Ok gals and guys, I need some advice, opinions, encouragement, etc. I haven't actively studied Japanese for probably over a year. School and work have been pretty brutal. However, this semester is almost over, and I won't be taking classes over the summer as I have in the past. I also don't have a full time job anymore. My only obligations this summer are a part time tutoring schedule and a garden.

So here's where I was at when I stopped: RtK volume 1 done, all of the core 2000 and about halfway through the core 6000 (on iKnow back when it was free). However, I routinely see kanji whose readings I used to know and words whose meanings I've totally forgotten.

Should I just start from scratch and try to blow through everything quick as a review? That was my first thought, but I'm a bit afraid that the Anki reviews will become unsustainable very quickly.

Any advice? I'm especially interested in hearing from others who have been in this situation and what kind of success you've had coming back to Japanese after a break.

[s0apgun]

I think start over on Core 2000 and rate any of the vocab you know as easy to keep the reviews down. It would suck to start Core 6k with huge holes in your memory.

the biggest mistake i made was neglecting grammar - I advise the 8547 Japanese sentences deck.

I'll share a few stories before I give my personal advice. I'm currently working 2 jobs at the moment and taking school (it finished recently but work still takes most of my days). I was keeping up with my reps everyday but I haven't kept up with them in 1.5-2 weeks and it's starting to reach high numbers of reviews (managed to do half of them but I will eventually get it back to zero and keep going). Life will probably get in the way at times, which is normal. Try to maintain it, if it's not possible, start a new but go at a pace you can handle. For me I can handle 20-30 new cards a day pretty easily(per deck). I used to do 50 or even 100 per day but it really started eating my time. Slow is the way to go. If you want to do more, do it outside of the SRS. Trust me, you do not want to have so many reviews when life gets in the way.

So it comes down to: use the srs at a slow pace and work on Japanese outside of the SRS. You should try to get 3:7 ratio for SRS to Immersion. I'm at 2:8 or 1:9 nowadays. Somedays it goes up but when you start learning Japanese (it might be the other way around).

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:the biggest mistake i made was neglecting grammar - I advise the 8547 Japanese sentences deck.

I recommend this after Core6000 or half way through.

Core6k won't give you anything when it comes to some of the nuances, unfortunately.

And when reviews piles up. Just tell Anki to give you the cards in longest interval. That way you'll be hitting more of the easy cards and drop the review number some.