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How to use my weekends? - Printable Version

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How to use my weekends? - Taelia - 2013-03-23

Hello,

I'm in a darnedly productive mood lately, doing well over 100 reviews+100new kanji/sentences a day. This ain't hardly enough to satiate my thirst during the weekends though! I finally have a lot of free time on my hands, I want to be able to actually use it!

Spending an hour or two to keep up the reviews really puts me in the mood for learning more, but I'm really hesitant to press Anki's "Continue studying" button. It really screwed me up in the past with excessive reviews due afterwards.
Spending half the day sentence-mining ain't all that fun either, and neither my kanji readings nor my vocabulary are good enough yet to enjoy watching/reading random media.

So.. I could just, well, do something not related to learning japanese, but before I resort to that... figured I'd come here and ask if you guys have any good tips~?

How to use my weekends? - scarby dancer - 2013-03-23

Work your way through a grammar book - or get the box set of Dictionaries of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar and absorb them cover to cover!

How to use my weekends? - Taelia - 2013-03-23

So far, the advice has been very helpful<3.

I'd like to give more background, but I'm not really sure what to say..

I've read various grammar books in previous attempts at japanese, but I feel grammar will come alongside my reading ability rather than studying it isolated.
I'm currently at around ~900 down my RTK1 list, expecting to be done within two weeks.
Also, I started sentence mining Final Fantasy 1 to fill up my Anki sentence deck.

I absolutely love playing RPGs, I also enjoy the occasional anime/manga/jdrama. Apart from these things, I have no idea what other ways of reading/listening there are, (I only recognized Yotsubato from that list), so more of those types of resources are welcome.
As well as other ways to stay in contact with the japanese language.

How to use my weekends? - tashippy - 2013-03-23

There's an overwhelming amount of Learning Resources here, especially in the stickied topics. http://forum.koohii.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=9 That should keep you busy. But as they say around here, don't forget to take a break from the forum to study Japanese.

How to use my weekends? - HonyakuJoshua - 2013-03-24

8547 japanese sentences deck

How to use my weekends? - jm82792 - 2013-03-24

Dang I wish I had weekends Smile

How to use my weekends? - Taelia - 2013-03-24

Fair point, I'll continue more reading in them grammar books then.
By 'Audio courses', do you mean actual courses or more stuff like the audio books I found in that thread?

How to use my weekends? - Zgarbas - 2013-03-24

Most mistakes I found were in the English translations, which is ok (It's not like you don't know what he means by dctonary). Of course, I didn't check every single sentence, so I doubt there weren't more mistakes which seeped in which I failed to notice (I did notice at one point that a sentence from the "this does not work" section was in the deck...I hope that was an isolated case). However, given the amount of time you save by using the premade deck instead of making your own a few mistakes are worth it. Just because 10 sentences are flawed does not mean the other 8500+ aren't still a valuable resource.

How to use my weekends? - HonyakuJoshua - 2013-03-24

i had studied j on and off for four years at uni before using the deck and had a good grasp of j grammar. i think the mistakes are pretty easy to spot if you know a fair bit about japanese.

it really helped me fill in gaps in japanese grammar that i didnt learn at uni.

edit as zgarbas said most of the mistakes are in the english translations.

How to use my weekends? - RawToast - 2013-03-25

Taelia Wrote:I'm in a darnedly productive mood lately, doing well over 100 reviews+100new kanji/sentences a day. This ain't hardly enough to satiate my thirst during the weekends though! I finally have a lot of free time on my hands, I want to be able to actually use it!

Spending an hour or two to keep up the reviews really puts me in the mood for learning more, but I'm really hesitant to press Anki's "Continue studying" button. It really screwed me up in the past with excessive reviews due afterwards.
You could use Anki's 'review random cards' to go over a few (or maybe 100/200 in your case!) older cards. As you're reviewing 100 new items a day your review stack is going to become massive; so doing some extra reviews on the weekend is a good way to keep it in check.

How to use my weekends? - uisukii - 2013-03-25

If you're feeling productive, run yourself a nice warm herbal bath and enjoy the weekend, fresh and hungry to dive into the next five days with the vigor of a child on Christmas morning. Sometimes it better to stop while you're still hungry, to give the stomach/brain time to catch up on itself.

Or read up on a bunch of grammar and take a look at one of the Core vocab decks, or something.

How to use my weekends? - Betelgeuzah - 2013-03-25

The dictionary sentence deck is awesome.
I've improved my basic grammar knowledge so much because of it.

How to use my weekends? - TheVinster - 2013-03-25

uisukii Wrote:If you're feeling productive, run yourself a nice warm herbal bath and enjoy the weekend, fresh and hungry to dive into the next five days
You could have just said whack off.

