raikiro's log - Swedish, Japanese & Russian

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raikiro
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raikiro's log - Swedish, Japanese & Russian

Postby raikiro » Wed Aug 08, 2018 4:02 am

So, after being member for quite a while without ever posting anything, I've decided to attempt a log. My goal is to have something to refer back to after a while, and to hopefully keep me motivated. I'll try to update once every 1-2 weeks, and see how it goes.


Background
I've always been a fan of languages (mostly the reading part, I'm not a very social being). However, I've also always had issues motivating myself to do stuff, even things that I actually enjoy (outside of language learning).
I'm a university student and my major is Asian studies. Starting this month, I have a little over a year without classes, and I have decided that instead I wanted to dedicate some more of my time towards languages. My main languages currently are Japanese and Russian. Japanese I studied at university for three years, whereas Russian I just started a week ago, so I am a complete beginner.


Languages
German: I am a native German speaker, so there's not much to say about that.

English: I had 9 years of English classes in school. I never deliberately studied for it, and I've always enjoyed playing video games and watch videos in English, which improved my understanding (and also my grades) tremendously. I also read a lot. My output is considerably smaller: besides very infrequent chats with international friends I have never really actively used it. I don't think I've ever spoken English outside of the classroom (except to myself), and since then it has been a few years. So my active usage is probably not as well as it could be. I did do a preparation course for the Cambridge C1 certificate successfully in my last year of school, so that would be my estimated level.

Latin: I chose Latin over French in school, and had 5 years of classes. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but after the classes ended and I had other subjects to study for, I never really pursued it any further. Still, I feel like I could quickly get back into it if I put in a bit of time.

Spanish: Ever since I was a child I wanted to learn Spanish. So when I got the opportunity in school I didn't hesitate. Unfortunately, my teacher and I did not get along at all, I was very unhappy with his methods, and got increasingly demotivated. After just one year I quit. Officially, I am at an A2, which is definitely wrong. My active skills are practically non-existent. I can understand the basic contents of written Spanish comfortably, probably because I still passively recognize the grammar patterns, and my knowledge of Latin vocabulary helps tremendously. One of the languages that I will put time into in the future, but currently I have other priorities.

Japanese: I studied it at university for 3 years. According to my teachers, after finishing the last course we should be at an early B2, though I can't realistically judge whether that is true in my case. Grammar-wise, Japanese is not much of a problem, but in the vocabulary and kanji department I lack significantly. After years of having my teachers tell me which topics to study and not having enough time for what I enjoy, I am a bit burned out. So, since I passed my final exams last month, I currently am taking a break from Japanese and planning on picking it back up in the beginning of next year (or earlier, if I feel like it). Until then, I only read some Japanese news occasionally to maintain my level as much as possible.

Korean: I had one semester of classes, only two hours a week. Needless to say that I did not get anywhere. As the course was free, I thought it might be fun to gain some insight in how the language works (considering my major), but I didn't really enjoy it and probably won't ever pursue it any further.

Mandarin: One semester, nine hours a week of classes. Since I had the same amount of hours in Japanese, plus other courses I had to attend to, I did not have too much time to spend on it outside of homework. But I did enjoy it a lot, and will eventually dedicate more time to it, though probably not in the near future.

Russian: Another of my long-term dreams. Wanted to study it for many years, but I never really had the time until now. I did start one week ago, and I am currently having fun learning to write the cursive and doing some Assimil.



Well, that's enough for a rough overview, I suppose. I don't want to put in everything at once, so I might write some more about methods or resources at another point in time. But of course, if anyone has more specific questions, go for it.
Last edited by raikiro on Sat Dec 30, 2023 2:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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brilliantyears
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Re: raikiro's log - Japanese & Russian

Postby brilliantyears » Wed Aug 08, 2018 1:14 pm

Yet another person combining Japanese and Russian :D Мне нравится!
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raikiro
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Re: raikiro's log - Japanese & Russian

Postby raikiro » Wed Aug 22, 2018 10:39 am

Two weeks have passed, so in order to stick to my schedule, it's time for another post.

Unfortunately, the last two weeks have been unexpectedly busy and I did not manage to do as much as I had hoped. I'm now into lesson 16 of my Assimil Russian and it's going quite good so far. When I have the time I usually do 2-3 lessons in one session – again, due to other events, I didn't manage to study every day recently.
As things seem to be calming down again, I decided to attempt finishing the Assimil at the end of September. So I have 40 days left for 55 lessons, we'll see how it goes. I don't put too much pressure onto myself, but having worked with Assimil previously for other languages, I think this is an attainable goal. Just to be clear, I do not aim for perfect recall of everything – I'd rather use Assimil as a foundation, and then delve into other materials as soon as I have decent enough unterstanding.

