Japanese Language Journal: Oct 30th 2017
Still not really back into the swing of things. I don't really want to make excuses. It is easy to blame things like still not feeling unpacked or settled and still having a lot to work on in the house. Those things are true. But the point is, if I start making excuses, it will mean I feel like I'm doing something wrong. And I'm not. In fact, I've still done my flash cards every single day. I've even done some cram sessions. In other words, I knew I was cutting back and accepted that, and I've succeeded in keeping it at a manageable level.
That being said, next Sunday I should be done all of the unseen cards in my current decks. I'm a bit excited about that, but also a bit anxious. I don't exactly how I want to proceed after that.
I'm not sure if my Kanji is getting better or not. I think I average something like 80-90% accuracy on knowing what the Kanji mean. But, I'm getting 60-70% on average for mature cards. And it doesn't seem to be improving. At the same time, I'm closer to 95% across the board on everything else when I take full advantage of the cards (sometimes I mute the audio and try to guess both the reading and meaning, other times I let myself hear the readings as well). Even without the audio on the Core 2000 decks I still get above 80% accuracy most of the time, which is noticeably higher than my Kanji accuracy.
This leads me to believe that continuing to study the meaning of the Kanji out of context may be slowing me down. It may be best if I start my plan to incorporate vocab along with On and Kun readings into my practice. At the same time, it may just be natural. After all, I had 3 months worth of 20 cards a day. It may be that this is working fine and I just need more time work through the backlog before things improve.
Either way, changing my Kanji studying approach probably won't hurt. I don't think I'll change anything at least until after I complete the Core 2000 deck. But, I'll still be cramming the meanings while I learn the readings and vocab. I just need to decide how I want to tackle that monster.
As for fluency, I feel like I'm primarily growing vocabulary. And that is certainly useful. The more vocab I get exposure too the more I'm able to identity the grammatical points as well. When I'd read a sentence and only know one or two words it could often be hard to piece together how they arrived at the English translation. The more words I know the better I am at picking up nuances in the language and figuring out how some of the less literal translations work and how some of the less formal grammar works.
My approach is still a slow one, but I at least feel like I've improved since I last wrote here. And I'm noticing the improvement. That is definitely a good motivator. So, again, for anyone learning my advice remains the same; unless you have a forced timeline (in which case you hopefully don't need much additional motivation anyway) simply learn at a pace you think you can maintain for the next few weeks or months and revise it every now and again.
That being said, next Sunday I should be done all of the unseen cards in my current decks. I'm a bit excited about that, but also a bit anxious. I don't exactly how I want to proceed after that.
I'm not sure if my Kanji is getting better or not. I think I average something like 80-90% accuracy on knowing what the Kanji mean. But, I'm getting 60-70% on average for mature cards. And it doesn't seem to be improving. At the same time, I'm closer to 95% across the board on everything else when I take full advantage of the cards (sometimes I mute the audio and try to guess both the reading and meaning, other times I let myself hear the readings as well). Even without the audio on the Core 2000 decks I still get above 80% accuracy most of the time, which is noticeably higher than my Kanji accuracy.
This leads me to believe that continuing to study the meaning of the Kanji out of context may be slowing me down. It may be best if I start my plan to incorporate vocab along with On and Kun readings into my practice. At the same time, it may just be natural. After all, I had 3 months worth of 20 cards a day. It may be that this is working fine and I just need more time work through the backlog before things improve.
Either way, changing my Kanji studying approach probably won't hurt. I don't think I'll change anything at least until after I complete the Core 2000 deck. But, I'll still be cramming the meanings while I learn the readings and vocab. I just need to decide how I want to tackle that monster.
As for fluency, I feel like I'm primarily growing vocabulary. And that is certainly useful. The more vocab I get exposure too the more I'm able to identity the grammatical points as well. When I'd read a sentence and only know one or two words it could often be hard to piece together how they arrived at the English translation. The more words I know the better I am at picking up nuances in the language and figuring out how some of the less literal translations work and how some of the less formal grammar works.
My approach is still a slow one, but I at least feel like I've improved since I last wrote here. And I'm noticing the improvement. That is definitely a good motivator. So, again, for anyone learning my advice remains the same; unless you have a forced timeline (in which case you hopefully don't need much additional motivation anyway) simply learn at a pace you think you can maintain for the next few weeks or months and revise it every now and again.
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