#my actual japanese study plan? despite desires to try Comprehensible Input lessons ... (and id love to try with Spanish or Thai)

[rigelmejo]

Language Study Challenges I've been contemplating, but I just do not have the time to do it all. ToT I think some of these could result in some good progress over a few months, as a period to see how much the challenge is helping you improve in your specific goals.

Glossika: attempt to study 2000 new sentences in the course in a month, doing reviews only if you have spare time. May require 1-2 hours of study time a day, but the studying can be done as just listening, so you can do it while also doing other things. Getting through 2000 new sentences in glossika will take around 40-60 hours (I think it took me 40 hours). If the method is working well for making progress on your improvement goals, then keep doing for 3 months and you will cover 6000 sentences, then the 4th month study the last 400 sentences in the course and finally start prioritizing reviews. Spend end of 4th month reviewing, and do a final 5th month of reviews if desired. (Do reviews more than me if you prefer that, do speaking practice with course if desired for your particular goals, do reading practice with course sentences of desired for your particular goal). This can be completed in ~3 to 5 months, so you can make some significant progress and see how well (or not) it worked for your goals in a somewhat shorter amount of time. (I'm doing this challenge now).

Listen to an audiobook: find an audiobook you like (I'm using SCI), attempt to listen to it in as short a time period as possible (that's possible for you), aiming for at least 1-2 hours of listening a day (on average). Since its just listening, it can be done while doing some other activities. If you pick an audiobook shorter than 60 hours long, pick a few audiobooks so that listening 2 hours a day would result in eventually listening to 60 hours in a month. If desired, the next month you can pick to re-listen to the same audiobooks again (for repetition and to see if you understand more the next time around). For me, the goal with this is to INCREASE practice listening to a LOT of dense speaking. So for me, perfectionism will try to kick in and I'll try to re-listen to the same chapter over and over. So for me, this goal is to FINISH listening to an audiobook. The SCI audiobook I'm listening to is around 60 hours. Guardian by priest is around 50 hours. A lot of Chinese webnovels will easily be 40 hours or much longer, if you want something long to keep listening to the same word choices and grammar patterns and plot of one author. If you pick shorter audiobooks, picking the same author may help keep the vocabulary and grammar more familiar to you over time. (I'm doing this challenge).

Comprehensible Input Challenge (for total beginners): Dreaming Spanish gives an estimate of 50 hours to learn 300 words, and 150 more hours (so 200 hours total) to learn 1,500 words. 1,500 words is a great foundation to starting to try shows if you are okay looking key words up every few minutes, novels for kids if you're willing to look key words up, graded readers, simple conversations, videos for learners which don't have as many visual aids for understanding, and the broader world of being able to learn more new words with SURROUNDING words as your context for guessing, instead of only or often primarily visual clues. Dreaming Spanish labels that as Level 3, 1,500 words learned, can watch Intermediate Dreaming Spanish videos. (From their site "Now you can listen to videos or classes in which the teacher doesn't use as much visual input, and may even be able to take advantage of really easy audios and podcasts that are catered to learners at your level. Crosstalk is still the best way to spend your time. At this level it becomes easier than before to do crosstalk over the internet using video call software, so you won't need to find native speakers where you live anymore. Reading is still not recommended if you care about your final achievement in pronunciation, but it starts becoming possible to understand lower level graded readers"). So for a total beginner the challenge would be to get through 50 hours of Comprehensible Input lessons for Superbeginners/Absolute Beginners/B0 (depends on the youtube account for what the first beginner videos are labelled). Just plan 1-2 hours of video lessons per day. Then for months 2, 3, 4, keep doing 50 hours a month and you'll hit that approximate 1,500 words known level. At that point, you should find non-comprehensible input made lessons such as beginner learner podcasts and graded readers become somewhat understandable, and media in the target language may in some cases be understandable if you're willing to look up key words and feel the initial "very tired/drained from focusing hard" part that always happens at first.

