The study guide contains 30 chapters, each with a different theme, such as work, nature, human relationships, lifestyle, architecture, and so on, to help you learn and write high-level kanji and also vocabulary and idioms related to each topic.
There are, on average, 40 kanji introduced in each unit with a chance to practice writing them, before a quick check where you are required to write the hiragana reading of them. Every second unit has a review quiz and activity section where it tests your knowledge and understanding of 2 units worth of kanji together. This is a great way to check your learning as you progress through the book.
Homo sapiens, a.k.a. us humans, are an interesting animal. We rarely do things that we know are good for us (or avoid doing things we know are bad for us) unless we know that other people are watching.
Contrary to popular belief, blogs are not only tools for self-obsessed narcissists. They are also an extremely effective way to share goals publicly because they trigger our innate psychological programming to succeed in the eyes of others. With blogs, we develop a following that we will feel obligated not to let down.
Blogs are also an outlet for sharing successes and failures during our mission. As Benny Lewis, founder of Fluent in 3 Months, never stops saying, mistakes are a very necessary aspect of language learning.
Likewise, punishments should involve something sufficiently detestable, but not so outrageous that you both know from the get go that neither party will actually be forced to follow through when the other wins.
After you have gotten into the swing of things, you should have a good idea of how many minutes it takes you on average to learn one kanji. You can then figure out how many minutes per day you need to meet your daily kanji goal.
Like other spaced repetition systems (SRS), Anki automatically schedules re-exposures to specific cards based on how difficult you rate them. Easier cards will be shown less often while those more difficult will come back around right away.
You can look up kanji dozens of ways, including the character itself, the stroke count, the radical, the reading (in kana, romaji, or Chinese Pinyin), or the index code from any of the major kanji dictionaries.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module students are able to learn simple everyday conversation like greeting and the introduction of themselves and are able to master all 92 Kana characters and about 70 Kanji characters. Students acquire the most important inflection forms of the verbs and adjectives as well as the basic sentence structures with noun, adjective and verb. They developed a basic vocabulary of about 300 words.
Recommended prerequisites
Previous knowledge of the Japanese language is beneficial. In principle, it is possible (with increased work load) to master the seminar without previous knowledge.