It also means that I’m only three weeks away from finishing Japanese for Everyone. I’ll write a full review when I’m done. I’ll say for now, though, I am very happy with JfE and would recommend it over Genki. I’ll also write a review up on the pros and cons of studying Japanese at university.

So right now I’m very busy, very stressed… But the end is so close in sight….

The same is true in most of what I do, including language learning. I do it to the extremes sometimes, which can be a good thing and a not so good thing. One side effect of this is that I often burn out.

I define burning out as not being able to find the motivation to do something, feel as though I’ve done it too much. But if I give up then my Japanese learning journey is over.

Learning a language is not fun and easy all the time. If it was we all know multiple languages by now. Unfortunately we sometimes need to push ourselves to just get that bit further. Here are some ideas on how to overcome burn out.

First things first, the most important thing to remember, no matter what you choose to do, is to not give up. If you give up you’ll never know Japanese. You can try blaming the language “But Japanese is too hard” – but ultimately it was you! Millions of other people can learn Japanese, so you can too.

1. Push Through What You are Doing.

Sometimes you have to keep doing what you are doing. For instance, if you are doing a course you may have to do something for homework and the like. Or perhaps this is part of your job. Or maybe you have a bet with your friends and don’t want to have to run down the street naked. Whatever. The point is you have to do it, you have no choice. It has to get done.

Here’s what you do: You do it. You just plough through it. If there is a lot you need to do, then break it up to smaller chunks and work through each chunk. Set yourself time limits and see how much you can get done. You have to do it, so you might as well get it over and done with.

At the moment I’m suffering from textbook overuse. Yes, I am almost three quarters of the way through Japanese for Everyone, and I am sick to death of looking at it! Unfortunately, I have to learn the presented grammar, vocabulary and kanji for University. What I do is just set aside thirty minutes every day to work through it. As soon as my thirty minutes is up I stop and don’t worry about it again.

Soon you will find that actually finishing what you had to do gives you a great sense of achievement. Or at least relief that it is over. When you are finished what you need to do, give yourself a (Japanese language related) reward. You deserve it.

2. Change Tactics

If you don’t have to keep on doing what you were doing, you have the freedom to change tactics. In other words, try a different approach. You will still be learning Japanese, how ever it will feel fresh, new, different.

You see, at the moment I’m suffering from SRS overuse (I told you I go hard at everything I do! And I’m feeling very burnt out at the moment!) I primarily use my SRS to learn new vocabulary and to practise grammar at the same time – through reviewing sentences. Anki has been sitting open on my computer for over a week and I haven’t touched it. If I’m not doing it, then I have to find something to replace this activity.

So I’ve started using the Assimil method. And I’m having fun with it! Even though I am still just reinforcing grammar and learning new words, it feels like I’m doing something different. It feels fun.

And you never know – by trying something new you may discover a method that works ten times better for you than your previous one. If not, no loss, just try something else new.

3. Take An Active Break

If you feel like you can’t go on, then perhaps you need to take a break. A break is completely healthy and may actually help your progress in the long run. But do not take a complete break.

When an jogger is running through the streets and gets to a red traffic light, often they will not stop and stand there, waiting for the green man. Instead, they do what is known as an active break. They will jog slowly on the spot, and when the light goes green they start running again. When they are puffed, instead of stopping and collapsing on the ground, they walk until they have their breath back, and are straight back into running.

So instead of stopping completely and doing nothing, try taking an active break. Sit down and watch some Japanese tv or a movie. Listen to your favourite Japanese music. Go to a Japanese restaurant and see how much of the menu you can understand. Do something!

An active break like this is also a great way to reward yourself for your hard work if you choose to do one of the other methods instead. It keeps us fresh and reminds us why we are learning Japanese in the first place!

But don’t forget to get back into studying again. Set yourself a limit and get back into it as soon as possible. Remember don’t give up. One week’s rest is a good amount of time to recuperate. If you still can’t get back into it you’re not trying hard enough. Don’t make excuses for yourself, just do it!

Get Back Into Learning Japanese And Enjoy It

Burn out = bad. But don’t let that stop you. Burning out is all in your head, so you can go on, you just need to give yourself a bit of a push.

As I said before, if things were all smooth sailing in language learning we’d all be polyglots. And if you don’t do it and give up, well, you are only hurting yourself, letting yourself down. Just keep at it and you’ll progress in no time at all.

