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Need help. Having a massive burnout. | ||
Tags: Burn-out | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| SevenSyndicate Newbie United States Joined 3677 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 9 13 March 2015 at 10:26pm | IP Logged |
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Hello my fellow language learners. I am in dire need of help. I have been studying over a year and in the middle of the worst burnout I have ever had. I have had them before but usually I can get over them fairly quickly. But this time it feels much different. I am not going to quit as I have come to far for that, but this burnout is so bad I don't want to even think about studying Japanese. And every time I look at a kanji a die a little inside (エーン).
I have used Anki since day one of my studies and started wanikani around 5 months ago, but really only have put in may 2or 3 months worth or so since I recently became unemployed and have no money (Just got a job today though, よし！). But anyway it is getting to the point where I don't even want to open Anki or WaniKani as it just puts a bad taste in my mouth. Somedays I manage to force myself to finish Anki, but it is getting really difficult. That being said I'm not behind on Anki at all, I only have around 50 sentences to read a day and that's it. I just can't seem to make myself do it. On wanikani however I am way behind, I have around 300 reviews due. Reason being is when I lost my job and knew I couldn't pay for it, I put it into vacation mode. But when I got money I resubscribed and I didn't do my reviews for a little while thinking it would still be in vacation mode. But I didn't realize that it turns off vacation mode when you subscribe. So I will probably have my stats reset to zero but I am not sure yet. Anyway now I will tell you how I burned myself out. Around December I decided to attempt to go jouzu ninja status on my Japanese because I didn't see the results I wanted after a year, granted they weren't bad results but I felt like I wasted a lot of time doing stupid stuff during maybe the first 7 months and did most of my real learning after that. So I started studying like crazy, I would do 22 kanji a day in RTK, 50 words a day on memrise, uncountable amount of sentences in Anki, whatever I could do on wanikani, writing weekly lang-8 posts (I still do that cause well, that doesn't take very long), immersion, reading japanese, tutoring sessions, and obviously review srs items from the previous day. So all in all I would spend 5 hours a day or more studying Japanese. I thought I could do it since my prior burnouts went by very quickly I figured if it didn't work I could easily unburn myself out (not a word I know). Turns out I was wrong, very, very, very, very wrong. I burned out quicker than the Hindenburg. And now even thinking about Japanese makes me want to hang myself (not literally of course). I never thought I would feel this way considering I have so much passion for Japanese and absolutely love the language. But I was wrong about that as well. One more thing I should mention to is that I have basically failed Remembering The Kanji 4 or 5 times now. It seems like every time I learn 100, I forget 80 of them. I have started over maybe twice, and now I am going to start over again. I have tried every method I can think of and have even made other help posts on forums about this subject and I just can't make it work for me. I've tried stories, memory palace, and various other memory methods and my brain forgets the stories practically as soon as I make them. But I have an idea for my next attempt that might ease that pain. So this situation doesn't help my burn out any either. You may ask why I am doing WaniKani and RTK, well the reason is that WK seems to be more about reading the kanji, and heisig is is about the writing. So I do both so I can cover both areas. I want to be able to write what I can read gnome sayin. Ok I know this post is seriously long and if you've made it to this point I am very thankful. 本当にありがとうございました。I promise this will end soon, just trust me 先輩. At this point I want to give you an assessment of my Japanese level so you can help me better. One of my main issues, and one of the reasons I haven't quit Anki already, is that I can't read Japanese worth a クソ (are japanese curse words okay, if not ごめんなさい). See I realize that if I hate doing something I should get rid of it, so I should get rid of Anki. But I don't want to forget everything I have learned up to this point and it is hard when I can't read very well. Which is because I don't know all of me kanjis. So then you might say, "Why don't you just listen to Japanese than?" well then comes the fact that I lack vocabulary so it is just as hard for me to listen. It is really hard for me to get comprehensible input right now. I know if I could find comprehensible input I could basically kick Anki to the curb and remove a lot of frustration, or at least put some water on my burnout fire. The reason I am like this is because I know a decent amount of grammar, but not a lot of words, and not a lot of kanjis. For example If I had to break down my levels I would do it like so. My grammar is about intermediate, my vocab is probably upper beginner, my kanjis are beginner, my speaking is beginner, and my listening is beginner. So my dilemma is that I don't want to quit Anki cause I may lose that grammar knowledge. But it will be hard to find comprehensible input that will keep my grammar up to snuff with low level vocab and kanji. I will make a clarification though, when I say low level vocab I don't mean that I don't know many words. I probably know a few thousand if I had to guess, but in the beginning I learned really useless words. At one point in my early stages of Japanese I was actually picking random words out of the dictionary. Which was a very stupid mistake. So I know a good amount of words, just not words that are used a lot. But anyway this situation is just really frustrating, since this is my first L2 I made a lot of mistakes and have learned from them. But I can't seem to kick this burnout. So I am looking for any advice you can give me to overcome a really bad burnout. Thanks for reading this super long post. You deserve an award. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5701 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 2 of 9 13 March 2015 at 11:11pm | IP Logged |
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You just got a job. (Congrats!) That's where most of your energy has to go. Languages don't run away. If you take a break, you will forget some, but relearning will be faster than learning it for the first time, you will have the advantage of seeing what you forgot and what you remember to pinpoint you to the parts you need to spend more time on, and some members here made the experience that taking breaks after intensive periods of learning actually made them feel like they had improved a couple of weeks to months after putting the language on ice.
