What do you recommend to do after Core?

Assuming you have actually finished the Core6k and not just the 2k. I'd probably recommend start trying to read stuff. Get light novels and start adding the words you find in there to your deck. I find even with Core2k done and 1/4 of the extra 4k done, you can read quite a bit of light novels. Some of the more 青年向け manga might be good reads too. Could also push the bounds and try actual novels but depending on genre and author, that might be pretty extreme.

If your grammar is lacking, now would be the time to brush up on that and improve it.

Thanks. One more thing, do you remember your comprehension rate when you finished Core 2K? Because, you suggest that I should read a novel, but I think I wouldn't understand anything.

Core 2k isnt really enough to read a novel, I would suggest doing core6k now (which is actually 4k more words) as I'm doing, but do it in a different way than just opening it and getting word after word without any context.

1- Suspend all cards from the core6k deck.
2- Get a text in japanese (from a textbook, magazine, blog, etc) and try to read it, for every word you dont know, search it in the core 6k list, and if its there unsuspend it, if its not there then you can either add it manually or just save the word to learn in another occasion.

This way you will be learning words from places you are studying.

But tbh, as I am doing Kanji Odyssey as well, Im going more kanji-oriented. I learn a kanji reading, then search all words that have that kanji and add all of them. It makes a lot easier to learn a reading when you have lots of words in your memory as examples for it...

I have studied around 500 words on core6k just by doing this (being at 400ish kanji on KO), its not the fastest way to finish it, but it feels more like learning and is less boring (at least for me) and anyway, learning japanese isnt a race (I need to remember this all the time, even though I want to be able to at least have some hope to pass N2 next year).

Good luck

It"s probably a good time to get some listening practice in because you should have enough words to benefit from it. Things like youtube videos or anime or whatever you're into. Don't wait until you can decode a newspaper before getting basic listening comprehension.

nadiatims Wrote:It"s probably a good time to get some listening practice in because you should have enough words to benefit from it. Things like youtube videos or anime or whatever you're into. Don't wait until you can decode a newspaper before getting basic listening comprehension.

Nah.. I'm in the same situation right now and I regret not having started earlier with listening. It's so painful when you have lots of words you can use and also grammar, but you cannot, because you do not understand what the other party/person is trying to tell you -.-

I don't know how you're working on the core deck, but I'd switch it to drilling sentences, instead of words, at this point, if you aren't already, and work on Core6k, either in words or sentences, whichever seems easier.

I agree that learning grammar and working on listening comprehension are important overall. Getting some easy Japanese texts isn't a bad idea, but I wasn't able to find much that was interesting and at the appropriate level. There's a lot of personal taste involved in that.