How to use my weekends? - Taelia - 2013-03-26

I'm getting lots of amazing advice, thanks<3
I hadn't considered the early reviews yet, that would actually reduce my workload later on rather than massively increase it! Also, with 100 new cards a day, extra reviews would be welcome.
I started my own sentence deck, but I feel like using a pre-made one is the better choice for me after all. More comfortable, maybe?

Lastly, not doing a damn thing when I feel rather productive feels counter-intuitive, but.. I think that might actually be a valuable life lesson. Thanks for sharing<3

How to use my weekends? - Tzadeck - 2013-03-26

TheVinster Wrote:
uisukii Wrote:If you're feeling productive, run yourself a nice warm herbal bath and enjoy the weekend, fresh and hungry to dive into the next five days
You could have just said whack off.
These two comments combined make me think of Tom Waits' stage talk here:



How to use my weekends? - Stansfield123 - 2013-03-26

There are plenty of learning resources, and easy media/reading material. Recently, I've been using three main ones. What they all have in common is that they're very easy to use, for almost any level.

https://www.erin.ne.jp/en/ (this is a free, and very good quality resource; and it's pretty extensive, you'll get bored with it long before you run out of material)

Yotsubato! is an easy manga. The first volume also has a vocab list to help you read through it (there's a thread about it somewhere, just search for it). After the first volume, you can continue reading, and have the English version as backup if, on occasion, you can't figure an important plot line out (that's sarcasm, there are no important plot lines in this). You can also read other, more serious manga, as long as you also get the English version to help you out. But this hobby might get expensive.

The "Japanese Graded Readers" (Yomuyomu Bunko) series of readers. They have them for every level, including yours. These can also get a little expensive. I would suggest you buy just one volume (a Level 1 or 2, don't bother with Level 0) for about 25 bucks, see how you like it. There are free alternatives around the web, but they're not as good. If you have the money, I highly recommend that you spend it. If not, don't worry, reading manga is just as good (only a little less comfortable, because it's not "hand picked for your level").

How to use my weekends? - uisukii - 2013-03-26

TheVinster Wrote:
uisukii Wrote:If you're feeling productive, run yourself a nice warm herbal bath and enjoy the weekend, fresh and hungry to dive into the next five days
You could have just said whack off.
Whatever helps relief stress. Some read, some play golf, some skydive. Stress has a habit of building up in the background, and sometimes forcing oneself to hold back a little and relax on a regular basis can help prevent stress build up from long running tasks, and helps create a sense of reward for performing said task.

Language learning is a long term exercise, like body-building or marathon running, etc., there is a reason rest days are mandatory even if the person is feeling up to it at that time.

Or one could always go for the "greasing the groove" method. But they have to be be aware of what they are doing while going into it.


But yeah, I could have just said whack off.

How to use my weekends? - RawToast - 2013-03-26

Stansfield123 Wrote:https://www.erin.ne.jp/en/ (this is a free, and very good quality resource; and it's pretty extensive, you'll get bored with it long before you run out of material)
There's also the "Learn Basic Japanese" video series. I don't think you can buy it anymore, but you might be able to find a torrent. I'd say it starts at a lower level than Erin's challenge.

Quote:Yotsubato! is an easy manga. The first volume also has a vocab list to help you read through it (there's a thread about it somewhere, just search for it)... But this hobby might get expensive.
If you have a store which sells the Japanese copy this is great, ordering it from Amazon ended up twice the price for me. The author is creating a second deck for volume 2.

Quote:The "Japanese Graded Readers" (Yomuyomu Bunko) series of readers. They have them for every level, including yours. These can also get a little expensive. I would suggest you buy just one volume (a Level 1 or 2, don't bother with Level 0) for about 25 bucks, see how you like it.
Avoid level 0! It's a similar in vocab requirement (N5) to level 1, but there are no kanji!!!

You might be able to do the following:
Level 1 graded reader -> Yotsubato 1/2 (with deck) -> NHK news easy.

How to use my weekends? - sherlock - 2013-04-04

Hyperborea Wrote:I agree, if you haven't been working on grammar then add some grammar study. I don't know where you're at in your study right now but adding something to read would be good - Yomu Yomu Bunko graded readers (pick the right level) and/or Yotsubato! Other possibilities are one of the audio courses (Assimil, Michel Thomas, Linguaphone, etc.).

You'll get better, more targeted advice if you give a little background.
Just a little curious about this. So do you just take one of the books in the set and read it from start to finish?

I really, really need to work on grammar -- i've been neglecting it to work on Kanji and vocabs.