My biggest issue with language learning has always been vocabulary. My knowledge and understanding of English improved tremendously after I had started playing video games and reading books that were interesting to me. And it did work – for English.
With my Japanese I encounter way more problems. I'd love to read more, but it just feels incredibly tedious. I don't know enough kanji (I should be at around 600 now), and I just cannot remember words that I've read. They just don't stick. I don't remember having had a similar problem in English, so for now I can only suspect that it is because of how 'different' Japanese is.

Here are my experiences with various methods for vocabulary learning:
Flashcards
In second grade my teacher explained to us how flashcards worked, and why they are useful. We then all received a nice carton box that we had to paint with colors we liked (mine was orange, I think) and then we got a pack of flashcards and practised how to write on them. For the rest of elementary school, we regularly used them in class for English vocabulary.
Then came a period of not actively studying any vocabulary, and a few years ago I picked it up again. I worked with both paper cards (mostly for kanji) and Anki for normal vocabulary.
In my experience, it is a great way to keep track of your vocabulary and review it every once in a while. However, for the initial acquisition of a new word, it is a pain. I would sometimes go through the same ten cards for half an hour, only to realise I had forgotten it the day after. And the struggle began anew. It was not fun, it was not efficient, and it was highly demotivating because I felt like I was too stupid to learn.
Summary: very nice to review words, but I need something else to acquire them initially.

Wordlists
I have different experiences with lists. I used them every once in a while for English and Spanish before a test: just looking at them, and trying to remember. It always worked decently well, but it could have been better.
Then I found Iversen's explanations on how he uses word lists and was very intrigued. I used these lists to learn some Japanese vocabulary for class or exams. The results were surprisingly good. The other day I found lists from about three months ago, and I remembered most words quite well. Considering that I had only written them, reviewed them once on the same evening and once the day after, it was a very good result. Had I spend a moment to import them into Anki and review them occasionally, the results would have been even better. I did combine wordslists and Anki for about 200 words, and I remember pretty much everything, including the kanji. So the handwriting definitely pays off here, as well.
This all sounds fantastic, but there is one big problem with word lists: I find them extremely tedious. In theory, I like lists. But somehow in practice I can't motivate myself to do them. The reason for this might be that my brain connects them to 'forcefully' learning words for a test. I plan on using them again for my Russian in the future and perhaps for my Japanese as well, now that the pressure is off. Hopefully it works – again, in theory, I really do like lists.
Summary: highly efficient time-wise, and good to use together with Anki if the lists you're getting the words from are already digital; but it feels too much like 'forced' studying. Even the most efficient method is useless, if you can't bring yourself to actually use it.

Goldlists
Only this month I began using Goldlists to see how it goes. Sure, they also are 'just lists', but they feel somewhat different. They feel more relaxed. Again, maybe just because I never used them for exams.
Up until now, I have not done any of the distillations, my first should be due in two days. I'm very excited to see how much I remember. Even so, those were words taken from my Russian Assimil lessons, so I got some natural repetition anyways. So there is no telling whether or not this is actually useful for just acquiring lots of words that you don't see in context all the time. Presumably, using Goldlists for random words will not work too well.
Summary: don't know yet how effective they are, but they are quite fun. We'll see.

Okay, so that was a bit about my vocabulary learning troubles. I'll keep you updated on my Goldlist experiments.
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Re: raikiro's log - Japanese & Russian

Postby appelkoekje » Wed Aug 22, 2018 6:12 pm

Hello! I'm also studying Japanese. お互い勉強を頑張りましょうね!
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raikiro
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Re: raikiro's log - Japanese & Russian

Postby raikiro » Tue Sep 11, 2018 6:30 pm

Nearly three weeks have passed, so I thought it's about time for an update.

First, progress:
I've completed lesson 35 of my Assimil Russian, which is nice. I said that I would attempt to finish the Assimil by the end of this month. It's still within reach, but I don't pressure myself too much. Tomorrow should be the start of my active wave, which will be some kind of feedback on how much I've learnt (or not).

