It has been a whole year already since I started to learn Japanese in earnest and doing so with Renshuu!
If you have not been following my progress so far, you can recap on my journey here.
When I look back at my 6 month update, it does not feel like I have progressed much since then. With some proper reflection though I actually have, and I'll get onto that in a moment. Looking back all the way to the start 1 year ago, is where the real satisfaction and achievement lies, as it actually does feel like my Japanese has come along in leaps and bounds!
The four pillars that I banged on about in previous posts are still key: Motivation, Goals, Resources and Time. In terms of those or my philosophy of learning this language, nothing has changed. I still don't have much time, my goals and motivation are still set and I'm still using Renshuu as my learning resource. All things considered I am satisfied with my progress and trajectory.
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| In the Mt. Aso Caldera |
Consistency
Consistency has been the key to my success. Success being relative of course, and only you should be the judge of it with something such as learning a language at your own pace and in your own time. I have been doggedly consistent in making sure I complete my study quizzes everyday. Even if I am ill, flat-out busy or travelling, I still made sure I found the time to fit it in during the day. Some days I would just not consciously absorb anything, practically just starting at the screen blankly whilst mechanically finishing my quizzes to tick the box of having done my study for the day. However, I trust the subconscious and space repetition methodology to do it's job nonetheless, which I why I maintain the consistency. I took a weekend off once, way back at the start and it felt like I had taken a month off. Never again.
Measuring Progress
In terms of JLPT study material, I am at N4/N5. I'm still covering off N5 stuff whilst pushing into N4 in some areas.
In terms of the stats of things learned, at the 6 month mark, I apparently knew:
- 1151 words
- 71 grammar points
- 267 Kanji
Now, I apparently know:
- 1604 words (N5 and working on N4)
- 101 grammar points (N5 almost complete)
- 288 Kanji (N5 and N4)
- 468 Sentences (N5)
Not bad progress considering the low amount of time I am putting in. I estimate maybe around 60 hours in the last 6 months, averaging perhaps 20 minutes per day. I also slowed down for a few months in terms of new material as I wanted to fully understand and memorize my current material properly.
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| My stats panel in Renshuu, very comprehensive for analysis |
Speaking Japanese in Japan
Our recent trip to Japan was going to be a test of my progress and Japanese prowess. In reality it did not go very well. Knowing a load of words, sentences and being able to read reasonably well do not crossover into real life at the same level. Native speakers often speak fast, they don't accentuate sounds fully for your benefit or take even a millisecond pause between words so you can parse them in your head. On so many occasions my listening would result in me being able to pick out a single keyword such as a noun, and then try to glean what is being said via context, tone and body language.
If I was the one initiating conversation or asking a question things went a bit better - I could figure the words out in order before speaking, or like with the in-laws at the dinner table, say words and then have lengthy pauses whilst I try to think of what to say next and they would wait patiently. With other people, if I was able to demonstrate some language ability, that would then open the door for the other person to speak far too much that I couldn't understand, resulting in me having to give a blank look and simply say 'Nihonga wa chotto' (my Japanese is little)
We did a few lengthy car rides with the in-laws. With me being well over 6 feet I get nudged into the front passenger seat. I'd rather be in the back as I can listen to conversations whilst quietly looking out the window. In the front passenger seat it feels like I have to be a main conversation participant or even instigator, which is difficult under pressure if I don't have a lot to say at that moment in time. Tomomi was pushing me as if to say 'you wanted to practice your Japanese, so go on' - trying to force small talk in a language you barely speak is incredibly stressful!
Most of the stuff I have learned is situational, as it is with most languages. Basics such as common places, items people, numbers, how to ask what when why etc.. not a whole lot of being able to talk casually about random stuff and express yourself. I feel I did pretty well with using what I know and I pushed my boundaries a little bit with it, by going ahead and speaking even if I wasn't entirely confident in my accuracy in what I was saying it - I've always said I would rather be fearless in speaking even if it's incorrect, rather than rarely trying to speak in those situations due to fear of getting it wrong. Incidentally that is one of the reasons the Japanese don't speak English very well despite learning it at school, the fear of being wrong when speaking.
All in all, I thought it was a positive experience from the language learning angle, mainly because it's good to have a reality check once in a while, reminding you that yes you learned a bunch of stuff, but there is so much more to learn and a long way to go.
