CDR's Japanese and Portuguese Language Log

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CDR
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Re: CDR Shoots for the Moon: N2 Japanese by Spring 2024

Postby CDR » Wed Oct 26, 2022 11:25 pm

Hours of Japanese Study : 527 / 1700

2x Super Challenge Japanese Films : 30 / 200

I started watching Midnight Diner on Netflix. It's cheesy, but the episodes are short, and sometimes I understand a single sentence, or pick up a vague understanding of what they are talking about.

Really, watching/listening to incomprehensible content is not a good use of my time, but I am doing it anyway.

1x Super Challenge Japanese Books : 2 / 100

I reduced it to 1x Super Challenge for books because the amount of reading required per day to get to 200 books is too much for me to handle at the moment. After the N3, I will focus on reading more and see if I can get on track for 200 books.

At the moment, it is 0.2 "Books" per day, which is 10 pages per day.

I typically do 4-5 NHK Easy articles, and then have been working through all the articles on Yomujp, starting with the N6 articles and working my way up. Yomujp articles are much easier to read, and most of my daily reading is from reading these.

I have been re-reading the Yomujp articles in sets as well, as it is even easier to re-read them. Although, even re-reading the "N6" articles, my reading speed is still slow.

For N3
Japanese Grammar Flashcards : 140 / 390
I am behind - but I am planning to finish before the middle of November.

I am overall unsure of these cards. They are English equivalent grammar point/explanation on the front and Japanese on the back, but some have similar English descriptions. This makes it confusing.

If I have a hard time, I edit the card and put an example sentence or four on the front in Japanese, with the grammar point bolded, and the English definition of the grammar point on the back and the translation of the sentences.

I find these work much better, I should turn them all into this format, but that is a lot of work.

Japanese Vocab Flashcards : 1104 / 3000 Edit (Actually, 1104 cards)
I am very behind, it seems very unlikely that I can see all 3000 flashcards before the N3.

I need to diversify my vocab learning strategy in favour of remembering now and forgetting later. The strategies can be unsustainable because I can clean it up in the new year and put them into Anki cards.

Edit:
I should mention I have 360 cards in backlog (due for review, but I have not done them), and another 270 suspended that I need to sort through.

Total new cards left is 1940. That is 50 per day to finish the day before the exam, but that would not be ideal, as there would be some subset of words that I don't really know that well, having learned them only a week ago or so.

Japanese Kanji Flashcards : 1415 / 1415
I mentioned I would complete an Anki deck I created to learn the readings of all the N3 Kanji. I have decided to drop this because the cards are too difficult, and I am able to answer the "match the Kanji to the reading, reading to the Kanji" questions on N5 and N4 practice tests easily, and I did no such Kanji reading study.

Learning the vocab that will be tested is a better use of my time.

NHK Easy Articles : 53 / 228
I am getting much better at reading these, and it has happened quicker than I expected.

When I started, reading a single NHK Easy Web article took between 12-18 minutes. The last few days it is down to between 7 minutes and 10 minutes per article.

Super Challenge - Portuguese Films : 36 / 100

Super Challenge - Portuguese Books : 0 / 100 0.5
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golyplot
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Re: CDR Shoots for the Moon: N2 Japanese by Spring 2024

Postby golyplot » Fri Oct 28, 2022 6:10 am

CDR wrote:Learning the vocab that will be tested is a better use of my time.


First off, there's no official list of JPDB vocabulary. It's just people guessing about what tends to be on the test.

Second, I think this is a harmful philosophy anyway. There are some people who have a need to pass the JLPT because they plan to work or immigrate to Japan, but for the autodidacts just doing it for bragging rights, I really question the value.

I remember when I started out, I was really concerned about JLPT practice tests and aiming to pass the JLPT and so on. It was only at the 2.5 year mark, when I took the practice N3 for the second time and saw little improvement, that I finally gave up in frustration. I decided that the JLPT tests are artificial and pointless and a waste of time. Instead it is better to focus on doing what you like, because that is the real goal after all. And if you do that, it shouldn't matter what the practice tests say.


