Japanese, My Personal Ultraproject
By: Sleepy Promethean
Tags: Autodidactism, Japanese, Ultraproject, Learning

Scott Young has written a wealth on increasing productivity and self education. He’s presented the world with a book and a few relevant articles on something he calls Ultralearning. This method is a tool for learning a large amount of information quickly. Without going into all the crazy details (out of laziness and wish for the truly interested to read his articles for themselves) I will be undertaking an Ultralearning project, a term I’ve shortened to just “ultraproject”.

By the title of this post, you’ve already gathered what I’ll be learning, or am hoping to learn rapidly. That’s right! It’s French! Just kidding. Due to career vestments Japanese is the language of choice for me. I’ve studied a bit on my own, a bit in college, and tried out a few apps, none of which has taught me more than a few things about the language and a minimal understanding of the grammar structure. With this ultraproject I’m hoping to change this.

I won’t bore you with the details of how the design of the project will work, just give a general overview of the plan going forward in the form of resources, method, and goals leaving the design to unfold as it will over the course of this time.

Resources:

Anki, an app used to create digital flashcards with a few bells and whistles.

All About Particles, a simple book on Japanese function words.

Drops, an app used to learn and memorize foreign language vocabulary.

Infinite Japanese, another app similar to drops with more of a game focus.

Some manga in the original Japanese I’ve purchased off a friend and whatever news and entertainment-type resources I happen upon in the wilds of Youtube.

Wikipedia’s List of Kyouiku Kanji, the kanji needed to attain a sixth-grade reading level in Japanese according to the Japanese ministry of education.

Side note for the unenthused: These just barely scratch the surface of materials I’ve found on Japanese. I may or may not use the others as I see fit, but for now, keeping it simple is a good way to manage everything in my head.

Method:

I’ll be spacing out the learning of various Japanese characters in combination with using apps, translating, watching, and listening to Japanese media I can find. With time and a little trick called sentence mining I figure I’ll be able to make it quite a way into understanding over the span of three months.

I’ll be giving weekly updates through the blog every Tuesday or so to give any readers the feel of what’s happened over the past week, any struggles, and what’s next as I adjust a schedule that fits nicely with my hectic life.

Goals:

>To read Kanji at the sixth-grade level.

>To have translated a song from Japanese to English.

>To be able to hold a conversation in Japanese for an hour with a native speaker.

The Dry Run

Though the Ultralearning articles and book state its a bad idea to start off with a schedule I’m going to do a dry run as the articles say using one. I fully suspect that it will quickly go awry, but that’s what learning during a dry run is for.

For my dry run, I’ll be using this little week by week guide I wrote up for myself.

<Week 1>

Daily goals:

>One Drops Lesson

>One Infinite Japanese Level

>Practice all Hiragana

>Practice the growing word list

>Read a two pages out of All About Particles

>Write out 25 Anki Kanji flashcards using pictures you can find on the internet and add them to the word list.

Weeks Goal:

>Be able to write all Hiragana by memory

>Have added 175 Kanji to the word-list

Side note for the curious: The Japanese writing system is broken down into three alphabets to help differentiate words from one another when reading since spaces do no exist in the language, Kanji (borrowed Chinese characters), Hiragana (characters that are used to spell phonetically), Katakana (more or less a different set of Hiragana).

So that’s it, that’s the plan, I’ll be starting Wednesday of this week, or “tomorrow” as some might like to call it. Wish me luck. If you’re interested in doing this yourself stick around for the trials and tribulation this is sure to incur so you don’t make the same mistakes.

Keep an eye on that horizon.

-Sleepy Promethean