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| Ajisen Ramen in Uto City. Not relevant, but delicious! |
Changing Tack in Renshuu
At some point over the last few months I changed my direction in terms of how I use Renshuu. I was slowly doing grammar whilst not really grasping it particularly well, and mainly focusing on just ploughing on with new vocabulary. I figured the more words I knew the better, and in a pinch I would be better off knowing the words I need rather than the grammar to string it all together. In reality it was not particularly helpful as learning vocabulary in isolation, especially words you likely won't use very often does not absorb into what I would call 'retrievable memory' very well.
What I did do, was go hard on Sentences schedules. These schedules contain hundreds of everyday sentences using grammar appropriate to the JLPT level selected. The quizzes include sentence jumbles (where you put all the words into the correct order), Fill in the blank, and simple comprehension checks. These schedules are by far the most enjoyable and incredibly useful. I have improved my grammar immensely, learned some new vocabulary in addition to some actually useful sentences. I cannot understate enough just how effective it has been, whizzing through and reading out aloud these sentence schedules in terms of comprehension of sentence structure. I highly recommend!
Queuing up the workload
My Renshuu workload is going to get dangerously high very soon. In the past I have tweaked my schedule settings to manage it, you can do this by reducing how much and how often new content is presented, or even flat out limit how many questions you can do in a day for a schedule. I do not want to do the latter as I feel it will interfere with the correct timing of the Spaced Repetition System, and therefore reduce it's effectiveness.
With the quizzes, things escalate pretty fast when you have a consistent amount of new content being presented everyday, and the issue is not immediately apparent. I have been using Renshuu long enough now to know when it's coming and that is because of the targets I have set myself.
I recently added 2 new schedules that are quite large - N4 Vocabulary, and Beginner 500 sentences. I am targeting to learn every term in these schedules within 1 year from now. As at the time of writing, I still have 638 sentences to learn, and 874 words. That is quite a lot. Currently I them have set to 5 new terms on each schedule daily which means those reviews are going to start piling on thick and fast in the next few months, with the potentially to double (or more) the time needed every day to get through everything. A change I made just this week though was to do a weekly cap of 20 new terms a week, which means it will do 5 per day for 4 days and 0 for the next 3 days. I'm hoping this is just enough to ease the inevitable avalanche!
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| Renshuu dashboard showing my current and future planned schedules |
Next schedules
The above screenshot shows my current dashboard and you can see my current schedules. A practice I have started doing is to add all of the schedules I want to do next, and then in settings mark them as 'Frozen'. What this does is keeps them on my dashboard but inactive. It gives me a constant reminder of my direction and what is next, so one less thing on my mind.
You may note though that two of the next schedules are significant ones and go hand in hand: N4 grammar and N4 sentences. I am going to wait until I am comfortable with my N5 Grammar, supported by smashing through the N5 sentence schedule. Then the N4 sentence schedule should hopefully assist with getting through the N4 grammar far more effectively than I did the N5 grammar initially.
Verb conjugations are the next one and for good reason. I found myself learning vocabulary, but the standard form would rarely come up in grammar and sentence schedules, instead it will be a conjugated form that I wouldn't recognize, which is one of the reason I put a little bit less emphasis on Vocabulary. I want to find some clarity in my mind in terms of understanding how to conjugate words and what to conjugate it into for different scenarios. I am not looking forward to this one if I am being honest. It has to be done though.
Suggested Renshuu Schedule setup
I tweaked my schedule settings quite a lot over the last few months and I think I have got the optimum setups that provide the right balance for me. By that I mean to help learn and comprehend from different angles without overdoing it on the workload or getting into the realm of diminishing returns. Below are my current setups:
Vocabulary
- Japanese > Meaning (select the English definition based on the written Japanese, includes Kanji if the Kanji is known)
- Meaning > Japanese (select the Kana based on the English meaning, includes Kanji if the Kanji is known)
- Listening > definition (you listen to the spoken Japanese, translate in your head and select the English meaning)
- I use a quiz size of 50, and allow a term to be studied multiple times per day across the above vectors, which works great for new words especially, as they'll come up multiple times in the early days assisting you with memorizing them.
