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東亜 TAC’15- Team Thread

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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TimmyTurner93
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United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 3660 days ago

45 posts - 58 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Portuguese, Japanese

 
 Message 41 of 314
27 December 2014 at 3:51pm | IP Logged 
Thanks everyone!

Woodsei wrote:
Are you a zero beginner, or
have you started some Japanese? Any basic grammar/vocab? What about your kana/kanji?
Do you have an idea about the resources you might be using? I think I may be able to
give you a better idea if I know where you are at. But even if, N5 at the end of the
year is extremely possible, at least from my experience. I'm sure a lot of other
people here on the team will have valuable advice for you as well.


I'm wouldn't say I'm a complete beginner. I can read/recognise both kana & have learnt
the first 50 Kanji in RTK. I've got both Genki textbooks, Japanese the manga way & Tae
Kims guide. RTK bores me & I mainly see a bunch of randome lines so I'm switiching to
Kanji
damage once I've learnt the radicals.

dampingwire wrote:
So if you are starting from scratch now you most certainly can
sit and pass JLPT N5 in December 2015. (You need to check whichever test centre you
think you'll use to make sure
that they offer the test in December: there are two yearly sittings, the other being
in July).


Yep i've already researched around all things relating to the test. Seems I only have
to take a short car ride to the test centre at the University of London - SOAS site.

kraemder wrote:
I used a flashcard app that had audio. It auto-played the audio and
showed me the hiragana so I would
read along.


I found something called text-to-speech for anki. I don't know how good the voice will
be but I'll give it a try once I've gone through the 1st few chapters of Genki.

kraemder wrote:
Be patient. Nothing seemed to stick for me the first year and it was
really really frustrating.
However, some people do really well from the beginning. I've talked to a few people
who sit the N2 after
only a year and a half or so of studying.


I've heard patience is vital in the majority of Asian languages as theres a lot of new
concepts for English speakers. Also, to reach N2 after a year a half probably took
some really effective and intensive studying.

& here's the
link to my log

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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4658 days ago

1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 42 of 314
27 December 2014 at 4:04pm | IP Logged 
TimmyTurner93 wrote:
Yep i've already researched around all things relating to the test. Seems I only
have
to take a short car ride to the test centre at the University of London - SOAS site.


I sat the N5 at the Russell Square campus. I sat the N4 at the Vernon Square campus, the location of
which I found out about the hard way when the receptionist/security guard at Russell Square said "Nope.
Nothing going on here today. Maybe it's at our other site" Don't make the same mistake I did and do read
the test voucher carefully :-)


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Warp3
Senior Member
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forum_posts.asp?TID=
Joined 5528 days ago

1419 posts - 1766 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese

 
 Message 43 of 314
27 December 2014 at 4:41pm | IP Logged 
g-bod wrote:
It would be nice if we could get a team name which is short and makes sense
across all the languages that will be represented by this team. Does 東亜 work in Korean,
Mandarin etc?


The Korean reading (동아) is a valid word according to Naver:
http://goo.gl/9NI45l

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Ezy Ryder
Diglot
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Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
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284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 44 of 314
27 December 2014 at 4:57pm | IP Logged 
g-bod wrote:
It would be nice if we could get a team name which is short and makes sense
across all the languages that will be represented by this team. Does 東亜 work in Korean,
Mandarin etc?

As you may have noticed in my log's title, it's written a bit differently using Traditional Characters
in Mandarin (東亞). Simplified should be even more different (东亚, I think).
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Woodsei
Bilingual Diglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Woodsei
Joined 4790 days ago

614 posts - 782 votes 
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)*
Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian

 
 Message 45 of 314
27 December 2014 at 7:05pm | IP Logged 
Hi all! Glad to see stifa and g-bod on board! I agree, g-bod, that it would be a good to
use a name that goes with all the languages here, and the only thing that comes to mind
is choosing maybe a kanji/hanzi character that has a common meaning. But then, what about
Korean? I'd definitely appreciate your input on this.

I am going to be working on the resources lists over the next few days, so forgive me if
they're not up yet. Just getting a few things out of the way here at home.


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sabotai
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5875 days ago

391 posts - 489 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French

 
 Message 46 of 314
27 December 2014 at 7:32pm | IP Logged 
こんにちは and 안녕하세요 Team East Asia.

I'm in again this year for TAC for Japanese and Korean.

