How do you guys avoid it? I've been doing core 2k/6k while reading the JDoBG and doing the basic deck. I finished Tae kim last week; but I'm just tired.

For fun; I took a peek at a few visual novels and was greatly inspired to keep going. A while on I realized how much of a beginner I am, and how long it'll take before I can actually get to playing them. My motivation went downhill. I know I should stop complaining and start learning, but I feel a bit a sad, a bit burnt out.

It's summer time and I want to make the most use of it. I can usually do 1 / 2 hours of book reading/ anki a day. I'm also homeschooled so I can easily fit it in my day. I don't want to waste the opportunity to do this while I'm young either. ( Barely 16 y/o ) There was something about it's easier to learn a language while you're young. I'm not sure if that's true or not. Back on topic ;

Should I let it pass? Take a break? Keep going through? How can I prevent this? What do you guys do?

I look back on what I've done already and realized the fruits of my labor can't go to waste. I mean I'm finishing RTK in 3 days so I'm not nearly as far as you but at 1000 in I wanted to quit but I asked myself why? I am doing so good! I made it this far no no turning back. I tell myself I have ambition: that desire and determination to achieve success no matter what the cost.

I do sometimes feel burned out though. Not because I'm studying Japanese but because life in general. I'm taking summer classes at college, working 7 days a week, hit the gym 4 days a week and study/learn new things in japanese everyday consistently. In the times that I'm tired I always remember this: Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.

I've come to learn that each of the language skills comes with a different level and they are not necessarily related unless you make a point of practising it.
To give a personal example: I studied really hard for a while and managed to go through the entire Minna no nihongo series (1 & 2, roughly equivalent to Genki 1 & 2). That made me really good at Minna no nihongo type exercises and comfortable with N5 style questions.
Then I realized I couldn't read. I thought the problem was kanji so I memorised about 1000 kanji in ~3 months.
Still couldn't read, though I recognized a lot of kanji.
I moved to reading practice, at first simplified Japanese (there are some reading textbooks like Tanoshiku Yomou), then gradually more difficult texts (I went through the Japanese grade systems and started with stuff aimed at really young children, slowly moving towards junior high) and when I felt good about myself moved to news.
At which point I wanted to move to watching news and bam! surprise, although I could follow along the same story comfortable if it was in writing, I couldn't make out anything if I saw it on TV.
So, back to square 1, listening practice, I first used some JLPT 聴解　practice audio, then moved to children's stories and gradually worked my way up to the news (I still have some trouble with it, but I'm slowly making progress).
This summer I've started with writing, and I'm down to my 9th entry on lang-8. It's still uber basic Japanese, but at least I'm making way less mistakes now. I plan to start incorporating more complex structures in the near future.
Once I'm somewhere at a comfortable intermediate level in my writing, I fully expect to start at level 0 with my speaking.
It was a shock at first to start so low each time, but now I'm quite used to it.
It would've probably been easier to work on those skills simultaneously, just the way I was taught English in school (we had about three hours a week of English lessons and they alternated between grammar, listening, reading, writing an speaking).
But with school and a full time job, it's really difficult to find the time to take up a language course or to design your own.
So, based solely on my very personal experience, I would say you might not be that burnt out. Maybe you just worked on one skill alone and expected that to translate into your reading ability. Which didn't really happen and this got you disappointed in yourself. But you really shouldn't be. Your reading will improve as you ..well..read more.
Again, only speaking from my experience, if there's something I could've done better, I shouldn't have spend 3 months on rote memorization of Kanji. I could've mixed that up with some reading, any reading, to make the process more efficient and less time consuming.
Good luck with your studies!

[s0apgun]

As someone who did RTK and Core6k within a year, let me tell just keep at it. It gets easier trust me. Daily studying becomes something that you WANT to do and you start really seeing progress around then. Don't give up, check out some of the other methods suggested on here besides SRS. Mix it up and have fun. 頑張って!

MelonBerry Wrote:but I'm just tired.
[...]
I know I should stop complaining and start learning, but I feel a bit a sad, a bit burnt out.

These are signs that you're not learning much from core 2k/6k or the DBJG. If you're not consciously aware of regular improvements in your Japanese, then you may still lack an overall picture of Japanese grammar to extract the most value from the Core sentences and ADoBJG (see http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm).

Put Anki on hold and try this on for size: http://kimallen.sheepdogdesign.net/Japanese/index.html (this is just one of many sites with the same target audience in mind); you ought to know everything that there is to know about Japanese sentences, before jumping into individual grammar points and vocabulary. If you don't find its contents more informative and engaging than your flashcards, then I've got nothing. In fact, all learning ought to be engaging when it's effective, i.e. appropriate for your level. When it's not, that's what leads to burnout.

