Same thing applies to this. Right now I’m at about 150 kanji after a week. By the time school starts I want to be at 400. And although I don’t quite understand full sentences yet, I’ve started mining things I personally say using the kanji that I’m studying at the moment. Soon I’m going to be getting me a dictionary and volume 1 of Kenichi. Thanks for the advice Khatz. It’s helping a lot!

I have some cognitive dissonance now and then, I think “man, becoming NATIVE level fluent is probably ridiculously hard”, but then I remember I’m thinking that in my third language (English), in which I’m very fluent. Not to brag (too much), but I’ve had English teachers ask me if I have lived in the USA (because that is the only way to become fluent, remember? ).

Thinking back at how I did it, it was via All English Most of the Time (tv, movies, music) for a couple years.

I haven’t made a habit of putting in a new card for each definition I look up although that might be nice to do. I find as my vocabulary count gets higher, I have to spend less time looking things up because I find words in the definitions that I already know. It’s a great feeling understanding something new… almost like magic really.

I’m currently at 642 sentences and 2243 kanji. I will be picking up RTK3 soon for more kanji, and I also pick up new characters from sanseido and infoseek when I look up definitions there. Because of my recent investments and putting in the time to refocus and find new goals, I’ve made quite a bit of progress in the past month or so compared to the last year I spent limping along. I’ve put in 400 sentences and 200 kanji and I feel like I’m getting somewhere again.

In the future, I’m going to try some more sophisticated techniques for managing my time, but for now I just use to do lists. I’ve also had to learn/relearn how to set goals and stay focused. It still doesn’t feel entirely natural, but I’ve got old habits to break.

Thanks, I’m glad you like it. ＾＾ Lucky wording I suppose.

“If I you think about it.. without these intermediate goals, you’re basically playing an RPG without any save points…”

What a brilliant way to put it. I keep a daily log of some simple things (hours with japanese blaring in my ears, reps), but now instead of seeing this as drudgery I’m going to think of it as my saved game.

And example day would be something like :

1. Watch the rest of the first season of Trick
2. Remove more English elements from life. (Brainstorming required)
3. Push the Immersion boulder up at top notch. (In other words, put more effort into the immersion process. This is the key to fluency).
4. Keep the listening up for as long as possible and every moment possible.
5. Come straight home, instead of chatting with professor.
6. Keep doing sentence reps in 10 minute sessions. No need to do them all.
7. Just do some reading. An hour or more. No need for more than that on Monday.
8. Keep a positive attitude, and stay immersed.
9. Aside from class, do not use English.
10. Find more Japanse stuff to read online. HTML, CSS, etc. seem like good topics.

With the varying goals like this, it keeps me in. And because of it, I added 20 monolingual sentences with words like 木管楽器 and 委員会, and a little of 総称 (Those that use Sanseido want to learn this word.. it’s used quite a number of times).

The main motivator in this was the advice to “chill” in the immersion environment and let your curiosity take you the rest of the way. So the effort shifts from sentences and the amount that you have to “how much time can I spend immersed today?” Or, “how many web pages/pages of manga/episodes of Trick can I watch today.” Goals like this are what I’ve found to be the best. Because, since they are part of the bigger goal, and they’re fun and easy goals to accomplish, the result? Lots of fun and learning.

So, this combines the “lock your machine and write what you’re going to do” with the “make intermediate goals” — only, they’re on the daily level. And, I feel proud when I can mark off most, if not all items on the list.

And, now, that I’ve seen how effective that is, I’m going to take a step further and make goals like this. Like, “let’s see how many pages of manga I can read in a week.” In effect, I find this is just like Timeboxing larger portions of time for larger tasks that would naturally take longer to do. But, because you’re boxing them in, you’re more likely to finish the task sooner, or, at least be more productive in the mean time than you would have otherwise.

Thanks for the great article. — If I you think about it.. without these intermediate goals, you’re basically playing an RPG without any save points..

Take care.

P.S. — Khatzumoto, I can’t thank you enough for recommending Trick. I absolutely love that show. I just finished the first season yesterday, and I plan on getting the other two seasons, movies, and the special.