Language Journal: August 7th 2018
I don't really know what to add today, but I felt an urge to write. So here I am.
My French learning appears to be working since my latest tweaks. It is too early to say much. I mean, my approach is in many ways even more casual than my Japanese. My French learning is literally JUST Anki based. I only have 5 new cards a day. I'm still very lax on judging myself there and it has only been a few weeks since I started editing my cards and actually failing myself on some.
Even so, by adding a bit of focus to most of the cards, it definitely feels like I'm retaining stuff now. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising. By editing the cards and failing myself I'm automatically spending more time on my French. The rest is hard to validate, but it definitely feels like my French is improving by far more than just the small amount of extra time.
On the Japanese side of things, I'm a bit disappointed in myself. I hadn't committed anything in writing, but I had started translating My Neighbor Totoro from Japanese into English. And I had kind of planned in my head to focus more time on that if my box of manga took too long or didn't show up. It got turned back at customs, and I haven't translated a single extra line since the day I started.
I can make excuses as to why. But the truth is, I'm simply not putting in the effort. I know what I need to do to make it happen, and I'm simply not doing it.
All of this means one thing. I'm really putting all of my eggs in one basket with Box of Manga and hoping that it gives me the kick I need. If I had stuck with the Totoro plan, it would definitely show that I'm willing to do the translation work.
I'm hoping that by actually putting words to all of this that I will actually get it done.
The first thing I really need is Anki on my laptop as I want to start converting manga and other media into my own cards in my own "sentence bank". I'm somewhat worried about this though. I wasn't able to get it to work in the past with my stored decks on Linux. I could install Anki, but it was an older version and incompatible with my synced decks. Which means I may need to go back to Windows. I probably shouldn't be whining about this. But it is less than ideal.
What I really want is actually a sentence bank and a word bank. With the only real difference being the card layout.
Basically, it is becoming painfully obvious that I'm approaching a rather long plateau if I don't change tactics soon. I need to break out of formalized cards and start going with native examples from things I'm interested in. This is what is going to drill into me the grammar and way of speaking that is going to get me to the next level.
This is all the culmination of a lot of things I've said and read in the past. There is no magic number. A vocabulary of 10k words is meaningless if they aren't the ones you're going to experience on a regular basis. Knowing all of the proper grammar and sentence structure won't mean a thing in casual conversation where those rules go out the window. It absolutely helps to have some of this under your belt. But, eventually, you need to get out into the real world. Or as real as you can get.
So, my decision was simple. While Anime and Manga weren't really the primary factors in learning Japanese... they are enjoyable and accessible. They are also not necessarily too far above my current level, while still being far enough above my level to challenge me.
Step #1 is going to be manga. I'm starting with Intermediate level from Box of Manga. If it is too hard I'll knock it down a level. I'd like to get to a point where I can comfortably read through 85% of a Manga without having to add anything new to my sentence bank (unless of course, I want to). Then I'll move up to the advanced level, and aim for the same.
Then, for step #2 I want to do Miyazaki films and maybe 君の名は. I'll probably translate every non-trivial sentence, maybe using SUBS2SRS for the ones I have the DVDs for. I'd like to get that to a point where I can watch one of those movies in Japanese with no sub-titles and KNOW EXACTLY 90% and understand 100%. Basically, I'm ok not knowing exactly how to translate every sentence as I watch, but I should be able to do most "on the fly" and still understand even when I can't keep up.
It is hard to say what step #3 would be, but I feel like it would be tracking down J-Drama's or short novels and aiming for 95-100% fluency within those.
Basically, I can sum up the past month by saying this; Anki is one of the best learning tools out there. But, if you really want to kick it up, you need to mess with decks and settings. And then to bring it to the max, you need to make your own cards.
You'll never find a deck which is perfect for you. But, you can take a terrible deck, like my French one and turn it into a GREAT deck by altering the layout and adding your own data/focus/etc... to the cards. But, there are still cards where the sentences contain too many unknowns, or the sentences are hard to remember because they are meaningless to me. Granted, I could change those TOO, but I would classify that as creating your own deck as well, at least to some degree.
The best way to get the most out of your decks is to ensure that they contain what you're interested in and that they aren't overwhelming. And the best way to do that is find something like Anime or Manga or Music which you're interested in as a starting step and building your own decks from that.
Well, time to start kicking my own butt a bit, I'm going to try and get Anki on this machine and start building out my card format.