Obviously, everyone is different. But I wouldn't be surprised if the same happens to you at some point.
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Re: CDR Shoots for the Moon: N2 Japanese by Spring 2024

Postby CDR » Sat Oct 29, 2022 6:38 am

golyplot wrote:
CDR wrote:Learning the vocab that will be tested is a better use of my time.

First off, there's no official list of JPDB vocabulary. It's just people guessing about what tends to be on the test.


Yes, you're correct. I am not too worried about it however, as the Tango N5 and N4 decks have corresponded quite well to practice tests. I expect the same for the N3 deck. The main problem is not enough time to get through all the cards!

golyplot wrote:but for the autodidacts just doing it for bragging rights, I really question the value.


You're predicting the future here. Stay tuned for my YouTube channel where I will hustle Duolingo Premium and Rosetta Stone with video titles like "How I failed the N3 after 500+ hours of studying Japanese" in the spring. :lol:

Why Register for the JLPT
While I am not actually an auto-didactic hustler planning my future YouTube fame on failing the N3 in December, I do not see the JLPT the same way you do. I understand your focus is on the certification itself. I agree, being certified N3 is not particularly useful.

I did not pay for a certification however, I paid for a test. When I bought the test, it is because I wanted the motivation and hard work of studying for the test.

$80 is cheap if it meant increasing the odds that I studied from July to December. It is just another layer of motivation, something I spoke about earlier in this journal. When paying for the test, I accepted that I would probably want to do some min-maxing and some test specific study, but that was a deal I was fine with making.

I also spoke earlier in this journal about how difficult it was to read in Japanese, from an emotional standpoint. Well, in the last two weeks the answer has been "that doesn't matter, the test is coming and I should read." The same barrier took me two+ years to conquer in Portuguese. $80 is cheap for that kind of result :D

As I have mentioned previously, it doesn't matter to me whether I pass or fail come December 4. Don't get me wrong, will I be happy if I manage to squeeze by? Of course, I will celebrate and go eat veggie sushi with my wife. But, if I fail, it's fine, it was $80 well spent. Either way, there is still lots of work left to do, work that will never end.

Maybe I should be able to find the motivation intrinsically, but I already know myself, I am not going to find it. So, I recruit processes, software, people, and tests to help me along the way. Maybe others can bask in the glory of having the grit and determination to get through the same process without giving the Japanese government $80, that's cool by me.

Why is your journal titled the way it is?

Will you, dear reader, dislike me forever for using cheesy quotes and admitting this is how I set my goals, and the inspiration for the name of the log?

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
― Les Brown

Additionally, the quantified nature of the goals are because of my adherence to the 4 Disciplines of Execution
https://www.franklincovey.com/the-4-disciplines/

1. Focus on the Wildly Important
2. Act on Lead Measures
3. Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
4. Create a Cadence of Accountability

Why stop learning Kanji readings in isolation?
While I wrote in my other post that spending time learning vocabulary will result in a better outcome for the JLPT, I also think that spending time learning vocab will be a better outcome for my Japanese in general. I did not feel the need to be that specific, but let me further put to rest the image of CDR the Language YouTuber Huckster :lol:

After learning Kanji readings in isolation for two weeks, I could see some benefit, but I know that I can learn the readings of Kanji from vocab, as I have done from January to now. In general, I think learning vocabulary is more essential and impactful to both my Japanese learning in general, and the JLPT specifically.

