Language Journal: April 19th 2018
Things are going "well". I feel like my listening has improved. I feel like I'm at the level of a seriously brain damaged child. By which I mean, if I were to go to Japan, I could probably understand a lot of the things a small child could understand. But, at the same time, I would fail utterly at many basics while being able to understand probably some amount of vocabulary which is well above what that child could understand. But, overall, I'm still not really any better than the child.
I feel like I have 2 constant struggles in learning a language. The first is simply knowing when I need to move on and the second is finding appropriate material. And the two problems are heavily intertwined.
I'm still finding Anki decks as the best way forward with the bulk of my learning. But, it is really hard to know when I should simply delete a deck, or add more. Basically, over time, every deck gets easier. I'm in a fairly stable place with my Kanji deck for instance, same with my Core 2k and Human Japanese decks.
So, I added a new deck focused on grammar. The new deck was terrible for me. At least, the N4 and N5 cards were. There were probably well over 500 cards, if not over 1k between just those two decks. But, they probably only contained about 20 different grammar points. Which is redundant to the point of annoying. But then, on top of that, they used these HUGE sentences with massive typos and questionable translations mixed with new and some times obscure vocabulary.
On the one hand, I could nail the vocab points in seconds flat. 90% of the time I could read the sentence perfectly. But, only like 15% of the time could I go from English to Japanese. Or, more specifically, back to the exact Japanese. I would probably upwards of 60-75% of the time that I could get to something which would have an equivalent translation. And, probably 80-85% of the time I could figure out how to use the grammar point correctly in the Japanese sentence.
The problem was deciding on a consistent way to grade myself. I had studied ahead MANY times because the grammar points were so mind numbingly simple and I was ending up with 80+ reviews a day from this one deck. Yet, I would see maybe 10+ unique grammar points only a day.
The most annoying part was that I was really looking forward to working out the translations from English to Japanese. And, I really wanted to translate them the same way as in the cards. But, the problems were many. As mentioned, there were outright typos. The sentences were long, complex sentences, but worst of all, artistic liberty appears to have been taken with many of the translations. I'm not sure if the form of the sentences on the cards was very realistic Japanese.
So, how do I rate myself on that deck? My ability to nail the translations was SHIT. But, a lot of that seemed to be tied to how it was chosen to translate it into English. So, is it my fault or not? If I go just on my ability to get the grammar then my brain would have exploded long before I ever finished. It was simply too redundant. It was also too easy to go from Japanese to English. And too easy to just figure out how that particular grammar point might be used in a sentence. But, it is too time consuming for my time scheduled to validate my translations 80-100 sentences a day, on top of which I don't really know if my translations sound natural.
Ultimately I deleted the deck. It wasn't challenging in the right ways. If the deck was more progressive (IE, less duplicates) I wouldn't have studied so far ahead. And I would probably have been willing to fix the typos and rewrite the sentences. I may go back to the deck and skip the N4 and N5 sections and limit myself to 20 a day or less and be brutal on myself about getting the translations right.
But yeah, the deck seemed good in the beginning. While it was redundant, the large sentences had an appeal of their own. Simple sentences aren't usually any real problem for me.
This also illustrates my other point. Thought I had found good material. I hadn't. Right now I've moved onto the Core 6k deck. The grammar is a little too simple, but there is a lot of good new vocab and it is challenging in a good way. I'm still not sure if this is any good for me in the long run. But, I'm interested for now.
I feel like I have 2 constant struggles in learning a language. The first is simply knowing when I need to move on and the second is finding appropriate material. And the two problems are heavily intertwined.
I'm still finding Anki decks as the best way forward with the bulk of my learning. But, it is really hard to know when I should simply delete a deck, or add more. Basically, over time, every deck gets easier. I'm in a fairly stable place with my Kanji deck for instance, same with my Core 2k and Human Japanese decks.
So, I added a new deck focused on grammar. The new deck was terrible for me. At least, the N4 and N5 cards were. There were probably well over 500 cards, if not over 1k between just those two decks. But, they probably only contained about 20 different grammar points. Which is redundant to the point of annoying. But then, on top of that, they used these HUGE sentences with massive typos and questionable translations mixed with new and some times obscure vocabulary.
On the one hand, I could nail the vocab points in seconds flat. 90% of the time I could read the sentence perfectly. But, only like 15% of the time could I go from English to Japanese. Or, more specifically, back to the exact Japanese. I would probably upwards of 60-75% of the time that I could get to something which would have an equivalent translation. And, probably 80-85% of the time I could figure out how to use the grammar point correctly in the Japanese sentence.
The problem was deciding on a consistent way to grade myself. I had studied ahead MANY times because the grammar points were so mind numbingly simple and I was ending up with 80+ reviews a day from this one deck. Yet, I would see maybe 10+ unique grammar points only a day.
The most annoying part was that I was really looking forward to working out the translations from English to Japanese. And, I really wanted to translate them the same way as in the cards. But, the problems were many. As mentioned, there were outright typos. The sentences were long, complex sentences, but worst of all, artistic liberty appears to have been taken with many of the translations. I'm not sure if the form of the sentences on the cards was very realistic Japanese.
So, how do I rate myself on that deck? My ability to nail the translations was SHIT. But, a lot of that seemed to be tied to how it was chosen to translate it into English. So, is it my fault or not? If I go just on my ability to get the grammar then my brain would have exploded long before I ever finished. It was simply too redundant. It was also too easy to go from Japanese to English. And too easy to just figure out how that particular grammar point might be used in a sentence. But, it is too time consuming for my time scheduled to validate my translations 80-100 sentences a day, on top of which I don't really know if my translations sound natural.
Ultimately I deleted the deck. It wasn't challenging in the right ways. If the deck was more progressive (IE, less duplicates) I wouldn't have studied so far ahead. And I would probably have been willing to fix the typos and rewrite the sentences. I may go back to the deck and skip the N4 and N5 sections and limit myself to 20 a day or less and be brutal on myself about getting the translations right.
But yeah, the deck seemed good in the beginning. While it was redundant, the large sentences had an appeal of their own. Simple sentences aren't usually any real problem for me.
This also illustrates my other point. Thought I had found good material. I hadn't. Right now I've moved onto the Core 6k deck. The grammar is a little too simple, but there is a lot of good new vocab and it is challenging in a good way. I'm still not sure if this is any good for me in the long run. But, I'm interested for now.
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