Last time I shared my experiences and opinions on some strategies for vocabulary acquisition. It's now been about five weeks since I started to try the Goldlist method, and I have very mixed feelings. I distilled two weeks' worth of lists so far. The first group was very successful: ~60% of words were remembered, which is twice as much as is expected of Goldlists. The second group was way different, and I barely remembered ~30%, sometimes even slightly less. Both contained 5 lists, so 100 words per group in theory – in reality it was a bit lower due to words I had written down multiple times because I forgot I had added them already. The two groups were not distilled on the same day.
Now, why were the results so different? All my words are taken from Assimil. Therefore, a lot of repetition took place just due to how basic and/or frequent the words are, and due to Assmil just being highly repetitive vocabulary-wise. Perhaps I just had one very good and one very bad day. But I am in doubt of the effectiveness that Goldlists have (for me personally, as I've seen some people get great results and swear by them). The vast majority of the words occur regularly in later lessons, and there is no way of telling how many of these words I would have remembered without the Goldlists, just because of looking them up over and over again when they appear in my lessons.
Which is an issue in and of itself: I don't want to look up words over and over again. Not in this kind of context, anyway. When I actually read a text/book/whatever for enjoyment and I'm not focused on making progress, that's okay. But seeing the same words nearly every day and still having to check the translation does nothing good for my sense of accomplishment. I'm doing Assimil to learn, but I feel like I'm not learning.
Perhaps it's a question of compatibility. I go through the Assimil quite quickly, and Goldlists seem to be way slower. The fact alone that you're supposed to wait two weeks before distilling the lists makes it hard to keep up with all the new words I encounter. Goldlists might work better with vocabulary that you don't necessarily need to 'keep up' with whichever material you are using. Just for the sake of learning more random words that you do not encounter very frequently, it seems fine. But for my current goal, it seems like I'm wasting a lot of time and see no real results. If I had put the time into something like Iversen-style wordlists, I feel like I would have made far more progress.
The actually sad thing about this, is that I enjoy Goldlisting. Or at least I did in the first 2-3 weeks, before I started wondering whether or not they work for me. I like having a nice book, and this system that it has to it. Iversen-style lists are usually just papers which need to be folded. Of course, technically you could just write these lists in a notebook, but without the folding they get harder to use (at least when you use both sides of the paper for one list, like I used to).

So, the real question is: what do I do? I started this nice Goldlist book and I hate just quitting something midway. But I also don't want to spend the second half of Assimil with a method which clearly does not fit its style, at least not at this pace. If you're doing one or two lessons per week like they recommend, it could be really good.
So I'm deliberating just switching and doing the Iversen lists, which I have gotten good results with in the past but did not enjoy too much. But maybe it is different now, I guess giving it a try won't hurt. Even then, another question remains – do I go back to lesson one and start from there, or do I just start where I am now? Maybe it would be best to go with the active wave, which is supposed to start tomorrow, actually.
Decisions have to be made, ideally by tomorrow. I'll keep you updated.


And also thank you @brilliantyears and @appelkoekje for your comments – I'm not very good at being social, but I appreciate it.
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raikiro
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Re: raikiro's log - Japanese & Russian

Postby raikiro » Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:07 pm

Alright.
Quite some time has passed since I last managed to update. Those who have read my log probably think that I left the forums.
Truth is, I have been very busy; sickness, Bachelor's thesis, looking for jobs. Add to that my social anxiety which kicks in even when just posting something on the internet, and you get the picture why I've been away for so long.

Anyways, despite not posting anything I have not stopped studying. Due to the previously mentioned reasons I didn't manage to get as far as I would have liked, but I still think I have made decent progress.
I have started to track my activities a bit more closely, so I actually have something I can look at and see how I did in previous months. Maybe, hopefully, I'll manage to post and update here once a month.

So, my recorded statistics for the last six months are:

Russian:
words read: 44.847
hours listened: 25,5

Japanese:
words read: 32.283
hours listened: 2,5
kanji learned: 380


My statistics just for the last month:

Russian:
words read: 11.891
hours listened: 6,5

Japanese:
words read: 3025
hours listened: 1,5
kanji learned: ~80*

*I just started recording exact weekly numbers for my kanji study recently, so I can only give an estimation for last month.


Needless to say, I prefer reading over listening. Looking at the overall numbers of words read I am quite happy. Especially my numbers in Russian I don't find too bad for my low level. My numbers for Japanese aren't very impressive in comparison, but since I have not put a lot of focus on Japanese in the last year it could be worse.

