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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4865 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 1353 of 1702 02 May 2014 at 8:28pm | IP Logged |
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Protip: if you're using subs -- try using subs in one of your other TLs; that way,
you'd still "practice" at least one of them. :) I'm just fooling myself with that though, as my German comprehension is very close to 100% in most cases. Which of the tests did you look up? TestDAF? I'm thinking of thaking that one myself, hopefully this summer or sometime this winter. And why are you going through core6k at this stage? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 1354 of 1702 02 May 2014 at 9:31pm | IP Logged |
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Yeah reading German subs is so easy it's kind of like why bother.. except that I don't always understand it as fast and so with English I can focus on the Japanese a little more. Or at least that was my impression the last time I tried it. But I wasn't working on German or any other languages anyway at the time.. since I seem to be brushing up German now it would make more sense to have those subs on.
I didn't look up any tests really. I just am vaguely aware that there's a B2, C1, and C2 test available.. and I know Goethe offers most of the tests. I'm not familiar with TestDAF or any of the other tests. I will have to research some. Whatever tests are offered in Tucson though is likely what I'll be taking. And why would I study the 6k at this stage? Because I need it! lol. I unfortunately found that I didn't study a lot of the vocabulary enough last fall to remember it still. I guess I crammed vocabulary for the N3. I don't remember exactly what I did but a lot isn't there. Of course, I could just get all my vocabulary from native material but I think the Core 6k vocab is far more likely to be on JLPT so I don't want to just ignore it. I was talking to another guy studying Japanese for the N2 and he is going through the 6k too. I am not sure how far he got into it for the N3 but he did pass the N3.. anyway, he's up to 5k now and is nervous he won't finish in time for the summer N2 (which he'll take in Japan). I'm thinking he'll be fine because 5k is really close to 6k and I've heard of people who passed the N2 (albeit not by a big margin) and still didn't know all the 6k. And he's a very diligent student in the traditional sense. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 1355 of 1702 02 May 2014 at 9:43pm | IP Logged |
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Oh I had my German tutor lesson. It was fun overall. The teacher was friendly and knows German better than I do although she's not a native speaker. Yes, I would rather have a native speaker but I'm not willing to pay 3X as much. It's weird because with a lot of her German her accent sounds really good (and better than mine) but for a few things not so much and I'm still getting used to it. To prepare I downloaded a new fantasy book in German to my kindle and started reading it.. and adding words to my SRS app directly on my phone typing stuff in. I was a little annoyed because I wanted an easier way that wouldn't interrupt the reading process as much. It turns out the -new- kindle offers this feature but mine is a year older and doesn't. Why mine wouldn't doesn't make any sense except they need a reason to sell me the new one I guess. It's cheap for a tablet at 100 bucks so I ordered it. I guess I can sell the old one for a little money or give it to a friend/family member.
I definitely would benefit from doing some flashcards and SRS with German. My vocabulary is pretty extensive but also there's a few gaps with words where my understanding is a bit vague and not clear enough or maybe I just don't know the word at all. Anyway, it would help. I remember thinking years ago that I was sort of plateauing in terms of just absorbing vocabulary by reading and looking stuff up on occasion. I'm not sure if I should study conjugations at all. I really am loathe to because it will not help my passive understanding at all. Passive understanding is truly the most useful skill I can get out of German as long as I'm living in the US. Then again, if I want to pass an ability test.. well. My tutor thinks that B2 would be good for me to try for. I'm not sure myself though. I might want to go for the C1 instead. If I do a test I want to do a test that will push me to the next level - not one that will push me to brush up a little and plug just a few gaps. Someone sent me a vocab list for a1-b2 in pdf (it's pretty sweet) and I know almost all of it. I can and will probably add the ones I don't to my SRS. I might look for a practice test to take to get a better idea. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 1356 of 1702 02 May 2014 at 11:52pm | IP Logged |
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Hmm I'm looking into the tests offered at the University of Arizona and they're not cheap. This is the latest...
