"Starting Over" Day 2

Its day two of starting over. 

Today, because I'm working with a lot of Kanji that I had at the "mature" level, I did 50 extra cards, taking today's count to 100.

So, my total is 200 cards studied.  Taking me to 10% in "young" level in 2 days.  However, this progress will slow tremendously as I continue on and reach cards that I don't know, while reviewing daily.

I have 17 review cards tomorrow and 50 new cards.  Only 67 cards tomorrow.

Why I'm starting over.

We all make mistakes, right?  Otherwise we wouldn't be human.  Well, I made mistakes in my Kanji learning and think it would be best to learn from those mistakes and start over, from scratch.

As I continued learning new Kanji every day and reviewing at 100 cards/day, I slowly came to the realization that I was doing it all WRONG.

Setting a cap on my reviews pushed back important cards that I may have forgotten already, until another day, and I needed to review them NOW.

So, I have decided to start over entirely, using a new deck that I picked up from the Shared Decks in Anki.  I will be setting the review cap to 9999, allowing every review card to be pushed to me when Anki says I should be reviewing it.

My plan: 

50 new Kanji/day
ALL OF THE REVIEWS/day

Goal: Finish by the end of July, 2014.

Its mentally difficult to start over, but the good news is that I've studied nearly 700 Kanji, I just didn't learn correctly to maintain retention.

I have already done the first 100 in the deck, which took only 24 minutes or so, so the first few hundred should go quickly.  I just want to make sure that I keep up on my reviews and push those cards to mature as quickly as possible so that I don't have to see them for a while.

I am hopeful that this will work out in my favor.

2000 Kanji in 38 days!  Let the countdown begin!

そして彼はそれを倍増。/Soshite kare wa sore wo baizou. (And then he doubled it.)

Been a while since I posted. I have been incredibly lazy, I know! Sorry!

I decided recently that I wasn't learning the Kanji fast enough, so I have DOUBLED my card intake per day to 64 cards, up from 32. This will greatly increase the amount of time I will spend on the Kanji section of my learning and will enable me to start getting into the really fun stuff, like sentence mining, sentence writing, watching movies with a bit of understanding, listening to music with some understanding, reading online news, etc.

I have not lost motivation entirely, I just find learning the Kanji to be incredibly boring and try not to do it at all if I can. I have actually skipped several days of Kanji learning, which is problematic because my review cards keep stacking up and I don't entirely remember them, forcing me to relearn them altogether. I have figured out that if I stick to a daily routine I will eventually master them, it's just going to take me some time.

Wish me luck!

６日目：Figuring it all out.

I was checking out AJATT today and went through the table of contents, where I found the overview page, which basically breaks down the entire process, including a diagram of what you should be doing and when.  He says on there, that you should do the Kanji FIRST, before anything else.  Just learn the Kanji and their English meaning and don't worry about sentences until the Kanji is completed.  Because of this, I have decided to change my routine back to the original plan. (I haven't really done much with my sentences anyway).

I also figured that I should make a nice diagram of my own, to better demonstrate the method I am using because the one on AJATT, though informative, is poorly designed.

The steps are as follows:

1. Setup an Immersion Environment that is continuous.
2. 2000+ Kanji (Reps are continued indefinitely)
3. Kana until complete
4. An additional 1000+ Kanji (Reps are continued indefinitely)
5. Sentences (Reps are continued indefinitely)

I also plan to setup a progress bar for each of these sections to keep everyone updated on my progress.

So, with this I have kinda figured out my scheduling and can better deal with the workload.
On a side note, I have found that by writing out the Kanji, I turn the learning into a sort of "game", where I try to remember the appropriate stroke orders.  I have also been trying to speed run the Kanji, by going as quickly as I can while writing them to see how quickly I can do my reps.  It's a bit more entertaining.

Kanji Report for 5/25/2014:

Studied 302 cards in 74 minutes today.
Learn: 134
Review: 100
Relearn: 68

Total: 258 reviews
Average: 19.8 reviews/day
Due tomorrow: 94 cards.

I would also like to report that I have completed 302 Kanji, for 16% complete.

Am I doing enough?

I have been thinking that I may not be doing enough to hasten my learning and facilitate a proper learning environment. 

Based on my reports from the Kanji, I am only studying for less than one hour each day. 

Although this is probably just fine for my Kanji learning, since I don't want to overdo the number of Kanji I input each day, it still feels like I am not putting in an ample amount of effort. 

One hour is NOT enough. 

I think, that in order to spend more intimate time with the language, I will change my schedule for sentences and start them tomorrow instead of two months from now. 

In light of this new goal, I will also be changing the number of sentences required to reach my goal to 3000. 

This is a hefty increase in my Japanese input and should have me spending more time actively engaged with the language. 

Time to make a timetable!

So, I decided that in order to properly iron out my plan it was best if I wrote up a timetable to keep me on track.

When I decided to do this project, I had made an error in assumption.  I assumed I would be learning 1900 Kanji over the course of 3 months.  To my horror, I had miscalculated and forgot about the 1000 sentences I want to do AFTER the Kanji is finished.

So, in order to keep things in perspective for myself, I am creating this timetable:

Activity	Number Required	Time to Complete	Number Needed Per Day	Estimated Completion Date
Kanji	1900	60 Days	32	7/18/2014
Sentences	1000	30 Days	34	8/18/2014

This is a reasonable goal, considering I am currently doing 25 new Kanji a day.  But if I continued on my current path I wouldn't reach my goal.

Day 1: 僕の目標/boku no mokuhyou (My Goal)

Today is the start of my journey and the point where I should laid down my ground rules and set some goals.  But first, I'm going to talk about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

So, the point of this blog is to force a degree of accountability for my actions or lack thereof.  My intention is to post daily about my journey to learn Japanese through self study over the course of 3 months (summer session from school).

A little background: 
I have taken Japanese classes in college.  Two of them to be precise, both of which were elementary courses, putting me at the intermediate level of Japanese for the purposes of taking another class.  However, it's been two years since I've taken a Japanese course and I feel like I'm a bit rusty. (That's putting it mildly.  I don't remember a lot of Kanji or how to pronounce it.)

My tools:

• Software: Anki (Spaced Repetition Software used like flashcards to help with memorization of material) 
• Book: Remembering the Kanji/RTK (Used with a deck for Anki to better understand and memorize kanji characters) 
• Anki Decks:  I have RTK 1 and 3 as well as a sentence deck that was downloaded through Anki.

The rules:

• Study daily.
• Blog daily, even if there's nothing to even report. 
• Finish by the start of the next school semester. (August)
• Rules can be added, but not removed.

The goals:

• Learn at least 1900 Kanji characters. I don't have to know the pronunciation of the characters, only their meaning.
• Study 1000+ sentences and learn the Kanji pronunciations from sentences.
• Be able to follow a Japanese television show's dialogue.
• Be able to read an easy Japanese novel without being glued to a dictionary for every word.
• Be more than ready for Japanese classes in August.  (I plan to minor in Japanese).

The process:

• I will be listening to Japanese music and watching Japanese movies for passive learning throughout the whole process.  Much like a child learns to speak, first they listen for a very long time.  Input before output.
• I will start with learning all 1900 Kanji first.  I feel that in order to learn Kanji reading I should be able to associate that reading with its meaning.  
• I will learn sentence structure from 1000+ sentence cards after all 1900 Kanji in the deck have been learned.

Let the learning begin!  Wish me luck!