Obviously I'm lacking significantly in the listening department. Listening just seems so boring to me. I try to always listen to the news post or story I'm reading, but sitting around at home just listening seems like a waste of time. I have bought a wireless headset to get a few minutes in here and there when I do the dishes or clean the floors. Many people recommend listening to stuff when commuting or travelling. But I didn't have university courses in recent months and I don't leave the house much, so there's not much to be gained there. Besides, when riding the train I prefer to listen to music.

But that's it for now. I hope I did not forget anything. As previously mentioned, I'm hoping to post an update once a month.
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raikiro
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Re: raikiro's log - Japanese & Russian

Postby raikiro » Mon Jul 01, 2019 1:14 am

Another month has passed, so it's time for another update.
Thanks to the heat wave I didn't do too much in the last two weeks. I just can't concentrate or sleep well when it is that hot indoors, so my studying time has been limited to the early morning or late evening hours, and I have been tired a lot. I also have not left the house much, which is usually where I get most of my listening hours from. Even people who love the summer suffer under the high temperatures, and I have always preferred the cold. Luckily, looking at the weather forecast, the next two weeks are supposed to be a bit cooler (about 28°c) where I live, so hopefully I can to function like a living being again. But enough whining about the weather.

I am happy to have found a very cheap physical copy of Assimil's old Russisch ohne Mühe from 1971, which is regarded as superior to the newer versions by many. I then managed to find a digital version of it as well and OCR'd it. When studying, I prefer to have a physical book in my hands instead of looking at a screen, but for the purpose of reviewing it and tracking my amount of words read I have them imported into LingQ as well. For that, the OCR'd version is quite handy. Manually transcribing it seems too much of a hassle.
Those who read my log last year might remember that I worked with a newer version of Russisch ohne Mühe heute which I believe to be from 1991. As far as I know, this is still the current German edition. It looks like they made a new one in French around 2015, which also seems to be the most recent in English. I got to lesson 52, and then quit because I felt like I didn't really get along with it too well. When looking back at these lessons now, I barely remember anything. Some loss was to be expected after not touching it for several months, but even back then I had troubles with it. Maybe I tried to progress to fast, maybe the 1991 edition was too hard to work with. Maybe both. I've seen several people say that while it seems like the newer versions are shorter and seem to be 'dumbed down', they are also more condensed and therefore more difficult to follow.
Realistically, I'll probably get back to it at one point, even if it is only to get some more exposure to somewhat decent graded material. For now, I'm working with the 1971 book. I only started about a week ago, so I'm not too far into it yet. I must say though, that I really enjoy the old recordings. Though you can hear that they are older, the voices are pleasant to listen to. I also feel like it is not as slow-paced as the newer edition, which even in the last lessons still feels unnaturally slow. It makes sense to start out somewhat easy, considering Assimil is aimed at complete beginners, but I would have preferred the speed of the recordings to pick up a bit more.
Perhaps I will even go into the 1951 Assimil at one point, which I also have digitally. This is a decision for the future though.

On another note, I have started to read Harry Potter in Japanese. Out of interest, I also took a look at the first few pages of the Russian version. I was pleasantly surprised that, disregarding the high number of words I obviously had to look up, I did not have any real trouble understanding the Russian text. The grammar seems to be quite alright. Admittedly, it might just feel like I get it right while in reality I'm just misunderstanding most of it. But since I have read the book a few years ago, and I didn't understand anything that made me wonder, it can't be that wrong. Besides, it's all about having fun, right? I have stopped it for now, though. It is just too tedious for me to read a novel in Russian yet with the amount of unknown words.
The Japanese one surprised me as well, but not pleasantly. I was disappointed that it seemed like I had more troubles understanding the Japanese grammar than the Russian grammar. Sure, Russian grammar is much closer to my native German, but considering how long I've been working on Japanese before I took a break for about a year, I was still dismayed. I put it aside for a week or two, but my ambition got the better of me. I want to read this book in Japanese. So I sat down and really started to make an effort. A couple of days back I saw a post somewhere that the first Harry Potter does start out quite difficult, but gets noticeably easier after the first chapter or so. We will see if this turns out to be true for me as well. For now, I have the book separated in 50 or so parts of about 2000 words, and I work through them slowly at first, trying to understand everything, and then re-read a couple of times until it gets easier. I have also found the audio book on Youtube, and have cut them into files corresponding to my 2000 word parts. They are about 13 minutes each.

