Hi everyone.
I have been on a journey to learn Japanese for a couple of years now. I initially focused on the reading aspect, as I thought it would provide a solid base on which to build new languages skills. I have been studying daily new vocab and kanji using the *Wanikani* Anki lists, and have gotten myself pretty familiar with a couple of thousand characters and about twice as much vocab (it’s honest work).
**The problem is, I am starting to burn-out from the incessant reviewing of flashcards. Particularly since I feel like brute-forcing new vocab in my head is not all there is to retention and fluency.**
That said, I have a hard time coming up with where to go from here. I have been rushing through a couple of grammar books but couldn’t keep myself engaged enough to include them in a routine. I have been trying to listen to podcasts aimed at learners (“Nihongo con Teppei” was pretty good) but, unfortunately, my listening skills are too bad at the moment and I don’t get much payoff.
I am therefore looking for advice on new resources I could use to keep myself engaged. I really enjoyed the daily / routine aspect of Anki lists. But I really need to work on my grammar and listening. Can you think of anything? Appreciate it.
9 comments
Have you considered just reading? It’s easy enough to do as a daily habit and you can just look up grammar/vocab as needed.
NHK Web Easy News with Yomichan has been great motivator for feeling burned out. I tried not to overload my Anki deck and keep it under an hour but I rather read and not understand completely than just go all the way on Anki.
I also just jumped into reading after burning out on Anki. My goal for this year is actually to consume as many stories as I can and sentence mining will absolutely get in my way, time-wise, so I just said “Screw it. Let the reading itself be my review.” I’m still adding vocab using new kanji though, just because it’s fun to add to it.
If you haven’t already heard of it, look into [Natively](https://learnnatively.com/) to see the kinds of books people are tackling at what level.
Ok so for me, I used to use Anki for like, 70% of my study time
Now I use it for 25% and I like it better. Trick was to stop adding so many cards, but it took a while to calm down to a manageable amount.
Not sure if this helps you but maybe.
Feeling engaged with synthetic resources like Anki lists, WaniKani, textbooks is a big exercise in missing the point. *If* those things are useful they are useful because they work together with activities you do using Japanese.
Imagine someone wants to climb big walls (huge cliffs, like El Capitan). So they come to you and say “I’m sick of doing bicep curls, but I like the routine, so I’m thinking of buying a rowing machine.”
You’d tell them, “bruh – why are you not going to a rock gym? High ropes course? I know this great park for bouldering.”
And they’re like “oh, I want to build a foundation.”
[In language learning there is no foundation](https://youtu.be/B2zRk4PqMSA), at least not one you can get from books.
Your listening is going to stay bad unless you listen. It’s time for YouTube, anime, Netflix, voiced games, NHK for School. As long as you understand *something* you’re learning more than you realize. Continue to listen to Teppei… but add some nice [storytime](https://www.youtube.com/@roudokushima) and/or [fishing trips](https://www.youtube.com/@chinuko), things like that.
Reading is good too. It looks like you don’t need to be convinced of that. Maybe you need to be nudged towards easier reading.
In the Refold community we’ve been talking about “baby-brain strategies” lately. No Anki, no expectations, no comparisons, no optimization, just a ton of content that’s mostly for kids. And the thing is, it’s *working.* People are making progress, and they’re *definitely* not burning out.
*I’m* starting to get convinced, and I’m a die-hard spaced repetition user with tens of thousands of items across three different systems. The thing that really flipped my opinion was starting to play story-heavy video games – I just finished the first 逆転 and next up is マルコと銀河流。
You might not be ready for that level of language intensity yet. But I realized I can sink hours into reading. (I mean, I can do that with books sometimes but games are more “grippy.”) Spaced repetition, I can’t do that for more than about half an hour a day or I start to hate it.
So I’m gonna drop SRS down to 20 minutes/day for a while, maybe even lower. It’s not a big difference in time, but it is a difference in focus. Like I’m going to tell myself that I’m *not* making progress there.
What are your hobbies? What sort of things do you normally read/listen to?
Reading about something you’re interested in anyway is a good way to keep focus.
Short reading/listening material you can follow along to is good also – e.g. follow a workout on youtube, make a recipe, follow an art tutorial, do origami from Japanese instructions, etc.
Literally just read more. Kind of a meme at this point but there is **absolutely nothing better than reading more.** Go download [Yomichan](https://learnjapanese.moe/yomichan/) and start reading. Read. Look up words. Repeat.
Are you using premade decks? I think learning THROUGH Anki is exhausting. But learning vocab and then adding it to Anki to solidify the learning is pretty painless. How you actually learn the words is up to you: reading, anime, conversation partners, video games, etc. Point is I think Anki is probably the very best way to maintain knowledge, but IMO it’s much less effective as a way to gain new knowledge
Order a couple of the 5秒に意外な結末 series books from Kinokuniya. They’re two page stories with surprise or unexpected endings.
Or, for a bit more work, 5分に意外な結末, which are 7-10 page stories with surprise endings.
Cut your WaniKani and Anki workload in half, and start some reading of actual Japanese with the above.