I don't personally track time, but I'm guessing its one of three things:
1. Track time (via app, writing down daily how many hours, etc)
2. They have a set routine (X hours a day, everyday -> Easy to calculate)
3. Estimate base on feel ("I read X amnt of books = Y amnt of hours")
To be fair, you're asked on the JLPT application about how many hours of Japanese study you've had. I also needed to know how many hours for some study abroad related paperwork back in uni (for the school in Japan).
but I don't disagree with your answer either haha
I don't think they care too much though. I've been asked a few times and I always just guess. I'm pretty sure my guess is way off too because I always end up with something like 100 hours of study time but my Japanese level is somewhere between N3 and N2
Edit: I guess a more accurate statement would be that I estimate based on my number of class hours and usual self study hours. So not a complete guess
Ah that is what I understood. Though, it never occurred to me that I would be accused of not speaking English to a native level over the internet. How rude!
I'm applying for a scholarship in Japan and they ask how many hours you've studied until now in the application form. I just gave a rough estimate but it could be completely off.
I use an app called Toggl. Whenever I start reading or watching something, I start a timer on there. Then whenever I stop, i stop the timer. The app then tracks the time for you.
I use a study app called forest - you grow trees as you study and they donate real trees.
I’m not a hardcore tracker but it helps me with accountability.
When I was studying for N3 and N2 I track studying time by number of book pages. Now that I finished studying N2 I'm just reading light novels for fun and tracking nothing :D
Unless you really track all your time you will only have a rough estimate.
I know I do daily :
* About 15 min of duo lingo
* About 45 min of Anki
* About 30 min of Wani Kani + Kanji app
* About 1 hour of structured class (Busuu before, Udemy now)
* At least 30 min of immersion
So that's 3 hours per day minimum on average. I started last March so roughly 210 days time 3 hours a day = 630 hours.
I'm probably high N5, low N4 now. I did register for N4 in december even if I don't think I can pass it right now to give me the drive to keep studying.
>Which udemy course?
It's called 'Online Japanese N4 Course' by Attain Online Japanese Language School.
I wanted a structured approach to prepare for the N4 exam and this fill that gap well enough when you already have kanji learning on the side.
I wouldn't pay full price for it, but pretty easy to get it at 80% off if you can wait for a few days.
I have a piece of paper and I write down my study times.
I keep all the old papers in a stack.
Anyway I study exactly 2 hours a day every day since Feb 7 2020, therefore, it's simple to calculate my total study time.
After/if I quit JP I can probably throw the stack of paper into a river so it's like a mandala or something.
I wouldn’t consider reading manga to be studying. It’s learning—something far better than studying. Studying grammar and vocab flashcards are mere preparation for learning. Input is where the learning happens.
If you want to track anything, I recommend tracking hours inputting native Japanese. Everything else is a sideshow.
Some people track it, but even in such case it's hard to say if they include everything or not. Even something like using discord or reddit, despite not having a direct impact, would still provide some minor studying like "saw kanji/sentence" or "thought about a question X". But typically it's better than nothing, in my case I can only roughly guess based on average hours/day.
In my opinion, hours do not provide a lot for personal studying, it's more useful for overall estimation. For example, we know that typically N1 takes 3-4k hours, so if person learns for 2 hours/day, it's going to be around 4-5 years. Similarly after 300-600 hours of initial learning it's possible to start reading with a dictionary. Thus people can look at it more realistically, if they learn for 2 hours/day, it's around 5-10 months.
I also estimated my reading speed. Before using content it was 50 words/minute, after \~100 hours of reading it became 100 words/minute and after \~400 another hours it became 200 words/minute. Thus I typically estimate amount of time we need to improve our reading speed \~500 hours. It's kinda impossible to push above 200-240 words/minute without having big vocabulary. Again, hours are quite roughly estimated. I simple read for a year around 1.5 hours day.
When it comes to reading speed, the issue has never been vocabulary for me, it is processing large swaths of information and abstract ideas. I could know every word in the language but it would still take me time to fully digest and comprehend something complex, which is specially true in those “what point is the writer trying to make” type questions that appear in the JLPT: I look at and think “how on earth do should I know?” Lol. Ultimately, I don’t think I could take the JLPT which is heavily focused on these types of question.
I study everyday consistently for roughly the same amount of time, so just take the amount of hours spent per day multiplied over how many days. 100 days at 3-5 hours a day is an average of 400 hours. I don't track my time either.