Comprehensible Input Challenge (for upper beginners): Assuming you know 1,500 to 2,000 words - or skill wise, you can handle understanding beginner graded readers and some beginner dialogues in learner materials, and can handle some content in the target language for native speakers IF it's on the easier side and you can look a key word up for meaning every few minutes (so for example: you can follow a Peppa Pig episode, or a Spongebob episode, aka a cartoon for kids, if you look up key words every few minutes - alternatively, if you can watch a simple romance daily life show and follow the main plot if you look up key words). Your goal as an intermediate learner: watch 300 hours of Comprehensible Input Lessons labelled "Intermediate." 300 hours will take you from that upper beginner area you're at (1,500 words learned) to 3,000 words learned. That will get you to the point of (from Dreaming Spanish site): being able to talk to patient native speakers and may be able to make friends and lamguage exchange partners, get through daily life stuff like shopping with words although it may be a struggle, can learn new words mainly from surrounding word context now (so picking up new words from things you engage with is going to start picking up more so listening to stuff and watching stuff outside of lessons will result in learning more words - shows, podcasts, entertainment), graded readers will still be more comfortable but you can wade into more books for native speakers (especially if you're willing to look up key words for main idea). At 3,000 words, media for native speakers will still feel difficult but it should feel significantly LESS difficult than it did when you knew 1,500 words. When I knew 1500 words I could start watching cdramas with no english subtitles, but I looked up key words every 1-3 minutes and felt exhausted within 5-20 minutes. Once I had studied 3000 words, I could watch simpler romance slice of life cdramas for 40 minutes (episode length) without feeling drained, and look up key words once every 5 minutes. (Although keep in mind: the first time you watch shows or read novels, it will feel Exhausting until you get used to it, even if you know many thousands of words... you have to practice reading/listening stamina, even if you have a bigger vocabulary). So a 300 hour study of intermediate level lessons, should give you a significant boost in your language skills. You could do 50 hours a month, 1-2 hours a day, and finish in 6 months. You could do 60 hours a month (2 hours a day) and finish in 5 months. You could do 90 hours a month (3 hours a day - probably more than the average person has time for but this is a challenge after all lol!) and finish in 3.3 months. A huge jump like that in 3 months would be awesome! (I did that kind of jump in 6 months... when I started chinese I cram studied 2000 words and 1500 hanzi in 6 months, then reviewed for 2 months by watching shows and graded readers, then for 4 months I read a TON of webnovel chapters and picked up another 1000 words and ~500 hanzi). So yeah, 1.6 hours to 3 hours a day of study for a few months, aiming for 50-90 hours of Comprehensible Input Lessons for Intermediate Learners on youtube per month for 3.3-6 months.

Comprehensible Input Challenge (for intermediate learners) : This is where I am (for Japanese). 600 hours to go from the last level to this, to learn 5,000 words total. (As you know... I'm attempting to use Glossika japanese to learn 5000 words instead, so I'll report how that goes). 600 hours unfortunately cannot be done in 3 months with a comfortable study plan - I think, for me at least, a comfortable study plan I know I can commit to is going to need to be 2 hours a day or less (on average). 600 hours would take ~10 months to go through at 2 hours a day. Now granted, 10 months isn't so long in the grand scheme. But if you, like me, can motivate yourself to read novels or watch shows at this point, then 600 hours of youtube lessons sounds so boring. Although... I guess for my japanese level, watching shows still feels exhausting (podcasts for learners feel okay though, like Nihongo Con Teppei, so maybe I should listen to hundreds of hours of that?). Find the intermediate/advanced video comprehensible input lessons on youtube for the language you're studying, and go wild. It should take 10 months unless you study more hours per day then I can. (I think this is a sobering realization, right as I type, that it probably is going to take 600ish hours of SOME form of Japanese study to get me to the level I want to be at... maybe I'll try to just slog through a japanese novel ebook... I can sometimes motivate myself to read for 4 hours a day, I like reading...). Note: if I do this challenge later, it'll be with Comprehensible Japanese youtube videos for Intermediate and Advanced. Significant progress you should see once you've learned around 5,000 words (from Dreaming Spanish): You'll be able to understand more advanced materials for learners. Listen to audios and podcasts daily if you want to learn fast. Crosstalk is still as good as always. You may start feeling you are not getting much out of getting input about daily life topics. Try getting input about new topics. Easier TV programs and cartoons should be accessible too. The purists who want to get really close to a native speaker and get a really good accent may still want to hold off on speaking and reading for a little more, but if you do start speaking and reading it's not a big deal by this point. You'll still end up with better pronunciation and fluency than the vast majority of learners. If you want to start reading, by this point you'll be able to understand books targeted at children of lower grade levels, and you can skip over graded readers. From me: if you're looking key words up for the main idea when watching shows, you should now be able to watch many shows in familiar genres and just look up 1 word every 5 minutes or so. If you've got a decent ability to guess, and practiced getting used to media for native speakers already, then like I was in Chinese - you will probably feel comfortable watching MANY shows in genres you're familiar with, without looking up anything. You will feel especially comfortable with easier shows like cartoons and romance daily life stuff, and things you've watched before. If you've been practicing reading before this, then once you know 5000 words you will find you need to look key words up less often and can focus more on enjoying stories, and looking words up because you desire their specific meaning/to fully understand details, not necessarily because you need the words meaning to grasp the main idea (I did a LOT of intensive reading around this period in Chinese because I could finally extensively read for plot, so I'd look up every unknown word I saw to grasp the other details and increase my vocabulary... and because the amount of unknown words to look up was now manageable).