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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5254 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 1697 of 1702 02 December 2015 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I hope when you move to Japan, you will continue to keep us updated. I miss you at the new forum
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| 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 1698 of 1702 29 January 2016 at 6:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well it's been forever since I updated. I actually made a journal on that new forum but it didn't seem anyone
was reading it so I ended up just continuing to post here. But that site is mobile friendly and I'm using my phone much more than my laptop. I apologize for the lengthy absence. I guess being in Japan and living in a share house I just don't have the motivation to write about learning Japanese that I did in the States. I mean there, I had nobody to talk to regarding languages and stuff buy it's pretty much the exact opposite here. I can't say that life is too exciting for me though even if just being in Japan makes it seem interesting. Typing with thumbs is getting annoying lol. I'm going to head upstairs to finish this entry. 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 1699 of 1702 29 January 2016 at 7:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ok a proper keyboard is nice for typing out longer text. I haven't done much long text typing since getting to Japan. I
got here and had the first month or so off without any school or plans and was thinking I would just study lots of Japanese and get awesome at Japanese (as much as possible). It didn't work out as well as I would have liked. I suppose there were a couple of reasons. While I like the room that I'm staying in, it's not as nice as my old apartment in Tucson. I had a lot of room there, several big monitors, a huge TV that kicked butt. Basically, it was fantastic for studying using a computer. And then a big dining room table to study on when I wanted to get serious with a textbook (not too often but the option was there). Here in the share house, which is like a dormitory really, I have a desk but it's kind of small. I left my monitors behind and the big screen TV. Using a laptop you can kind of do everything you can on a proper desktop setup but it's just not as comfortable. I ended up using my phone and iPad instead and I guess they're just quite as effective study tools for reading Japanese. (I didn't get a lot of reading done.) I did get a chance to socialize a lot which I didn't do so much in the States. I was pretty much a loner after work (gives more time for studying =p). Socializing is great but it's awful for studying. I can do some speaking practice. Speaking practice is wonderful for well speaking but you really don't expand your vocabulary or grammar doing it. Reading is just too big I think. Plus I'm not in a total immersion environment. Lots of people here want to learn English and I sound cooler if I mix my Japanese with English so that's what I generally do. It's hard as hell to just speak Japanese anyway. We have other westerners in the share house also and none of them speak Japanese well enough to really have a proper conversation. I guess more than anything i got a lot of sleep. Then school started finally the 2nd week of January. I had signed up for a class at Tokyo Central Language School. The person who was my contact for registering told me that English wasn't spoken by all the students the way I described Genki JACS (she hadn't heard of the school) so people had to use Japanese instead and she thought that was a good thing. I agreed so I enrolled. It helped that it was about 1/3 the price of Genki JACS too. Well that wasn't the case. It might be the case for the lower Japanese levels but not the upper levels, and definitely not the class I ended up in. They have a rigerous placement test at this school. It took all afternoon from 1 PM until 5:30 PM. They start it off with writing the hiragana and katakana alphabets and then moving onto grammar / vocabulary / kanji / reading / listening questions. It ends with an interview. I would say it's more thorough than the JLPT which has no interview and requires no ability to write kanji. But also a waste of time. I know my level pretty well and could have just looked at material for each class and picked my class. But that's not how things get done so I suffered through the placement test. There were people who obviously shouldn't even be taking the placement test - they couldn't understand the most basic Japanese instructions and the teachers had to resort to speaking foreign languages to say anything to them. I was impressed with the variety of languages being spoken by the teachers: I heard Chinese, French, English, and some others. Since the placement test got progressively harder, the students had the option to just say this was their limit, pass it in, and go do the interview and be done. It gets tempting to do even if you think maybe you can keep going a bit more. The students that clearly spoke no Japanese lasted longer than I expected but they were obviously the first to be done and just leave. I kept going and when I was hopeful that it was done they said that there would be a break and then people had the option to continue and do an even more difficult test. From the grammar I had just looked at I would guesstimate it to be about N5/4/ and maybe some N3 grammar. But I was already tired. I wanted to do an N2 class because even though I've studied some N2 and N1 grammar I know I have some gaps with possibly even some N3 stuff. Did what I had already done qualify me to take an