My French learning appears to be working since my latest tweaks. It is too early to say much. I mean, my approach is in many ways even more casual than my Japanese. My French learning is literally JUST Anki based. I only have 5 new cards a day. I'm still very lax on judging myself there and it has only been a few weeks since I started editing my cards and actually failing myself on some.
Even so, by adding a bit of focus to most of the cards, it definitely feels like I'm retaining stuff now. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising. By editing the cards and failing myself I'm automatically spending more time on my French. The rest is hard to validate, but it definitely feels like my French is improving by far more than just the small amount of extra time.
On the Japanese side of things, I'm a bit disappointed in myself. I hadn't committed anything in writing, but I had started translating My Neighbor Totoro from Japanese into English. And I had kind of planned in my head to focus more time on that if my box of manga took too long or didn't show up. It got turned back at customs, and I haven't translated a single extra line since the day I started.
I can make excuses as to why. But the truth is, I'm simply not putting in the effort. I know what I need to do to make it happen, and I'm simply not doing it.
All of this means one thing. I'm really putting all of my eggs in one basket with Box of Manga and hoping that it gives me the kick I need. If I had stuck with the Totoro plan, it would definitely show that I'm willing to do the translation work.
I'm hoping that by actually putting words to all of this that I will actually get it done.
The first thing I really need is Anki on my laptop as I want to start converting manga and other media into my own cards in my own "sentence bank". I'm somewhat worried about this though. I wasn't able to get it to work in the past with my stored decks on Linux. I could install Anki, but it was an older version and incompatible with my synced decks. Which means I may need to go back to Windows. I probably shouldn't be whining about this. But it is less than ideal.
What I really want is actually a sentence bank and a word bank. With the only real difference being the card layout.
Basically, it is becoming painfully obvious that I'm approaching a rather long plateau if I don't change tactics soon. I need to break out of formalized cards and start going with native examples from things I'm interested in. This is what is going to drill into me the grammar and way of speaking that is going to get me to the next level.
This is all the culmination of a lot of things I've said and read in the past. There is no magic number. A vocabulary of 10k words is meaningless if they aren't the ones you're going to experience on a regular basis. Knowing all of the proper grammar and sentence structure won't mean a thing in casual conversation where those rules go out the window. It absolutely helps to have some of this under your belt. But, eventually, you need to get out into the real world. Or as real as you can get.
So, my decision was simple. While Anime and Manga weren't really the primary factors in learning Japanese... they are enjoyable and accessible. They are also not necessarily too far above my current level, while still being far enough above my level to challenge me.
Step #1 is going to be manga. I'm starting with Intermediate level from Box of Manga. If it is too hard I'll knock it down a level. I'd like to get to a point where I can comfortably read through 85% of a Manga without having to add anything new to my sentence bank (unless of course, I want to). Then I'll move up to the advanced level, and aim for the same.
Then, for step #2 I want to do Miyazaki films and maybe 君の名は. I'll probably translate every non-trivial sentence, maybe using SUBS2SRS for the ones I have the DVDs for. I'd like to get that to a point where I can watch one of those movies in Japanese with no sub-titles and KNOW EXACTLY 90% and understand 100%. Basically, I'm ok not knowing exactly how to translate every sentence as I watch, but I should be able to do most "on the fly" and still understand even when I can't keep up.
It is hard to say what step #3 would be, but I feel like it would be tracking down J-Drama's or short novels and aiming for 95-100% fluency within those.
Basically, I can sum up the past month by saying this; Anki is one of the best learning tools out there. But, if you really want to kick it up, you need to mess with decks and settings. And then to bring it to the max, you need to make your own cards.
You'll never find a deck which is perfect for you. But, you can take a terrible deck, like my French one and turn it into a GREAT deck by altering the layout and adding your own data/focus/etc... to the cards. But, there are still cards where the sentences contain too many unknowns, or the sentences are hard to remember because they are meaningless to me. Granted, I could change those TOO, but I would classify that as creating your own deck as well, at least to some degree.
The best way to get the most out of your decks is to ensure that they contain what you're interested in and that they aren't overwhelming. And the best way to do that is find something like Anime or Manga or Music which you're interested in as a starting step and building your own decks from that.
Well, time to start kicking my own butt a bit, I'm going to try and get Anki on this machine and start building out my card format.
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