Summer Break Study Log

Yeah when you’re doing 10 a day the reviews start reaching the 200+ per day pretty easy although it sucks you had 200 in the morning alone

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Oof yeah lol, if that’s gonna be a normal thing I’ll prepare myself. I can see why people stay at lower points per day then especially if they aren’t using the Reading mode.

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Day 7

I’m gonna post weekly each Wednesday, writing this is fun but I don’t have that much to say now that I have a schedule I settled for.

Grammar: N4 164/177 - I can’t help but feel like somethings wrong even though my reviews are easy. But maybe that’s just me feeling like I’m taking the easy way out after reading posts from people struggling with the Fill In mode. I didn’t feel the need to use the mode since I won’t want to write but now it’s bothering me. Hopefully reading a lot makes up for it. I see the grammar I review a lot while reading Yotsubato especially since it’s N5 - N4.

Reading: Reading a volume of Yotsubato takes about 6.5 hours right now. I could finish it before 4 pm, leaving lots of time for jpdb, Bunpro, and whatever else I want to do. But I still plan to keep my 1/2 volume pace since 6.5 hours seems exhausting to do every day. I still didn’t start the Pokemon manga for the beginner bookclub yet. I forgot about it already until I saw it on the top of my page lol. So I’ll read the chapter tomorrow + Yotsubato.

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Week 2

Grammar: N3 69/219 - My free trial for Bunpro ended this morning so I’m buying the monthly subscription. I’m glad it’s cheap, I’m so poor :sob: I had some trouble with similar grammar points like ところが and ところで but after using the cram I’m doing fine. I was starting to think of my listening practice. I don’t plan on starting until next month but I found a channel called 日本語の森 that explains grammar in Japanese so I’ve decided to kill two birds with one stone and listen to him explain grammar I’ve already learned on Bunpro. Looking at my schedule I saw that if I didn’t do N1 during my summer break I won’t have it for the final month of my summer break. Depending on how I feel by August I might not do it and stick to reviews, but it only takes 2 hours and is quickest compared to everything else I do so not like I’ll be relaxing if I don’t do it lol. So probably not but maybe I’ll be sick of learning new grammar by then who knows.

Reading: I didn’t plan to but I just started reading 1 volume of Yotsubato per day. So far I’ve finished 4 volumes and it takes me 5 hours each more or less. The story isn’t very exciting but it’s cute enough that I want to keep going. I have started reading more on syosetsu though so that I don’t have to spend too long on the jpdb site. I’ve decided to change my summer goal to 300 hours of reading since the Yotsubato goal was too easy and I want to give myself a reason to continue reading about 5 hours a day like before.

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Week 3

I didn’t realize I left this draft open all night and never posted it :{

Grammar: N3 119/219 - My reviews are staying surprisingly low so far, it doesn’t go past 150 unless I don’t do them for a day or something. More and more grammar points are getting similar so I plan to use the cram function.

Reading: I’m mostly using the breader instead of the jpdb site so lots of the words are still in the review queue since they don’t appear in what I read. I’m not too worried about them since if they don’t appear they’re not high on my pirority list. Still, I might set Sunday or Saturday off to just clear out the reviews I can’t get through reading since I don’t want to forget them. I haven’t finished reading Yotsubato and focused more on webnovels instead. It’s cute but I can’t use my breader with it so would rather using other media. So I might just read it to relax on Sundays since I don’t like to work too much on that day as Christian.

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Week 4

I had a bad week so I didn’t do much besides reviews. I feel a lot better now, I even cleared my bug infested room lol. No more bed rotting :muscle:

Grammar: I just did reviews to maintain my schedule. Since I’m a week behind now I’ve decided to not do N1 the last month of my summer break since it’ll bleed into my first week of senior year. And I’d rather chill out before that happens so for my last month I’ll just consume a bunch of input and review. I’ll probably just add an N1 point when I encounter them instead of just doing 10 a day, but that’ll be after I get most of N2 to season 1 at least since I don’t want to do a bunch of reviews during the school year.

Reading: Luckily, though I haven’t done any new grammar points I still keep up with my reading. It helps that reading has been my favorite past time since I was in elementary school. But instead of webnovels, I was reading a lot of messages on Discord. I thought they’d be easier than webnovels since it’d be daily conversation but they end up talking about politics or a random celebrity I don’t know lol. Now I’m learning words like ‘vote’ and ‘election’ which isn’t too bad since I already know the kanji (I did isolated kanji study before this). They also have VC channels that I can join but unfortunately they aren’t that useful for me yet especially since people mumble. Now that I’m feeling better I’m gonna go back to webnovels

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Week 5

I found a wasp in my house, I think the bugs are coming back for revenge ;(

Grammar: I changed the review mode to Overdue First, I didn’t realize there were different modes before. Now even if I don’t finish the reviews for the day I will at least finish the oldest ones.

