Language Learning

Given the article about Anki and how that author was happily on 70%... I've decided to lower my Anki-FSRS from 90% (default) down to 80%. This should cut my workload significantly. It will take a week or so before the workload feels different, but the simulations suggest maybe 30% or 40% fewer cards-per-day and only losing maybe 5% of my memory. (Fewer reviews == more mistakes, which means more words "forgotten". But at only 5%-ish, its a good tradeoff)

The simulator also says that 70% is my optimal workload for fewest-minutes spent per card. So maybe I should keep dropping it down all the way to 70%?

As of today, I've completed 5 months of study. 3 of which were self-study, and 2-months under a tutor (twice a week meetings, 3 hours total). I have 3 weeks left in my tutoring session, meaning I need to figure out where my next steps are. Tutoring is expensive, both in time and in dollars. I 100% needed it, my speaking skills have gone from non-existent (with huge numbers of "unknown" mistakes in my pronunciation), to passable. I feel confident with the skills I've gained from our in-person practice. But I'm no where near my overall goals even with all the tutoring.

I feel the need to do more tutoring, but maybe later? My current bottleneck is clearly vocabulary and grammar. Subjects I can handle on my own. I also have significant amounts of self-study that I've built up (ie: Pokemon, "Das Maus", transcribing and/or translating songs, Grammatik aktiv. Vocabulary lists to memorize... etc. etc.). With all the tutoring sessions + homework, I barely have gotten any of my self-study done.

I'll at least work through my self-study goals (finish reading my A2 book. Maybe complete a full playthrough of Pokemon, etc. etc.), before I consider additional tutoring. I know this will stunt my speaking skills, but I'm also confident that additional tutoring in the future can "fix" my speaking skills later.

I did have one moment of "achievement" this past week. I've begun to remove the children songs from my playlist. While I haven't gained mastery of all the children songs of my previous playlist... I realize I am "strong" enough to be learning from real pop songs / normal German songs now.

I'll probably go back to some of the harder children songs (or at least, the ones with more complex rhythms / less boring songs). They really are great for learning vocabulary. But my skill level has evolved that I can be sampling harder songs / harder books / harder material successfully. So I should move forward and leave the easier stuff behind...

Yep, sticking with it! Pretty good week last week.

I'm using someone's transcribed notes from the grammar section in my textbook so I have them in a portable format (for use in my note-taking app, or to throw into Anki, etc.). It's not the cleanest transcription, and one thing I'm starting to notice is I'm getting really sharp at spotting typos. Typos--especially kanji conversion errors--work differently in Japanese than they do in English, so there's kind of a separate learned skill for it. It's super interesting stuff, and I'm recalling an interview with Alexander O. Smith (a video game localizer) where he said recognizing potential errors and understanding the scenarist's original intent is a key benchmark for being able to localize games well. Makes me feel pretty good about playing some more later.

I wonder if reading through stuff with errors is an exercise worth seeking out, too, for those at intermediate-level and up. It feels like a good way to reinforce learned but not yet mastered material.