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旅立ち/Катюша-Woodsei’s TAC 2014 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4789 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 145 of 162 06 February 2014 at 5:41am | IP Logged | ||
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@dampingwire and @SolfridChristin: I am so sorry for the long-overdue reply! Regarding
Rpod, it's by the same company as Jpod, so the lesson format, transcripts, website layout, etc. is identical. Of course, you get kanji sheets with Jpod. Jpod has a tremendous amount of podcasts that seem to cover a huge range of materials, while with Rpod, what I counted was maybe teeny about 415+ lessons. I maybe biased here, but I think the Jpod lessons maybe a bit better, but then again, I only listened to a handful of beginner lessons, so it's too soon to judge. But the lessons are still good. I picked up a lot from only 5 podcasts. I think overall, the general approach to the xPod series is to make language study easy, enjoyable, but pretty darn useful for the time it takes you to listen to a lesson, which is a lot more than I can say for most audio courses. What jumps out at you when comparing Jpod and Rpod is that huge number of lessons for Japanese as opposed to Russian. That said, though, I believe that with time, and after more lessons in their arsenal, their quality will probably be just as good as Jpod. A note, though. I mostly listen only to the dialogue tracks and read along using the transcript, since I mostly focus on listening and reading in the initial stages of language learning and skip grammar explanations. I did listen to some full podcasts for Rpod and liked them a lot, but I get bored very quickly :D I find that when I look up an unknown pattern as it occurs, I understand it better, than if I spend time on formal grammar study, which confuses me anyway if I'm not used to the language. Also recently, I've been mostly doing Tadoku (extensive reading) and Tachou (extensive listening) as my primary methods of study, using graded native material, and readers too, but without the translations. I pick up words I don't understand from context or use a monolingual dictionary, English being used as a last desperate resort if I fail to understand or ignore a word. More on that in my follow-up post. That said, for those that study with courses, I think the xPod series are a great asset for their language studies. A big apology to you guys for responding so late. I had a huge exam I had to study for, and a new job, and have been desperately trying to rearrange my time. I've been trying to avoid hanging out on the forum frequently because it's so addictive :D And I end wasting hours doing nothing but reading awesome logs when I should be reading/listening to Japanese/Russian, or doing other things. I'm not so disciplined with this, but can anyone blame me? ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4657 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 146 of 162 06 February 2014 at 11:15pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for the info. Good to hear that they have a reasonable number of lessons. I'll bear them in mind when I get around to Russian. It's going to be some time yet though! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4789 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 147 of 162 18 February 2014 at 5:10am | IP Logged | ||
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So I've been plugging along with language study. I know I said i INTENDED TO JOIN THE 6
WC, but I'm sort of content with my pace for now, and didn't want to catch the competition bug just yet. I have a big exam coming up, hence the lack of updates, but I've been working on Japanese and Russian steadily, if not necessarily heavily. Progress Report 1. Ok, so with Japanese, I've joined the January Tadoku, and I'm glad I did!Starting off the year with a reading challenge was a pretty efficient way to ease myself back into language mode, and I really love reading, so I had tons of fun. I wasted a week or so doubting myself and how I'm going about language learning in general, but found the motivation again and just read books. I spend the month mostly reading picture books and manga. Reason is I wanted to refresh what I know in a low-stress way, and sort of gauge where I am in terms of level. I love learning new words, but the task of constantly interrupting my reading to loo up words gets wearisome after a while. Even with Rikaisama/Rikaikun, I just run out of steam and call it a day after a few pages. I basically just decided to rely on pictures to figure out things from context. It also keeps me in the target language, rather than switch between the two. I'm writing this post on the go, so I don't have much time to copy and paste links to some websites I've used for picture books, but I'll write up a post on that soon. I also own physical books, but I've only read one of them. The manga I'm currently reading is ノラガミ. I was browsing new anime series a few weeks ago and found the anime by the same name, and was really hooked! So I decided to check out the manga, and now I'm having lots of fun with it. It's one of the simpler ones (got furigana, text is relatively comprehensible depending on your level) but it's totally enjoyeable. The thing I love about manga is that words and names are constantly repeated, so kanji readings and vocab are reinforced simply by osmosis. And being the super-lazy person that I am, I constantly fall off the Anki wagon. I'm working on that, though. Really, kanji has to be reinforced, somehow. For Russian, I'm presently busying myself with a few very basic audiobooks on the iPad, and I have 3 readers that I plan on using. I tried Rpod for a while, and believe it's very useful, but I find myself gravitating towards more authentic sources, sources that have stories, etc. I don't know, listening and reading to an audiobook or a reader seems to stick better for me. I can hear snippets of conversations, passages, or phrases replaying in my head over and over again, and sometimes can even recite them out loud. So it must be working. Again, I'll post some links to some of the books I'm reading when I get home and have some time off. I may renew my Rpod membership down the road, I don't know. But not now. I'll stick t listening and reading and see how effective it is for Russian. It worked for Japanese, so I'm hopeful. Generally, it's an enjoyable way to "study" languages, and after a difficult last year, I'm simply just enjoying the rhythms of Japanese and Russian. I'm still working up to the hardcore immersion I had set up previously, but trying not to take anything too seriously too suddenly. I don't ant to burn out. I really want to see significant changes with both languages by the end of 2014. So, not a very specific post with anything new, but I'm always having new idea and observations that I always note down as I read and listen, so hopefully I'll be sharing more useful thoughts worthy of your time in the future :) I haven't posted my intros for Russian and Japanese yet, as well as the current February challenges for both teams,, so that's something I'll be working on. Now I'll hop over to some of my teammates super-interesting logs, and inspire myself to pick up some more language! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5040 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 148 of 162 18 February 2014 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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>Even with Rikaisama/Rikaikun, I just run out of steam and call it a day after a few pages.