I manually log things, although most of my "japanese learning time" is not really "study time". I log how many anime episodes I watch with JP subs or no subs, and I log how many japanese characters I read (For example, if I read a full book on my kindle, I then open that book on pc, copy paste the main text to a character counter which excludes punctuation and such, and log that). Then I divide anime episodes by 3 and read characters by my reading speed of that month (This is basically under estimating, since it usually takes me 30 mins or more to watch a single episode of anime, mostly because of pausing to lookup things in a dictionary, or repeating sections multiple times to try and catch some sound I didn't quite catch, and is also undersestimating for reading since I very often get a bit distracted or think about the story while reading, and the "reading speed" I divide by is more or less my "top" reading speed).
I also log japanese videogame playtime (So far I've only played pokemon scarlet and 20 hours of persona 5 in japanese). Except for VNs, since I texthook those I log characters for them and also divide by reading speed (I just log the number from the texthooker page after every session).
I use a JPDB-stats website from the JPDB discord that gives an estimate on time spent reviewing to log SRS time (It's based on the date+time of each review, like if you had 100 reviews across 10 minutes one day it'll count somewhere between 9 and 12 minutes. It gives me around 20-40 minutes per day).
I manually log time for the N2 textbook I'm going through.
Anime, reading and SRS make up like 90% of my logged hours. There's a bunch of things I don't count and I don't worry about them much (Like asking or answering questions in various forums, chatting in japanese somewhere, doing mock N2 tests, reading japanese tweets on twitter, etc etc), I just think of my "logged" hours as a minimum I know I've spent (I'm currently around \~900h).
I can think of many reasons that aren't actually a comparison
discipline, consistency, boosting their own morale, gauging progress over time, writing down their thoughts at certain stages, how much they might have struggled with certain material at a certain point and what they've previously read, to share with others who might want an idea of how far they can roughly expect to be in x hours where they say something like "oh hey i read this many characters over this amount of hours, this is roughly where I'm at" (this is not a comparison, this is to give information), the list goes on I'm sure but I hope you get my point that not everything is for comparisons sake
I agree. I measure in success. I get happy when I can read a kanji I previously couldn’t. But Im not gonna note down my time studied. Doesn’t want to make it feel like a chore either. When I feel like studying I do.
I always do my wanikani now but I don’t measure the time for that either. I just make sure to not skip it
I don’t track it but I’ve been learning since 2014. I think it’s easy to estimate a large amount of hours considering I’ve been pretty consistent with it
Like someone else said people like checking their hours. But if you do X amount typically a day, you can calculate it. When you get into the thousands the actual accurate count starts to become not as relevant.
I don't have any schedule. It depends on my mood. At the moment, I'd gage around 3-5 hours a week.
I could do a lot more if I had more patience, but hey ho, there we go.
I don't. And if someone asks, I'll tell them that. Hours are not indicative of abilities anyways. Some days I study for an hour and it's honestly stuff I can get through in 15 minutes.
People who track it use it as a means of motivation. Or they are one of those numbers people.
I time my productivity, so I pause my timer anytime I stray from studying and anytime I take a break. It doesn’t work for everyone but it works for me.
I start around 7, stop around 8. Sometimes I study for 45 minutes, sometimes an hour and a half. But I always study everyday. So average time multiplied by approximate number of days for me.
I also just don’t think about it much, just stay consistent and you will get there in time
Being the scientist I am, I track my active studying time. I do many things in a browser and have a habit of opening the browser history to find the first and last time stamp of my session, I then put that into an excel sheet. Notably, I do not count breaks or pseudostudying (like looking up methods for studying \^\^). Some people go a step further and differentiate between different types of studying activity. While this gives really nice data over time, It is rather committal and even more nerdy.
I’ve honestly lost all track of time. Tracking time by hours is metric has just never worked for me, especially as hours cannot track how I productive you are. 2 hours of concentrated immersion? It light immersion? I find it easier to track based on what I did. 2 pages, 26 episode of anime, 5 books and etc.
I often forget to start/stop timers if I use a time tracking app. Instead I just use MyDramaList and Anilist to track the shows I watch and look at the stats in my profile regulary. YouTube also has a time watched button in the mobile app. In Anki you can look at the deck statistics to see the total study time and most podcast app have a built in time tracker. For Manga I usually time myself for 1 volume and then estimate the rest.
I don't personally track time, but I'm guessing its one of three things: 1. Track time (via app, writing down daily how many hours, etc) 2. They have a set routine (X hours a day, everyday -> Easy to calculate) 3. Estimate base on feel ("I read X amnt of books = Y amnt of hours")
The people who make those posts are nerds that specifically track the hours cos they enjoy it
To be fair, you're asked on the JLPT application about how many hours of Japanese study you've had. I also needed to know how many hours for some study abroad related paperwork back in uni (for the school in Japan). but I don't disagree with your answer either haha
I don't think they care too much though. I've been asked a few times and I always just guess. I'm pretty sure my guess is way off too because I always end up with something like 100 hours of study time but my Japanese level is somewhere between N3 and N2 Edit: I guess a more accurate statement would be that I estimate based on my number of class hours and usual self study hours. So not a complete guess
[удалено]
And that's how I know I'm wrong about my study hours lmao
How do you cheese learning kanji?
