Language Journal: September 7th
ONE WEEK of new Kanji left.
So, yeah. Almost seen all of the Jouyou Kanji at least once. Just one week away. Honestly, I feel REALLY good about how well this is all sticking in memory as well. I'm mean I don't think I'll be anywhere near 100% when the week is over. But, I feel like a reasonable window is like 60-80%. And I'm feeling optimistic that it is closer to the higher end. I feel like that is a fairly crazy thing. For a journey of a little over 100 days.
As I've said before, while Japanese students learn these slowly throughout their school years, they also practice writing along with the On and Kun readings. And while they are learning other school subjects. So my condensed timeframe isn't as crazy as it might seem.
But, if I assume it takes about as long to toss in each of writing, On readings and Kun readings, I could probably master these Kanji in totality in less than 2 years. I think, generally, it would take even less than that though. I could probably wrap it up in the span of a year. When you think about it, knowing what each Kanji means usually depends on either understanding or building up mnemonics regarding the radicals. And most of the Kanji share all or most of their radicals with other Kanji. So, if you've memorized the meaning of each Kanji already, drawing them should actually involve far less work than memorizing 2000+ sets of strokes.
Also, since I'm not, and probably no one else is, trying to learn Kanji in a vacuum isolated from other Japanese learning... there is a good chance you've learned or will learn words containing the Kanji you're trying learn the readings for. Which gives you some freebies in terms of learning the readings.
But, anyway, this isn't a post dissecting the learning of all of the Jouyou Kanji. It is a progress diary.
Last time I wrote I wasn't feeling so confident about how well the Kanji were sticking in my memory. But, then I did 2 things. First, I set a stupidly high limit on the number of review cards a day. And then, secondly, I spent one solid evening going through the backlog and working on mnemonics for all of the Kanji I had struggled with. A point which I gave up doing daily while we're busy planning our move. But no reason I can't periodically do it if I choose to :)
In my opinion, the first point above uncovers a potential flaw in the default settings for Anki. I had a backlog of over 500 cards. With a limit on daily reviews, what that means is that a lot of cards were getting pushed out beyond when they were planned to be shown to me. Which explains why I felt poor about my performance.
If you assume that the defaults or your custom settings set the spacing up correctly for you to commit these things to memory, then when they get pushed out beyond those ranges, it increases the odds that you forget them before you see them next. In other words, it inflates the rate of errors. Sure, over time you should get through the backlog and these things should eventually stick. But, allowing the backlog to grow too much will exacerbate the effects.
I wish I had caught onto this sooner. I presumed I had a backlog of maybe 150-200. So, with 100 reviews a day I was thinking I wasn't too far off and that my retention rate was just as low as the stats were bearing out. Now that I've caught onto it and fixed the review rate, my accuracy is going up. Unfortunately, I'll have a few weeks of 200+ reviews a day for next few weeks until I retain the backlog in memory and push the deadlines for those cards further out to where they should be. Based on stats from my other decks, I suspect the norm for daily reviews until I really start nailing things SHOULD be closer to 50-80 review cards a day.
How I feel in general about my learning? It is give and take. Because I'm not practicing the On and Kun readings it isn't helping incredibly with my reading or listening. Though, when I see written Japanese I'm better able to get the gist of what it is about. I just couldn't tell you how to "say" what was written. I'm learning more vocab and grammar on the side still though.
As before, I know I'm making progress. It just isn't leaps and bounds. It is often circumstantial when it comes to noticing that what I've learned has helped.
Once I have the meanings of the Jouyou Kanji down fairly comfortably, I'll probably switch to another deck which focuses more on the readings. Maybe even spend the time to customize the cards in ANKI and include my own practice words for each of the readings. Double it up be reinforcing or learning new vocab in the process.
Anyway... that is probably a few more months away. I don't think I want to stress with the readings until I'm more comfortable with the meanings. So, maybe wait until I'm averaging under 40 reviews a day. I don't think I want to drop my current Kanji deck, so if I'm planning on adding more I definitely don't want to be swept away. By then, my other decks should be even more manageable as well. Opening up more time.
Human Japanese deck is done. It is currently drifting down from about 80 reviews a day to 60. Now that the deck is done, I think it will be down to less than 20 a day in fairly short order. I've been working with the Human Japanese decks and lessons longer than anything else.
Half of the Core 1000 deck is done and those are closer to 40 a day right now and going down on the completed decks.
I have another deck on which I get 2-8 reviews a day (single digit!). I may ultimately cram that one in with the completed Core 1000 decks.
