This topic contains 8 replies, has 4 voices, and was last updated by 
-
Posts
-
Basically I’m asking this because I’m somewhat afraid that I’m going a bit too fast. Don’t get me wrong, I look forward to each and every lesson, sometimes a bit annoyed with Kanji because of the different meanings/vocab, but for the most part I love learning Japanese. The grammar and sentence construction techniques taught here is probably the most exciting and interesting thing I’ve ever learned, not to mention one of the few things I’ve looked forward to learning.
I started textfugu around late May/ early June, and I’m on S3 just about ready to learn the first 4 stroke Kanji. What really surprised me was how quick I picked up Katakana (2-3 hours), even though I know Hiragana was my first step, I still felt it would take an equal amount of time (3 days).
So that’s why I’m asking if I should slow down. Honestly I’m already able to pick up a lot when I see it written, or even hearing it through youtube and looking at pictures of Japan, and it keeps me motivated to continue. Does it really matter that I’m picking it up so quickly?
Everyone’s different…if you’ve got the enthusiasm & motivation, then maybe go with it (you may not always have that!)…however, there’s nothing wrong with going slower, nothing to be ashamed of.
In terms of what you’ve ‘learnt’, it feels like you’ve ‘learnt’ the stuff you did yesterday/recently as you’re very confident with it, but as time passes are you still confident with it?
That’s kind of what I was getting at. Though I have no trouble remembering everything up to this point. I go through Anki daily, sometimes 2-3 times just to be able to read, speak and understand the sentences/vocab/kanji better.
I feel as long as I keep up with Anki and devote some time to reviewing what I’ve learned it will stick. By far the easiest part for me has been the pronunciation. Having Spanish as my second native language and a few years of Italian under my belt it honestly gives me a great range.
I honestly don’t see myself losing motivation since I’m already planning a summer abroad program to Japan with my university, but wanted to see if pacing myself might be a smarter choice.
If you’ve got the time and motivation then do it.
I guess what I was trying to get at, is that people can get carried away with what they’ve ‘learnt’, and maybe over-confident and complacent because of that.
Keep re-visiting everything you’ve done.
Also, perhaps rather than doing Anki so much test yourself in different ways.
I think that’ll be more effective than doing the same thing over and over, and be a truer test of having learnt something.I second what andrew said. If you can recall everything you’ve learnt easily then keep going at the pace you’re doing. Someone managed to get to Season 5 in a month but they had taken a Japanese class before so that helped alot.
My way of studying is to go over each chapter at least twice to ensure I fully understand everything and don’t miss anything out. I was going at a pretty quick pace until I got to the verbs in Season 3 and it slowed down a little. For me, having to remember all the verbs, na adjectives and currently the i adjectives is taking it’s time. I’d rather do it this way though and take longer then skim through something and not fully take in what’s being taught.
Ryatt:
I go through Anki daily, sometimes 2-3 times just to be able to read, speak and understand the sentences/vocab/kanji better.Wait how do you get Anki to do that? It always makes me wait at least a day.
From my personal experience I assumed learning Japanese would take a long time, so I took way too long to do the first two seasons. I regret that. I’ve been picking up momentum ever since.
I like the advice of finding alternate ways to practice. I try that to some degree, but haven’t had a ton of luck in finding productive ways to do that. The best I’ve come up with, for my current skill level:
* Practice writing. I know Koichi said to skip it, but I found I could read hiragana a lot faster, and with fewer mistakes once I got good at writing it. Also, I can practice writing it during a boring meeting, and one of my goals is to take notes in Japanese.
* Active listening/watching. I’ve just started doing this, and a little more than half of the time it’s with subtitles on. Still, if I hear a phrase, or a word pop up, and I want to know what it means I try and look it up, and flag it in my denshi jisho to export to Anki later.
Eventually, I suspect I’ll be able to watch TV, play video games, and other things to practice. I’ve picked up a lot of material from Japan to do this. I’m just not at the stage to leverage most of it. Also, I bought Japanese board games, and RPGs to translate as a way to practice when I’m ready.
If anyone has any suggestions for other ways to practice please let me know. :)
@ hey – you can force a review in Anki, after you’ve done your daily dose just click on “Open” on the deck you want to do, then “Review”, then “Review Early”, then you can do as many as you want.
Watching shows/films is alright (as a beginner), I do that too.
One small thing I like is just wandering through parts of the city with Japanese shops/restaurants and seeing how much I can read, or at least partially read.
Yeah, being in Japan gave me a lot of practice in that regard. My ability to pick out random words from the noise got a lot better. I still don’t always hear the words correctly though. For example, I was watching TV today, and I swore the actors were saying ”おめがし”, but they were saying ”おめかし”. Even after I confirmed it was おめかし I would go back, and listen to them say it, but every time I heard おめがし. That made me a bit sad.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.