I can give this kind of analysis for each of the study tasks I am currently doing, or not doing. No doubt, reflection on your study process and habits is an important part of learning a language. Reflecting on your thoughts about those study processes and why you are doing them is also important.
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golyplot
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Re: CDR Shoots for the Moon: N2 Japanese by Spring 2024

Postby golyplot » Sat Oct 29, 2022 4:55 pm

Signing up for the JLPT as a commitment device is an interesting idea. It doesn't make sense for me, but I can see how it might be useful for others.
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Re: CDR Shoots for the Moon: N2 Japanese by Spring 2024

Postby CDR » Tue Nov 01, 2022 12:16 am

Shift Work and Language Learning
Because I have to switch shifts for my job every two weeks, sometimes it feels like I get a good pace going and then it's all reset as I struggle with a new sleep schedule. This week, the switch to night shift has been more terrible then usual. I keep waking up after just 3-4 hours of sleep and struggling to fall back to sleep.

In the last day, I discovered a solution to this problem. After 15 minutes of Anki cards, I am struggling to stay awake. Handy because I don't have to leave bed to do flashcards. :lol:

Japanese
I watched more of Midnight Diner the other day, I finished ep 11 and 12.

ep 11 marks a new season, and the change in production values is obvious. They feature more places outside the diner then in the first season, and the shots are more varied.

I don't typically read the episode descriptions before watching, because Netflix doesn't show me.

I really have no idea what episode 11 was about. A new character spent a lot of time searching for a recurring character who is part of the Yakuza. He eventually convinces the Yakuza character to visit this lady in the hospital who is dying. They talk about their relationship and how they did not get married (?) and a few scenes later it is implied she died. They probably talked about it as well, but I did not understand.

ep 12 was more understandable. This girl works so much she falls asleep sitting up while waiting for her order at the diner. It is eventually revealed that she works so hard to support her deadbeat boyfriend (however, it was ambiguous to me whether he was her boyfriend, or brother, I did not understand anything to figure out their relationship, I just saw the episode description after). He is an unsuccessful comedian, and also a violent, abusive person.

When he is being a terrible human being to his girlfriend in the diner, one of the reoccurring Yakuza characters walks in at the same time and the food the boyfriend threw at the girlfriend hits him. I was pretty sure this sealed his doom, and I was correct. Eventually, the Yakuza force him to break up with his girlfriend at the diner.

I would note that the episode description suggests her boyfriend is "cold". "...but he is abusive to her." would be a more accurate description.

One of the NHK Easy News articles I read some time ago was about a diary written by a Ukraninian teenager, who is a language learner. When the war broke out she was studying Japanese. She decided to keep a diary, in Japanese, while she escaped Ukraine and eventually made it to Japan. That diary has now been published as a book.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/%E3%82%BA ... 0BDD4F829/

I suspected that the book might be easier to read if it was written by a fellow learner, and it seems it was published by an actual Japanese book publisher, and not something she released solo on Amazon.

The publisher is 世界文化社 - https://www.sekaibunka.com/.

I would assume this means there is some quality control in the book, but overall I am worried about the quality of the Japanese I would be putting into my brain. Reading the sample, I couldn't tell, obviously I am not at a high enough level to be able to determine that.

I suppose I could ask a Japanese person for their opinion.

As far as I can tell though, it is one of those eBooks where the formatting is fixed, meaning you cannot look up words using the Kindle dictionary...

Portuguese
My wife went to TO to vote in the second round of the Brazilian Presidential election. But, since I had just worked all night, I was unable to take her, so she went with some friends. They are also a Brazilian/Canadian couple, and he has also studied Portuguese for some time. They have a kid, who they both only speak to in Portuguese. My wife really hyped him up, I am quite sad to have missed out on being ti-tio for a day :( .

I got my Portuguese practice in regardless, as we meet up with Brazilian friends to watch the election results. It was an intense four hours of listening to the TV and to our friends speak. I was able to understand most of the conversation, however I remain unable to effectively participate in group conversations because I am not quick enough speaking.

Obviously, I would have to actually practice this to expect any change. :lol:

I mentioned previously that I think I will put JP in maintenance mode in December, so I can focus on cleaning up my Portuguese before we go to Brazil.

