Author: mimimin

(Note: This is copy/pasted and slightly edited from my post on a forum.)

Hello, everyone!

It’s been a while! Funny how you get a temporary job opportunity in Japan and tell yourself you’re going to blog all about it, but then find yourself with barely even enough time to do anything else. I have, however, been able to get back to deliberately studying Japanese, and have made a spreadsheet that I find pretty useful and neat. I decided I wanted to share it, in case it could be useful to anyone.

For a little background, I have finally set my sights on taking JLPT either N1 or N2 next year (since I missed the application deadline this year). However I’m not confident in my vocab, so I’m basically starting from 0 and making sure I have every single term burned into my head before I have to take it. I set up this sheet that will basically tell me if I’m on track for my weekly goals (including my stretch goal of N1) and how much progress I’ve made on each level.

I’m using it in tandem with a study site I recently discovered called renshuu.org, and while I’m not a huge fan of flash-card style studying, I find this site to be pretty flexible and easy to integrate into my own study methods. If you are studying Japanese for any reason, I recommend giving it a look. I may write a post on how I use it later, but right now I just want to share my sheet.

It’s still pretty rough and there are many things I want to add to it, but for now…

Here is the blank sheet. My goals are N2 or N1, so I have N2 on the left and N1 on the right.

Changing the blue areas under “Goals” will move the grey area up and down to show when you will meet your goal.

There are two spots for the two separate goals, obviously.

Changing these areas will change the increments for each week:

The grey area will update, too.

The date on the left can be changed to indicate your start date; the one on the right will change as well (I shouldn’t have left that one blue, oh well).

It’s set up to be one week at a time.

These areas are the current number of terms you have studied (and won’t study below it, for those like me skipping katakana terms).

If you have met one of your goals…

…it will automatically check off that part of the week!

And if you meet both your kanji and vocabulary goals…

It will cross off the entire week so you know you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

However, if you aren’t completely caught up…

The week will highlight in yellow.

If you’re way behind…

The overdue weeks will turn red!

Finally, there is a section that shows your progress on each of the levels according to your kanji and vocabulary counts.

When you’ve reached 100% for one part, it will turn green. (I may make 75% turn yellow, 50% orange, etc. but this works for now).

That’s pretty much it for now.

Keep in mind I’m using the full version of Microsoft’s Excel. I don’t know if there will be problems if you use the online version or other software such as OpenOffice.

PS I love Excel and use it for nearly anything I want to keep track of. If you use it correctly it’s like magic♡

Here is the link if you’d like to use it: https://1drv.ms/x/s!AkHnRSM5h8MJgaNZP–kCVIMpzppOA

It’s uploaded to my OneDrive so I think it will update automatically as I make changes to it.

Let me know in the comments if you have any more suggestions (this one is actually more complex than mine since I wanted it to be more accessible).

Things I want to add:
– Ability to put in how many you’ve already learned and use that to calculate benchmarks instead of weekly goals alone
– Ability to put in your goal and desired deadline to have it automatically calculate how many you need to study each week

I hope this sheet can be helpful to you! Good luck with your studies☆