So I definitely think in another month or two that my daily reviews should be so low that I'll need to add something in the mix. I try to make sure I do 500-750 reviews a day. Right now ANKI shows me at 407 cards due to tomorrow, with close to 100 new cards a day and repeats on my mistakes it is guaranteed I'll hit the lower end of that. But, Anki is predicting that in about 16 days I'll have less than 100 reviews, and by 20 days, all of my reviews will be on mature cards.
Not sure how accurate that is, but as you can see, even if it is off by a bit, I should be in a place where I'm dying for new content in rather short order. Feels a lot better too, my accuracy on mature cards probably averages a hair under 90%. With the uber backlog pushing my mature cards out even further, my accuracy on mature cards was hovering much closer to 75% with days in the 60%.
Had I caught onto just how big my Kanji backlog was sooner, I might already be at that point where I need new cards. But, it is what it is. Can't really do much about it now.
So, still feeling good. I have still practiced 100% of the days since I started this journey. I've completed my ANKI decks every day since I started that. I really am looking forward not only to getting better at Japanese, but also about the prospect of learning more languages. French next. My daughter will apparently have to learn it quite well in school in Ottawa and my nieces live in Quebec City. So I have motivation. Well, that is all for this one. Next month when I write something up, it should be interesting as I should be done recognizing the Kanji and perhaps have started furthering my Kanji knowledge.
Honestly, if I'm still thinking/hoping that there will be a major leap I can make, I think it will be learning the On and Kun readings concurrently with expanding my vocabulary. One site didn't want to focus on these and claimed it would come with learning vocab anyway. And while I agree with that, I think it depends on your immersion in reading. Finding new, level appropriate things to read/translate is difficult right now. So, ANKI decks are my life source. It may be slower and less practical to learn the On and Kun readings and vocab in that fashion. But, currently I believe it SHOULD work.
Furthermore... while reading is important to my main objective, the applications are slightly more limiting than they might be for some. I want to be able to read well enough to travel where I want to go. So, reading things like road signs, menus, important notices, etc... I don't need to be able to read a novel, or newspaper or anything so linguistically encompassing. I'm in much more need of listening and speaking skills. I'm learning Kanji now because it helps with that, I believe it helps my overall comprehension and because lesser goals of mine do involved simply attaining a practical level of fluency.
Done!
So, yeah. Almost seen all of the Jouyou Kanji at least once. Just one week away. Honestly, I feel REALLY good about how well this is all sticking in memory as well. I'm mean I don't think I'll be anywhere near 100% when the week is over. But, I feel like a reasonable window is like 60-80%. And I'm feeling optimistic that it is closer to the higher end. I feel like that is a fairly crazy thing. For a journey of a little over 100 days.
As I've said before, while Japanese students learn these slowly throughout their school years, they also practice writing along with the On and Kun readings. And while they are learning other school subjects. So my condensed timeframe isn't as crazy as it might seem.
But, if I assume it takes about as long to toss in each of writing, On readings and Kun readings, I could probably master these Kanji in totality in less than 2 years. I think, generally, it would take even less than that though. I could probably wrap it up in the span of a year. When you think about it, knowing what each Kanji means usually depends on either understanding or building up mnemonics regarding the radicals. And most of the Kanji share all or most of their radicals with other Kanji. So, if you've memorized the meaning of each Kanji already, drawing them should actually involve far less work than memorizing 2000+ sets of strokes.
Also, since I'm not, and probably no one else is, trying to learn Kanji in a vacuum isolated from other Japanese learning... there is a good chance you've learned or will learn words containing the Kanji you're trying learn the readings for. Which gives you some freebies in terms of learning the readings.
But, anyway, this isn't a post dissecting the learning of all of the Jouyou Kanji. It is a progress diary.
Last time I wrote I wasn't feeling so confident about how well the Kanji were sticking in my memory. But, then I did 2 things. First, I set a stupidly high limit on the number of review cards a day. And then, secondly, I spent one solid evening going through the backlog and working on mnemonics for all of the Kanji I had struggled with. A point which I gave up doing daily while we're busy planning our move. But no reason I can't periodically do it if I choose to :)
In my opinion, the first point above uncovers a potential flaw in the default settings for Anki. I had a backlog of over 500 cards. With a limit on daily reviews, what that means is that a lot of cards were getting pushed out beyond when they were planned to be shown to me. Which explains why I felt poor about my performance.