The fees for the exams are as follows: Goethe-Zertifikat B2: $150 ($110 for UA students), Goethe-Zertifikat C1: $180 ($150 for UA students). Which is up from a year before or so which was 100 for the B2 and 150 for the C1 (for anyone). I don't know how current that pricing is.. I called and got an email address for the guy in charge. I did confirm that they still offer it at least. Once a year in November. Which is better than December but not by much (December being when they do the JLPT.. and December 1 usually at that). So I'll do the German test and then switch hardcore to Japanese mode and try to forget German.. Or something. The fee is a little high but no traveling expenses involved makes it a lot more reasonable compared to the JLPT. My new Kindle arrived. I ordered it last night before I fell asleep and it arrived today. I have to say I'm impressed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 1357 of 1702 03 May 2014 at 4:37am | IP Logged |
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meh they took away my pro access. I got to keep it a couple years longer than I paid for but it's kind of neat that my thing says senior member too. They don't give much incentive for pro access aside from getting an avatar picture.
Oh well. I am probably going to study German more tonight. It's just that I got a new kindle and it's fun. It's weird contrasting how I studied German versus how I'm learning Japanese. Japanese is still playing catch up although I've ignored German for eons. But it's getting there. Sort of. In my German tutoring session today I realized how my German vocabulary really differs from my Japanese one. I learned almost all of my German vocabulary through context. Aside from the most basic of words which I studied out of a vocabulary book. It's a lot like how I learned English. Of course, my English is far superior to German because it's gotten so much more use and I have had far more conversations and read more books etc. But Japanese is all learned out of context. Via flashcards. If I'm lucky I have one sentence to go with the flashcard. If only Japanese had an alphabet then I could go read it. But it doesn't. Anyway. I was thinking how cool Rikai-sama is and how nice it would be to have a tool as good for German. I currently use Lingoes and it's ok on the PC but it's no Rikai-sama. Rikai-sama saves a native audio pronunciation and tab delimited definition for making flashcards. Does such a thing exist in any other language? The kindle vocabulary thing is pretty neat though. It saves a list of vocabulary from what you look up. It keeps it in a 'book' on the kindle called vocabulary or something. You can open the book and it will organize the lists of vocabulary by the book you were reading etc. And it has a flashcards option. The flashcard saves the sentence you got the word from. So side 1 has the target word on top and the sentence it came from underneath. Pretty sweet. But no SRS. And no configuration. You just go through the list and if you know a word for good you can make it mastered. And no export feature. So it's limited. I'm probably going to use it to manually type in vocabulary to my SRS program as I get free time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 1358 of 1702 03 May 2014 at 8:42am | IP Logged |
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As far as learning from context goes, Japanese is no different. Once you hit the intermediate
level the most important things to do are reading and watching TV. SRS is still a useful tool but it should not be the main event. Especially not now you're aiming for N2. Rather than seeking advice from people who are cramming for N2, you should ask people who have actually passed it. Sure I spent some time SRSing and studying vocab. I also watched a lot of TV and read stuff. The ability to fill in the gaps and figure things out from context is much more useful in the exam (and real life) than the ability to swallow an arbitrary list of 6000 words. Edited by g-bod on 03 May 2014 at 8:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4865 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 1359 of 1702 03 May 2014 at 10:24am | IP Logged |
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I think I need core6k just as much as you do (if not more), as I've been ignoring
Japanese since the end of Febraury... (after making my way through Goblet of Fire, which, with its 1150 pages, caused a huge burnout) I used the yellow marker thingies when using kindle - that way, I could easily backtrack and find the words, and put them into Anki. (I use my phone and my tablet's kindle apps) Do you find Anki benefitial with German? I didn't really find any benefits because it, unlike Japanese, didn't require remembering any readings, and I usually figured out the meaning from context (IIRC, I had a 95%+ success rate, even with 200% intervals) Funny how I only made about 2000 flashcards in German and still made it further than with Japanese -- I think the hours upon hours of German listening had a better effect on my learning. If only "raw" Japanese was as accessible as German... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 1360 of 1702 03 May 2014 at 9:52pm | IP Logged |
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@GBOD: The difference between learning Japanese and German and using reading as a tool is pretty big. I can read something in German, and understand it through the context, and I can read its correct pronunciation in my head. The word is on its way to becoming part of my vocabulary. But for Japanese, even if I know what something means through context, I really don't know how to say it. As I learn more kanji I know you can guess the reading but still. With German, I didn't even write words down to save for later. I just kept reading, like you would if it were English. I guess I'm not comfortable doing that in Japanese. If I'm learning from a word list or if I'm learning from reading, I want to make a flashcard to study it.
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