In the comments, why not share your experiences of burn out and what you do to overcome it?

On the 18th of March I started up a log of how many hours I watch Japanese tv/movies. I record what I watched and whether I was watching with subs, without, or it was just on as background noise. From the 18th-30th I watched 15 hours of Japanese TV. I find that I don’t watch it for days, but when I do I watch quite a few hours. It does average out to just over an hour a day. I haven’t really been watching any of the dramas from the current/previous season so perhaps this may be a-typical.

Anki
At the end of Feburary I started a new anki file. I now work on both vocab/grammar and Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji in the same deck. I currently have 576 cards. I have an overall retention rate of 73% with 87.1% on older cards.

Japanese for Everyone
At the moment I’m working through chapter 15 of JfE. Things are moving smoothly, I’m finding that I can move through this quickly now. I don’t know, at the moment I’ve got a bit of rhythm to what I’m doing.

An Integrated Approach To Intermediate Japanese by Akira Miura and Naomi Hanaoka McGloin
I just started this and I’m planning to move through this more slowly than JfE, but I’d like to do finish the book by the end of the year. I have started chapter two, but I’d like to go back and go through chapter one more thoroughly. I recently did a review of my first impressions on this textbook if you’d like to read.

Goals For April
April is going to be a busy month for me. I’m moving house, all my major assignments at uni are coming up, and I may have to look for a new job. Oh, and it’s my birthday too However, the next season’s dramas are beginning, something to look forward to, and I plan to keep working on my Japanese at a steady pace.

I’m half way through Japanese for Everyone, and I find this book right for my level. This actually makes me more impressed with Japanese For Everyone – it is a good textbook and takes you far. I’m finding that I will learn a grammar point in one book, and then a week or so later the same grammar point is covered in the other one. Why do I have both then? I like seeing examples from both texts. I get more vocabulary from both texts. Integrated also has harder kanji and more reading passages.

Every chapter begins with a section called “Culture Notes“. These are little paragraphs in English about something to do with Japanese culture. For instance, in the first chapter they talk about “How to Address Someone”. In chapter six the culture note is about restaurants.

Next there are three dialogue conversations. They are a page in length each and are good reading practise as well as listening practise. Then there is a reading passage, again a page long. Finally a couple of pages of vocab, divided up into the conversations and reading passage they were featured in.

The Kanji section follows, and leaves a lot to be desired. It is divided into two sections: Kanji that you should be able to read and write and kanji that is just to be recognised at this stage. I lie, it isn’t exactly just kanji, what is presented here are words – kanji compounds as well as kanji with the hiragana tail. What it doesn’t do is tell you how to write them, how to pronounce them or what the words actually are. Perhaps this is genius in that you have to go out and actively discover these words for yourself (a process which would no doubt help in the learning of these kanji). I believe they are featured in the previous “vocab” section, but I haven’t checked all of them.

The Grammar Notes are short, sweet and the way I like them. That is, a brief description in English, and then example sentences. These grammar points refer back to the dialogue conversations and the reading passage in the beginning, giving line numbers to go back and check them out. There is sometimes little passages to explain a certain nuance of a grammar point. Over all, these are very easy to understand (so far!) and I find it easy to move forward.

Exercises – I admit I haven’t done any yet, so I can’t comment! There are one or two tasks for each grammar point, with five or six questions in each. There are also some questions that look like they involve group work, which hopefully can be adapted for the self learner – hopefully I can update on this when I’ve gone through the book more. There is also a listening exercise for those who have the tapes. The questions and answers are all in Japanese, which I like. I hope to tackle these soon.

To end off each chapter is another reading passage with a couple of questions at the end. Oh, and a little quote. At the end of chapter one it says:

しっぱいはせいこうのもと
失敗は成功のもと
lit. Failure is the basis for success

I like it.

At the moment I’m only in the middle of chapter two, after adding chapter one’s grammar points to my SRS. Now that I own the book, I can go through it properly, writing and highlighting in it like I like. Overall I like the textbook, and hope that I can complete it by the end of the year. I think that the “Intermediate” title is misleading – I certainly don’t feel intermediate but feel like I can handle this. The only major drawback I have with this text at the moment is the Kanji section, but as I supplement my Kanji learning with other resources, I don’t think this will be a problem for me.