N2 level class? I was thinking maybe not. I had forgotten how to write a couple hiragana and katakana O.o. Obviously reading them would be ok but I hadn't written Japanese in ages. I had crammed some kanji the past couple weeks but no kana at all. And although I could read all of the kanji they tested me on, they tested on writing kanji too and I only remembered some of them. This isn't RTK style testing, they give you Japanese and you have to SPELL, not just remember how to draw a single character. So I stayed for the harder test. A girl behind me spoke English to me and told me I was they only person who stayed that wasn't Chinese. The teacher passing it out teased us about being really confident in our Japanese language abilities. The test was hard as expected but I figured I'd regret it if I didn't do my best. I could read almost all of the kanji and give the furigana but was only able to write a couple of kanji when they tested the other way. My ability to write hiragana was getting better as the test went on. The grammar seemed to be a mix of N2 and N1. I've never taken an N1 test of any kind, just looked at the grammar a bit and made some flashcards for stuff that looked useful to mix in with my N2 stuff. I don't really know how I did but I know I got some of it right. A lot less than on the previous test though. The reading section was really challenging. I did most of it but 15 minutes before the time limit I just decided the heck with it. I was exhausted and would likely have to guess for questions and it didn't make sense to guess for questions when the idea is to get an accurate placement for my class. I just passed it in and headed for the interview. The interview was pretty short. I just sat down and spoke Japanese with a friendly young female teacher. She quickly said she was more than satisfied with my speaking ability and asked me a bit about the test I just took. I explained that I had no problem reading the Japanese but it had been so long since I had written it that I struggled a bit with kana, and definitely with kanji. She seemed concerned about that. I said that it was coming back quickly and that I definitely didn't want to be in a class with easy grammar/vocab just to improve my ability to write by hand. She agreed. She said I would take a class in the morning instead of the afternoon. At this school they have the more advanced classes in the morning, and the beginner type classes in the afternoon. I think that was the whole purpose of the interview. And I think it automatically placed me into an N2 class. If I had know that I would have quit much sooner! I came to class the following week. No western faces in the class. The teacher introduced me and it seems that everyone had been in this class together at least for the previous term (semester). I was the only new person. And they all were Chinese. Just like per the placement test, the non kanji background people's Japanese hadn't reached a high intermediate level. We did introductions and the whole class seemed astonished that I could give a lengthy introduction in Japanese. They all gave really brief introductions. I still can't say if that's because it's all they could do or if it's just all they wanted to do. The class officially used the textbook 中級から学ぶ and they were about halfway into it. We did a listening exercise and I figured I got about 80% of what was said. Nobody else did though. I raised my hand for 50% instead not wanting to stick out. We went through the material. I was definitely learning although the text itself seemed a little easier than I would have liked. I've been going to the class for almost three weeks now. I still can't really say for sure what everyone else's Japanese level is. But I would say some are probably better than me and I'm better than others. I do think my speaking is more advanced than others if only because I force myself to use as much grammar as I can when I talk and I'm not at all shy about speaking Japanese. I think others are more shy. I know I am probably not saying stuff the way a native speaker would but I figure they'll understand and they generally do. Most people in the class took the JLPT in December and the teacher somehow got the test results for the whole class and announced it to the class a couple days ago. Maybe the school is a testing center? I don't know. There was one student in the class who attempted the N1. He didn't pass (no idea if he passed the N2 previously or is just skipping it). The rest took the N2 and most passed it. One got a pretty high score too although most were just above passing and didn't have huge amounts of breathing room. This really surprised me because in class they're teaching grammar not like it's review but like the class hasn't seen it. And in addition to the 中級から学ぶ book we're using 耳から覚える文法N2 and starting with chapter 1. The latter book isn't an official textbook - I just recognized the sentences because I have the book and went through chapters one and two on my own a while ago. (about a year ago? more?). It also surprised me because the class doesn't know vocabulary that I think is -really- basic. Like 散らかる. The teacher went through a big explanation of this word because they didn't know it. I've known this one for years... I mean.. at some point you want to know how to say that your room is a mess. I know being Chinese gives them a unique advantage over westerners due to the kanji but it's hard to say how this translates to the JLPT. Some students did well with grammar, others did well with the listening. I don't think anyone aced the reading section although the person with the highest score couldn't have done too badly at it. In class students generally can write an essay pretty damn well and