Motivation and Discipline: Spanish and Japanese Log

[kelvin921019]

Morning transit
Anki review + Glossika (do 10 reps as review drop)
~50 mins

Lunch
Translation 15 mins
Assimil 24 (short lesson again) 45 mins
It's better to accompany Assimil with some leisure reading / listening, so as to boost the vocab and to reinforce the sentence patterns. Although I do appreciate the "light grammar" approach of Assimil, sometimes I need some googling for better understanding of difficult point. Nevertheless, I still refrain from doing intensive grammar drill. As it is always adviced in Assimil, I should understand instead of memorizing it.

Once again, I encounter new vocabularies in exercise. I think that it is one of the "trick" by Assimil to maintain the vocabulary size of its book (another "trick" which I hate is to put them in footnote). But it kind of deviate from the purpose of having an exercise, namely to test on our understanding of the vocabularies and structure in the main text. Another thing, this Assimil book seems to contain quite a lot of typos. "Lección cutro". Apart from these, I'm still a fan of its method.

Just some preliminary thoughts on bidirectional translation: the four stage in a bilateral translation allows me to view the text in different angles and in the meantime allow me to refresh my memories of the lesson (so it's SRS, but each review takes a slightly different form).
(a) L-R is the learning process, but the subsequent tasks test on how much you have actually learned the text
(b) Reviews allows refreshing my memory in (a)
(c) L2 to L1 translation test on my understanding of the text. Doing both word to word translation and meaning translation allows me to highlight the difference between L1 and L2. The process of selecting what hint I should keep actually test on my ability to highlight the features of L2.
(d) L1 to L2 translation test on my vocabulary and understanding of structure of L2. In the meantime, it is a check on my L2 to L1 translation. If I do step (3) wrongly, my L2 will not be correct as well. In the end it boils down to the depth of my understanding of the text in the L-R process.

Home
Assimil 30 mins in total (spending most time on reviewing)
I can sometimes do some Glossika: today I did 15 mins (I decided to do so after I noticed in my Spanish studies that after some crazily difficult sentences in the beginning there's a drop in the complexity of sentence structure).

I am not in the mood to do bunpo today. I'm never in a rush, I'm going to have my N4 in December, that's plenty of time. In fact, if things go smoothly, I may skip N4 and go straight to N3.

I read an interesting analysis on Wikipedia that Japanese actually have grammatical cases.

Cases in Japanese are marked by particles placed after the nouns. A distinctive feature of Japanese is the presence of two cases, which are roughly equivalent to the nominative case in other languages: one representing the sentence topic, the other representing the subject. The most important case markers are the following:

Nominative - が (ga) for subject, は (wa) for the topic
Genitive - の (no)
Dative - に (ni), used for a goal or recipient of the action (e.g. "gives to someone"), or to indicate spatial placement (e.g. "to the west")
Accusative - を (o)
Lative - へ (e), used for indicating direction towards (e.g."toward some place") but leaves ambiguity as to whether it is the goal.
Ablative - から (kara), used for indicating direction away (e.g. "from some place")
Terminative - まで (made), used for the goal of a direction (e.g."up to/until some place")
Instrumental - で (de)

This shed some light in my bidirectional translation. I used to treat the particles as something like a preposition and I was very frustrated in looking for some meaningful way to translate が or を, or to distinguish に and (で / へ). Everything makes sense when I treat them as grammatical cases.

[kelvin921019]

(30/4/2020 Public Holiday)
I have changed the topic of this log. Probably just make it sounds less boring. When I am lost, I often look for reference from my two favorite polygots: ikenna and Luca. I was inspired by Luca's study log, so I kept my own here. He pointed out the pros of keeping a log and set out the goals (to some audiences):
https://www.lucalampariello.com/10-winning-steps-for-the-ultimate-language-learning-plan/

Morning
Anki review 20 mins
Glossika 12 mins (This time will start to get longer after I changed to do 10 new sentences a day)

Afternoon:
Translation 15 mins
Assimil 25 40 mins (A 8 sentence short story with the final one being an “Ah!”)
Once again, my experience in Pimsleur and Lingodeer / Duolingo help me in laying down the foundation, both in terms of grammar and vocabulary. As a result I don't have to spend time learning the beginner vocabulary but to focus at the upper beginner ones and focus at the structure of the language. For the next language, I think I will start with the combo Pimsleur + Lingodeer / Duolingo / first 8 - 10 chapters of any beginner type materials.