I think the Core sentences are best used after most/all of them can be understood, leaving new vocabulary as the only unknowns. It would at least mean there are no detrimental holes in your basic understanding. Hope this helps.

Animosophy Wrote:

MelonBerry Wrote:but I'm just tired.
[...]
I know I should stop complaining and start learning, but I feel a bit a sad, a bit burnt out.

These are signs that you're not learning much from core 2k/6k or the DBJG. If you're not consciously aware of regular improvements in your Japanese, then you may still lack an overall picture of Japanese grammar to extract the most value from the Core sentences and ADoBJG (see http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm).

Put Anki on hold and try this on for size: http://kimallen.sheepdogdesign.net/Japanese/index.html (this is just one of many sites with the same target audience in mind); you ought to know everything that there is to know about Japanese sentences, before jumping into individual grammar points and vocabulary. If you don't find its contents more informative and engaging than your flashcards, then I've got nothing. In fact, all learning ought to be engaging when it's effective, i.e. appropriate for your level. When it's not, that's what leads to burnout.

I think the Core sentences are best used after most/all of them can be understood, leaving new vocabulary as the only unknowns. It would at least mean there are no detrimental holes in your basic understanding. Hope this helps.

This site is excellent. Thanks for reminding me about it, because I never finished the read.

NO BREAKS! You can always stay in contact with the language. Maybe you should reward yourself with reading a simple Manga, playing a video game, or maybe watching Anime while paying attention to the talking.
I lately got bored with Kore2k6k so I moved to native materials a little. I'm playing FFX International Edition with all Japanese text and English voice acting, works greatly! What I found awesome about this is that I realized how much the kore deck was useful to my Japanese comprehension! So now I think it's great again. This also made learning Japanese more enjoyable.
I also bought a parallel Englsih-Japanese book, didn't start seriously with it yet, but I had a very good idea about the first few sentences without reading the English translation, which also boosted the image of Kore2k6k!
But in the end, I think you're your own doctor, because you're the one who gets bored or lose energy to things, so you ought to know what you need to change.

BTW, here is my status: Abot 1000 words in Kore, one third of TK's guide essential grammar, finished RTK lite, and almost no Anime or Drama watching.

Animosophy Wrote:

MelonBerry Wrote:but I'm just tired.
[...]
I know I should stop complaining and start learning, but I feel a bit a sad, a bit burnt out.

These are signs that you're not learning much from core 2k/6k or the DBJG. If you're not consciously aware of regular improvements in your Japanese, then you may still lack an overall picture of Japanese grammar to extract the most value from the Core sentences and ADoBJG (see http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm).

Put Anki on hold and try this on for size: http://kimallen.sheepdogdesign.net/Japanese/index.html (this is just one of many sites with the same target audience in mind); you ought to know everything that there is to know about Japanese sentences, before jumping into individual grammar points and vocabulary. If you don't find its contents more informative and engaging than your flashcards, then I've got nothing. In fact, all learning ought to be engaging when it's effective, i.e. appropriate for your level. When it's not, that's what leads to burnout.

I think the Core sentences are best used after most/all of them can be understood, leaving new vocabulary as the only unknowns. It would at least mean there are no detrimental holes in your basic understanding. Hope this helps.

Alright; thanks. I'll look at it today. Really appreciate the help.

undead_saif Wrote:NO BREAKS! You can always stay in contact with the language. Maybe you should reward yourself with reading a simple Manga, playing a video game, or maybe watching Anime while paying attention to the talking.
I lately got bored with Kore2k6k so I moved to native materials a little. I'm playing FFX International Edition with all Japanese text and English voice acting, works greatly! What I found awesome about this is that I realized how much the kore deck was useful to my Japanese comprehension! So now I think it's great again. This also made learning Japanese more enjoyable.
I also bought a parallel Englsih-Japanese book, didn't start seriously with it yet, but I had a very good idea about the first few sentences without reading the English translation, which also boosted the image of Kore2k6k!
But in the end, I think you're your own doctor, because you're the one who gets bored or lose energy to things, so you ought to know what you need to change.

BTW, here is my status: Abot 1000 words in Kore, one third of TK's guide essential grammar, finished RTK lite, and almost no Anime or Drama watching.