I have also changed my approach to studying two languages after another. Previously, I used to always take a longer break or only do one language a day because in the past I have read quite a few people stating that doing foreign languages back to back is not a good idea. Not that I was really afraid to mix up Russian and Japanese, they are distant enough from each other. But after studying my brain likes to repeat the texts or phrases or just random words throughout the day. I was afraid that this might be a sign of my brain trying to work with these information and doing another language would 'overwrite' them in a way. But I recently browsed through the old HTLAL forums and saw Prof. Argüelles write that he actually likes to switch languages every 20 minutes or so because it keeps his mind fresh so he doesn't tire from studying long hours. I tried this, and was surprised. Obviously I cannot yet attest to the long-term success of this, but I did indeed feel refreshed again just switching to another language, where previously I would have just called it a day. And certainly putting in more time per language won't hurt, will it?

That should be the gist of what I have been doing language-wise this past month. My statistics for June:

Russian:
words read: 11.301 (590 less than in May)
hours listened: 5,3 (1,2 less)

Japanese:
words read: 5358 (2.333 more)
hours listened: 1,6 (0,1 more)
kanji learned: 90 (no exact numbers for last month, but slightly more)

As can be seen quite clearly, I did more in Japanese this month while not doing significantly less in Russian, which makes me happy. Less listening, which, as I previously explained, is probably because I did close to no commuting this month. I have tried to make it a habit to listen with my wireless headset while doing the dishes, but this only is about 10 minutes every day. 10 minutes a day equals to 5 hours per month, which fits my statistics.
But overall, I am quite satisfied that I did not really do less despite still having a lot of work to do for writing my thesis. For that, I have a lot to read and analyze and then write out, so I don't feel like studying every day.

This post turned out to be longer than expected, but I should be done for now. Thank you for reading.
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raikiro
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Re: raikiro's log - Japanese & Russian

Postby raikiro » Thu Aug 01, 2019 9:05 pm

Another month, another update.
It has been a difficult one. I have not yet looked at my statistics but I can already tell they're not going to be very impressive.
In short, my girlfriends laptop broke so she spent a lot of time in the living room where I usually study (we only have two rooms), I have tons of paperwork to fill out and doctors to go to. Also, I read 3 books this month for my thesis. If I counted my words read in English, my statistics would actually look quite good - but I don't.

Still primarily working with the Assimil 1971 for Russian and reading a news article here and there in Japanese, as well as slowly trying to progress through Harry Potter. Though, as previously stated, I did not do a lot.

Let's take a look a the statistics.
Russian:
words read: 7854 (3447 less than in June)
hours listened: 3,4 (1,9 less)

Japanese:
words read: 2559 (2799 less)
hours listened: 1,2 (0,4 less)
new kanji: 27 (63 less...ouch)

So there's that. It's less everywhere, just as expected. Especially the kanji one hurts. But, I can proudly say that I only skipped one day in anki for my kanji repetitions, so I've been keeping at it - I just did not add many more.
Another note, just for the sake of accuracy: for LingQ, 'last month' seems to equal 30 days. So technically, every other month there is one day that does not count. Not that it makes a huge difference, but it means that when I feel particularly energetic at the start of a new month I might have a really productive day that doesn't count in the aforementioned numbers.

This month will probably not be much more successful than this one. I am progressing to another chapter of my thesis which means a lot of reading scientific texts, after which I usually don't feel mentally fit enough to work through new material. But, fingers crossed, I aim to finish my thesis by the end of the month. Officially I do have until the end of September, but I feel like getting it done to finally have some more time for my language studies.

I have seen a couple of people setting themselves goals. I didn't do this in a while, but I though I might at least try. I'm just making these up spontaneously while typing this. Let's see, something specific and realistic.
For Japanese: finally get to the end of chapter 2 in Harry Potter.
For Russian: get to lesson 42 in the 1971 Assimil. In the 1991 edition I've been past that for quite a while, so I don't expect it to be too difficult. I spend a lot of time reviewing and repeating the Assimil 1971 lessons over and over, so this will take a while. However, it should not be too straining mentally, so I hope I'll be able to do this even after working on other things.
These goals are not something I will try my hardest to archive, but they might be that bit of motivation I need to do at least a couple of minutes even when I'm tired. But I will not force myself through, and failure is okay. Taking too much time and energy away from my thesis will harm my future more than skipping some hours with my languages for now. It's a matter of priorities.

