Or else?

I did some translation of children’s books. It went well. I learned some new vocab surrounding medical topics (still seeking care in a foreign country, sigh).

I also got some ear training listening to numbers at stores.

Oh! And I realized I can almost understand the train arrival loudspeaker at the main train station for the most common announcements. That’s very helpful.

I’m chugging along and balancing personal study time and school. I participate in a listen every day challenge with a Wanikani forum, so I try to do 20-30 mins every day. I used to be good about making anki cards out of new vocab, but I’ve gotten lazy recently and slipped by the wayside 😅

I was playing Ace Attorney 5 in JP, but I dropped it a month ago when college ramped up more. There’s just so many games I want to play, I’ll never get to them all.

But I can acknowledge how much progress I’ve made in a year and compared to me 4 years ago. If only I didn’t hate speaking…

Vocab, grammar, and reading are proceeding apace. I made a change this week with Anki to speed up my per-card review time. I realized I was mixing modes a bit, wanting to shadow the voice lines on the cards for speaking practice. I decided instead I’ll set up a more dedicated shadowing practice if I feel what I’m doing with my listening routine isn’t enough. Results were immediate: I cut my daily Anki time by a third, probably more.

With how much vocab I have lined up, I’m actually thinking now I might go to every day for Anki; I’m six days a week right now. Curious to hear what pace everyone else has. Take a day or two off a week? Or instead reduce the rate of new cards when you need a bit of a break? Review timers wait for no one!

Speaking of separating my practice modes, ugh. Listening. I’m not happy with it. I started going through a podcast and went back and forth on how I felt about it for a while. The problem is, I’m very behind on listening. It’s like a full tier below my reading. Available research is telling me I want a high comprehensibility level (over 90%) to train my ear on. And it’s hard to find beginner/lower-intermediate content that:

• Has a transcript readily available
• Is at a consistent grammar/vocab level for its audience
• Doesn’t speak too slow
• Is interesting

I’ve given up on the last one for now, and am considering up giving up on seeking a specific speech pace, but I’m not sure. The podcast I’ve been listening to, Sakura Tips, has been very inconsistent with grammar patterns. I’m regularly getting upper intermediate and even the occasional advanced grammar structure in the episodes, which is bizarre considering her vocab, pace, and even the topics are obviously geared towards beginners. I finally decided to bail on it and I’m going to do the audio recordings on NHK Easy. It’s frustrating because, in print, those articles stopped being challenging for me long ago (aside from proper names and various esoterica), but my ear seems to need the bootstrapping.

Had my first in-person class with a tutor after getting fed up with iTalki’s prices (and also feeling like online tutors broadly just don’t care as much about their students). It went fantastically. Added a bunch of new vocab to study thanks to that first class. Hoping to focus more on grammar.

Today is day 667 of flashcards.

Completely cratered one day, then the next I got sick, so there’s been a trickle of study ongoing instead of a flow. The last 2 days I’ve really come back on track though, more so than I usually recover. Already doing hours worth of study as soon as I wake up, but I think in part it’s due to the study sessions I have with my GF, we both don’t talk and just study on our prospective projects, and it’s working out quite well.

Spanish I’m using Migaku these days, but I feel it’s also not the best, since the courses you can take from it is like… Learn creatures or colours, and a lot of these words just seem like words I’d hardly use in English let alone Spanish. But I do them so I have something to do. I might end up using the Migaku addon and switch to Vivaldi to use it, and just pick up words from YouTube or Netflix and the like and add it to my manual Spanish lessons that way.

Japanese haven’t really done anything too strange. Doing a bit more Busuu courses these days compared to what I usually do, that goes for Spanish Busuu courses too. Again Busuu helps clear up some concepts that Duolingo left for dead in obscure tips sections. Edit: also, just remembered. I’m about 30 words off of finishing the complete N5 word list, so that’s about either 6-14 days of study, depending. So that’ll be a milestone.

Still however not happy with what course selections I have for Spanish, despite mixing a weave of Duolingo, Busuu and Migaku. Might end up just getting a physical textbook and reading through it to make it feel like I have a more complete understanding.

Still keeping up with the maths, but only managing 15 mins a day, which is more than enough for just starting I think. Plan on ramping up maths at some point in the future to a whole hour a day but probably not for a good few months still.

Will probably touch the Irish again in a short while today. Managed to clear a lot of todays logs so have more time now. Also plan on exercising later too, I’ve also picked that up recently as well.

The cold weather is very nice, it’s actually a motivator for study. I get to keep warm from the cold and study and drink tea and it’s a very relaxing experience.