I’ve been studying Japanese for close two two years now, with a lot of my vocabulary learned from the Core 2k/6k Japanese Vocab deck and a mix of manga/NHK articles. However, due to work-related stresses and issues, I ended up putting my studies on pause for close to half a year. Now that I want to reconnect with the language, getting back into it and re-reviewing grammar, and mostly catching up with my Anki queue is daunting. Is there any advice you folks can give to help me ease myself back into learning?
4 comments
Nothing too specific but just try to ease yourself back into the habit. If your Anki queue is too daunting as a whole then just commit to doing smaller chunks at a time, eventually you’ll work down to a manageable daily amount of reviews.
If stress is an issue for you then try re-engaging with more enjoyable immersion material (manga, anime, music, podcasts, etc).
Just don’t stress yourself out about being efficient about it, it’s supposed to be enjoyable after all!
set the Anki daily limit to be ridiculously small and within a week you will be back in the game and motivated
increase as necessary
limit anki new cards to 0 and you could limit the number of reviews for a while too. don’t be too hard on yourself with the reviews, you don’t have to remember everything perfectly so don’t again/hard everything, just press good if you got it *somewhat* right. the words will pop back up sooner or later anyway, just because you couldn’t remember it perfectly after a break doesn’t mean you completely forgot it and need to re-learn it from 0.
find something fun to re-engage the japanese parts of your memory, like a good anime, manga, j-drama, movie, book, light novel, podcast or whatever, just use the language in some enjoyable way so that you can get back into the ~feel~ of the language without all of it being endless anki grinding.
I like the other recommendations.
My go-to for any daunting task is to think of the smallest possible thing I can do, and just start there without putting any pressure on myself to do more. More often than not, once the gears start turning, then it all comes into place naturally. Other times you just realize you still don’t have the capacity to do whatever the thing is and that’s ok too.