Wow, it's been four months since I last posted an update. Life has been very busy for me lately and sadly my language learning efforts have suffered from that. I realized I just don't have as much free time anymore to spend on learning languages, and that I'll have to make some hard decisions. Dealing with two languages in the beginner has doesn't seem realistic for me anymore, so I've decided to take a break from
Mandarin for the next 1-2 years. I've also scrapped my plan for this year, and have decided to just stick to my reading goals in Japanese and Korean.
Target reading:
Japanese: 25/50 books, 23/50 manga volumes
Korean: 0/1 book, 0/10 manga volumes
I didn't read much in Japanese until the second half of March, when I went on a reading spree and caught up with my goals. Manga won't be a problem at all, I read enough of those without even trying.
I'm going to have to try to read more in Korean, as I haven't made any progress with that at all yet.
I also let Anki build up a huge backlog since January. I have now caught up with Japanese and am slowly catching up on my Korean backlog (~500 left). That will be cleared next week. I'm not sure when I'll be adding cards again for Korean, I might take a week or two to get comfortable with my current deck first and then decide how I'll tackle the language again.
My idea for Japanese is a lot more concrete. I've taken the J-CAT again last month, but the results were a bit disappointing. Overall my score dropped by 12 points, mostly in the vocabulary and grammar department.
2017 May
Listening 72 (-5)
Vocabulary 53 (-5)
Grammar 59 (-6)
Reading 72 (+4)
Total 256 (-12)
Lately I've been mostly working on my listening and speaking, and I can really see the improvement I've made with those in my daily life.
Knowing this I've shifted my focus to improving my non-fiction related vocabulary and reviewing/activating the grammar points I've studied in the past. I'll add 3000-4000 words to Anki before the JLPT in December. I'd up the pace but I don't think I can keep up with the reviews if I do. For grammar I'll be using mostly the Shin Kanzen Master and JLPT drill books.
I've managed to get a small morning routine going of reading 15-30mins before heading into work, I might try to get some other stuff in as well if I manage to consistently get up earlier.