November 2023 – Kaeru’s Japanese Learning Goals

After a few months of personal things that were disrupting my study routine, I’m finally stable enough to meaningfully progress my Japanese studies again!

In an effort to keep study time high and writing time low, here’s a quick bullet list of what I hope to achieve this month:

• Catching up on Flashcards: Guess who’s in “catch-up mode” again? My goal this month is to catch up… again. I have Renshuu set so that I study at least 150 words a day, and will commit to at least getting that done daily.
• Keeping up with “Wild Words”: Outside of the catch-up, lately I’ve been looking at more websites in Japanese and have been trying to add words that I keep seeing to my “wild words” list. These words are best learned when they’ve been seen recently (and the context is retained), so my focus for any new terms for now (as I’m catching up) will be these recently seen words.
• Bite-sized Translations of Native Material: I’m going to be trying to translate more native material more frequently, but I’ll be sticking to only 1-2 sentences per day, likely headlines or things from spaces I already have a lot of context for (ie manga, or supporting material from a series I know I like). I’ve found that having prior context takes out some of the burden from translating, and is also quite motivating!
• Fully Translating Textbook/Graded Material: I’ll be attempting more translations of textbook and graded material, since I’ll be able to translate a larger quantity of it than the native material.
• Tutoring Lessons: I stopped these for a month, but otherwise have remained consistent. I finally got to Genki chapter 15, and am looking forward to continuing on and learning more grammar to support my translation goals.