Return transit
Glossika Japanese 15 mins (keep in at the minimum of 5 new sentence everyday)
Assimil Japanese 20 mins

Although I’m still in 1/4 of Assimil, I have to start thinking about the what next. This allows me to set out a clear path, so that I won't get lost in my path and secondly I can get things prepared (like preparing the amazon orders and begetting).

I got my inspiration from Luca's experience in his greek studies and ikenna's french experience, and also my experience in Primary School where my reading skill improves significantly after intensively reading 3 english novels in 2 years (which allows me to get through English exams at school for the next 5 years without much studying) and my experience of listening to BBC podcast (and reading Times magazine) before my public exam, which effectively boost my listening skills.

My game plan is to first reach a solid conversational fluent at a solid B1 level so that I can enjoy Spanish media without subtitles. My plan would be for the first 1 to 2 months after Assimil, I will do this routine:
(1) Anki Review (in the morning) + Glossika
(2) Harry Potter: reading and listening
(3) Podcast and TV series without subs
(4) italki tutors (Speaking lesson)
(Still considering its usefulness) News in Slow Spanish [?]
Then, after I have finished Assimil Japanese, I will stop the Anki review and Glossika for Spanish.

As for Japanese, there are still plenty of time, but I am not worried about the resources.
(1) Drama / Anime / Variety Shows (no subtitles)
(2) Satori Reader / "Read Real Japanese Fiction" / Glossika
(3) Bunpo for further grammar drill
(4) italki
(5) for JLPT: vocabulary list and past papers
And planning for a Japan trip at the end of this year

[kelvin921019]

(Public Holiday)
Afternoon:
Anki Review on Assimil Spanish: 20 mins
Some of the words during the review still sound a bit “foreign” to me. I completely know its meaning and sound, just feel “unfamiliar”. I think it is probably because the expression is not repeated enough in the book. Qué raro!

Translation exercise 12 mins
Assimil Lesson 26 (40 mins)
I don't like this lesson, once again they put a lot of new words and expression in the footnote and cultural notes. Some of them are actually useful (such as the verb Ganar) so I throw them into anki. However, I can only do it without any audio, so it's a little problematic when I encounter such word in podcast in the future.

Evening Running
Glossika Spanish + Japanese 30 mins
If I'm going to get the most our of Glossika, I should sit down and examine the sentences. However, Glossika is my "transit practice method" but not the "studying method". Furthermore, one problem with its Japanese programme is that sometimes it lacks consistency in its language. They sometimes uses different expression for the same English translation:
"He is sick" -> "彼は風邪を引ひいていて" (actually means that he caught a cold)
"You are still ill" -> "あなたはまだ病気です"

"is she ill" -> está enfermo
"are you sick?" -> Estás enferma
Also that sometimes they use more formal language while sometimes they use less formal one. I'm using it as a pronunciation practice and introduction of more sentences. But at this stage I am not going to study the sentences in depth.

Night:
Assimil Japanese 10: 5 mins (I am leaving the detailed analysis and exercise for day 2)
Bidirectional Translation: 10 mins
Bunpo: 2 small sections (I do Bunpo usually for the days with the least workload with Assimil)
My approach with bunpo is to go through each lesson, copy all the example sentences and analyse them, do a L2 to L1 translation. Then the in-app practice and SRS will do its job in refreshing my memory. My aim is to get myself familiarize with the grammar item and eventually recognize the sentence pattern in my reading practice.

Secondly, I tried not to use Anki for Japanese. Firstly, it is a tedious kind of drill not too suitable for studying at night. Secondly, my approach with Japanese is to understand the language with a lot of input (after assimil) and in which event important words will appear so many times that I will soon remember. Thirdly, as to assimil, I will use a schedule to do my space repetition instead of an app so that I can have a precise control over the amount of work load each day.

I had sufficient exposure to Japanese prior to my Japanese studies so that I don't have much problems listening to Japanese and understanding many of the vocabularies. I just need to learn the grammar and to reinforce my pre-existing knowledge. In this case, there is no need to inundate myself with Japanese. On the other hand, I have no prior Spanish experience, therefore I need anki to inundate myself with Spanish everyday so that I can overtime get use to its tone.