Then, once you've settled into your new schedule maybe take a look at yourself rather than at other people's study habits. Have you ever successfully adopted a low maintenance high frequency habit like moderate exercise several times a week or studying a particular subject half an hour a day, and maintained that for the better part of a year or longer? Do you throw yourself into new activities and ride the wave as long as it lasts? Or do you do both? People can get good results either way, but I believe nobody can maintain high frequency high effort studying for more than a couple of months, you'd either have to reduce frequency or effort, and you should choose the one that works for you. Also, what are your goals? Who do you want to talk to, what do you want to understand, what experiences do you want to make? What made you pick the language in the first place? Work on that aspect first, if you can find a way to make it more accessible for you. Using several approaches is a good thing, but every now and then you will have to look at what good they still do, and possibly change the way you use some of them, or even replace them. (Also, RTK sucks, except for people who find it intuitive. I don't. I find it forced and stupid and devoid of context.) Edited by Bao on 15 March 2015 at 1:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4824 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 3 of 9 14 March 2015 at 3:32am | IP Logged |
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I think it's time for new material. Anything, just not anki, wanikani, or the others you are doing. They might all be amazing programs, but it's easy to get stuck in a rut, or to keep hitting your head against the same wall until it hurts.
I don't even know if it matters what you do, or what level it is. Something easy you find at the library, or FSI Head Start (free), or anything that tackles Japanese from a different angle than the one you are using. For what it's worth: I would have burned out long ago just using anki! A lot of people here love it. I find I can use it for a month, and then I've just done with it for awhile. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4642 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 4 of 9 14 March 2015 at 9:55am | IP Logged |
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I don't use Anki. It's booooring.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lusan Diglot Newbie United States Joined 3877 days ago 35 posts - 53 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Polish | Message 5 of 9 14 March 2015 at 4:10pm | IP Logged |
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I love Anki. However, I found that it can take over. I think that learning language MUST be
fun activity. Anki could soaks up all the fun. I do not allow more than 100 words for review a day. It takes no more than 20 min of my life. Burning out is very easy to do. Overtraining is not good. The best is to stop whenever we feel tired and to limit ourselves. I feel that learning a language is participating in a marathon. It is a slow process because we are creating new neural channels in the brain. If we are too hard on ourselves, the brain gets pretty irritated and the learning process stops. If I were you, I would stop for several weeks. Take a vacation from learning -hey, we need sometimes to cool the brain, right? Afterword, I would start easy with a good beginning book and a NEW Anki set. I would ramp slowly. Nothing is lost. Just take it easy. Edited by Lusan on 14 March 2015 at 4:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4379 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 6 of 9 14 March 2015 at 6:48pm | IP Logged |
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Personally, getting into a learning program is like trying to memorize words out of a dictionary from A-Z. It is
probably common learning Chinese & Japanese you are going to forget characters from time to time. When it comes to learning characters, I have my computer & portable devices setup to enter them phonetically. I would type messages and learn to recognize the characters as I go along. It is a slow but natural process. I normally remember a character if I see it in a newspaper or magazine a few times but I don't usually try to force it into my memory like trying to memorize words in a dictionary. Studying by a textbook or a set of tutorials can become boring. I watch a lot of Chinese documentaries and TV shows online. I have a file on computer where I would enter my new words & phrases. The other day I picked up a phrase in Chinese: 精神分裂症 for the medical term "Schizophrenia". The term came from watching a TV show and is now on my word list. Instead of sticking to a learning program everyday of the year and hope to become fluent learning a language, I would designate certain days for watching TV or listening to the radio. I get exposure to a language without getting bored. A while ago I was watching 中国达人秀, the Chinese version of "America's Got Talent" and 星光 大道, a show similar to "American Idol" for discovering singing talents. When you watch a show online, you can replay sections of a video to catch the dialog if you didn't hear it clearly the first time. I can watch 6 hours or more of a Chinese TV show and pick up all sorts of words & phrases without getting bored. When learning Japanese, the 1 thing popular in Japan is Karaoke singing. You would follow certain singers such as Aiko Moriyama, JERO and their live performances. The lyrics are usually displayed so you get the spoken and written words at the same time. I don't usually read the printed edition of the newspaper but prefer to be online. I can easily copy & paste words & phrases into an online dictionary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5894 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 9 14 March 2015 at 7:37pm | IP Logged |
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Japanese is a tough language. I study Mandarin which is also tough for native English
speakers. Because it is a tough language, probably the most important thing to me is to keep my motivation up so as to stay the course. I'm an inefficient learner but am slowly plugging away at it and making progress. I think you need to find something to make Japanese fun (motivation) and stop beating yourself up for having difficulties climbing what is pretty much the equivalent of Mt Everest. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6532 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 9 14 March 2015 at 7:49pm | IP Logged |
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I love Anki/SRS but find single word cards boring. Also, it shouldn't be the main part of your learning. Texts should be the core - dialogues, easy readers, songs, tweets, eventually books. Whatever you can use at your level. This way you can just take a break from SRS anytime and focus on getting input (or on practising output). Then you may want to start a new deck or delete the boring cards.
Anki is like spice (or simply salt/sugar). It can enhance anything but you're not going to consume it on its own. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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