Hello! To follow up on the title, I know plenty of online resources that have recommended following a textbook, supplementing it with a vocabulary deck, to use Heisig’s, and to maybe even combo a little bit of N5-N4 reading material once possible
My question is, **how is this all possible?**
* Genki grammar review to really be effective can merit 1 to 2 hours of study
* Anki is at least 45 minutes if I’m having a *really* good day
* Heisig’s kanji review on top of that (not to mention the suggestion to use another, Heisig-type anki deck as an accessory) only adds more fuel to the fire
I’m more than ok with the idea of studying this language for years and years to come, but dedicating some 3 hours a day and trying to juggle all these different tools at the same time leaves me feeling like I haven’t made any real progress
If any of you folks have any tips or tricks to deal with this, I tell you with all sincerity, It’d all be greatly appreciated!
6 comments
I think you have a good mix of sources, TBH. Many people have had success with Genki+Anki+RTK. At least it is a good “baseline” from which you can make adjustments based on your personal likes and dislikes. I also think that you can make good progress with these sources with much less than 3 hrs/day, as long as you make a realistic study plan and keep being consistent. For instance:
Anki vocab: Don’t do more than 10 new words/day and don’t put entire sentences on the front. Also only do JP->EN and not also EN->JP. Eventually this should end up being 30min/day max and in 3 years you will have learned over 10K words, which is far from bad.
Kanji: Only do RRTK (kanji->keyword) and limit yourself to the most frequent 1000 or so kanji for now (you can still do the other ones afterwards). If you do only 3/day, you will be at over 1000 in under 1 year. This should take you like 5 min/day (in fact you will probably want to do more).
And then there is Genki, where frankly you do not have to do every single exercise there is for every grammar point, just because it is in the book. As long as you do enough to understand the grammar point you are in a good place. Especially if you are mostly interested in input (reading/listening), it is less relevant for you to be able to apply every grammar rule by heart yourself. You just need to be able to recognise them when you see them.
I am not saying that this is the ideal study plan. You will have to define your own goals of what you want to achieve in which time frame. But you can definitely still get good progress with less time than what you currently spend.
Edit: typos
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> My question is, how is this all possible?
If you study 2 hours a day like I did, you will get through Genki I and II *and* the workbook just fine in like 7 months and also have time for Anki and a few kanji (not entire RTK, but the 315 kanji in Genki)
You’ll be totally fine.
The real thing to watch out for is burnout as Genki II drags on and on and on and on. But after that you can jump into more fun stuff (books!) so don’t give up.
tbh, I’m doing something similar, and yeah, it takes 2-3 hours a day minimum. I’m doing Wanikani (a lot of people here just use the WK Anki deck instead), three Anki decks (RTK, katakana words, and a Core 6k deck with repeats from elsewhere deleted). I’m also doing Bunpro. When I have time and motivation I read some NHK News Easy or other easy native resources.
I was only doing Wanikani until I hit level 25-ish, at which point I added the rest. It’s a lot, but in another 4-5 months I should be at WK level 50 and in the middle of Bunpro’s N3 grammar. I hope that’s sufficient to try to wean myself off flashcards and focusing more on immersion. So the main part of juggling multiple tools should only be a few months. I know a lot of people here recommend immersion ASAP, but I’d rather have more vocabulary and grammar under my belt before getting there.
Well, first off, I don’t know how Anki is a separate category from Genki and Heisig. You would use Anki to memorize the material in Genki and Heisig. Second, I wouldn’t recommend learning kanji and grammar at the same time. That is too hard. Do Heisig first. When you’re finished with that, then start Genki.
And it’s OK to stick to 60 or even 30 minutes a day.
Try doing the Genki I & II kanji in RTK order. [Here’s a text file](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b1WS610ZM5uURXRyVI6sfdTxw9oVkMwu/view?usp=sharing) that you can copy/paste into a spreadsheet that has the order for you already done.
Beyond that, for Anki it should be material you’re studying so it should have Genki based cards along with the Genki RTK cards.