Japanese Study Methods Review - 8 Dec, 2008

To keep myself focused and constantly reviewing my learning methods I’ve decided to write a post each week or so and discuss with you all about your own study methods (there’s a poll at the bottom of this page). I’ve also set up a learning Japanese page to gradually piece together a working path through learning Japanese.

This week was the first week of Remembering the Kanji. I’d previously studied the book but it was at the peak of my burnout and I suddenly stopped. I picked the book up again recently and aimed to study 20-30 kanji a day. At first they will all be new kanji, but eventually those kanji will need revising again, so I expect my progress to slow after the first 5 days or so. I’ve set myself a target of learning all 2042 kanji in 3 months. We’ll see if it’s obtainable. For this I use the excellent site Reviewing the Kanji as well as Google Docs where I keep a spreadsheet of my progress. This can be viewed and downloaded on my Learning Japanese page if you wish to use it for yourself.

Failed is red, untested is blue, unexpired (tested) is green and expired is orange.

Here’s how I got started:

• Morning
  • Study new kanji
    • Draw the kanji in my mind
    • Make up my own story for it, or use Heisigs, and add it to the site. I find it works better if I use my own stories.
    • Read the story over in my mind
    • Practice drawing the kanji a couple of times whilst thinking of the story
    • Move on to the next kanji.
• Evening
  • Review the untested kanji
    • Each time I fail any kanji I do a quick re-study when the kanji is revealed
  • Study new kanji

• Morning
  • Go through the failed kanji stack.
    • I go a little further with this by holding my hand over the left side of the screen where the kanji and story appears and I try to recall the kanji. If I can’t remember it from the keyword I reveal the story. If I still can’t remember it I spend a while relearning it. That’s why I re-study it when I fail it, it gives me a chance to test myself again before the kanji are added into the green (unexpired) stack.
  • Study new kanji
• Evening
  • Review the new kanji
  • Study new kanji

• Now cards will begin to expire. This means they move from the green stack to the orange stack. These cards should be reviewed at the same time as reviewing new kanji. So far I have cut down my new kanji from 20-30 to 10-20 and made sure I review at least 10 kanji. I’ll gradually increase this to find the best number to review without overdoing it.

After the 5th day I was in to a routine and I’m now on 110 kanji. I broke out of my routine this weekend though. I had a lot on and slept in… So on Monday I failed a lot of kanji! I’ve halted learning new kanji for Monday and I’m focusing on relearning those I’ve failed. It just goes to show you should keep doing it every day no matter what!

Minus the mess up at the weekend this routine is working really well for me. Sometimes I only study 10-15 kanji a day, but I don’t beat myself up over it, I just keep going and try for 20-30 the next day. The key is to keep the momentum going, don’t stop completely or you will find it much more difficult to get started again!

Poll

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You’ve reached the end of this article. Seeing as you made it this far you might be interested in these related articles:

• Japanese Study Methods Review - 15 Dec, 2008
• A Week of Nihongo #2
• Learning Japanese, avoiding the burnout and keeping it fun
• A Week of Nihongo #1
• Learning Japanese, blogging and how not to be perfect