Yikes! It looks like I only learned 4 new words in the fast 2 months!  However I’ve been adding 5 new words per day…  So what gives?

Leeches

About a week ago I noticed that there were a few words that I had seen a bunch of times and should be leeches.  I investigated and found that there were a bunch of cards well past the 7 lapse leech threshold so I suspended them all.  I wish I had written down how many I suspended, so I’d have an idea how far that set my count back.  I just hope getting the leeches out of the way leaves me with more time to study the easier to remember cards.

More Adjustments

I’ve also limited my 1 and 2 day cram decks to 70 reps, so cards with anything over that will probably turn into a leech.  I should probably drop this filter or adjust my leech limit, but I haven’t, so I’ve ended up suspending a bunch of cards and only have a net add of 4 in the past 28 days.

My Evolving Lesson Plan

I have been feeling for some time that I’ve been learning vocabulary just to learn vocab and that my time would be better spent studying other aspects of Japanese communication.  So I’ve decided to learn about 200 more(basically so it’s an even 2500) and then put vocab on hold.  Instead, I’ll be studying sentences.  I’ve already started adding a few sentences while keeping up with 5 vocab per day.  I’ll probably add a few more sentences each day for the next month or so until my vocal stands at 2500 and then maybe 1 vocab and however many sentences I can keep up with for the long term.  I’ve done sentences in the past, so I know that I can keep up with a lot more sentences per day then vocab, because I already know the vocab in one direction at least.

Studying the sentences helps reinforce what I’ve already learned and helps me remember the vocab in both directions (English to Japanese and vice versa).  It also helps me getting used to the way words are put together in Japanese.  I’ve written before that I feel studying grammar when first starting out is a mistake, and grammar is best learned by getting as much exposure to comprehensible Japanese as possible – at least at the beginning which is where I still am.

Anyway, in less than 2 months,  I expect to be doing maybe 10 sentences and 1 vocab per day until I’ve caught my sentences up with my vocab.  By that time, I expect that I will be able to follow along with  Japanese TV and children’s books with some difficulty but finally being able to put what I’ve learnt to some limited use.  Hopefully things work out as I expect they will.