You got a vocab list for FFX International or are you just using the Japanese scripts online?

undead_saif Wrote:NO BREAKS! You can always stay in contact with the language. Maybe you should reward yourself with reading a simple Manga, playing a video game, or maybe watching Anime while paying attention to the talking.
I lately got bored with Kore2k6k so I moved to native materials a little. I'm playing FFX International Edition with all Japanese text and English voice acting, works greatly! What I found awesome about this is that I realized how much the kore deck was useful to my Japanese comprehension! So now I think it's great again. This also made learning Japanese more enjoyable.
I also bought a parallel Englsih-Japanese book, didn't start seriously with it yet, but I had a very good idea about the first few sentences without reading the English translation, which also boosted the image of Kore2k6k!
But in the end, I think you're your own doctor, because you're the one who gets bored or lose energy to things, so you ought to know what you need to change.

BTW, here is my status: Abot 1000 words in Kore, one third of TK's guide essential grammar, finished RTK lite, and almost no Anime or Drama watching.

I read よつばと！ last week. Read the first volume, it wasn't hard at all. The gist of the grammar was pretty simple but I came across a few words I didn't know. I'm not really far into core 2k/6k.
And thank you for the words. I've been looking up numerous things for me to do when I actually get to a decent level. (Who knows how long that will take?) Found a decent amount of manga, light novels and visual novels. I ended up reading part of the guide from the previous post and went right to looking up more things. There's a whole different side of things I'll never see translated to English.

I'm also wondering if it'd be worth getting a japanese kindle at some point? I heard reading, even if you can't understand it, is good. But it is a huge obstacle that takes time. If I do invest in one and read some novels, I hope my japanese will go up even a little bit.

Also; I gave up on RTK months ago. I can't stand anki. I'm going to have to come across Kanji at some point, correct? I'd rather learn them in context. Core 2k/6k + aDoBJG is enough for me. I don't mind either of them, the second one is actually fun. I get to see what I learned.

I don't know how you're doing Core 6k without an SRS.

ryuudou Wrote:I don't know how you're doing Core 6k without an SRS.

? I thought I said I'm doing the core2k/6k deck on anki in my first post. Oops, maybe I forgot to say that?
The only one I'm not doing is RTK.

Hello MelonBerry,

At your stage, I also took a break for around 10 days. It's like I was exhausted after I run a marathon of 20.000 km. I chill out during this time watching anime, downloading karaoke - as I love japanese music -. So I was seeking content due to the fact that I spent a boatload of time learning RTK and Tae Kim's grammar book.

During my long journey to the fluency, I became to copy a full page of an article or something where there is a great deal of Kanji in accordance with some advice from AJATT (All Japan All The Time). Then one that comes to mind is this. The best and lazy way to consistently improve the memorization of Kanji is throughout 'copying' and MCD. When writing became part of the natural rhythm of my life, my ability to recognize and write words came on in leaps and bounds.

Persevering is hard with anything in life. Even myself after having made my own gargantuan site, and even yesterday having completely changed what it looks like, I often feel like doing absolutely nothing despite knowing that time is of the essence.

Though I read about 1.5 books a week now, I still feel like I could be doing more. So, in this long journey to your destination, just be sure to at least go steps forward each day, even if they're just a few, rather than step backwards one.

がんばってくださいね。

ryuudou Wrote:I don't know how you're doing Core 6k without an SRS.

Another means of studying from Core 6K is in a L-R format. All 6000 sentences with audio can be reviewed with full comprehension (not memorizing) in anywhere between 5～10 hours.

There are probably a few others ways to study/review Core 6K without an SRS, but L-R is at least one other approach I am certain exists.

My key to avoid burning out is to have short term and long term goals. You need to feel like you're making progress or it will feel like a slog with no end in sight. Most people, in most of their work, have busy periods and less busy periods. Your studying of Japanese can work that same way. It just depends on how you want to structure it.

I will not sing the praises of positive influences that have goals, which I can suppose you know them. Setting short and long term goals will not spare yourself from burn-out. We fix more or less consciously aims such as becoming fluent, being able to read japanese or keeping a conversation. Needless to say that we clearly formulate own objectives : to do RTK within 90 days, learn 25 news sentences a day, finish the 'due to' flashcards.
Why the people who set out shorter plan (a deadline of 3 days even 1 day) are suffering from burn-out? The reason for the problem is to have fun while we are doing something in Japanese. I mean that in the end we have to feel enthusiasm, happier like after sex.
We can imagine the same thing with musician learner who is studying at a music conservatory. Get rid of the pleasure of playing an instrument, and I bet you that the student, with the simplest and most realistic objectives, will hardly reach the aims.
I advise you to reduce your homework to 20% of the time that you are dedicating to Japanese. Then the other 80% allocate them to chill out with Japanese stuff.