deck
Outdated deck, don’t use it, has many complex and business words that are not useful for now
Use something like Core2.3k or Kaishi 1.5k if you want to immerse ASAP, or you can use Tango decks if your goal is to take the JLPT, but it’s more boring
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As in the " Improved Core 2.3K VN Order V2"? Also I can’t find the Kaishi deck (I’m using anki pro) ill try out this new deck though, thank you very much!
Kaishi is here
Core2.3k is here
I just completed the Core2.3k a few days ago and it was great, it helped immensely with me getting comfortable with easier-level manga and LNs, highly recommended
Kaishi is an alternative that I saw on themoeway guide, but I haven’t personally tested, it also seems good
Also themoeway is a great guide for Japanese, anything you need is there, I think everyone should at least read it once to have a better idea on how to do stuff and save yourself from mistakes that could hinder your progress, read it if you haven’t, it saved me as a beginner
2 hours a day using an Anki deck is a lot, keep Anki under 1h-1h15m if you can, consistency is key, don’t get burned out doing too much Anki because in the end you’re gonna stop for a few days and it would have been the same as doing just 1h/day, I know because I did the same thing, you don’t enjoy the language that way
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Week 2 complete (forgot to write this yesterday lol).
I have been doing 20 new words a day on anki + 5 grammar points a day here on bunpro. Most days I have been listening to at least an hour of Japanese music, and sometimes watching anime without subtitles and listening to podcasts. I can feel the improvement already
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Week 3 done. Couldn’t write yesterday bc of long hours on plane (but still managed to do my grammar and vocab. 20 words, 5 grammar points a day.
I’ve started to listen to ‘Japanese with Shun’ podcasts, trying to do 1 episode a day at least to start to internalise language.
Once I finish N5 and N4 grammar, I have decided to start reading an easy manga (right now thinking chainsaw man, open to all suggestions though!)
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Week 4 - nearly a month in! Due to school starting, I can’t do new words every day, but on the days I have time I am doing 20 new words, 3 grammar points. I’m on N4 grammar now!
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One thing that may work is to try to get up 20 minutes earlier and first thing in the morning to get Japanese study done. Or first thing after finishing school before doing homework…
Congrats on getting to N4 grammar!
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week 5! Already down a month (slightly more even - 34 days to be precise). So far I have done all of n5 grammar, a bit under a 5th of n4, and nearly 900 words! Doing 25 words a day right now and 3 grammar points, only doing reviews on friday (and probably mondays for a bit) due to impossible time constraints lol. Thank you for the advice everyone so far. Right now I am not doing that much immersion learning tbh, but I want to properly start it soon by reading chainsaw man in JP (heard it was easy).
Wow that’s a lot of words!
How much time do you spend on them?
I’m interested in:
- retention
- time spend per card
- how many young reviews you have each day are they still growing?
Anyway, grate progress. I would suggest reading + audio (to not kill pronunciation) over listening. You don’t really have time while listening to here all the grammar points you’ve learned (I guess it depends on how well). In general for me it’s much better to stop and think about constraction. And then after some time I can listen do audio form there on the background. For example what was hard for me a week or two ago now is just easy listen material!
I go with lingq and there mini stories.
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I’m a little confused if I misunderstood you:
So you are adding new words every single day but only review all of them on fridays? Won’t you forget most of them until you reach friday? (as example when you add words on Saturday you won’t see them for 6 days?)
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I use anki pro so idk if I get those details lol, but as a guess the most I spend on a card will be like 15-30 seconds if im really concentrating on it (also sometimes will be very long if im talking to somebody whilst doing reviews). I just do a lot of words cus im doing about an hour a day so I have time
No I review every day but I don’t add new words on Fridays due to time constraints/being too tired to add characters.
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