I moved to Japan earlier this year, and my formal studying has drastically decreased due to being busy with my new life (i.e. distracted by shopping, eating, drinking, etc when I’m not working). I still SRS vocab in advance via JPDB from a novel I’m reading, but I feel like I’m missing out on more immediately useful patterns and usage. I also feel like things I had learned previously often fade from memory if I don’t see them for a while.
What specific methods and resources helped to continue your *active* progress after the Tobira (or equivalent) level? I’m looking for more formal/structured methods, as I already am reading a book and watch plenty of shows/news, and have a lot of real conversation practice both in daily life and through iTalki. I have no plans to take the JLPT, but it seems most resources after Tobira are geared towards the test. Any of those particularly useful in more general terms?
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Maybe you should talk about it with your italki tutor? It sounds like right now you are doing really well. But if you want a structured environment, then finding a tutor who can give you that might be your best bet since you are already investing in that realm. Some tutors are really good at giving structure and creating a plan with you but you have to find them yourself unfortunately.
What I found was, even though I didn’t care about the JLPT, taking it helped give me the structure I wanted. I went through the grammar books etc and just learned things I didn’t know yet. Then I would notice them in my immersion and they’d stick better. So maybe try it out and see?
After Tobira I started using the Shin Kanzen grammar books along with the Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar books. I don’t have any plans to take the JLPT, but these have been great for learning new grammar and understanding the differences between similar grammar points.