I thought I would just try to read as much as possible, but I am considering a collection of activities instead:
1. Having multiple conversations with multiple italki community tutors
I can understand my wife well, but other people can take time to adjust to, so maybe I can help myself by talking with a bunch of different people
2. Drilling verb conjugations
My grasp of verb conjugations has decreased since 2018 for sure, I think I would benefit greatly from drilling this
3. Listening Intensively to Podcasts with a transcript
4. Spend more time talking to myself in PT
I work from home, so no one is around to judge me anyways
5. Extensive reading, as already planned
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Re: CDR Shoots for the Moon: N2 Japanese by Spring 2024

Postby CDR » Mon Dec 05, 2022 7:10 am

Well, the JLPT is over!

It was unsurprisingly difficult. The hardest part seems to be communicating this to others. Everyone thinks I am being modest :lol:. It was a beating, with the listening section knocking me out. I probably understood less than 20% of the listening section. None of this is surprising, I know what studying I did and did not do, and there were conversations in this log earlier in the year about the listening sections of the test.

Why was it difficult? There were too many unknown words on all sections of the exam, my reading ability is too slow, and my listening skills are trash. There are clear ways to fix all of that, although just because they are clear does not mean they are easy or fast :lol:.

Overall, I left the test energized to study more. I did not, however, expect it to be because of my fellow test takers. I decided to talk to as many people as I could, and it was the best part of the test by far. Listening to them talk about their language learning journey in summary was invigorating. Switched numbers with a few people, we'll see if it amounts to anything.

The success rate with people who looked nervous or bored was 100%. Don't bother with people studying, obviously.

Regardless of the beating I took, I celebrated with some veggie sushi with my wife. I am happy to have reached over 600 hours of study this year. I have to stop and appreciate the accomplishment. I look forward to repeating this beating next year :lol:. My motivations for continuing to take the JLPT have changed, I'll leave that for another post.

Forgive me for the cheesiness:

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
― Les Brown


Put another way, this was close enough! :D

Reflections
I have been mulling over my own lessons learned this year, to inform myself when thinking about what I will do next year.

JLPT Related
  • Bring a backpack and a clear water bottle
  • Bring snacks in your backpack for an energy boost during the breaks
  • You can get a lot of studying/reading/listening (studying unrelated to the JLPT, just more Japanese) done between waiting for the test to start in the morning after registration, and even in the 20-minute breaks
  • Don't leave the test building during the break before the listening section and think you can re-enter the building from the same door. I got myself locked out, and for about five minutes I thought I wasn't going to make it back in time. Good times
  • The best part of the test was talking to other test takers
  • Systematic progress through each level of the test is sensible, I planned to do that, but the timeline became too tight. Regardless, in the future I would stick to systematic progress, even if it meant I wasn't going to be ready for the N3. I wasn't ready anyway, so systematic progress would have been better

Japanese Study in General
  • The number one priority that should be top of mind is time on task. Even if something is not related to a particular goal, studying as much Japanese as possible is the MAIN goal, so embrace whatever you feel like you can do
  • If you weren't going to study at all, then it does not matter if you engage in the most inefficient study methods known to humankind
  • Do not stop studying for bad reasons. Even if you have good reasons to stop studying, strive to do a minimal amount everyday you can
  • When you stop studying, return to studying as soon as possible. A 1 or 2 day lapse is no big deal. 2 weeks without studying is a tragedy
  • You cannot make up for lost months, 15 minutes a day is better than 0
  • Focus on the wildly important - Pick a few goals and stick with them for as long as possible
  • Be highly skeptical of new goals, systems, software, and methods. There is no shortcut and you already know it
  • Designing brand-new goals and systems every week is not a good sign. Go for some walks, reflect on how you are feeling about learning, and take care of your mental health
  • There are limits: do not let stiff/poorly designed systems detract you from studying, if something is causing you a lot of friction, fix it ASAP. (The difference is this is likely going to be a single point, not a total redesign)
  • Small, iterative changes to your system are more likely to be successful and not a form of procrastination
  • Every time I post my intentions, it never pans out, keep the intentions to yourself, report and reflect on the results
  • Keeping a table of predicted vs actual hours studied over your desk actually works
  • Music has always been important to me, and when I stopped studying Japanese in 2014, the one thing I kept were the songs I found. Taking time to jam to some Japanese music brings up a lot of motivation
  • The language spreadsheet works, but only if you stick to the same goals/tasks. If you keep switching goals/tasks, it becomes impractical to keep updating the spreadsheet to match
  • While losing money is a factor in the effectiveness of Beeminder, you can suffer from exhaustion of the threat of losing money. While I have used Beeminder for many years, this is the first time that has happened to me
  • The graphs Beeminder generates and being able to see whether you are on track or not by looking at a graph is useful in and of itself. Make your own
  • Ground yourself in statistics and data when possible. Having a good idea of what your Japanese will look like after 200, 500, 1000 hours of study is going to save your mental health
  • If you are crap at some particular task, reflect how many hours you've spent on this task. Typically, you will suck because you haven't put any time into it yet, or very little, so just work on getting those numbers up
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Re: CDR Shoots for the Moon: 1700 Hours of Japanese Study by 2024

