Learning Japanese – 1 Year Update

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Learning Japanese – 1 Year Update

この投稿は日本語でもご覧いただけます。

Overview – 概要

Here is my 1 year update video/post.

After one year of learning Japanese via the AJATT Immersion Method I have made quite a bit of progress.

The video above explains most of the progress I’ve made but to sum it up and I’m at a high level, can read most material (I know about 95% of words, with about 5% unknown that I just skip over) and can understand and enjoy TV, Films, Anime and the News.

I am by no means fluent but I feel close and feel myself getting closer with each day.

Below are my Anki statistics which show my “study” history and where I’m at.

I’ve also included the amount of listening hours and how much I am in contact with the language per day to give an idea of how much work I have put into it.

Immersion – イマージョン

Immersion is a language learning method that involves being around the language as much as possible on a daily basis.

The logic of this method is simple and based on how babies learn languages.

The idea is that if you are getting language input all the time, eventually you will output it.

It is a very successful method that all learners that have become fluent in their second language have quite probably used.

My “immersion time” per day is about as follows:

  • Listening per day – ~22 hours
  • Reading per day – ~70 pages

The listening hours obviously include sleep hours but whether or not these help is hard to tell. There is no, as far as I’m aware, of any solid scientific data supporting it either way, however, getting listening hours before going to sleep and when waking up is a good boost if nothing else.

The reading is a little hard to judge so I’m basing this on a slight educated guess.

The total sum of 70 pages may not be just from books though, it is a rough estimate based on the number of sentences I see each day in my “immersion environment” which includes, manga, books, news, online articles, subtitles and sentence flashcards.

Kanji – 漢字

Here are the stats in English:

  • Mature: 2326
  • Young + Learning: 421
  • Suspended: 263
  • New: 0
  • Total Learnt: 2747

Sentences – 例文

 

Here are the stats in English:

  • Mature: 5210
  • Young + Learning: 1998
  • Suspended: 0
  • New: 2293
  • Total Learnt: 7208

Thanks for reading and watching!

Click here to find more information on learning Japanese

マット

By Matthew Hawkins

2016/06/05

 


Here are some of my favorite tools and sites for learning Japanese

Thank you for reading this blog post, which I hope you found useful for learning Japanese. Here are some of the most useful websites that I’ve found for finding Japanese content to use for immersion as well as some really useful learning tools to help you through your Japanese studies. Some of these are affiliate links which just means that if you decide to use these sites by clicking the following links, then I will earn a commission. But honestly speaking, these are the sites that I use and recommend language learners, even my friends, to use anyway.

Anki Tools: To get started, I really like Migaku for Anki. By itself, Anki is already a super useful tool for language learners but Migaku allows for integration with websites like YouTube and Netflix, allowing it’s users to create flashcards from the shows and videos that they are watching, as they are watching them. If you use my link you can get an extra month for free.

Speaking Practice: For this I absolutely love iTalki. There are thousands of Japanese teachers on the platform that are available at all times of the day to have conversations with you, in Japanese. Some teachers take a more traditional approach while others are just there to chat, these are the ones I would recommend if you are looking to improve your conversational Japanese. Lessons start from just $5 and there’s no long term commitment, I highly recommend them.

Immersion: I’ve used a lot of different earphones / headphones over the years but by far the one that has come out on top is the NENRENT S570. This is a singular in-ear earphone that matches your skin tone to keep it discrete, meaning you can listen to the language you are learning while at work, or school. For a full list of tools and gadgets I recommend for maximizing your immersion time, check out this blog post.

2 Replies to “Learning Japanese – 1 Year Update”

  1. Pingback: 初めて日本語の勉強をした時から一年が経ちました – BritVSJapan

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