As to another thing about Assimil, I notice that at least for the Spanish one and Japanese one, some basic vocabularies may not be comprehensively / systematically covered in these aspects:
- the seasons / the months / expressing date
- Family members
- Common sports / activities
- Colours
- Basic emotion adjectives (sad, angry, cheerful etc)
- Weather
- Food / drinks
A note to myself in taking up another language: A good introduction to A1 materials is needed before Assimil. Probably Pimsleur plus one beginner book which bring myself to A1 level is needed. Otherwise it may be strange that on one hand one can express complex ideas while on the other hand he can't tell others what day it is.

[kelvin921019]

(Public Holiday)
I think the first thing I will lose my motivation in should be the motivation to write long log....
Morning:
Review + Translation: 35 mins
Assimil Lesson 27: 45 mins (This is a better lesson, more challenging while not too difficult to progress. The main problem is still its excessive use of footnote)
For every lesson, I encounter 3 types of materials:
- words / expressions which I already know and can be recognised after repeated listening
- completely new items
- and the most troublesome one, those I should have known but cannot figure out solely by listening.
My approach in how I start each lessons are: (1) listen the audio million times and write down whatever I have heard (2) figure out all the known words or by pronunciation write down new words (3) repeat until there's I can figure out nothing more. Then when I read the L1, I will discover the most troublesome categories of words, which are words I should have known. In that event, I will repeat listening to the audio until I am familiarize with its sound.

My approach to the text:
(1) Main text: aim for 100% memorisation and can be recited without any aid at the day I study it and the day after
(2) Footnote, exercise 2: and cultural notes: I will pick and choose some useful ones and throw them into another anki deck
I think I’m going to complain million times in this log about how much extra items they’ve thrown into the footnote or culture note. But I think my complain is valid.

Although some people advocate not to memorize the text or only aim at recognising 80 to 90% of the text in long run, I prefer digesting the book as it will form my "core" in my studies. My aim is by the time I complete this book I can reproduce every lesson from its L1. That's when I can move on to native materials.

Transit
15 mins Glossika Spanish feels like forever, listen to podcast español con juan (good for intensive listening exercise, though I don't have the prerequisite knowledge to understand more than 50%, it is just a test for me to see how far I have gone through and clearly the answer is "not much")

Return Trip and At Home
Assimil Japanese 10 Part II
LingoDeer Do a few 5-mins quizzes for review and refreshing memory (Japanese I)
LingoDeer New lesson

You may notice that I have given up on Bunpo and gone back to Lingodeer. After reviewing some N5 past papers, it appears that Bunpo is clearly not enough as a standalone grammar course for N5 and I believe that's the case for N4 as well. So I switch back to Lingodeer but keep my progress slow and steady to prevent overwhelming myself too much. I also stopped using Glossika for Japanese.

I think after testing different methods, I will settle with Assimil (a reading exercise) + Lingodeer (grammar and vocab drill) combo. So I can do the Assimil reading + lingodeer reviewing in commute and do the translation exercise and new lingodeer lesson at home. Just hope that this is the final decision I have made after rapidly switching over different methods in the past 2 weeks or so.

I used to think N4 should be enough for me to enjoy Japanese, but it turns out that in order to enjoy light novel or anime (not to mention news or TV drama) N3 is the minimum requirement. In that case, I have to prolong my study process to N3. According to my research on internet, N2 is needed for me to understand more sophisticated books (like books concerning current issues). I think that's why Japanese is regarded as a "difficult language" because of its sentence pattern based grammar.

At night
I listen to some Dreaming Spanish youtube videos for beginners. I think I can understand much thanks to the foundation laid by Lingodeer and Pimsleur.

[kelvin921019]

(Public Holiday)
Today I do something different, I try to use a watch to mark the exact time I'm actively studying for each language.
Spanish
Anki Review in the morning: 23 mins
Bilateral Translation: 10 mins
Assimil: Cuarta lección de repaso (Lección veintiocho) 29 mins
Glossika: start to skip the repeated phrases 16 mins
Review lesson + inserting mp3 at night: 15 mins

Total active study time: 1 hour 30 mins (Not a much as I expected, but for non review lecture Assimil usually use up more time)

Japanese
Lingodeer doing review of 2 previous lessons using cellphone (30 mins in total)
Assimil Lesson 11 (L-R; comprehension; understand words) + 1 translation task: 20 mins
Lingodeer new lessons 40 mins

Total active study time: 1 hr 30 mins
It turns out I have spent more or less the same active studying time for both Spanish and Japanese. Therefore I do the immersion in Spanish in order to make Spanish the "main language" at this moment.

