Lesson 12 - I feel much better after a couple of weeks off and a positive discussion with sensei In my last entry, I shared my frustration with my current progress and some apprehension about the amount of work that lay ahead. Fortunately, I had a couple of weeks to reflect on the situation. I did a little studying, but not much. Fortunately, I didn't forget much, which is also a good sign that all of the studying I did before has been effective. In this morning's lesson (asa no ressun), I was frank with sensei about what was bothering me. What exactly am I working towards? She'd actually been thinking about that as well. This was reassuring to me because it show'd that I was more than just a timeslot, if that makes sense. I know she has a lot of other gakusei, so it was reaffirming that she thought of me specifically, and where I was headed. We discussed the JLPT 5, and possible JLPT 4, as a reasonable goal for next July. There is one in December, but I nowhere near ready for that. She said it would be good to start working out of a textbook instead of just worksheets. I'm still a little intimidated by Kanji, but I've got Kana to worry about first, so I will focus on that. Anyway, it was very encouraging. She said that considering the number of lessons that I've had, I'm doing quite well, and that I should go a little easier on myself. She said it typically takes about 300 classroom time to be ready for the beginner proficiency tests. I can safely say that I have a solid vocabulary of about 150 words and can write and read 12 hiragana characters (which is completely self directed). Considering I've only had about 9 hours of class time, and maybe another 50 hours of study time, I'm in good shape.