Hello everyone, to give you a perspective, I learned about CI one year ago and then I started my Dreaming Spanish journey. At the moment I have a little over 400 hours of Spanish and I am able to comfortably watch Intermediate level videos from DS and Spanish Boost Gaming, or rather listen, because I don’t need to rely on visuals that much anymore.
I have been doing Japanese since December last year. So far I have 507 hours of CI plus 50 hours of Anki JP1K. Additionally, I have read some basic grammar explanations, but it is a negligible amount of time. All CI hours are active immersion, I am sitting and paying full attention (as best as I can at least) to the videos.
I am going to enroll in a Japanese language school in July, and I want to build a solid foundation in Japanese before that time. Even though I know that a pure CI approach works and it is the best way to acquire a language in the long run, I decided to stick more to the AJATT way than pure CI, because I have limited time and Japanese is so much harder than Spanish that pure CI would take an eternity.
So what is my Japanese ability after all this time? I can say that right now my comprehension limit lies somewhere between levels 30–36 of Beginner videos. There are some videos that are very hard to watch and my comprehension level may drop to the point that I am only able to understand some phrases and words, but not able to follow the general plot. Given that, I don’t feel anywhere near ready to move to Intermediate videos. Even harder Complete Beginner videos I am still not able to fully understand without relying on visual cues. I also tried listening to one random Nihongo con Teppei beginner podcast and it felt a little bit too hard. I feel that I am close and maybe need another 100 hours of CI before Nihongo con Teppei becomes comprehensible for me as well.
For the last 3 months I could only put 5 hours per day on average into my Japanese, but right now I am more used to long CI sessions and I have more free time as well, so my target is 8–10 hours per day for the next 3 months. I hope that will allow me to break into Intermediate territory and create a strong foundation in the language.
Additionally, I am going to add pitch accent ear training to my study. I have watched several videos with people who reached a very high level of Japanese, like Matt or Dogen, and all of them suggest that it is much better to spend 30–50 hours on pitch accent in the very beginning than spend hundreds of hours later correcting all the mistakes you have ingrained over time.
I hope that you will add some updates during and / or after your language course in Japan. It certainly will be a very different experience to your current studying approach.
I hope that you reach your studying goal in the next three months. Just watch out that you don’t burn out while you go for massive input.
As you are not dogmatically sticking to the ALG philosophy I would recommend switching input methods when you find your attention waning.
When you start to drift do some ANKI, then back to CI, next time practice your Kana with miru, or duolingo for 20 min. You are putting in soo much time you will get more retention swapping activities when your mind starts to drift than you will just watching content without being able to concentrate.
The actual ALG thai course everyone bases CI off had teachers monitoring and swapping activities and subjects when interest fell off. You have to do that yourself as you have no teacher.
Thank you for your update! This was really interesting for me because we seem to be around the same amount of comprehension (I’m currently making my way through level 34 videos) with a similar number of study hours, but with very different approaches.
I’ve been studying Japanese for about 9 months now. I did a lot of rewatching CIJ videos and grinding Anki flashcards up to the 6 month mark. After I finished my beginner vocab deck, I quit Anki in favor of more immersion through CIJ videos and reading with Yomitan (so much more fun).
I probably have a little over 600ish hours of active studying (close to you, but I haven’t tracked it all). This is about 165 hours of CIJ, 100 hours of reading, 220 hours of Anki, and what I would guess is about 100 or more hours of untracked grammar guides, pitch accent study, and YouTube content.
It’s fascinating to see that with a similar number of hours, we are working at about the same CIJ level, despite studying through different mediums. This truly makes me believe that there is no one best method, and it really is just about the hours you put in. I find that super cool!
A couple other comments on things you mentioned:
I’d definitely keep up with the kotu.io test daily. I started about a week into learning Japanese, and it’s crazy seeing how easy the test is for me now, when I could barely get 50% at the start.
I started Nihongo Con Teppei last month. It’s pretty tough for me but manageable. You mentioned you tried a random episode (I did the same thing multiple times). I’d recommend going back to Episode 1. Someone on Reddit mentioned the beginning episodes are easier, which definitely feels true.
