Hello, I'm currently participating in an intensive summer language program in Japan. It's big selling point is that it claims to teach a full college year's worth of Japanese in only 2 months. I'm about halfway through. I did really well in the first half, but it feels like cracks are starting to show and I don't know what I can do about it.
We're going through the Quartet textbooks, covering a full chapter every 3 days or so. The first two days we have vocab quizzes, followed by a kanji quiz on the third day. I have to memorize about 20 new vocab words every day, along with about 45 new kanji by the time that test comes around. This pace is fast, but I've been able to manage for the past month.
Unfortunately, after we completed Quartet 1, the difficulty ramped up like a cliff. We went from reading basic recipes to discussing academic material in barely a week. My last two vocab quizzes went pretty poorly (around 75%), but I'm not sure what I can do about it. I know the definitions just fine, but the way the quizzes are designed and conducted makes them pretty rough. I'm sometimes spending upwards of 10 hours a day between class, homework, and study and it STILL doesn't feel like enough. We're covering a week's worth of material every single day, and I just don't know how much longer I can keep this pace up. At this point, my head is just starting to spin, and it feels like there's not enough space to cram in more. I'm almost beginning to hate Japanese.
I'm starting to panic a bit. I'm already doing the best I can, but the difficulty is only getting harder, and my grades keep suffering. I refuse to give up and take the loss; I'm determined to keep at it and succeed. I just don't know how I can go about doing that.
Any advice/survival strategies would be greatly appreciated.
by Destructacon