Kanji
- Kanji's meaning (look at the Kanji and select the English meaning)
- Simple quiz for me. I am not learning readings in isolation, instead learning their meaning and consequently their readings via vocabulary.
Grammar
- Sentence Jumble (arrange all the words of a sentence into the correct order)
- Star selection (choose the correct word that goes where the star is marked on the blank spaces within a sentence)
- I add 1 new grammar point to learn every week which is a good pace.
Sentences
- Sentence Jumble (arrange all the words of a sentence into the correct order)
- Star selection (choose the correct word that goes where the star is marked on the blank spaces within a sentence)
- Comprehension check (it provides the sentence and you just select yes, maybe or no as to wether you understand it or not)
- Basically the same setup and question types as Grammar. Whereas grammar focuses on the specific grammar points presenting multiple questions at a time on the same point, Sentences are completely random.
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| A street in the busy tourist town of Yufu, Kyushu |
Renshuu Plans
Within a month of using Renshuu I knew it was the program/app/system to take me forward and well into advanced study. I like to support people and companies that make a great product especially when the free version is perfectly usable. I signed up for Renshuu Pro, paying on a monthly plan at $11.99 NZD per month. I did this for 8 months (total spend $95) before cancelling entirely for a month just to see if I was happy with the free version. I missed features such as the Listening questions and extra Grammar questions so I wanted to go back to Pro.
I took a look at how much I had spent, and how much I would likely spend over the next 2 years ($288) even though I will likely use it even longer, and it made no sense to pay a monthly subscription. Instead I opted for the lifetime one-off payment membership at $174 NZD.
In a world where software and even other things in life are moving to a subscription only basis (you will own nothing and be happy apparently) It is refreshing for someone to offer a pay once option.
My recommendation is to not do the monthly plan. Try Renshuu for free for a while, and if you are happy with it and dedicated to learning Japanese, spring for the lifetime option and don't look back.
Random Language observations
I'm always coming across little things that are confusingly amusing with the language to the point I should probably start making notes so I can do a whole dedicated post on them. Because hindsight is a wonderful thing and I didn't do that, I'm going from recent memory and thought I would share this little snippet with you.
Identical words but with different Kanji
There are many words that are the same, often with a barely discernable difference in pitch accent that people like you and me, and I would guess many natives, could not distinguish when the words are used in isolation and without context. Some examples:
- Ireru / 入れる (to put in) / 容れる (to put in) / 挿れる (to put in) / 煎れる (to be roasted) 淹れる (to make e.g.. tea)
- Hashi / 橋 (bridge) / 箸 (chopsticks)
- Hana / 鼻 (nose) / 花 (flower)
Now the thing I find amusing and interesting with the similar words such as these, is that when I ask my wife 'what is the difference between Hana and Hana?' the answer I get is 'they are different Kanji'. My immediate response is 'but you don't speak in Kanji', and the answer to that is context. Japanese is a language that relies a whole lot on context. I think even native speakers would struggle with words if they were not provided with context! Ireru is a fantastic example as you essentially have 3 different words sharing many of the same meanings but with different Kanji, are they interchangeable? does it matter? Probably.
Honorific O
There are many words that sometimes will have an honorific or polite お (O) prefix. I haven't yet gone too much into the reasoning behind this, but I believe it largely has to do with the respect given with how you speak to other people; you may need to speak more politely to someone older than you, but not younger than you for instance. For example, Chopsticks are 'Hashi' in casual form but politely are referred to as 'Ohashi'
Anyhow, I came across an example that confused me. I knew the word お代わり (Okawari, meaning second helping at a meal) and then recently 代わり (Kawari, meaning substitute). This was confusing because they are very similar words and use the same Kanji. When spoken or written the only difference is the O at the start, and the two words are not the casual and polite form of the same word, but two entirely different words with different meanings. Yeah, fun right?
In Closing
Stay tuned for the next update, though that may be a while away. Unless I have a huge revelation in my study or change my methods substantially I won't be doing an update until a year from now. That will be a significant milestone though, 2 years of slow study and where my Japanese is at just prior to moving to Japan. From there it will pick up again as hopefully with being in Japan and a lot more time on my hands to commit to study I can really accelerate things with a bit more progress to report!