Some words on Lingodeer
It turns out that Lingodeer use up the most of my time. But that's fine as I have chosen to complete an entire section today (there are in total 60 sections to be completed and each sections have 2 to 3 small lessons), but when motivation is low, I can do one lesson only or even not to do any.

Upon some research of the genuine review on Lingodeer (usually I look for criticisms), the major complaint against Lingodeer are as follows:
(1) Lingodeer does not provide too much drilling so you won't know how to create your own sentences
(2) Lingodeer itself does not have a SRS system
(3) It is not comprehensive enough

In this regard, Lingodeer actually provided some instructions on how to use its lesson
(1) go through every lesson, write down the words and sentence
(2) on second day, review the previous lessons using "challenge mode"
(3) occasionally do a 5-minutes review (random questions from all topics learnt)

In order to get the most out of Lingodeer, I utilize my experience with Assimil and Anki:
(1) Firstly, one have to realize that what Lingodeer offers is sentence pattern drilling with extensive grammar notes. So basically they show you lots of sentence in different manner (like fill in the blanks, dictation etc, just like Glossika) in order to demonstrate how the grammar works. In this case, when going through each lessons, I will copy all sentences and vocabs on paper as they suggested (N.B. never do everything on phone alone. My previous mistake is to only jot down grammar notes and vocab notes on paper)
(2) The first time the sentence appears, I listen to it once, and try to translate the sentence from its Chinese translation and see how much I have missed. Then I analyse the sentence and memorize it. That's fairly easy once I've understood its meaning.
(3) During sentence drill, I just cover the answer and try to translate the entire sentence from scratch
(4) As to stories, I'll try to comprehend the story from audio and do dictation of the text. Then understand the story with the aid of the translation
(5) As to review, I prepared a list containing the past lessons in order (I group each review into groups of 2 to 3 small lessons) and will add a new review item once I have completed a new group of lessons. So everyday I will during my commute do review to the lessons I have completed the day before (if any) + 1 review in the list or 2 reviews items in the list. As I will progress the lessons in a slower pace than I review the lessons, I will soon finish reviewing the lessons in the list and in that case I'll start the list all over. This will satisfy the lack of SRS.
In any event, if I have extra time, I will do a few 5-min quiz (random questions from all previous lessons).

So this should be enough to fix all Lingodeer's problems:
(1) Step (1) to (4) should allow me to do more drilling and sentence creation
(2) Step (5) allow me to review lessons in a more or less SRS manner
(3) These would take up much of my time, so it won't prejudice my Spanish studies
(4) as to comprehensiveness of the lesson, I'll leave it to my N3 studies as it is pointed out to me that one need at least N3 level to comprehend light novel and anime.

[kelvin921019]

As the forum is downed yesterday, I have typed out yesterday's log in my personal computer.
(4/5/2020)
Spanish
Anki vocabulary and grammer drill: 5 mins
Anki Assimil Review (quick oral translation and sentences review): 16 mins
Assimil Book Review Lección veinte ocho: 5 mins
Glossika Spanish: 22 mins
Assimil bidirectional translation with lesson 29: 73 mins
Anki organisation (Insert mp3 and review at night): 15 mins

Total active study time (exclusive random review): 2 hrs 16 mins
Comment on Spanish studies:
As to Glossika: I start to cut down sentence which are fairly easy and those which are repeating itself
As to Assimil, this is the first long lesson (in total 14 sentences with 5 sentences in exercise 1 which all go into Anki). I have spent unnecessarily too much time in analysing the sentences which are repeating itself a bit. I have to adjust my approach so as to shorten the time in going through the lesson. Upon quick look at the number of mp3s in the future lessons, I think something has to be done in order to be more efficient in my studies
I am still listening to some español con juan podcast in my free time. Good podcast, i+1 for me.
Short term Target:
(a) Shorten total time to 1.5 hr
(b) Continue with español con Juan
(c) Start reading Spanish casual materials (I went through a blog entry in the español zone in this site)

Japanese
Review Lingodeer lesson: 40 mins
Assimil 11 (part 2): 15 mins
Assimil Homework: 5 mins
Lingodeer new lesson: 30 mins