Buy this text from JapanShop.com
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What do you think of this text book?
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Plus, a fresh start is refreshing!

So I’ve started again. I picked out a whole heap of words I was interested in reviewing. Stuff like 付き合う. I look up the word in my Casio XD-GX9600 and plug in one of the example sentences into anki. I also like to use anki to review grammar, so I’ll start plugging in some sentences from Japanese for Everyone chapter 13 soon.

Japanese For Everyone

I’ve finished chapter 12. I’ll be taking a break from this while I try to remember the kanji, hopefully getting back into it in January. Chapter 12 was a fairly easy one to get through.

Anki

Thanks to the kanji, I’ve fallen behind on my reviews with this. 289 expired cards… *cries* I have 615 cards now, up from 533 from last month. And I did review at the beginning of the month, not so much towards the end. I would like to keep this up through the kanji, how ever as things are proving I’m not sure if I can. The kanji is time consuming!

Deck statistics time!

Correct over a week: 92.5% (346 of 374)
Correct under a week: 77.3% (2061 of 2667)
Correct unseen: 85.3% (828 of 971)
Total Correct: 80.6%

If only my kanji was that good. The thing is, though, when I add a sentence to my srs, usually I understand all the grammar and it’s only to reinforce grammar and to help learn new vocabulary.

Remembering the Kanji

I have to pick up my game. Moving at the pace that I want to move out, Remembering the Kanji is time consuming. Currently I have studied 395 kanji. The problem is I’m finding it takes 3-5 reviews for most kanji before I find them in my head and I can pass them onto the next box. And the most time consuming task is actually studying the kanji, vs reviewing the kanji.

Here’s my deck as it stands right now:

After I started tracking my review results (so, from the 28th October onwards), I have averaged at 48% correct. This number goes up when I review cards in the far decks, but so far as most of my cards are in the first deck I’m getting a lot wrong. I’m expecting the numbers to sort of even out as I get further into it. I guess we’ll see. Must… Study… More…

Into The Future

I’m still hoping to finish the Remembering the Kanji book by around Christmas. I’ll have no excuse after my exam in two weeks. I’ve already got my “rewards” for finishing picked out – certain Japanese books. So, main priority: Kanji. I’ll let you know how it goes.

September is over and I’m looking forward to the end of October when it is Natsu Yasumi (Summer Holiday) time! But that is looking a head and this post is for (mostly!) looking behind.

Learning 日本語

I feel like I’ve had an epiphany. I feel like I’ve really moved forward this month and everything is coming together. Things are clicking into place and I suddenly understand so much more about the language. It’s a great feeling.

Japanese For Everyone

I’m up to Chapter 11 now. I’m almost half way through the book! Exciting!

I think that JFE’s strong point is grammar. It doesn’t explain things in great detail (I like the fact that Genki has longer written explanations), however the exercises are very good and most grammar points are easy to pick up. I think at the start of the book with no other guidance I would have been lost, but once you are over the initial hurdle this is a good book.

Anki

Anki is going good. Earlier in the month I didn’t use the program at all, which is bad. Last week I was busy clearing out all my sentences and then adding more. Last month I had 359 cards, now I have 533 cards. However, I haven’t yet been tested on 113 of them! I need to, next week is an exam!

OK, deck statistics time!
Correct over a week: 93.7% (253 of 270)
Correct under a week: 75.4% (1378 of 1827)
Correct when seeing for the first time: 85.7% (717 of 837)
Total Correct: 80%

Hana Kimi Overload!

I admit, like the rest of the world, I have become obsessed with Hana Kimi. I have watched the show over and over again. I feel like I hear a bit more every time. I do feel like my listening skills have improved.

However, sometimes when I watch the show with subs (I alternate) I realise I understand the sentence that I didn’t understand without subs – only because the sentence wasn’t said 100% clear or something so I didn’t recognise it. I know that people don’t speak clearly in real life so this is good, real-world-like training.

For The Future

I’m going to be talking a bit more about the upcoming months and my plans in my newsletter, but let’s just say that October is going to be a very busy month for me, finishing up my semester at university and all the plans I have for the website. Hopefully I can follow through with my plans, that would be subarashi! All though, truth be told, I think I’m going to have to pull some time out of my arse.

Japanese for Everyone

At the begining of August I was half way through chapter 7. Now I have completed chapter 8 & 9 and I’m about to start chapter 10. I thought it would be harder than it was, but I think thanks to Anki and hearing a lot of what I was learning in dramas, a lot of it has sunk in.

