So, a month or two ago I took a "short" "break" from Japanese. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I genuinely thought I was giving up. But I now know what I was doing wrong. I was pushing myself with 100 Core cards a day and multiple Tae Kim lessons, along with completely incomprehensible input. I was frustrating myself and not really getting anywhere, until one day, swamped with reviews and forcing myself to listen and read things I couldn't understand a word of, I pulled out my earphones and said "Eff this" and told myself I would do it some other time. Some other time turned into a week, a month and then 2 months, until now, when I've decided to pick up the ball again. But this time I'm taking it slow, I'm going to get rid of my 800+ reviews and I'm going to add a reasonable amount each day. Wish me luck, and I'll continue posting to keep myself accountable!

I've restarted doing core deck from this thread http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=11095 few days ago. I was already 4500 words into core 6k, but somehow I've managed to stop doing reviews, so I have similiar situation, going 30 words per day now, with reviews modifier x 3.

We can keep each other motivated! Good luck ^_^

Glad to see you back, Hirakana!

Don't feel ashamed about stopping ^^ It happens to the best of us (well, it happened to me last year during RTK twice, ahahaha, but I learned some valuable lessons--as it seems you have--and I've been waaaaay more consistent this year because of it).

頑張って、ね？

What are you planning to do this time around, or are you just going to play it by ear?

I think I'm gonna Core until 1000-1500 while casually flipping through Japanese the Manga Way for a refresher on the grammar, and then I'll start reading NHK easy and studying more intensely until I finish Core and I can concentrate on native materials and grammar. Thanks for asking zurisu, how are your studies going by the way?

Sounds like a nice plan to me ^^

Ever since finishing Core6k in September, I've been taking things really slow (no new stuff, just reps), which has been fine by me since November I wrote 90,000 words for NaNoWriMo and this month I'm (attempting) to relax for the holidays and spend more time with friends ^^ So it's nice to have a semi-break to recharge and prevent burnout.

Actually, I started working on Core10k this month, so I AM back to adding new cards now, and I hope to finish it around April or so.

Don't ask me about native reading/listening, though <_< I'm doing it a little but not nearly as much as some would recommend, hahaha. I hope to get back on track with that in January. My tentative plan is to study and learn fully an entire episode of an anime (Fruits Basket), each and every sentence of dialogue, and if it seems to pay off, hopefully the entire series ^_^

Cool ^_^
I'd like it if we could exchange progress reports or something, it'd be good to have someone to keep me accountable and to keep accountable hahaha.

I'm back after quite a long break myself. I think i made it half way through nukemarines 6k deck. But I'm gonna check out the deck in the link you posted! Good luck!

You can do it! A great thing about this process is learning from your mistakes.

Read through some of my lessons and it'll be like taking steroids, but taking steroids for the better good of your Japanese skills, which makes it OK. lol

On a serious note, don't disappear again! Or else the Japanese kami will have to come after you.

We need a 'general encouragement thread' =P I think there's one for JLPT and RTK but not a general, all-around support & accountability thread, is there? Haha. ^_^

800+ cards, that's going to be hard. The most my cards ever piled up to was I believe 1500 -_-. I was really busy for about two weeks (college applications), so I had to take a "break" I really can't believe I didn't even follow up with my reviews though. Anyway for a little tip on how to tackle those 800+ cards, perhaps watch a drama or tv shows while doing them. My big pile of cards which was a scary sight turned into a regular review session, however I was glued to my chair for 5+ hours. Would've been less if I wasn't so distracted by the drama I was watching.

Xanpakuto Wrote:I was glued to my chair for 5+ hours

Hnnnh, that's one way to do it, although I tend to prefer music or sometimes a documentary or variety show of some sort. Anything with a plot will take all my attention and no reviews will get done!

However, I wouldn't even try to do a big backlog in one session. I'd just set my max daily reviews to 150 (your comfortable daily review may vary), cut my new adds down to nothing or just a couple a day (a couple new items can help keep it fresh without adding noticeably to the load.) Once my daily reviews stops being equal to the cap on reviews, then I'd start normal adding again.

If I've stopped studying from feeling burned out, the last thing I want to do is a marathon session. Slow and steady wins the race, or so I've heard.

I think the most reviews I have done in one day was about 4000. I was focusing on my Chinese and had allowed my Japanese deck to pile up hugely, and I powered through them all whilst on a flight to Spain from HK. It wasn't really fun but it did help pass the time I guess.

I'm trying to add 50-100 cards a day right now but find my brain melts after a while. Its hard work.

After breaks I prefer to count my reviews in time rather than cards. You'll hit cards you still remember instantly and those just go away, but you'll hit other cards that you'll need to restudy a bit before you send them to the relearn pile.

Once I learned to completely ignore due counts and focus on doing a set number of minutes of reps per day I found using Anki to be much more enjoyable and if I want to skip a few days, for example snowboard season is here, I don't obsess over it.

After blowing through my reviews at school and in my free time, I now only have 100 left! Gonna finish them after my homework I think. Feels good to be back on track. Thanks everyone

Taking a break is not equal to giving up.

These breaks are a natural part of learning. Your progress over a week/month/year/lifetime will mostly look like scattered dots on a graph rather than a completely straight arrow. Because we're not robots. So don't beat yourself up about it or feel ashamed about it. Embrace it and see it as a part of the learning process.

During breaks though, it's very useful to do something else in Japanese. Looking at grammar, or vocab or whatever. Or if you plummet to the point where you feel like you can't muster the energy to study for a while (hey, it happens to the best of us), try watching Japanese tv-shows or other enjoyable things in Japanese. Also, analyzing your past mistakes (like you already did) is really useful in order to improve study methods.

But anyway, It's great to hear that you're back . Yay!

Relevant.

Ya know, you could always give up on core2k/6k and move to Subs2srs cards based off of your favorite drama or anime. As for order, the morphology plugin does wonders giving you cards that match your level. I find Core to be so boring when used in isolation. I actually mix Core with Subs2srs, makes things magnitudes more enjoyable for me. Anyway, sometimes change is good.

At 1000 in Core ^_^
皆さん、メリークリスマス！

After eight lessons, now I can recognize some words of one of my favourite songs. I'm very happy for the apparent effect. It's more and more interesting and motivating to continue. Japanese is beautiful. ^_^