2024.41 Language Study

Who here is surprised that a pseudo New Years resolution didn't go to plan?

No one?

Literally, none of you?

Yeah, same.

So let's catch up on what's happened in the past, oh 25ish weeks 😬.

I was chugging along, the little engine that could 🚂, all up until the moment I couldn't.

Life changed, my interests shifted, I started doing other things in my free time, and I completely stopped studying Japanese.

I lost my Duolingo streak 😱. I lost my Anki streak😢. I lost my interest 😴.

But life changed again, the pendulum of my interests swung back the way of Japanese, and as of a 9 weeks ago, I got back on the horse 🏇.

Duolingo was right there waiting for me, ready to motivate me with low-ball questions and fancy celebrations. I've never seen a little green bird be so excited about a 3 day streak.

My Anki deck was also waiting for me, as were the cough.... 500+ cards in my backlog.

🟨 Did I remember anything?

I have to say, I was very intimidated at first. I'd spent the last couple months not thinking a moment about Japanese.

Would I remember any of the Kana? Would I have to start all the way over from day one?

Surprisingly (to me at least), I remembered nearly 95% of everything I had learned up till my hiatus 🤗.

I cannot express how encouraging this was. It was such a confidence booster to discover that my learning strategies had been effective and the information had stuck in my brain 🧠 all this time.

So let's look at what I think was most effective in helping me commit what I'd learned to long term memory.

1. Mnemonics and Kana-first approach

There's no doubt that learning the Kana using Tofugu's mnemonics was 100% the right choice for me. Thanks to Tofugu , every kana has a little story paying rent somewhere in my brain, ready to show up when I see those weird lines pop up on my screen.

On top of that, my early dedication to ditching romaji and immersing in Kana only readings allowed the Kana I was learning to move past basic recall and closer to quick recognition.

I would encourage new learners to:

1. Prioritize learning the Kana first over any vocabulary
2. Use a mnemonics system for committing the Kana to memory
3. Ensure any content you're consuming has romaji readings disabled so you're forced to read Kana only

2. Going Slow

I have been learning this language at a pace so slow a snail 🐌 would complain.

As an already very busy, hobby language learner, I was intimidated about not being able to learn fast enough for it to be worth while.

As someone who cannot dedicate multiple hours each day to immersion, learning new content, and reviewing learned content, choosing to go slow has been critical in ensuring I lock in the information as I learn it.

My recommendation would be:

1. Don't rush to learn too many new things each week
2. After learning something new, continually review it for the next several days, ideally using some sort of SRS system

3. Flashcards

Basically a trope at this point.

1. All the language learners talk about flashcards
2. The newbie doesn't want to do flashcards
3. The newbie eventually ends up using flashcards

I absolutely thought I could avoid using flashcards, and I was motivated to avoid them since nothing about that system appealed to me nor fit with my learning strengths.

But in retrospect I believe this was wrought from a misunderstanding of how to effectively use flashcards.

Some folks online talk about downloading a massive Anki deck of 2k cards, then using that to learn 50 new cards a day and review a hundred cards as well.

That was never going to work for me, for one because flashcards are not an effective way for me to learn new material.

However, they are an effective way for me to review already learned material.

This nuance made the difference and Anki has played a critical role in ensuring the information I learned on a Sunday is still fresh and baking 🍞 its way into long term memory by Friday.

My recommendations:

1. Initially, do not download pre-made decks, create your own cards by hand
2. Only create cards for things you have studied, learned, and understood
3. Use these cards to help you review and commit to memory these things you have already learned

🚢 So where to from here...

The next phase on my learning journey here is getting my first 100 vocabulary words and Kanji under my belt. I'll probably write more about my strategy for that in a future post though.