Hello everyone,
I started studying japanese 4, 5 months ago, using Genki I as my main resource, along with Tokini Andy’s precious help. I was able to do a lesson a week, including studying it’s grammar, vocabulary, exercises and listening as well (I am currently at lesson 12).
I knew I wanted to introduce kanji at some point and after trying some methods (anki, books) I found Wanikani to be best tool for me. I am currently at level 9 and found myself really happy with the advances being made.
The “problem” is that, as some of you might know, it consumes a looot of time if you do not wanna let lessons and reviews pile up, and I found myself not having enough time to advance the much need grammar and exercise studies.
I sometimes advance the Wanikani queues during the day, but most times the study session that would be spent studying Genki is hijacked by Wanikani.
Let’s say I can allocate 6-10 weekly hours to my studies, what advice can you give me to split my time, what should be the priorities (grammar, exercises, listening, kanji, reading, whatever you may find important)? Should I let the kanji study pile up and just be comfortable having 100 200 reviews and carry it out sporadically without the OCD of wanting a empty review and lesson pile?
If you know any other useful tools, please do share 🙂
Further context: I am 26, Portuguese, like some of you I really fell in love with Japan, and started learning with the hopes of, at a first stage, being able to read manga and understand anime and, and in some years visit Japan throughly, already being able to understand most and speak some 🙂
3 comments
Don’t worry too much about exact splits, just try and do a mix of things each week. In a year, it will matter much more than you studied consistently than anything else.
If you’ve got a couple of resources that work for you and you can sink some serious time into that’s better than lots of resources you dabble in.
I was where you were at just a few months ago, and I’d recommend that no less than half of your time should be put into comprehensible input, 2/3 of your time if you can swing it (with podcasts especially you can add them into other activities, like cooking or cleaning or walking or commuting, in order to make more time for Japanese study).
Here’s a mix of resources that I’ve been using lately and can recommend. 🙂 If the Podcasts or YouTube videos are too fast, try listening at .7 or .8 speed and work your way up to full speed.
YouTube:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/xebcjc/comprehensible_input_listening_youtube_resources/
Plus one extra favorite not on that list:
Japanese Immersion with Asami
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIciBLpZ6BP2XNYTFXb6eRQ
Reading:
https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/
https://yomujp.com/n5l/
https://watanoc.com/
https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/fhleb9/we_made_a_manga_in_really_easy_japanese_that_is/
https://www.satorireader.com/
Podcasts:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17P2dBQHnBnHcG3ua_24IO6sP9RDC-5b3WHV9Ri2N5qU/edit?usp=drivesdk
If understanding manga and anime is your primary goal, you can also try searching for lists of simple anime and manga to start diving into (though a lot of it will become much more accessible once you have a okay grasp of the grammar in Genki 2 and beyond). The wanikani forums (which you don’t need to pay for wanikani to participate in) have manga bookclubs with super useful vocab lists, and they probably have something for anime over there too!
Though I think spending 5 hours trying to understand material that’s 80 or 90% (ideally 98% according to research) comprehensible will be a much more efficient use of your time than spending 5 hours trying to understand material that’s only 50% comprehensible, because you can just cover way more material in the first situation.
Also, someone I know doing wanikani for the long haul (2 year unbroken streak) only does 5 or 10 new lessons a day, if I remember correctly.