Postby CDR » Sun Dec 11, 2022 12:45 pm

Now that I finished celebrating, I still need to consider what happened in November. November was my worst month (since I resumed studying) at 58 hours. The minimum per month this year was supposed to be 64 hours.

I thought I was failing to manage my time because of anxiety related to writing the JLPT, and I was fine to accommodate it because I had already studied lots of hours this year, and I managed to do a lot of studying in the first half of November. However, the test is over and I have not returned to studying. I am going on vacation soon, but I have only managed to do 12 hours of study.

One of the problems is that when I returned to studying shortly after the test, almost every card I got wrong in my Kanji Anki deck was being suspended as a leech. I know this happened because I have been stopping and starting my Anki deck a lot since mid-October.

All I need to do is reset the leeches as new cards and relearn them. However, emotionally, seeing all the cards get marked as leeches is a bit upsetting.

Writing that down, it seems silly, as the solution is simple. But, I suppose I can sympathise with myself here. Each card that leeches gives me a pang of guilt. A small one, but add them all up together, and it leaves a terrible emotional experience to work on the deck.

There are a few obvious ways around this issue, taken directly from "lessons learned" in the last post. But, I called them "lessons learned" not "actions applied". I'll need to work on filling that gap :lol:
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Re: CDR Shoots for the Moon: 1700 Hours of Japanese Study by 2024

Postby golyplot » Sun Dec 11, 2022 4:26 pm

One solution is to just delete all your cards and restart, hopefully with a better deck. I did that on JPDB myself in October, and post-reset, I made a rule of *only* studying vocab that appears on Satori Reader so that if I have trouble with a word, I can look up the stories where it appears in SR and see it in context to hopefully remember it better. (Which isn't a silver bullet - I've still forgotten these a lot, but it is better than nothing.)

Another suggestion is to focus on activities rather than time spent. E.g. have a goal of "read one chapter on Satori Reader every day" rather than "spend X time studying".
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Re: CDR Shoots for the Moon: 1700 Hours of Japanese Study by 2024

Postby CDR » Fri Jan 13, 2023 4:05 am

Warning: 99% of this post is about Portuguese

I've been working on the Super Challenge in Portuguese, mostly watching things with my wife on Globo Play. We went to Brazil at the end of 2022 to visit family, and wow. My listening has improved a significant amount. On day-to-day topics, I can keep up listening even in a group conversation, and even if I zone out, I can find my way back into what is being said.

That being said, I cannot participate in a (native) group conversation. I am too slow to put sentences together still. But, the trip highlighted an important fact. I am extremely comfortable speaking to my wife in Portuguese, but I get very nervous speaking Portuguese to her family and friends. So nervous, I really cannot say much at all. Because of this, I kicked this new year off by paying for some one-on-one conversation practice sessions on iTalki. The first two tutors I tried with last week were not ideal for me, but this week I tried another two tutors, and they are both a much better fit.

