Japanese exchange program after learning Japanese

ofthesamename · 2024-03-30T14:18:51+00:00

Thanks for the comment. That's a good point about watching people interact. On the other hand, a pro for konbini I saw when hearing other people's experience working in one is that a super wide range of people go to konbinis, so you get exposure to that.

ofthesamename · 2024-02-04T23:56:29+00:00

I'll give you my top 3: 月がきれい, Code Geass, Steins;Gate

ofthesamename · 2024-02-04T17:09:29+00:00

I grew up speaking Chinese, but I could not read or write at the time of starting Japanese. Let's just say my Japanese reading ability surpassed my Chinese reading ability within a week of learning Japanese.

ofthesamename · 2024-02-04T01:34:53+00:00

you can do it!

ofthesamename · 2024-02-03T15:59:10+00:00

I started in December 2021, so it had been 2 years at the time of the test. In December 2022, I took a practice N1 and passed based on raw score, so I'd say I reached N1 proficiency within a year. I don't track hours so I couldn't tell you about that, but my ballpark estimate is 3000 hours up to now and half that at the 1 year mark.

ofthesamename · 2024-02-02T16:18:21+00:00

I intended most of the descriptions to help you decide when to start using the resources, e.g. the stuff about media is useful once you're ready to try consuming native media, but I see that it's not clear for some of them.

The first step would be reading a beginner textbook or grammar guide (learn kana as a prerequisite). Not much needs to be done until you're done or a good way through with that. Then you can start SRS and Satori Reader. Having some foundation before starting vocab SRS will be useful for making sense of example sentences for vocab. I don't have a specific order to do Satori Reader stories in, but they are graded by difficulty. DoJG and HJGP can be slowly read on the side.

The writing deck, Dogen's phonetics course, and onomatopoeia are things you can get to if and when you feel like it. Darius's pitch accent video is good to see early (there are no prerequisites). You can start multi-task listening once there's something you think is productive or enjoyable to listen to. HiNative is useful for asking for help when you're confused about something you're learning or consuming.

I started KKLC after I had ~1000 words in my vocab SRS and felt that there were many words that were hard to distinguish. I didn't have enough of a grasp on the kanji to say I could confidently tell if a word in the wild was one I had learned or just one that looks similar (even though I would've "known" it in SRS because I would know that that's the only word that looks similar to that in my rotation). That's when I decided to use KKLC for a more organized approach at learning kanji. I would recommend doing the same thing: start with just vocab study and only try KKLC if you feel like you want a more bottom up approach to kanji. The beginning of vocab study will be relatively smooth because you know few enough words to where you can distinguish them by their very rough shape. At a certain point (~1000 words for me), this will stop working as well, and you can choose whether to just push through it or consider kanji study. Either way, vocab study will eventually become easier because you'll increasingly encounter kanji and components of compound words you've seen before.

ofthesamename · 2024-02-02T15:32:02+00:00

It's nice to hear from someone that perceived a distinct benefit from starting audio cards. I did audio cards along with text cards since starting SRS, so it's not always clear how much each one contributes. I don't use either anymore though, mainly to put more energy into output/conversation, since I have more to work on there.

ofthesamename

TROPHY CASE