crush wrote:There's definitely something to be said for getting used to the sounds and what not, but so long as you're not getting burned out (RRTK was burning me out near the end, as was the Tango N5 deck) you should be fine putting more time into vocabulary and grammar than into immersion in the beginning. I'd say it's probably more effective if you aren't a huge anime fan and don't have a long list of shows you'd like to rewatch, but that's just a personal opinion and i don't have any evidence to back that up. You may want to try doing the Tango N5 and N4 deck before starting to hit the immersion hard (immersing more than active study) or even trying one of the core 3k/6k decks. Both Tango books have been made into Anki decks, you just need proof of purchase and Matt will send you the decks. Perhaps put more emphasis on immersion when you get to the point where it's fun to mine cards. I can generally pull about 20 common i+1 words per slice-of-life episode, though i separate sentence mining from regular immersion. Currently i'm mining shows i'm more interested in as i can follow the plot much better (since the subtitles are there).
Intuitively, I feel this is what would be best for me. Read Genki or Tae Kim while doing immersion and vocabulary study, and definitely shift gears towards immersion more once I get to a point where I can at least read basic stuff, then do sentence mining from graded readers, perhaps. Now it's just to find shows with subtitles to get started with, and actually get started with it.
But i still think you should be listening to Japanese every day, i'd aim for something similar to what i was getting: 30 minutes to an hour a day. I'd feel fine calling your commute time active immersion even if it's not 100% active. At the beginner stages, even if you're putting all your attention into a show, it's not going to be 100% active anyway as your comprehension is so low and your mind will wander (if you're anything like me at least, heh).
No, I definitely suffer from that problem as well and my mind wanders a lot. But I have an hour or two every day that I can be listening, as I've got a nice commute where I'm stuck in the car the entire time. Which is part of why I was wanting to find podcasts, as there's not as much reliance on video, though I guess it doesn't matter much if there's very little comprehension at the beginning anyway.
Also, thanks to the links to AnimeCards. I'll get a look at them when I can find time, or stop getting super distracted again.
So if it's something you're really interested in and you don't mind dedicating (probably) around 2 years to it, i think you should go for it! Just know that it may interfere with your other languages, taking time away from them. That's how it's been for me at least.
That'd definitely be my time frame. I'm doing in because I'm debating applying for JET and would like to get involved in Japanese life while I'm there, which would require me to learn Japanese. It'd be a year from now, so if I could get basic comprehension by then, and decent comprehension after two years, it'd be worth it to me, for sure. And I'm sure I'd grow by leaps and bounds once I was in the country, if I do apply/get accepted/etc.
----------------
As for other things, I haven't done much at all with Irish this week. Not even reading. It's been a chaotic week, with our students starting back online Wednesday and Monday and Tuesday being entirely prepping for it. That, and waking up at 4:30 every morning so I can go to the gym have made my focus shot by the time I get home in the afternoons; I've been completely sapped of willpower, which is something I hope to get back once I get back into the swing of this schedule. Also, I happened across a Sámi language/culture Discord server, and now that's tempting me, which is one I really don't need since I want to focus on Japanese/Irish (or maybe Spanish...who knows?). Especially as I can get at least a good hour in for each language on my commute. More if I could bring myself to read more in Irish in the afternoons and sentence mine things there. Though just getting into doing Anki would be great. I wish the iPhone app was free, though I understand why it isn't; guess I can do the browser, or just my laptop as I take it everywhere with me it, though it makes things a little bit more inconvenient than having it on my phone.
As for Japanese, I think I should just bite the bullet and get the Tango N5 book, and get the deck from Matt and them and just start at it. I feel I'm stuck in the resource paralysis section again. Which is quite frustrating as I can recognize I'm there, but not more on.