Over video call, I am not so nervous that I am mute, I can actually have a decent conversation. However, I sweat buckets. The nervousness displays itself differently, I suppose. This is, overall, an amusing problem to have (I am a chatter box in English). Hopefully I can become comfortable enough speaking to RANDOM STRANGERS on the internet that I'll be more calm and collect with my wife's family the next time we visit.

Now that I am reflecting, I realize that even before the lessons I was nervous. These first two weeks of Jan have been a bust for my Japanese, and I think it was because I spent most of my time trying to distract myself from the fact that I would speak Portuguese for an hour+. In the end, I did well and rarely had to use English. All of my tutors praised my Portuguese, with one specifically saying I have learned the "rhythm" of the language really well, and this really smooths over mistakes I make in grammar.

I am not really taking the praise to heart, however, I am sure they all want return business... We might be able to consider this a kind of regional pride in disguise, as this tutor is from the same city as my wife, and has the same accent as her, and my speech, sometimes, sounds like them!

I love talking about politics, but it's always tricky business. You don't want to put a person you are paying in an awkward situation, and they might not want to talk about it because it could cost them business. So my strategy was simple: I talked about a book my mother-in-law bought me for my birthday. It's a biography about Lula. I would show them the book, talk about how the Portuguese is difficult, but I enjoy struggling through it, blah blah blah. Just gauge the reaction, it's not really about politics, it's about the book my mother-in-law got me and how my Portuguese level compares, but if they want to talk about Lula, the door is wide open!

Two people walked in, so I was able to fish out some people who are probably okay with talking politics in the future :lol: .

Along with the book about Lula, I purchased a book for young-adults in PT while there. "Os Dois Morrem No Final" which is actually by an American author, translated into Portuguese. It is much easier to read than the biography of Lula, dare I say it's almost FUN. I've got through the first 50 pages, but I figured I would wait until I finish the book to tweet the Super Challenge bot. Since they are physical books, I am not bothering to look up unknown words most of the time. I was going to try StringerBell's method, but I'm too lazy for that. I think if I could find a shorter book, it would be a better test for Stringer's method. One evening I stayed with my phone and looked up every word I didn't know when reading the young-adult book, but yeah, it's too many and I am very spoiled by pop-up dictionaries.

Lastly, I've resumed using Tandem (the language learning exchange app). I have been on and off this app since at least 2017, as that is when I got my first reference. I am not sure if I ever found anyone I could consider a "long-term" language exchange partner. I can recall various people who I spoke to for a "long time" as far as language exchange apps are concerned (1 year max?). I find it works really well with Brazilians because they make fast friends.

A few people I met over the years eventually told me they didn't care much for learning English anymore, but wanted to keep chatting with me anyway. That was always lucky, but many times the connection does not stick anyway, although if we are honest, it might have been my fault sometimes :oops:.

In contrast, I have found it to be a bad place to find Japanese people. I have found that on these apps, Japanese people rarely reply, and even if they do, they aren't very conversational. This includes the fact that I spend two weeks a month on a over-night schedule for the sake of my work, so I am basically living in JST half-the-year. I had much more success with mylanguageexchange.com, finding some Japanese people in my city to chat with in person for a while, until they went back to Japan. No more Japanese people have shown up locally on the site though, so this evening I've started reaching out to Japanese people who are far-away, maybe the people on this site aren't so busy, or shy?
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Re: CDR Shoots for the Moon: 1700 Hours of Japanese Study by 2024

Postby CDR » Fri Jan 20, 2023 2:19 am

At this point, I should probably change the name of the log :lol:

Portuguese
Paid Conversations : 6 / 52
The paid conversations continue. The lesson I had on Tuesday was excellent, I wasn't nervous. I had another today. (Breaking my rule of 1 per week to save money, but it was a booking mistake on my part). This one was also a great success.

