After more than 3 months of avoiding creating a Learning Log, it seems like I finally did it, more because it’s a new year for learning.
The main objective of this log is to keep track of my goals, store what i’ve been using to learn and be able to look back the progress.
I’ve actually started to learn a lot of time ago, could learn and not forget hiragana, but became a lot lost, on the last 3 years I could find a way, but been starting and stopping, now I’m studying more serious and saw a lot of progress on the last 3 months, I’ve built a routine and will keep it through this year, I’m actually by level 18 on manga, been also finishing some graded reads, YouTube videos and listening to podcast.
This year, I want to continue a good routine of immersion, while also improving my grammar and getting more into anime, video-games and books.
I’m going to keep updating this post as I progress. This version is kinda incomplete, I will finish it later, need some time to think
目的 Goals
My plan for goals is to create bigger goals for the year (can change), and monthly goals to achieve the yearly ones goals.
That‘s too big of a chunk to see any progress during the year. Seeing progress is key to keeping up motivation, I’d say. So I would do it with maybe something like finished lessons for Genki, or learned kanji of all of them kanji in the KKLC. Go for it!
The way I think works best for me it’s to have a bigger chunk for the year, and break it into smaller pieces, like by month, and what I will do each day to achieve it, the yearly goals help me to keep on the track of what I’ve planned for the year, also because it’s for an entire year it can change, but helps me keep a routine, but this is a good point that I forgot, will change the numbers to be easier to track.
To have yearly and monthly goals sounds like an effective strategy. I’m curious to how you will chunk those and see if I can grab something of that strategy for my own goals
I think now it’s going to the right direction, -I forgot to reply, すみません－, I’ve divided into things to do this month, like manga, podcast, at the moment, I want to get more into gaming, and later on some books, so I’ve put FFVI as a goal, and I’m doing like a daily goal to do everyday to achieve the monthly goals, maybe the game gets a little bit underdone this month, but I’m okay with it as it is my first game, and I still have a lot of time for the yearly goals, this is a way that’s actually working for me and getting things done, if you think you can grab something that you find useful, feel free to do it!
I think now it’s time to get a bit of review on January and think how things will progress,
̶I̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶r̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶d̶r̶a̶f̶t̶ ̶4 ̶d̶a̶y̶s̶ ̶a̶g̶o̶
The main goal of January was to build a immersion routine to carry through the year
Manga: This month I’ve only read Yotsubato!, it became pretty enjoyable and I was able to understand, pretty different from the first time I tried to read it as a first manga and felt it was too far from my level, I’ve read other mangas considered easier on the site, was able to build comprehension and now I’m back to Yotsubato! being able to understand, this made me fell like I had some real progress, i’m basically reading everyday, so it’s already routine.
Podcast: As a way to also improve listening, i’ve start at the end of the previous year to listen some podcast, i’m continuing to listen to Nihongo con Teppei for Begginers, and it’s comprehensible input, by now i’m listening more than what I used to listen last year, and it became a routine i’m always doing, so this is fine.
Anime: I’ve started 私に天使が舞い降りた, this is also an anime i tried to watch but found too hard, now i’ve watch some episodes I found it easier than what I remember, will consider it as a progress. This one i’ve started to work on too late on month, and it’s not a routine, i will work on this on february.
Game: For gaming, everything is new to me, so i didn’t expected to hit the goal for this, I started to play Final Fantasy VI, what helped me was pre-learning some words from the script and play, this way it was easier to learn the new vocabs that are used in the game, and also reading the script after the part i played, it’s also not a routine, so i need to work on it this month.
Kanji: a problem I found was that learning kanji in a loose way was making me confused as a dived in different content, so I started to read and learn using the KKLC (I already did just a starting part of RRTK but I’ve quit some years ago, it was really at the beggining). I’ve read that the best way to study was to get the kanji down and learn, and then practice with the Kanji Learner’s Course Graded Reading Sets they build, it used only the kanjis you’ve learned before and introduced phrases you could use and get comprehensive kanji read, this is a great idea, but this book is REALLY BORING, at the start it was fun because of the concept, at the end by 80% I couldn’t take it anymore, so I changed my approach to learning kanji, now I’m using anki for kanji together with the book, and practicing writing as a way to get it easier into my head, found an app called Ringotan that’s pretty good for it, also has SRS for writing, it’s going well, this new approach already became a routine and i’m learning 10 new kanjis per day, this one I also started a bit late, so i didn’t achieve the goals for january, but it’s okay.
For a month focused more on get routines down, it’s actually good that I did make routine of most things, now I can see what I’ve done that’s good and needs to continue and what I need to improve, so let’s work on these this month.
This text actually came out pretty big, i’m not gonna comply too much because I have some difficult when writting things, as they tend to be too short, i’m gonna finish Yotsubato! by middle of month and start some new manga, so i’m looking forward to it.
がんばれ！
Can I ask which ones? I have a list of beginner-friendly manga (that are also interesting to read), but I don’t read much at that level anymore. So curious if there’s more I can add to it
Ringotan is great. I found it helpful for recognizing some styles of handwritten kanji as well.
That’s interesting, I will also check it later
For the ones i’ve read:
スーと鯛ちゃん 1: This one is the first one i’ve read, and it’s pretty easily, basically two cats interacting, could just get the first volume, but it was good for first read.
チーズスイートホーム: Classical Chi’s Sweet Home, from the same author as the previous one, we can say it’s more difficult than the previous one, you have baby talk from Chi, but it keeps the writing style from the author, overall pretty enjoyable and fun.
かわずや: Simple Story about a girl who works on a store.
今日から始める幼なじみ: Romcom story, the only negative point we can say it’s that it hasn’t furigana, this may spike up the difficult a bit, but the vocab is pretty simple.
姫乃ちゃんに恋はまだ早い: This is a romcom about elementary school children, we can basically say the same thing as the previous one, it also doesn’t have furigana.
みらいのふうふですけど?: Another one for the romcom list, it has partial furigana, but has similar difficult.
舞ちゃんのお姉さん飼育ごはん。: Romcom with cooking, the slice of life parts of it are easy to understand, but the part where there’s cooking it become more difficult, as there’s cooking related vocab and verbs, so it’s 50/50 for easy and hard.
ハピネス: One of the last one’s i’ve read, now it’s a story about vampires, there’s some new vocabs that I could get, and the overall grammar and structure are fairly simple, recommend.