But that's it for now. Thank you for reading.
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Re: raikiro's log - Japanese & Russian

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Wed Aug 07, 2019 10:34 pm

Finishing my thesis nearly made me sick. So I know the stress you are under. Good luck!
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Re: raikiro's log - Japanese & Russian

Postby raikiro » Sat Aug 31, 2019 5:13 pm

I finished all my studying for the month, so here is another update.
I have not yet taken a closer look at my statistics, but I'm very confident that I managed to get done more than last month. Setting a goal was pretty helpful I think, and both of them have been met. I'm happy about that, so I'll probably try to continue with goals, if only to give me a sense of accomplishment.

So let's take a look:
Russian:
words read: 12139 (4.285 more)
hours listened: 5,3 (1,9 more)
monthly goal - finish Assimil Russisch ohne Mühe (1971) lesson 42: done

Japanese:
words read: 12.871 (10.312 more)
hours listened: 1,8 (0,6 more)
new kanji: 36 (9 more)
monthly goal - finish chapter 2 of Harry Potter: done + managed to read a bit further

Overall, considering all the work with my thesis, this is an appreciable improvement. Speaking of my thesis: I did not finish this month, but that's not a problem. The horribly scientific part is done, and I only need to read about half a book and then put everything in writing. After that comes a comparison, for which I have already laid most of the groundwork. So it should not be too complicated.
For those interested, in my thesis I'm comparing Jesuit missionary activities in Japan and Tibet. I'm analyzing the first Jesuit that traveled to each region, their missionary methods and activities in the context of the political and religious situation within the respective countries. Its fun, though sometimes I feel like pulling my hair out dealing with all these old texts.

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Finishing my thesis nearly made me sick. So I know the stress you are under. Good luck!

Thank you, I hope your thesis turned out alright for you.
It is a huge advantage that this form of academic writing was never problematic or difficult for me. So while everyone was freaking out, I've always managed to stay on top of things, finish with time left and good grades. Definitely nice, but I guess my anxiety when having to speak to people somewhat outweighs my affinity to writing.
It still leaves me exhausted though, so my language time is definitely suffering from it. Currently I only have about 1 hour a day, after that I notice that my retention goes way down.

But back to my statistics. I'm running into a problem with my kanji. The main factor preventing me from adding too many more is the number of reviews I have for my anki. It makes sense that it takes a bit for the intervals to increase more, considering that I added several hundred within 2 months or so starting out. Its not like it takes too much time every day - only a couple of minutes, which is fine. The real problem is that I tend to get intimidated by large numbers. So even though I only need 5 minutes for 50 reviews, seeing a 50 there makes me nervous and not want to add more. (I always add two cards per kanji, so the amount of new kanji is effectively doubled when it comes to reviews.) I have tried playing with the interval settings a little bit, but no noticeable improvement. Maybe I should try to set a goal for new kanji as well, preferably per week and not per month. Otherwise I might be tempted to hope for a day with less reviews and get stressed towards the end.

The number of hours listened, though larger than last month, is still practically non-existent for both languages. My aim is to improve that after my thesis is done. I really love watching videos like let's plays (people that stream/record themselves playing video games and commenting everything), and they were a big part in my learning English. But they do take quite some time, and if it's not in English I need to focus a bit more. Usually I just have something running on the side, but in the beginning this is not going to be enough to understand what's happening. I'm excited to test out my Russian comprehension though. So that's probably going to be a goal for October, unless I get too impatient. Then I might start earlier.

So, some goals for next month? This is not something I plan to achieve religiously, but this last month they've proven to be motivating.
Japanese:
Kanji. 10 per week, so 40 in a month. Not significantly higher than what I did last month, but I don't want to overdo it (again, I'm really afraid of these large numbers of reviews). But getting a bit more consistency can't hurt, I can still aim for more in the following months.
Finish chapter 4 of Harry Potter. Perhaps a lofty goal, because it takes a lot of time. I look up everything I don't know, I read everything once and then again with the audiobook. But actually, as I hoped, the last few pages really did feel easier. Chapter 1 was a nightmare. But now that I'm progressing faster, I'm having more fun, so I might do it.
Russian:
I think I'm just gonna go for another 14 Assimil lessons, so the goal is finishing 56. I did the Assimil 1991 before, but looking at it now, I barely remember and understand much of the later lessons. This is probably because I tried to rush to much considering the time I had available. I wanted to progress with the little time I had so I did a new lesson everyday, instead of taking some time reviewing. Not planning on making the same mistake again, so this time I'd rather go slowly.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day.
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