Reading: I haven’t read as much this week. The webnovels I’m reading aren’t as interesting to me since it’s not like the ones I read in English. The books I usually read are historical nonfiction / historical nonfiction like Boys In The Boat or Grenade. But the books I read in Japanese are romance and isekais since the easiest rated books in jpdb were of those genres. I see now that it won’t work for me, so I’m gonna work on finding easier historical books. Also, I’ve found a VTuber named Korone that I love so I’ve been listening to Japanese more. But I haven’t put too much effort in it so it’s just passive listening.

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Maybe Magic Tree House?マジック・ツリーハウス8 古代オリンピックの奇跡

And browsing the children’s books section [児童文学・童話・絵本]I also found this World culture adventure series.

I haven’t read any historical fiction myself ですが

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I dimly remember reading Magic Treehouse in elementary school now. Thanks, I’ll check them out this week

Week 6

I’ve noticed more study logs lately, it’s fun to read them

Grammar: N3 149/219 - I’ve been watching some 日本語の森 and I enjoy listening to how the guy explains the grammar v how it’s explained on the site though sometimes I feel like it’s a bit different. But that’s also probably because he’s explaining in Japanese and I’m misunderstanding him. I’ve noticed more and more grammar is vocab or multiple previous grammar points smooshed together so it gets easier and easier as long as you have a good foundation.

Reading: I’ve started doing isolated kanji study again. I said at the beginning I wouldn’t be doing that but I realized that knowing the kanji before the vocabulary helps a lot with reading / learning vocab. And I just like kanji a lot lol. I already know what a lot of them mean but I’ll be going through to learn 1 common reading for each. I was going to start listening study next week for the final month of summer break, but once I’ve checked different novels and realized how much I still couldn’t read, I’ve decided to only focus on reading this summer break again. I’ve been reading people’s posts here in the Bunpro forums, especially Chihiro’s. I don’t know a lot of the words but the grammar is easier than the novels I try to read at least. It makes me think of reading Japanese posts in other forum sites too, I’ve heard that LINE and 5ch are popular so I might try to look at them. I already do that with French, I read a lot of Reddit posts and plug the vocabulary into Anki, but I know that Reddit isn’t nearly as popular in Japan.

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Week 7

Short post since nothing much changed this week besides finding a new reading source. And apparently I have a school assignment due two weeks before school actually starts, don’t know why they like torturing me like this :pensive:

Grammar: N3 189/219 - Reviews rn are going smoothly. Though sometimes I’d have to pull up the pages of two grammar points to pin down the differences between them, especially the ones with ところ in them. Besides that, though it takes a while certain days, I’m trying to stay on top.

Reading: I wasn’t able to figure out how to use LINE but I found the Japanese version of Quora instead. I was looking for a Reddit alternative and it’s the closest I’ve found. I’ve been lagging behind in vocabulary since I’ve hardly been adding new words while reading, so I plan to read a bunch of pages on Quora about topics I’m interested in and mining vocabulary related to it.

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Week 8

Grammar: N3 has been finished and I’m starting N2. A lot of the grammar is vocabulary rn so that’s good, it’s easier for me. Grammar was the goal of this study log (the other ones I don’t care much if I reach) so I’m glad I’m making good progress to finish N2 by the end of summer break. It makes me feel like I didn’t waste my time this break, though just relaxing is good too of course.

Reading: I’ve learned it’s hard for me to read if I don’t already know the vast majority of the words. It’s better to read harder stuff but I end up getting tired too quickly. Too bad since that’s how you learn the most efficiently, but it’s not like I’m in any rush anyways. Quora is still my favorite site to read in the case of Japanese. But I’m still having trouble parsing sentences, even if I recognize the individual grammar points within them. Like on Quora, one question was 両親が低学歴でその子供に高い教育を与えたからといって賢くなるものなのですか? and I couldn’t understand it at all though it became more obvious after I translated it. But that’ll just come with practice, so I don’t mind. I like my grammar rn so I’m gonna try to spend more time on jpdb to learn more vocabulary, though I don’t really enjoy it.

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Week 9

Grammar: I’ve started enjoying watching grammar videos more. I used to rely on articles but I found that watching videos make the points stick a lot better, especially the ones from 日本語の森. I guess it’s because I have to think about it more carefully since it’s in Japanese. They’re even more useful now that the grammar points are more challenging for me. Before, they were words I recognized or grammar I’ve already learned before and mixed up. That’s still happening now but I’m noticing more and more that are just new. I’ll have to focus more this week.