Total active study time: 1 hr 30 mins
Comment on Japanese Study progress:
(a) So there are 2 types of review in Lingodeer: a full lesson review and a quick review. In the so-called "challenge mode" review, I simply do the lesson again. While on the other hand in quick review I have to translate all sentences from Chinese (or English) to Japanese within a given time frame and before translating the audio of the sentence will be played once. However, to make life difficult for myself I will turn off the audio. Of course I will get some wrong.
(b) Another thing about Lingodeer: I sometimes get my answer wrong because I have use different word orders (which does not affect the overall meaning) or simply I use kanji instead of kana. That's little bit frustrating but it does not hinder my progress too much. Though yesterday I have spent 30 minutes figured this out. I kept thinking why my answer is wrong and then realized that I used Kanji instead of kana.
(c) As suggested by woshijiajun, I am now using Assimil as graded reader and for bilateral translation

Short term target:
(a) Shorten total time to 1 hr
(b) I am not in a rush in doing output exercise, but I have done more active exercise i.e. L1 to L2 translation as time progress.

[kelvin921019]

(5/5/2020)
Spanish
Anki vocabulary and grammer drill: 5 mins
Anki Assimil Review (quick oral translation and sentences review): 20 mins
Glossika Spanish: 20 mins
Assimil bidirectional translation and lesson 30: 45 mins
Anki organisation (Insert mp3 and review at night): 12 mins

It is the first time I'm unable to recite the entire lesson perfectly even after repeated drill practice, some words simply can't stick and keep forgetting the correct form. I reckon that is because those words are rather out of context (the word "cretino": idiot - simply has nothing to do with the story)

I am now focusing on doing more podcast, apart from Español con Juan (which is too beginner-friendly in my opinion), I am also using español automático, where the hosts are talking in a faster pace than Juan
http://www.espanolautomatico.com/

Total active study time (exclusive random review): 102 mins (This time is acceptable for me)

Japanese
Review Lingodeer: > 1 hr
Assimil Session: 20 mins
New Lingodeer Lesson: 20 mins
Total active study time (exclusive random review): > 2 hrs
Clearly I have chosen the wrong approach. My time with Assimil is heavily compromised today.
First mistake: The 5 mins speed review without audio hint is impossible to be completed in the first take. As a result, I redo the same review for over 5 to 6 times before I get everything correct and have a severe headache after reviewing the lessons.
Solution: use audio cue whenever needed, it will tell you the intended order and choice of words.

Second mistake: Do review of 2 lingodeer full sections review. My initial plan is 5-mins x 4 = 20 mins. Turn out it's not the case at all.
Solution: Revamp the schedule, everyday I will either do a review of the previous completed section (consisting of 2 to 3 small lessons) in challenge mode (so just going through the sentences quickly and painlessly, probably 15 to 20 mins in total) or do 5-mins pop quiz of two lessons at most with audio cue (so I guess 5-mins x 2 lessons x 2 attempts = 20 mins should be enough)

Third mistake: Attempt to SRS my Assimil reviews early before the active phase. The workload - together with the workload at my actual job - stack up exponentially.
Solution: After a cycle of bilateral translation, the next translation will be at active wave (by that time I will have finished my Spanish Assimil).

In order to prepare myself for N5 exam, I may also start to take some time to do mockpapers when I have some free time. So far I have the following mockpapers:
(a) mock papers provided by my friend
(b) the "MyTest" App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jlpt-test-n2-n3-n4-n5-mytest/id1463267540
(c) of course, the official mock papers: https://www.jlpt.jp/e/samples/sampleindex.html

[kelvin921019]

As an introvert, I don't need external reason to motivate myself. Learning itself is the motivation.
Spanish
B&B (Breakfast and Bus)
Anki vocabulary and grammer drill: 4 mins
Anki Assimil Review (quick oral translation and sentences review):17mins
Glossika Spanish: 15 mins
Listening to Lesson 31 (preview): 5 mins
Lunch
Assimil bidirectional translation: 10 mins
Assimoil lesson 31: 60 mins
Before Sleep
Anki organisation (Insert mp3 and review at night): 12 mins
Total active study time (exclusive random reviews and podcast time): 108 mins

I'm still doing fine I guess. Of course when the lesson gets longer, the more likely I will miss something. Today I have a lot of problems memorize the exact spelling / pronunciations of two to three words even after repeating the lesson every single moment (sometimes during conference / meeting, when my attention slip, an assimil lesson will suddenly kick in my mind).

The plus side is that the stories are always interesting (on the other hand, Japanese one are just plain and dull) and if the story is interesting enough I can always remember the gist of the story and translate it to Spanish in my head. Having said that, doing a lesson for 60 mins seems to be the norm given the amount and I start to feel like I am rushing a bit more than before.

