I just thought I would bounce my study plan off you guys and see if there's any room for improvement.

First, I should mention that I only have 60-90 minutes per day total for study. I'm basically learning Japanese on my phone while I walk the dog and during lunch. I have other things going on and I don't feel like spending any more time then that. That said, I've been doing this every single day for 20 months, so am in this for the long haul.

Given my time constraints, I estimate that it would take me 8 months to learn the jouyou kanji and I believe that time could be put to better use learning 1,000s of vocabulary. Since my main interest in learning Japanese is speaking and listening, I've decided that my time would be better spent studying vocabulary and grammar and put kanji on hold. I also don't mind spending time doing extra "passive" activities such as listening to podcasts and watching tv, so getting to the stage where I can follow along could effectively double the amount of time I spend with japanese.

Currently I'm at around core 2.5k with another 1k deck that undoubtedly contains a lot of overlap. So let's say i currently have a vocabulary around 3k. I've learned a few hundred kanji, but I'm only adding a few here and there to keep from getting too bored with vocabulary. At the rate I'm going I'll probably finish rtk lite around the time I finish core 6k. I've also gone 2/3 of the way through tae kim.

My plan for now is to keep forging ahead with (core)vocabulary acquisition as fast as I can. I've been doing 2 cards for each word - one vocab recognition card and one sentence understanding card. I've found that adding the sentence card speeds my overall acquisition, even considering that it's twice as many cards. If you're wondering, my cards have furigana on the front, so I'm reading the kana, not kanji. I've also started listening to japanese pod101 in the car(doesn't count as study time). Eventually I will start watching japanese shows and listen to podcasts, but with my small vocabulary, I still can't follow along yet. Once I can follow along, I'll be able to spend a lot of extra listening time so getting to that stage is my singular focus right now.

How does all of this sound to you? Is there anything you might do differently if you were in my position?

I know you said you want to focus on speaking and listening, but personally I would add some writing. Unless you have a speaking partner, who is able to correct you, producing sentences yourself really helps to enforce grammer (also for speaking). And the best way to check, if what you wrote is correct, is to check your sentences with solutions, if you follow a text book or to have it checked for you in one of the language forums. You could probably do the latter, while you walk your dog, the first will require you to sit down. Other than that your plan seems good to me.

1. Instead of studying RtK and vocab separately, I'd use RtK's mnemonic method to only study the specific Kanji that show up in my vocab (and the necessary primitives). I would suspend all unlearned Kanji in my RtK deck, and each day go through the vocab I'm about to add, and unsuspend the new Kanji in them (and the necessary primitives). Shouldn't take more than five minutes at the start of your daily studies. This is actually what I'm doing (and I suspect what most of us who finished RtK1 are doing), with RtK3 Kanji that show up in Core. No reason why you wouldn't do the same with Rtk1.

2. Rather that wait to "get good enough" to listen to native audio, I would watch variety shows with subtitles, rip the audio from them, and then listen to them repeatedly later, as I drive or walk around (again, something I've actually done). Even though it's not as much fun as listening and fully understanding native podcasts for the first time, I bet it still beats listening to audio lessons. And there's more value in it, as well. Doesn't work as well with fiction (there are pauses, action scenes, etc., while variety shows are usually all talk). Comedy shows, like Gaki no tsukai, would work though.

If I were you, I would get rid of the single word vocabulary cards (because they're redundant) and remove the furigana from the front of the cards but put audio on the front (I think this makes learning the kanji in the sentence easier but without extra effort).
Otherwise, sounds fine to me. How many cards are you adding a day? Vocabulary sounds a bit small for having been doing it for 20 months.

Adding a small writing component might be really useful. I keep shilling it, but I believe that 日本語日記ノート is a great book for learning how to keep a diary in Japanese. It starts *really* basic, but moves up to more complex sentence forms as you go alone. Take 5 minutes before you go to bed, log into Lang-8, and write a diary post. It will help your speaking down the road, too.

As for plans in general, make sure they're enjoyable on some level for you, or promise some kind of short- to mid-term reward for completion (find a way to make it fun). De-motivation is always the biggest enemy, more than anything else, IMO.

Thanks for the great suggestions! I really appreciate it.

@ Riogray, I've had this on my todo list. I've already made an account on italki and I've been planning on writing a journal. I'm glad you reminded me, maybe I'll try to carve out some time this weekend for that. Thanks.

@ Stansfield123, Studying vocabulary with the kanji is an idea that I haven't given serious thought to, but I might give it a try and see how it goes. My guess is that it will slow down my vocabulary progress a little too much, but I'd be happy to be wrong.