I think you can try 君のいる町 — it's pretty easy to read and they're using a fun accent in it. >Really, kanji has to be reinforced, somehow. Why not copy some stuff in Japanese? Maybe you could write out some ノラガミ pages, lol. Edited by Takato on 18 February 2014 at 7:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4789 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 149 of 162 18 February 2014 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Takato: I'm actually doing a mix of writing out some lines from the manga/Japanese subs,
and rereading favorite scenes :D However, I do know that not all of it is in there, so I'm trying to be more consistent with Anki, at least just for kanji. It's going badly, though. I realize I'm not much of a flashcard person :S I guess I might just write out some each day or something. I did read the first 2 volumes of 君のいる町 last year, then stopped, I don't know why. It was pretty easy. Thanks for reminding me! I'll keep it mind once I finish the ノラガミ volumes I have on hand. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4789 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 150 of 162 18 February 2014 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is a non-post, just my own thoughts, but I thought I'd share, anyway. I love
Japanese. Languages in general are very important to me, but Japanese has a special place in my heart. I previously said I wanted to take the JLPT to keep myself motivated to study, but that's not really true. I have all the motivation I need already because I really love the language, and the JLPT will always be there if I want to try and take it; I'm guessing it DOES look good as a measure of proficiency on your resume. But I want to master Japanese nonetheless, and I'm not going to put the JLPT as a standard to measure my progress. I'll just do my best in every aspect of the Japanese language and culture, so much that the JLPT will be a child's play should I ever consider taking it. I'll just focus on living the language and enjoying it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4789 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 151 of 162 31 March 2014 at 11:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well that hasn't been a very resourceful month, in terms of language study. Catching up
on study for an upcoming medical exam, writing for work, and plain old procrastination, I admit. I always do that when I have too many things I plan on doing, and it's a trait I really hate. Oh well. I WILL show up again in the evening to post updates and my plans for April. I did register for the March Tadoku, but only started reading a couple of days ago, so of course I haven't hit my goal of 1000 pages. Even less than half. But I have been reading a lot of manga. As for Russian, I'm jumping back and forth between some Assimil (2011 version), Russianpod, and a couple of children's books and a beginner reader. Hopefully I'll be able to talk more about the process in detail in my next post. And, ugh, I really need to install the Russian language pack for Windows. It's getting really annoying using online transcribers and typing in an English pronunciation. For the record, anyone know of an online Russian pop-up dictionary, like Rikaisama/chan/kun? Would greatly appreciate it. Missed the forum! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4789 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 152 of 162 02 April 2014 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, Monday was a surprise. I thought I'd read a couple of manga chapters from ダイヤのエー
ス(Ace of Diamond), a really cool baseball manga, and I got so caught up in the plot I ended up reading a lot. Like, around 8 volumes. Took me all day but was so worth it. There were words I didn't get initially, which were cleared up later, and then others I had to look up in the dictionary. That page count did bump up my score on the Tadoku bot quite a bit, and I did meet my initial page count goal, but because of some issues with the bot on that last day, a significant amount was re-tweeted. I did contact Lordsilent about it, and I hope to have that issue fixed, since I haven't read as much as recorded, and I don't think it's fair to other people. Needless to say, my exam prep has completely gone out the window. Now I have to make up for it :S But I guess I'm a happy language learner. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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