In the future there will be lessons with 14 - 16 sentences. Probably I need better time allocation. So basically my daily routine for 1 Assimil lesson is as follows:-
(1) Listen to the audio usually 8 to 10 times (usually listen 2 to 3 times in the morning to get a feel of the difficulty and the length of the lesson, so I can allocate the time better)
(2) Try to write down whatever I can capture from the audio on my notebook. Usually I leave some blank space with a underline indicating the parts where I am not comfortable with or even cannot recognise / don't know at all
(3) Then, listen to the audio while reading L1 4 - 5 times, then write down the words in L1 which I think are corresponding to the parts I don't know. Sometimes when reading L1, I may notice some words that I ought to know but I can't recognise when listening only. Also the L1 also contains hint of the structure, so I can use a pencil to divide the text into chunks
(4) Then, reading L2 and try to match the chunks in L1 with the L2 (usually by this time I have memorized the L1). Also read aloud a few times. By this time, every L2 start to make sense. I then write the corresponding L2 on the paper next to the L1 chunks I wrote down. Then I cover the L2 and test myself
(5) After reading aloud a few times, I can cover the L2 and read out the lesson only by reading L1.
(6) Close the book, by this time I can completely understand the entire lesson
(7) Now open the book, I start enter sentence which worth reviewing into Anki (usually just avoid repeating sentences like Qué pasa which have appeared in 3 different lessons). When entering every sentence, I will start to analysis its structure and read the corresponding footnote. It's a L2 to L1 one sided passive only card, L2 is the text, L1 usually contains the translation, hyperliteral translation, root form of relevant new verbs and any grammar notes
(8) As I have complained millions times before, the author like to insert extra vocabularies into the footnote. I will choose the interesting one and mark them with an asterisk
(9) After finishing the main text, I close the book and listen to the text again. Then, do exercise 1. Usually if it is not too easy or a repeated sentence, I will also enter it into anki
(10) Then exercise 2, I prefer covering the entire sentence and do translation myself. If some sentence are useful, I'll enter it into anki (another deck, a cloze completion or translation deck) then I'll enter all sentence or items marked with asterisk into that deck as well.

I am thinking about skipping the bolded part, as handwriting takes up quite a lot of time.

Japanese
Return Transit
Review Lingodeer: 30 mins
Assimil 12 (Part II): 6 mins

At home
Assimil translation work: 10 mins
New Lingodeer Lessons: 25 mins
Total active study time (exclusive random review): ~1 hr

The time spend on Lingodeer starts to make sense. I now opt not to do 5 mins drill but instead do challenge mode, but with one trick. In challenge mode, no audio will be played before answering. So I can just cover all the hints with my finger and try to recite the sentence. Basically, it's like doing Glossika.

[kelvin921019]

(7/5/2020)
Spanish
Breakfast and Transit
Anki vocabulary and grammar drill right after wake up: 3 mins
Anki Assimil Review (quick oral translation and sentences review): 17 mins
Glossika Spanish: 15 mins (struck out too many repeated items)
Listening to Lesson 32 (preview): 2 mins

Lunch
Assimil bidirectional translation: 7 mins
Assimil lesson 32: 50 mins

Before Sleep
Anki organisation (Insert mp3 and review at night): 12 mins
Total active study time (exclusive random reviews and podcast time): 106 mins

One problem now is the lack of basic vocabulary. A little problematic when I can start to use complex structures but I still don’t know how to ask people where the ATM machine is or ask for a water kettle or buy a t-shirt. But I saw that it is advised against memorizing vocabularies categorically. Let's see what's after 100 lessons of Assimil and then after Harry Potter.

In order to prepare for longer lessons, I try to break down the amount of time I spend in doing one lesson (8 sentences, 60 words, 7 of which are ankified), excluding the time I listen to the recording in the morning.
(i) Stage one: usual L-R, then L1, then L2, then write down vocab list on paper, this would be the usual L-R cycle for me: 17 mins
(ii) Stage two: preparing anki card while analysing the sentences, reading the notes, by the end of this stage I can reproduce the entire lesson from memory: 23 mins
(iii) Stage three: Doing the 2 exercises (and ankifying some exercise 1 sentences): 4 mins
(iv) Stage four: preparing another set of anki cards on vocabularies: 6 mins

So, I tried a bit not to write down the vocab but I don't feel like memorize the words without writing it down at least once. So, Stage one cannot be cut down.
Stage two is the crux of my method, without this step I likely can only doing L2 -> L1 at most.
Stage three is part of the lesson and a test on my knowledge. Sometimes it contains useful sentence for anki
So my decision is:
(1) to move stage four somewhere else if I don't have time
(2) If the lesson is too long, I may try not to dictate the lesson when listening, but I still need to write down vocab list.
(3) Listen to the lesson at lot more in the morning.