Reading: I found a site called Aozora that is an archive of Japanese books in the public domain. But it’s hard for me to navigate and since in order to be in the public domain, the book has to be pretty old, the language in there is apparently pretty outdated. I’m still curious about the books there though so I plan to check reddit posts to learn more about it. I also found a resource called Bunsuke’s Newsletter. I’ve already subscribed to it but have been using the site to read ahead. It gives an exerpt of a book / short story for you to read and includes a vocabulary list and even a grammar list. Now that I think about it, I remember seeing it years ago but could hardly read and left it for later. It’s probably deep in my bookmarks somewhere now lol. It looks useful and can help me find new books that I can try, but the excerpts are so short (a few scentences) that I can’t really gauge whether or not I’m interested in the book. I would prefer the first chapter but I understand that since the book is paid, he can’t show too much. Either way, it’s a good way to get in a tiny bit of daily reading practice. I’ll probably need it once I get back to school, since I’ll have to focus on French again and can probably only do my reviews for a while.

Week 10

I’ve finally reached the last week of summer break, I have a few more days but by next Wednesday I’ll be back in school so I’ll just make this my last post. Mostly because 10 is a pretty number lol. I’m not looking forward to drowning in schoolwork again but I’ll at least be able to maintain my Japanese level for sure.

Grammar: I’m finishing N2 and most of the grammar points N5 - N3 is Seasonal and above so I’m happy with my level of grammar right now. I don’t have a job so was hesitant to spend money on Bunpro, but if I didn’t I wouldn’t be anywhere near N2 right now so I’m glad it was worth it. Like I already decided before I’m not gonna be doing N1 for a while in favor of focusing on vocabulary since that’s my biggest limiter when reading now.

Reading: Though I haven’t been working on my listening, I can still watch gaming videos because reading the captions have become quite easy compared to before. It was my main motivator for learning Japanese so I’m glad I got to this point. Years ago I actually told myself I’d stop here since it’s all I wanted, but now I’m enjoying it enough that I want to keep going for the fun of it. My new goal now will be to be able to read a novel comfortably. It won’t be far off, I just have to grind vocabulary this and next year. Speaking of novels, I’ve tried to join the 君の名は book club but I unfortunately wasn’t able to buy the digital copy, for some reason they’d only allow me to get the physical one. But I’ve had trouble with the address so I just left it alone, it’d be a bother to read physically anyways. I prefer digital because of the breader I mentioned before, making it easy for me to search things up instantly and do my vocab reviews. In addition to historical books, I’ve started enjoying ones that are about someone dying and either being sent back in the past or into a storybook with a romance plot preferably. I said a while ago I don’t really like romance but I realized if put into a setting with knights and dukes it’s my favorite lol. I’ve been reading it for hours these past few weeks. So I’ve been looking for books like that too. I haven’t gotten far, I’ve only found a series named 本好きの下剋上. I’m excited to read it but I don’t have the funds right now, so I’ll have to wait until next year which is probably for the best. I don’t want to struggle the whole way through.

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お疲れ様でした! I’ll focus hard on vocab too.

How would you rate your progression from week 1 to week 10 out of … 10?

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Oh yeah I probably should have mentioned that in my original post, I don’t know how to end things lol. I’d say my progression was an 7/10, mostly because of the N2 grammar which I cared most about. I can’t talk about my goals well because I forgot about them and just read + did Bunpro which actually worked out fine luckily. I didn’t reach my goal of N1 but I didn’t expect to anyways so I don’t mind, I knew that N2 was likely how things would end. I didn’t reach my word goal since I was mining them from reading instead of just going through srs as usual. I regretted it at first but realized it’d be easier to learn if I’ve already seen it while reading, quality over quantity. I used to do the 50 words a day that I mentioned before but I realized it was all in a vacuum, which is why after all these years my grammar hardly progressed past N5 and all I could do is pick out words and guess. Lastly, unlike before, series like Yotsubato is a cakewalk for me now and I can also follow videos by reading the captions. In the end I didn’t technically reach all my goals but I don’t think I would have changed any of my methods since I managed to get to a level I’m happy with without sacrificing the enjoyment of my summer break.

Sorry I rambled a bit lol

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Congrats! :champagne: Nice you made it this far
I’m quite curious how many vocabs are in your reviews?

For reading: you could go on “MyAnimeList.net” and search there?
I’m not sure how many novels are in their database… But you can find easily many light novels.
The tags “romance” “isekai” “Fantasy” probably do the job :smiley:
(Or when you have a manga/anime you look if it has a light novel as main source)

Before changing my settings, it rounded up to about 4k words. It’s not a bad number, but I’m excited to get to 10k someday. And thanks for the suggestion, I’ll look into it later. I’ve been staying away from isekai in anime since the few that I’ve looked into had weird fan service so hopefully the light novels are better quality

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