Link to my log

Edited by sabotai on 27 December 2014 at 7:33pm

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Woodsei
Bilingual Diglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Woodsei
Joined 4790 days ago

614 posts - 782 votes 
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)*
Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian

 
 Message 47 of 314
27 December 2014 at 7:52pm | IP Logged 
@TimmyTurner93:

It's good that you have a few resources at your disposal. Don't get caught up in
multiple beginner text-books, though, you'll be forever at the beginner stage. Yes
multiple repetitions are good for reinforcement, but since you seem to be using Anki,
that will take care of it. You can definitely consult other sources for further
clarification, but don't dwell upon it. Once you got the basics down, expose yourself
to a lot of authentic material, because, as you will see, speed, word contractions,
usage, are all obviously different that what you'd find in text books. Just get a
solid grounding first, and Genki is a very good book. Tae Kim is a good, concise
grammar. One good place that's full of resources and recommendations about what to
watch, read, or basically do while learning the language is this
page. It basically points you out to almost every
source of media/books out there, and it has guides that group them by level, so that,
whatever stage you're at, you can always find something authentic and useful to enjoy
and learn from. I refer to this a lot in my own process. I think the site itself is
very useful for advice on the language, but I haven't really spent a lot of time on
it. Remember, lots of exposure is key. The more comprehensible it is, the better it
works, even though listening to higher levels than yours cements the sounds of the
language in your head, and makes it easier to pronounce in the long run. It also
exposes you to lots of words and idiomatic usages that you may either be able to work
out on your own, or at east, if you do come across it actively studying, it would
sound familiar to you, and its particular usage would make sense. But comprehensible,
or semi-comprehensible, has the best ROI that I've come across, in terms of speed and
efficiency. I do both anyway. Software like subs2SRS can help combine native material
and studying, if Anki is your thing, and TONs of reading and listening. Another
software called Learning with texts helps you do both reading and Anki.

For text-to-speech, there's a plug-in called Awesome TTS. I had it installed on Anki a
while back to have it give me audio for some sentences. Nothing beats a real voice,
and you're bound to get a few mistakes in pronunciation every now and then, but this
one uses Misaki's voice, and it's pretty fast, and so far, I haven't had any weird
pronunciations. Though it could happen. At least to me, it's better than Google TTS.
Their's is excruciatingly slow, and really grates on the ears.

Kanji. If RTK is not your thing, I believe g-bod used the Basic Kanji and Intermediate
Kanji books, so she may have better advice regarding that. I used RTK, because it
saved me the frustration of not knowing the meanings, and it was faster for me to do
anyway. But, yeah, I agree, it can get old pretty fast. And RTK 1 and 3 don't give you
the readings. So you can do a couple of things. One, you can head over to the
koohi website, which is basically RTK, only they give
you for each kanji the community stories people contributed (might save you some
headache trying to think one up yourself, or at least inspire you) and they also have
example words for each kanji, from which you may get the readings. I like to focus on
one thing at a time so I don't get bogged down, basically first get the meanings out
of the way, then focus on the readings, but that's just me. Another option is, as you
do sentences in Genki or whatever source you're using atm, then rip out those kanji
and look up their meaning, reading, etc., either RTK-style, or whatever floats your
boat. That at least saves you the trouble of having to study rare kanji, or the least
commonly used ones. If you keep seeing it then you need to learn it. Other sources
that I thought were very good were the Kanji in Context books, which basically has
jouyou kanji, and lots of common words that incorporate them, with of course their
readings. Apart from that, someone here may pitch in if they did things differently.

JLPT books. Kanzen Master has a selection grouped by level, and also 日本語総まとめ
(Nihongo Sou Matome). Hopefully I will link to these resources in the resource list
over the next few days.

Another resource people seem to use a lot is Japanesepod 101. It's in podcast format,
but it has pdfs for the individual lessons. It's somewhere between a traditional
course and more authentic sources, in that it gives you more natural word and
idiomatic usage, while also teaching you the structure and grammar in a low-key,
friendly way. There's a lot of clowning around in the first few episodes which really
annoyed me, but it gets better as you go along, I believe. They also have dialog-only
tracks which may save you the trouble, but of course lacks the explanations. I think
doing it, as well as Genki, is over-kill, though. They have hundreds of
lessons. You can do them while you do immersion, though. They can be helpful for
listening practice and shadowing,and can help move you along, but they don't replace
native materials, in my opinion. It's your call. Try them out and see.

Like I said, I'm working on the list (I'm sorry it's taking me forever!), so hopefully
you can check them out when its up.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Edited by Woodsei on 28 December 2014 at 2:03am

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Woodsei
Bilingual Diglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/Woodsei
Joined 4790 days ago

614 posts - 782 votes 
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)*
Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian

 
 Message 48 of 314
27 December 2014 at 7:57pm | IP Logged 
Welcome, sabotai! Looking forward to a productive year with you. I'll add your link. Just
remember to sign up at the TAC thread, and on the Wikia page.

Edited by Woodsei on 27 December 2014 at 7:58pm



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