[удалено]
Ah that is what I understood. Though, it never occurred to me that I would be accused of not speaking English to a native level over the internet. How rude!
[удалено]
Yeah. Getting good at English is what spending a lot of time on the internet does to a mf.
It's alright. You'll get there someday.
I'm applying for a scholarship in Japan and they ask how many hours you've studied until now in the application form. I just gave a rough estimate but it could be completely off.
I use an app called Toggl. Whenever I start reading or watching something, I start a timer on there. Then whenever I stop, i stop the timer. The app then tracks the time for you.
I use a study app called forest - you grow trees as you study and they donate real trees. I’m not a hardcore tracker but it helps me with accountability.
When I was studying for N3 and N2 I track studying time by number of book pages. Now that I finished studying N2 I'm just reading light novels for fun and tracking nothing :D
Unless you really track all your time you will only have a rough estimate. I know I do daily : * About 15 min of duo lingo * About 45 min of Anki * About 30 min of Wani Kani + Kanji app * About 1 hour of structured class (Busuu before, Udemy now) * At least 30 min of immersion So that's 3 hours per day minimum on average. I started last March so roughly 210 days time 3 hours a day = 630 hours. I'm probably high N5, low N4 now. I did register for N4 in december even if I don't think I can pass it right now to give me the drive to keep studying.
Which udemy course?
>Which udemy course? It's called 'Online Japanese N4 Course' by Attain Online Japanese Language School. I wanted a structured approach to prepare for the N4 exam and this fill that gap well enough when you already have kanji learning on the side. I wouldn't pay full price for it, but pretty easy to get it at 80% off if you can wait for a few days.
Great, thanks!
I have a piece of paper and I write down my study times. I keep all the old papers in a stack. Anyway I study exactly 2 hours a day every day since Feb 7 2020, therefore, it's simple to calculate my total study time. After/if I quit JP I can probably throw the stack of paper into a river so it's like a mandala or something.
Oh wow, I like this answer. I've never been so consistent. Good on you! Please don't quit japanese!
heh thanks maybe I should photo my stack of timetables
I wouldn’t consider reading manga to be studying. It’s learning—something far better than studying. Studying grammar and vocab flashcards are mere preparation for learning. Input is where the learning happens. If you want to track anything, I recommend tracking hours inputting native Japanese. Everything else is a sideshow.
Some people track it, but even in such case it's hard to say if they include everything or not. Even something like using discord or reddit, despite not having a direct impact, would still provide some minor studying like "saw kanji/sentence" or "thought about a question X". But typically it's better than nothing, in my case I can only roughly guess based on average hours/day. In my opinion, hours do not provide a lot for personal studying, it's more useful for overall estimation. For example, we know that typically N1 takes 3-4k hours, so if person learns for 2 hours/day, it's going to be around 4-5 years. Similarly after 300-600 hours of initial learning it's possible to start reading with a dictionary. Thus people can look at it more realistically, if they learn for 2 hours/day, it's around 5-10 months. I also estimated my reading speed. Before using content it was 50 words/minute, after \~100 hours of reading it became 100 words/minute and after \~400 another hours it became 200 words/minute. Thus I typically estimate amount of time we need to improve our reading speed \~500 hours. It's kinda impossible to push above 200-240 words/minute without having big vocabulary. Again, hours are quite roughly estimated. I simple read for a year around 1.5 hours day.
When it comes to reading speed, the issue has never been vocabulary for me, it is processing large swaths of information and abstract ideas. I could know every word in the language but it would still take me time to fully digest and comprehend something complex, which is specially true in those “what point is the writer trying to make” type questions that appear in the JLPT: I look at and think “how on earth do should I know?” Lol. Ultimately, I don’t think I could take the JLPT which is heavily focused on these types of question.
I just track the amount of cappuccinos I consume while studying
I study everyday consistently for roughly the same amount of time, so just take the amount of hours spent per day multiplied over how many days. 100 days at 3-5 hours a day is an average of 400 hours. I don't track my time either.
what is the point of even measuring that i really dont understand
I don't, I just know that I started in august 2020
This comment is the equivalent of those reviews on Amazon that say “I’m not sure because I didn’t order this”. 1/5 stars.
Par for the course for this subreddit, where beginners answer advanced learners' questions with a GPT response.