Japanese
Return Transit
Review Lingodeer: 17 mins
Assimil 13 (Part I): 11 mins

At home
Assimil translation work: 12 mins
New Lingodeer Lesson: 22 mins
Total active study time: ~ 1 hr

This is the sweet spot, not too less, not too much. When I'm reviewing lesson, I always play a sentence twice just to make the experience more similar to Glossika.

[kelvin921019]

(8/5/2020)
I think I can finalise my methodology and schedule after today's "final experiment". So from this day on I would write more about my learning progress instead of a very scientific log.
Spanish
Breakfast and Transit
Anki vocabulary and grammer drill wake up: 3 mins
Anki Assimil Review (quick oral translation and sentences review): 19 mins

Listening to Lesson 33 (preview): 3 mins
Assimil bidirectional translation: 20 mins

"Wasted time" during work in the morning
Assimil lesson 33: 65 mins (~60 words main text + 9 sentence all ankifyable)
15 mins Step 1 + 22 mins Step 2 (first 6 sentences)+ 28 mins (remaining 3 sentences + exercise + reading extra grammar)

Afternoon
Glossika Spanish: altogether 15 mins (doing it on and off)

Before Sleep
Step 4 + Anki organisation (Insert mp3 and review at night): 15 mins
Total active study time (exclusive random reviews and podcast time): 140 mins

So that's it. I have tried the time allocation in the dates where I am busy enough and do not have lunch alone. Inevitably I have spent more time as I have to do more work to "bridge" each of the sections and I have spent more time as I do my bidirectional translation work on transit (so typing on phone). However, I still manage to finish all the tasks but I cannot retain 100% like usual. Probably being too tired contribute to this.

In addition to my usual studies, I have also purchased the e-book "La profe de español" by Juan (of español con Juan). It is stated to be for A2 level so it is just slightly above my current level (the i+1 reading). On average I have 4 to 5 new words or expression highlighted for each page but their meaning usually can be inferred from the context.

I can say Juan is a genius. This book is much easier to digest but in the meantime challenging enough so that I can learn something more. It is better than "the Spanish Short stories for beginners" by Lingomastery which by all means is not meant for Beginners. Another plus about this is that it is written by native spanish. I am going to use it as supplementary reading exercise for the time being and then I can move on to more advance reading materials by Juan after finishing this one.

Japanese
Return Transit
Review Lingodeer: 15 mins
Assimil 13 (Part II): 10 mins

At home
Assimil translation work: 8 mins
New Lingodeer Lesson: 25 mins
Total active study time: 58 mins (a little bit rushing)

I finally get my schedule done. I will continue using this schedule on Japanese until mid September and by that time I would have finished Lingodeer. My plan would be to use Bunpo to fill the gaps in my N4 grammar for 1 to 2 weeks and to L-R more before moving on to N3 materials.

I also spent little bit of time doing some reading on watanoc (which I have discovered when reading other's log here). It contains very good materials so I can read say 5-6 articles leisurely without strain. They do spend a lot of effort in tuning the materials into appropriate level. N5 materials sometimes are just too dry as all sentence structure taught in N5 are purely descriptive, clearly they have spent a lot of effort in making the materials as interesting as possible.

There are also accompanying audio, but the one I've listened is recorded by the same person who spoke with an artificially high pitch when acting as the second character in a dialogue.As a result I burst out laughing. I think I will focus on doing reading in watanoc for the time being.

I have tried to revisit some old anime which I used to enjoy and it seems that I don't have the requisite amount of vocabulary and grammar to understand more than 50% of the contents. Therefore I am adopting the approach which I used before I start learning Japanese i.e. inferring the meaning of the dialogue using vocabularies which I have known as well as the image. The result of which is that I am not really training my listening skills. Therefore, I think watching anime is not helping too much for the time being except to get myself familiarize with the tone and rate of speech of native Japanese materials.