I’ve been learning for about a couple of weeks now and I am currently making my way through Genki I. I have been using anki to review the vocabulary in Genki so far and I really like the srs style of learning.
I want to get to the point where I can start immersing in native material and start navigating casual conversations (on a very basic level) as soon as possible. I was considering speed running a core 6k deck by doing like 50 new cards a day since I have 2 hours most days where it’s inconvenient to use anything other than anki (commute, breaks at work etc..)
My main concern is that right now I don’t know any kanji so I am afraid it might make it very difficult to navigate the core decks. Should I still go for it? I’ve also read about a lot of different vocab decks like Tango or Nayr’s Core5k. Which route might be the best for my goals? Also, how can I supplement this vocab grinding with kanji since I don’t want to just ignore it or put it off. Should I also do RTK in parallel or some other kanji resource, or just brute force the learning kanji via the vocab? Any thoughts appreciated!
2 comments
As someone learning about 150 words a day for a month straight, my advice should be relevant here. I did RTK. I paced it out for about 3 months and sprinted to the end, but the later ones I did not ‘mature’ properly. Still I continued and started relearning them and new kanji with vocab. If you have not done RTK then 50 new vocab a day will be hard, but it will take about a week or two before you start having issues.My retention rate is 67% on new cards, 88% on learned cards – I have to go through over 800 cards a day and I fail about 180-200. This is before I take my new cards too.
If you can keep the same retention rate as I am – then I assume you will have about 300-400 cards before the new ones come up and you will probably have to redo 60-70 a day. Depending on how you do this and if you take pomodoro breaks, then you will have about 2 to 2 and a half hours of SRS if you give yourself 5-8 seconds a card (includes retesting on fails)
Doing this without RTK may be crazy. A good chunk of my new vocab goes to maturity quickly because they are obvious compounds, but I get confused with abstract ones which have little to no relation to their Kanji. Like “本来なら” or “付け” and “順調”.
What if you could immerse right now?
You need some grammar, right? Here’s the most efficient way to learn it: [Cure Dolly](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj). Here’s the [full textbook](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OwVPStFrXRjXvzmrFQUfXpEiPNspYq6JYxA4zDTlhPM/edit) if you’re put off by the robot voice.
Genki is a good book but is very much meant for a classroom environment so you can make faster progress by just focusing on the important part: the grammar.
Well, we also need vocab, right? The most optimized way is the [Core 2.3k deck](https://anacreondjt.gitlab.io/docs/coredeck/).
And you can immerse NOW, even with your minimal knowledge.
You do not need to drill Anki for hours to start immersing.
And it’s not the fastest path to fluency. That would be practicing Japanese via immersion, in other words practicing the language you are learning.
If you don’t know a word… You look it up.
You don’t need to know it in advance – look it up on the go.
Pop-up dictionnaries make it so easy it’s like a cheat code. All you do is put your mouse over and you get a full definition of a word, or a grammar point.
For your free hours, if you have a hand free, maybe install a book reader with a popup dictionnary on your phone like [jidoujisho](https://github.com/lrorpilla/jidoujisho) and read on your phone. You’re now immersing at work 🙂
If you’re interested in this method I recommend readng [TheMoeWay’s routine](https://learnjapanese.moe/routine) which will get you started.