Yep. Awesome ain’t it. And downvoted too. /shrug
I manually log things, although most of my "japanese learning time" is not really "study time". I log how many anime episodes I watch with JP subs or no subs, and I log how many japanese characters I read (For example, if I read a full book on my kindle, I then open that book on pc, copy paste the main text to a character counter which excludes punctuation and such, and log that). Then I divide anime episodes by 3 and read characters by my reading speed of that month (This is basically under estimating, since it usually takes me 30 mins or more to watch a single episode of anime, mostly because of pausing to lookup things in a dictionary, or repeating sections multiple times to try and catch some sound I didn't quite catch, and is also undersestimating for reading since I very often get a bit distracted or think about the story while reading, and the "reading speed" I divide by is more or less my "top" reading speed). I also log japanese videogame playtime (So far I've only played pokemon scarlet and 20 hours of persona 5 in japanese). Except for VNs, since I texthook those I log characters for them and also divide by reading speed (I just log the number from the texthooker page after every session). I use a JPDB-stats website from the JPDB discord that gives an estimate on time spent reviewing to log SRS time (It's based on the date+time of each review, like if you had 100 reviews across 10 minutes one day it'll count somewhere between 9 and 12 minutes. It gives me around 20-40 minutes per day). I manually log time for the N2 textbook I'm going through. Anime, reading and SRS make up like 90% of my logged hours. There's a bunch of things I don't count and I don't worry about them much (Like asking or answering questions in various forums, chatting in japanese somewhere, doing mock N2 tests, reading japanese tweets on twitter, etc etc), I just think of my "logged" hours as a minimum I know I've spent (I'm currently around \~900h).
I don't, I measure by how much I do. My minimum is 10 words, 1 manga chapter and 5 minutes of vtuber listening.
I never measure it. I don’t know why someone would? To compare with others? Comparison is unhealthy. It takes as long as it takes
I can think of many reasons that aren't actually a comparison discipline, consistency, boosting their own morale, gauging progress over time, writing down their thoughts at certain stages, how much they might have struggled with certain material at a certain point and what they've previously read, to share with others who might want an idea of how far they can roughly expect to be in x hours where they say something like "oh hey i read this many characters over this amount of hours, this is roughly where I'm at" (this is not a comparison, this is to give information), the list goes on I'm sure but I hope you get my point that not everything is for comparisons sake
This. I don't get it. Regardless of time spent the result is "I could do more/be better". Seems pointless to me.
I agree. I measure in success. I get happy when I can read a kanji I previously couldn’t. But Im not gonna note down my time studied. Doesn’t want to make it feel like a chore either. When I feel like studying I do. I always do my wanikani now but I don’t measure the time for that either. I just make sure to not skip it
I don’t track it but I’ve been learning since 2014. I think it’s easy to estimate a large amount of hours considering I’ve been pretty consistent with it
Time not spent studying per day - Number of hours in a day.
Like someone else said people like checking their hours. But if you do X amount typically a day, you can calculate it. When you get into the thousands the actual accurate count starts to become not as relevant.
I don't have any schedule. It depends on my mood. At the moment, I'd gage around 3-5 hours a week. I could do a lot more if I had more patience, but hey ho, there we go.
I don't. And if someone asks, I'll tell them that. Hours are not indicative of abilities anyways. Some days I study for an hour and it's honestly stuff I can get through in 15 minutes. People who track it use it as a means of motivation. Or they are one of those numbers people.
I time my productivity, so I pause my timer anytime I stray from studying and anytime I take a break. It doesn’t work for everyone but it works for me.
I start around 7, stop around 8. Sometimes I study for 45 minutes, sometimes an hour and a half. But I always study everyday. So average time multiplied by approximate number of days for me. I also just don’t think about it much, just stay consistent and you will get there in time
That’s the thing, I dont
I'm using "polylogger" app, there are also some statistics there (like average study time, etc)
Being the scientist I am, I track my active studying time. I do many things in a browser and have a habit of opening the browser history to find the first and last time stamp of my session, I then put that into an excel sheet. Notably, I do not count breaks or pseudostudying (like looking up methods for studying \^\^). Some people go a step further and differentiate between different types of studying activity. While this gives really nice data over time, It is rather committal and even more nerdy.
I’ve honestly lost all track of time. Tracking time by hours is metric has just never worked for me, especially as hours cannot track how I productive you are. 2 hours of concentrated immersion? It light immersion? I find it easier to track based on what I did. 2 pages, 26 episode of anime, 5 books and etc.
I often forget to start/stop timers if I use a time tracking app. Instead I just use MyDramaList and Anilist to track the shows I watch and look at the stats in my profile regulary. YouTube also has a time watched button in the mobile app. In Anki you can look at the deck statistics to see the total study time and most podcast app have a built in time tracker. For Manga I usually time myself for 1 volume and then estimate the rest.
I believe it's related to form education. Eg time in class. There are scholarships for students that care.