I've not done too badly at leaarning to speak Japanese over the last six months. I would estimate that I've increased my vocabulary by around 600 words, I've completed another textbook and I've clocked up somewhere around 100 hours of speaking Japanese.100% of the time on Skype. I've come to the understanding that it's not "how many years" you learn a language that matters, it's how many hours you put in. For the first year, I wasn't putting many hours in regularly, for the next six months I increased the amount, but in comparison with the last six months, most of the Japanese I know has been learned over the last six months. The more I learn, the more I enjoy learning the language too.
Am I fluent in Japanese? No, I don't consider myself fluent. If this was paragliding, I'm able to make short flights though. The progression in paragliding is that you begin running around with the canopy above your head, then you make short hops, then long hops, then longer hops and suddenly you find a more accurate for these longer hops to be short flights. That's where I'm at right now. I'll spend the majority of my time on Skype practicing Japanese that I've recently learned and then once I'm satisfied that I've practiced everything I wanted to, I'll spend the rest of my hour just chatting in Japanese ... it's a bit like I'll just talk within my comfort zone, not pushing myself ... almost like allowing my Japanese speaking motor to tick over and keep my existing vocabulary warm.
Anyway, I'm now looking at what I'll do for the next six months and I've decided to have another go at learning kanji. This time though, I'm going to try a different approach. I still think the RTK method is good, but I also think it would help me if I learned the 214 radicals. In some ways, I think having a smaller achievable goal will do me good; especially when having the 214 radicals memorized will help me define better mnemonic stories when I return to learning kanji. My plan kicks in a few days time, but here it is:
3 radicals per day. (All 214 learned in 75 days)
4 kanji per day (300 in 75 days)
5 new Japanese vocabulary words per day (450 in 90 days)
At the moment, I estimate my vocabulary in Japanese to be slightly over 1,000 words (ish). In 3 months time I'm hoping it's around 1,500ish. I will also know 300 kanji (from the white rabbit series of flashcards) and all 214 radicals. So after that, that will leave me about 1800 kanji to learn. Now I know that I wasn't able to learn 25 a day, and I think that learning 20 kanji might also lead to another disappointment for me ... I mean I might possibly be able to do that, but I don't think I'd enjoy it too much ... learning 20 kanji a day takes a chunk of time that I'd rather be spending on something I do enjoy ... learning / speaking Japanese. Sure, the sooner I'm able to read more kanji, the sooner I will be able to get a lot more authentic input ... but, I've started enjoying Japanese so much that the rush to reach some level where I can show off how amazing I am (ha ha ha) ... well that just doesn't appeal ... I've kind of noticed that I'm now speaking Japanese with Japanese people now because I get a lot of pleasure out of speaking ... and I think that perhaps people who don't speak Japanese would think I'm speaking fluently anyway ... and most people who do speak Japanese fluently will be fluent at a conversational level rather than being masters of the language. I'd like to keep going with Japanese for the rest of my life ... being conversationally fluent is now seemingly inevitable ... whether it's in the next six months or whether it's in the next two years ... doesn't seem to be such a big deal to me anymore. It's funny how these things change in your mind, but that's the way it is. Anyway, yes, getting back to my thoughts about learning kanji; as long as I achieve what I set out to achieve over the next three months (214 radicals, 300 kanji) is achieved, then I could happily learn the remaining 1800 kanji in 6 months ... 10 kanji per day. I would also inevitably be increasing my vocabulary, so having a base of 1,500 words ... I'm sure my vocabulary would be around the 2,000 word count in 9 months time. So that's January / Februay 2015. That fits in with another plan I have to finish my MA in Online and Distance Education. So whilst I'm doing that, I'm going to need to reduce the intensity of which I learn Japanese .. I will still be learning it of course, but just not quite so intensively. By the end of 2015; I will be really rocking the nihongo! YAY!!!