I actually get a fair amount of exposure to variety shows because my wife is always watching them. Right now, listening to them seems of limited value because I can only catch the odd word here and there, but I'm expecting they will become more valuable once I understand more. That's actually why I'm prioritizing vocabulary - so that I'll understand the variety shows better. Any suggestions on how to get there sooner are appreciated. Maybe rewatching them a few times and pre-reading the subtitles would help...? Is there a good source for variety show subtitles?

@ Aikynaro, My average over 20 months is 7.5 new facts per hour(counting sentences and vocab as one fact) but I'd love to pick up the pace. I think my pace is slowly improving as I learn that certain sounds usually mean then same thing in different words. I've tried getting rid of the single word vocabulary cards, but I find I don't really learn the vocabulary as well without them. It seems like I'm doubling my workload, but anki does a good job of spacing everything out so it seems the increased accuracy actually results in a lower workload.

@rich_f, Thanks for the book recommendation! I've never seen that book before, but I might get it on your recommendation. Yea, I agree making it fun is key. I make it fun by not doing too much every day and being able to understand more and more always makes it fun.

Again thanks for the great suggestions. Everything was good advice.

yogert909 Wrote:@ Stansfield123, Studying vocabulary with the kanji is an idea that I haven't given serious thought to, but I might give it a try and see how it goes. My guess is that it will slow down my vocabulary progress a little too much, but I'd be happy to be wrong.

I'm a big fan of duplicating review materials in more than one deck. It's actually not as big a time waste as it seems. If done the right way, it can actually be a time saver.

For instance, if you go over individual Kanji, and then go over words made up of those Kanji, in parallel, both decks are going to speed up compared to what you could do if you only had one of them. The easier deck especially (in this case, the Kanji deck) will go very fast, and end up making up a tiny portion of your daily review time.

Same with doing the same deck with vocab and sentence, in parallel (especially for beginners, for whom every sentence has 2-3 unknown words). Even later on, as long as the sentences are worth it (as long as they keep adding new grammar patterns, and mixing in interesting expressions/idioms etc.). I'm afraid that the sentences in Core might not be that great though, after a while. You should check out Nayr's deck instead for that. It's pretty much the same words (an updated, 21st century version of the 5000 most common Japanese words, but basically the same), and in far more modern, interesting and complex expressions and sentences. You could for instance do Core vocab and Nayr's sentences, in parallel.

!!!!!!!!edit!!!! Attention: My advice about the Kanji only applies to you if you actually use the Kanji in your vocab reviews. Up until now, I just assumed that you do that for your vocab recognition cards, and rely on furigana for sentences. After re-reading your post, seems I may be wrong. I typed all this out though, so I'll leave it be, maybe someone else has some use for what I said.

Anyway, if you don't use the Kanji (have furigana in all your questions), then there's no reason to follow my Kanji suggestion. Reviewing the Kanji won't help you with your vocab deck. If that's the case, then just do what you've been doing, it's fine. It's not like you HAVE to know the Kanji to understand and speak basic Japanese.

I second Aikynaro's suggestion of replacing the furigana with audio in the question though. Having reviewed several thousand sentences with furigana, over 20 months, you've had all the Hiragana practice anyone could need, so at this point you'd be much better served listening to audio and looking at the Kanji, rather than reading furigana. And I can tell you from experience that having the audio in the question rather than the answer speeds up reviews considerably (you use the time the audio plays as your thinking time, and then you usually press space twice or space/2 space/4 to go right to the next card; with the audio in the answer, you still have to read the question, and then you have to listen to the audio as well, almost doubling the time you spend on most of your reviews). Or, if you really don't care about Kanji, just have furigana and the audio both in the question.

(And consider using Nayr's deck for your sentence deck. It really is much better than Core.)

As always, great advice from you Stansfield.

I agree that audio on the vocab cards would be ideal, however a lot of times I'm standing in line at the grocery store or studying in restaurants during lunch and I'm too self conscious/respectful that I don't want to have the volume up. t was great when I tried it out a month ago. Maybe I'll try using headphones again, but I'm always forgetting them when I need them..

Totally agree about duplicating facts in more than one deck. At first blush it doesn't make logical sense, but anki's algorithm does a pretty good job of spacing things out to avoid superfluous work. At the end of the day, adding sentences increased my vocabulary acquisition speed considerably so I don't even care if it makes sense.

I'll check out nayr's deck. I can preserve my learning data by just importing the sentences into a new field in core and change my card layout to show nayr's sentences instead.

Sounds like a plan to me!