If you assume that the defaults or your custom settings set the spacing up correctly for you to commit these things to memory, then when they get pushed out beyond those ranges, it increases the odds that you forget them before you see them next. In other words, it inflates the rate of errors. Sure, over time you should get through the backlog and these things should eventually stick. But, allowing the backlog to grow too much will exacerbate the effects.
I wish I had caught onto this sooner. I presumed I had a backlog of maybe 150-200. So, with 100 reviews a day I was thinking I wasn't too far off and that my retention rate was just as low as the stats were bearing out. Now that I've caught onto it and fixed the review rate, my accuracy is going up. Unfortunately, I'll have a few weeks of 200+ reviews a day for next few weeks until I retain the backlog in memory and push the deadlines for those cards further out to where they should be. Based on stats from my other decks, I suspect the norm for daily reviews until I really start nailing things SHOULD be closer to 50-80 review cards a day.
How I feel in general about my learning? It is give and take. Because I'm not practicing the On and Kun readings it isn't helping incredibly with my reading or listening. Though, when I see written Japanese I'm better able to get the gist of what it is about. I just couldn't tell you how to "say" what was written. I'm learning more vocab and grammar on the side still though.
As before, I know I'm making progress. It just isn't leaps and bounds. It is often circumstantial when it comes to noticing that what I've learned has helped.
Once I have the meanings of the Jouyou Kanji down fairly comfortably, I'll probably switch to another deck which focuses more on the readings. Maybe even spend the time to customize the cards in ANKI and include my own practice words for each of the readings. Double it up be reinforcing or learning new vocab in the process.
Anyway... that is probably a few more months away. I don't think I want to stress with the readings until I'm more comfortable with the meanings. So, maybe wait until I'm averaging under 40 reviews a day. I don't think I want to drop my current Kanji deck, so if I'm planning on adding more I definitely don't want to be swept away. By then, my other decks should be even more manageable as well. Opening up more time.
Human Japanese deck is done. It is currently drifting down from about 80 reviews a day to 60. Now that the deck is done, I think it will be down to less than 20 a day in fairly short order. I've been working with the Human Japanese decks and lessons longer than anything else.
Half of the Core 1000 deck is done and those are closer to 40 a day right now and going down on the completed decks.
I have another deck on which I get 2-8 reviews a day (single digit!). I may ultimately cram that one in with the completed Core 1000 decks.
So I definitely think in another month or two that my daily reviews should be so low that I'll need to add something in the mix. I try to make sure I do 500-750 reviews a day. Right now ANKI shows me at 407 cards due to tomorrow, with close to 100 new cards a day and repeats on my mistakes it is guaranteed I'll hit the lower end of that. But, Anki is predicting that in about 16 days I'll have less than 100 reviews, and by 20 days, all of my reviews will be on mature cards.
Not sure how accurate that is, but as you can see, even if it is off by a bit, I should be in a place where I'm dying for new content in rather short order. Feels a lot better too, my accuracy on mature cards probably averages a hair under 90%. With the uber backlog pushing my mature cards out even further, my accuracy on mature cards was hovering much closer to 75% with days in the 60%.
Had I caught onto just how big my Kanji backlog was sooner, I might already be at that point where I need new cards. But, it is what it is. Can't really do much about it now.
So, still feeling good. I have still practiced 100% of the days since I started this journey. I've completed my ANKI decks every day since I started that. I really am looking forward not only to getting better at Japanese, but also about the prospect of learning more languages. French next. My daughter will apparently have to learn it quite well in school in Ottawa and my nieces live in Quebec City. So I have motivation. Well, that is all for this one. Next month when I write something up, it should be interesting as I should be done recognizing the Kanji and perhaps have started furthering my Kanji knowledge.
Honestly, if I'm still thinking/hoping that there will be a major leap I can make, I think it will be learning the On and Kun readings concurrently with expanding my vocabulary. One site didn't want to focus on these and claimed it would come with learning vocab anyway. And while I agree with that, I think it depends on your immersion in reading. Finding new, level appropriate things to read/translate is difficult right now. So, ANKI decks are my life source. It may be slower and less practical to learn the On and Kun readings and vocab in that fashion. But, currently I believe it SHOULD work.
Furthermore... while reading is important to my main objective, the applications are slightly more limiting than they might be for some. I want to be able to read well enough to travel where I want to go. So, reading things like road signs, menus, important notices, etc... I don't need to be able to read a novel, or newspaper or anything so linguistically encompassing. I'm in much more need of listening and speaking skills. I'm learning Kanji now because it helps with that, I believe it helps my overall comprehension and because lesser goals of mine do involved simply attaining a practical level of fluency.
Done!
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