My thoughts at least a week ago on my failure to start reading
I have been trying to make the transition to doing more reading (of stories/new), but it has not been very successful.
I thought the problem was:
Reading in Japanese is not yet a habit, while grinding flash cards in Anki is definitely a habit at this point.
So about a week ago I took a day and decided to read first, and work on my flash cards later. So I spent about 50 minutes reading on LingQ, and the most difficult part of reading was, unsurprisingly, emotional.
It is very hard to read, as one might expect, so after struggling with a sentence or an entire story and reflecting, I was mostly sad. This isn't surprising, I can remember feeling the same way when I started reading in Portuguese. However, at that time I decided to go back and do more studying of Portuguese, instead of pressing onwards through the negative emotions. I should have just kept going, because the next time I came back to reading (native) Portuguese it was still painful.
I could probably chart a graph of emotions I was feeling over the 50 minutes. There were a few things that improved the experience as I went along:
Turning off Furigana.
Sometimes it was wrong, but generally speaking I think it crowded out the words and made it more difficult to read. If I needed the reading of something, I just hovered over the word. (If Furigana is on, every single Kanji will have its reading. It would be better if it only showed for unknown words)
Increasing the font size (it was pretty small), decreasing the amount of space between lines, and getting it to display as much text on a single page as possible.
Font size is obvious, it was too small and I was struggling to see the words at the distance I sit from my monitor. More words on the page was probably an emotional difference, it just felt more normal and made it easier to follow sentences across lines.
Giving up on mysteriously difficult content.
Even if the content was supposed to be easy, there were one or two stories where I would get half way through and all of a sudden it seemed way more difficult. After struggling for a bit, I just decided to cut my losses and find different stories on the site.
All of these actions resulted in a better experience by the end of the 50 minutes, but I was still shook.
My Thoughts on Reading Now, a Week+ Later
Imagine studying 2+ hours a day but you still have a hard time fitting reading in?
....
Actually, this is a misperception of my mind. I just checked and I did about 6+ hours of reading last week. Almost all of that was re-reading. Part of my misperception was because I do not read every day. So this was driving the idea in my mind that I am not reading, or reading enough.
I switched to putting the stories I read (or would like to read) in Anki. The repetition scheme is to read each story 3 times in one week (With the first reading being the start of this theoretical "week") and then after that it is released into Anki's normal SRS scheduler. However, the reality is I can only read on certain days (mostly, days I am off) so this has not worked out perfectly. Yet, putting them in Anki has helped, because I already have the ingrained habit of using Anki anyways. This is letting reading piggy back off my Anki habit.
Each card is an individual story, with a URL or page number depending on where the story is located. Some of them I will read once and that is it. Some of them have audio available, so I will Listen and Read, then Read, then Listen and Read again.
The Magic of Rereading
Very amusing to have the memory of a particular passage or story taking to over 2 hours to piece together the meaning of, and then coming back and re-reading it a few days later in 10-15 minutes.
Progress Towards the N3
At the end of July, I reached 360 hours of study time. This means I am finally in the low end of the range of estimated "study hours required" to pass the N5 (325 hours to 600 hours).
I intended to write the N3 in December....
4 more months at 84 hours a month is +336 hours for a total of 696 hours. Estimated study hours for the N3 is between 960 and 1700 hours (Study hours for N2 is between 1600 and 2800 hours). So my total at the start of December would fall in the range expected to pass the N4, but is 264 hours short of being in the N3 time range bracket.
This is the only measure that is not flattering to my chances. In terms of estimated # of Kanji, Vocab, and Grammar points, those are all reasonably achievable, given the number of hours I dedicate to this.
To reach the N3 hour studied bracket, I would need 66 extra hours of studying per month for the next four months.
Never say never, but if I was going to be able to recruit that much more time, it would probably be watching YouTube videos in Japanese I barely understand... We'll see how far I can push it.Quizzes
New Results
2022-08-22
JLPT N5 Nihongo Master Practice Test: 86% (13/15)
JLPT N4 Nihongo Master Practice Test: 46% (7/15)
JLPT N5 Sample Questions: 57% (8/14) My Listening was the worst part 1/4 listening questions correct. The other sections were 3/4 (Grammar and Kanji?) and 4/6 (Reading?)
The only one that changed is the N5 Nihongo Master. After taking these tests, I was reminded that N5 = "Knowledge of some basic Japanese."
The N4 is "Knowledge of Basic Japanese."
This certainly puts my struggle with reading into context. It is unsurprising that reading is difficult... I only know some basic Japanese.
Historical
2022-07-4
JLPT N5 Nihongo Master Practice Test: 60% (9/15)
JLPT N4 Nihongo Master Practice Test: 46% (7/15)
JLPT N5 Sample Questions: 57% (8/14)
2022-01-22 (~15 Hours of Study)
JLPT N5 Nihongo Master Practice Test: 40% (6/15)
JLPT N5 Sample Question: 7.14% (1/14 - lucky guess)z
Listening
The test demonstrated that my listening is weak. I am not surprised at all. I was doing decent previously, listening to a podcast everyday while walking. However my walks have stopped for unrelated reasons, and I have not found a good time to do some listening since then.
However, when I listen to these podcasts I understand very little, and I typically don't have the time to actually sit down and work through transcripts or other ways of cheating the meaning of the podcast. If I do restart my walks and listening, I should find something I could realistically listen to. That's a big if, so in the mean time I will need to carve out proper listening time.
I have a Anki Deck version of the old Glossika format. I was considering cutting the number of new word cards in half, and instead doing new cards in this Glossika deck. However, many of these sentences have no new words for me. Which you know, is great for listening practice, but not so good for my vocab size.
Listening to these sentences also convinces me my listening is not so bad. I am able to understand many of these sentences. So I am thinking that those audio questions contained words I just didn't know. BUT at the same time, I used Glossika for Portuguese, so I am extremely familiar with the sentences in English already.
My brain was waiting for the Japanese translation of "These chairs aren't beautiful, but they're comfortable."
Leeches
I have a number of Anki cards in my deck that are definitely leeches. I have tried waiting and putting them back in the deck after a break a few times now, but I always forget these words.
Since I still want exposure to these words, I've decided to create a custom collection on Clozemaster. So, for every suspended word, I find at least one sentence already in Clozemaster and add that to my custom collection. I will try to review the sentences in this custom collection every day, but I already have a back log.
It's a bit of a grind to add suspended cards to Clozemaster, so I will transfer a few at a time.
