Hello everyone. I have been studying Japanese for a while and finally think I found a good method, I wanted to know what you guys thought of it.

Firstly, my long-term goals. In 3 years I will be out of college so by that time I wish to be able to..
Read at a high school level.
Listen and comprehend 50%+ of what I hear.
Speak and write at least at a basic level.

My current study schedule is this.
RTK- for most of my free time. I want this done by the beginning of next month so I'm doing 50-100 a day to blaze through when I can.

Jpod101 lessons- also with reading along with the transcripts. They are fairly short and interesting.

10 minutes of pure reading immersion. I just choose a site I like and without trying to do specific things I just go over it picking out known kanji and reading kana and known words outline. My plan is to add time to this step as I progress.

Reading tae Kim's grammar guide occasionally.

My main idea for learning is something I was doing a while ago that I can't do until my gf gets her own computer when we get back home "we're on vacation and she is using my computer until she gets hers"

Translate one of my favorite games!
Essentially I take the Japanese and translate it word by word, then try to write the general meaning in English. I send it in to have it checked out by someone who knows Japanese and then it is added into the official translations. Except this time I will also be adding interesting words and phrases to anki to really solidify them into memory.
It seems weird but doing that was the most fun I have had in Japanese and really solidified my knowledge of hiragana, also teaching me how to do stuff like type out japanese and use online dictionaries.

So do you guys think that if I do these daily and immerse myself i will meet my goals?

Hey Ninjas.
To me "read at highschool level" means N1 reading, and there is no way you can do that without an advanced study of grammar (beyond Tae Kim).
Also you need speaking and writing practice if you want to get better at them.
The rest could work, but if you're bored or reach a plateau (3 years is a long time), don't hesitate to experiment other things.
Good luck!

Hi Ninja, welcome to the forum.

I don't see anything terrible about your actual study plan and wish you the best of luck as you start learning Japanese.

That said, I don't think you really know much about what it takes to read at a high school level in Japanese. It's basically full fluency and it's well beyond the highest level of the JLPT.

It's a big deal and even the most dedicated and talented people learning Japanese take thousands of hours of study to pull that off.

Its a decent plan as long as you periodically tweak it and not follow it fully just because you planned it.

I know it will take thousands of hours to reach this, and I plan on changing my method periodically. The problem I think I'm having is that I start a new method every few weeks. Resulting in me having the beginner phrases and grammar down pat but not doing anything to actually learn to read.

So as soon as I learn the kanji I'm going to be doing massive vocab acquisition using anki and my reading/translating. I dont expect to know everything in 3 years but I want to at least be able to read game/ visual novels with 80%+ comprehension. Without knowing any words this will never happen. So. I need a dictionary in my head. Hence doing vocab cards from material i am reading.

Thanks for the support, I will be trying my hardest to get a regular schedule set up so I develop it into a habit.

EratiK Wrote:Hey Ninjas.
To me "read at highschool level" means N1 reading, and there is no way you can do that without an advanced study of grammar (beyond Tae Kim).
Also you need speaking and writing practice if you want to get better at them.
The rest could work, but if you're bored or reach a plateau (3 years is a long time), don't hesitate to experiment other things.
Good luck!

I disagree I only used tae Kim and then looked up any grammar stuff that is not mentioned in Japanese (ie dictionary or chiebukuro or just plain google or rikaichan) and understood it.
Tae Kim covers so much anyway so I don't get why you can't figure of stuff he didn't specifically mention/explain on your own via what I just said. I paid 0 dollars buying Japanese grammar books etc and I've read over 50 bunkos. I'm just saying its not necessary necessarily
http://book.akahoshitakuya.com/u/124681

And isn't there obscure useless crap in n1 that Japanese people don't even get anyway
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid169421

I had a realization a while ago actually while repairing my mothers computer. I took a computer repair class at a votech school for 2 years in high school for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. I still don't know everything about computer repair and networking, but I know enough to learn anything I need if that makes sense.

1600 hours. To learn how computers and routers work. And I still have problems with laptops(our school did not have many at all) and did not learn everything. In 3 years I will have a degree in computer science with a focus on programming. I will still not know everything despite spending at least 4000 more hours working with computers. My favorite teacher, worked with computers for 40+ years and tells us he's still learning. There is no "point of completion".

This is not even counting the hundreads of hours I spent setting up LAN and playing with router settings to host game servers.

I'm figuring it will take just as long to learn Japanese fully. So I am giving myself the goal of no longer worrying about time and hours and just. Going with it. Finding interesting games and novels and anime and manga and learning through what I enjoy. There is no completion point, so I figure focus on what you love to do, and in my case it's play and make video games.

If I read or hear Japanese, it's probable in a game.
If I write or speak Japanese, it's probably about a game.

I figure I'm going to be doing this for a while, so I'm going to do this like I did when I started learning how routers, even with all the failures and calls to tech support.

It's all worth it once you finally get it working.