Anki

Last month I had 233 cards. Now I have 359 cards (and I’m going to add some more today!) So I’ve added 126 cards, which is on average four cards a day. I think I’d like to try and bring that average up to around 6 cards a day. On average I’ve been getting them correct 84% of the time which isn’t bad.

As you can see, there really isn’t much to report for last month, but I will be using September to get back into the swing of things!

Pimsleur I:

I’m up to lesson 20. I’m haven’t listened to it for a week or so now, as my new job is closer to home (I used to listen to it as I walked to work, which was about a 30min walk, perfect!). I was finding it easier and easier, and perhaps moving too slow. I’m not sure if I’m going to have time to pick this up again while I’m at uni, so I might be stuck on this level for quite a while…

Japanese For Everyone:

This is the textbook I use at university (if it was up to me I I’d be using Genki). I’m currently half way through lesson 7. I really need to catch up in the workbook, I’m several lessons behind in that…

Anki:

I know I used to talk about how great jMemorize is, and I still like jMemorize over other programs such as Supermemo etc. However, I have found a program that I love even better. It’s called Anki and it’s still in better, however it’s still in beta. I have been following the creator’s progress and I know that 0.3 will be awesome! I’ll be doing a review of this program soon, comparing it to jMemorize…

I’ve also been revising this month how I incorporate flash cards into my study. So, with the move to Anki, I’ve restarted with my cards. I have 233 cards currently, and over the next two weeks or so I’ll be releasing another download for everyone.

Japanese Readers:

I recently brought some Japanese Readers. They are beginner level – I was tossing up between buying Beginner and Upper Beginner. Now I’m glad I brought beginnger! I have 10 stories in total. They started off very easy. Even when I didn’t know a word I could guess from context. Now, the stories were very simple, with simple language and simple sentence structure. So while it was sooo exciting to be reading Japanese, it was also a bit of “This is sooo damn simple! This wouldn’t even be interesting to a child!” Then, after the first three books, it started getting harder. I can’t really read any more of them at the moment. My biggest problem is vocabulary. I know a fair few sentence structures because Japanese For Everyone moves so quickly, but I don’t know nearly enough words. I’ll keep working on it!!!

Other Things In July

As you all know, I’m back at uni. This week is only the second week back, but I am already highly stressed. You see, I’m taking an extra subject this semester. I didn’t want to, but I have to if I want to graduate at the same time as I originally planned. Which means that I am highly stressed and don’t have as much time as I’d like. I’m also feeling really really tired and run down – after uni I try and do something but I end up going to bed, and spend more time trying to wake up so that I can cook myself some dinner!

Basically it means that this website has been suffering. Not good. This place is almost like an added stress even though I love posting here and maintaining it. It’s just that when I do, I think “I should be doing more university work!!”

So, I have decided that this semester I am only going to be posting reviews for two series: Nanokakan and Hana Kimi. I will finish the other series when the semester is finished – only about 12 weeks to go!! I have some great things planned this summer which I’m looking forward to. You can find more about them if you are subscribed to my newsletter.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about my study methods, combined with research I’m planning to do this semester at uni, so expect some fantastic posts on learning languages!

Plans and Goals

I can’t wait to finish this semester of University. As much as I love uni, I am really stressed! I just want to know everything already and be over and done with!

So when this semester of uni is over, I have some plans of what I would like to do. One is I plan on completing Remembering the Kanji. My original plan when I started this was long and slow… Just go through it at a nice pace. I’ve since decided if I do it this way I’ll probably never get it done. So, starting around November, I want to just power through them. I probably wont do any other Japanese study (other than “fun” stuff like watching dramas) while I do this, and I’m hoping that I can learn them reasonably well in two months, three at the most! Once I’ve got through it, it’ll all be revision, and a matter of acquiring vocabulary.

But Really, I’ve Just Been Wasting Time…

Yes, I am the queen of procrastination, and I think more than I act (which is strange because when I do act, I do so without thinking…) Now with uni here, I will have to watch my time more carefully! However, I am going through a bit of drama withdrawal, so hopefully this sunday I will be able to chill a bit, relax, and have some much needed comic and romance relief. Then again, I really need to do some washing and the dishes…. There isn’t enough time!