I tried to explain a volunteer job I had during the pandemic, where I helped elderly people who lived in social housing with their income taxes. I had none of the vocab, so I had to talk around it. Eventually, I got it. My tutor commented that none of her students had ever talked about income taxes before. My topics of choice are riveting, right? :lol:

I also talked about the politics of healthcare here in Ontario. Since my tutor is a lawyer, I also tried talking about an expensive textbook I had to purchase for a 4th year class on Sentencing and Penal Policy in Canada and about that class. I figured it was way out of my comfort zone, but so was the income taxes and I managed to get through that. I cut it short though, because time was up!

So, I am trying to work systematically through my life, and talk about things I've done in the past, and break it up with things I read in the news, or whatever I've been reading about recently. It seems to be working well so far.

Super Challenge Films : 42 / 100
Super Challenge Books : 1 / 100

I am a bit behind in the film portion of the Super Challenge. I am wondering if I have forgotten to record something I've watched, but I don't think so.

In a tangent, I am worried about the future of my automation. I wrote a script that accesses the time tracking app I use, and tweets to the Super Challenge bot whatever reading and watching I did for Portuguese and Japanese. Recently, Twitter turned off 3rd Party access to alternative clients for Twitter. I am worried that in the future, they might turn off all access to their APIs, and I will have to manually track in my app, tweet it out, and etc.

Hopefully that won't happen.

Japanese
Hours of Japanese Study : 615 / 1700
I am very behind, as I mentioned last time, I have not studied much at all in January yet.

These last two days, I have returned to my study schedule, but only because I finally ran out of buffer in Beeminder, and if I don't study 3 hours per day, it will charge me $90 USD. So that's been kicking my butt into gear.

Vocab Cards Left to meet Tango N4 Deck Equivalent : 51 / 699
In the last episode of CDR Shoots for the Moon, I talked about the terrible Anki backlog I had. After much hemming and hawing, I decided to export my decks to an apkg, save it on my laptop and back up drive, and try something different for a while.

I have switched to sentence mining, and I will try to track my progress by comparing the number of cards I have mined, to the number of cards in the relevant Tango deck. I was 699 cards short of finishing the N4 Tango deck, I stopped doing it because it had quite a bit of duplication with the first deck I got through, and went right to the N3 deck.

Anyways, 699 cards mined will equal the number of cards I had left in that deck. I setup a new language learning spreadsheet for 2023 to track my progress. At 20 new cards a day, it's 32ish days until I reach the goal.

Yomujp N6 Articles Read : 13 / 25
At the moment, I am sentence mining the "N6" articles on Yomujp. I've already read through these before, but I thought it would be a good place to pick back up and pick up some words I have forgotten. Since I won't be working through my old Anki backlog anytime soon, it's very important that I start reading more.

They've also added a few more articles.

2x Super Challenge Films : 36 / 200
2x Super Challenge Books : 3 / 200

I am very behind, no surprise. Not much else to say.

French
Kwiziq A1 Readng Practice Stories : 4 / 9
My wife started studying in French with a friend in 2021, but the friend eventually stopped, and so did my wife. I've been bugging her to start again and said we could study together. She would tell me that I am too intense in my language studies for her.

So, finally, we came to an agreement. 10 minutes per day studying French, whatever your heart desires.

So, I wanted to do this as a Free and Legal Challenge. However, after taking Dialang, I scored A2 in listening and reading. I don't really feel I am A2 in either of those (and certainly not speaking or writing), but I think that disqualifies me from the challenge anyways. I am a false beginner because I had 7 years of French classes in school. Although, I would barely pass my classes! That was a long time ago now, but obviously, I am surrounded by legally required French.

Anyways, in the spirit of the Free and Legal Challenge, I gave my only French textbook to my wife and I have been using Kwiziq's free French reading practice. I can no longer pronounce French, when I look at French words, my brain attempts to pronounce them in Portuguese. I listen and read to the story first, then read it again, doing my best to recall the accent in my mind's ear.
7 x


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