quickly while I'm struggling because I have to verify kanji by typing it on my phone. I'm noticing the progress in my ability to write by hand but it would take a lot of work to catch up to where these Chinese students already are right now. But while they can write and 'spell' kanji in words very well, they have a lot of the same issues that westerners do when it comes to reading out loud: they know the meaning but don't remember the Japanese pronunciation of the kanji. Especially if it's a kun reading as opposed to an on reading. They do find words with on style pronunciations a bit easier it seems, but when reading they often say the Chinese pronunciation instead of the Japanese. So the class is pretty good for me in terms of the level. We're speeding through 耳から覚える at the rate of about once chapter a week. We don't do it every day because they alternate between two teachers every day and only one teacher is using the book. But she'll go through explaining a grammar in say 10 minutes and then it's on to the next. I don't know how quickly other people's classes go through grammar but this is about 3x faster than I've done in a class before. After three weeks we've done three chapters in the book and will be starting chapter 4 soon. If I didn't have a background including some self study of N2 material I'd be against the wall and asking to go back to an easier class. Probably to an easier school that just goes slower. But I do have the background so it's a good pace for me. Regarding what I was told about students using Japanese with each other. It's absolutely no the case. As you would guess from a class where everyone's native language is Chinese, they speak Chinese. They try to speak Japanese to me a bit but it's not very effective. We can communicate but they're not fluent really and I struggle to understand them even. Likewise, they have difficulty understanding me too. I'm just not used to a Chinese accent - or they are mixing Chinese with their Japanese a bit perhaps. I can easily have a conversation with a Japanese person however or a westerner speaking Japanese even if it's not very well. I can't help thinking it's that they're mixing Chinese into their Japanese although I can't really verify that. 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 1700 of 1702 29 January 2016 at 7:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm just going to touch briefly on how I'm doing my personal studying. Initially, I was using the Japanese for iOS app to
study. It's the most convenient for adding words. I can look up stuff that's useful on my phone anywhere and save it for studying and it's in the app's SRS flashcard system. Being in the country and seeing words on signs or on menus or while having conversations this is a big deal. But I decided this wasn't as effective as it could be because the SRS system has some limitations. If you get behind on your reviews it forces you to review EVERY due card before repeating a missed card so being behind sucks that much more. It has no audio and no example sentences except as provided by the www.JISHO.org website. But you can add notes to cards so that helps. Anyway, I decided to try Midori instead. I was liking Midori a lot because it does a better job of reviewing cards if you have a lot to review. It doesn't force you to review every due card before repeating a missed review card. You can be behind and do some reviewing and feel like you accomplished something even if you didn't finish everything that was due. Also, you can put a vocabulary into two or three folders. This lets you setup separate decks to test you using English/kanji/kana and separate statistics. It was good for a bit but it also has no example sentences really, or audio. So I'm now using Flashcards Deluxe. I like it better than anki although I like both. I have FCD setup with Rikai same so rikai same saves the audio to my dropbox folder on my computer and added the vocabulary and example sentences etc. Adding new vocabulary with audio and sentences is super easy from an etext in Firefox. It's kind of less easy if I have a list of vocabulary or am using a paper text though. I can search google or something for an example sentence to include on the card. It gets slow though finding a sentence that I want to use. I am reading a paperback right now and am accumulating a lot of words I would like to review but I'm debating if I want to add vocab to my deck without sentences. Regardless, one thing I like about FCD is it lets me flag cards. I can then review those flagged cards again, separately. For my regular SRS I'm testing myself with the word written in kanji. For words I want to do extra review on I'm doing closed delete with English definitions. The extra review is not SRS based but a sort of Leitner algorithm that SRS has available. It's an ok algorithm that's good for this purpose but not good enough to replace regular SRS (unfortunately). And I can just listen to the app play the audio of the flagged vocab for me too. I like this for new words and stuff that doesn't seem to want to stick. It kind of solves the issue for me where passive testing doesn't seem to drill it into my head well enough but active SRS is just too hard after an interval of a few days when you're studying a deck of hundreds or thousands of vocabulary. I'm really good about watching movies/anime without subs now. I have more motivation. It's still annoying that some anime I can't seem to find w/o hard English subs but improving my Japanese is too important for me now to slack and use English subs. I will say that I have found myself being a different kind of lazy though. I can follow the plot well enough picking up about half the Japanese. What I should do though is strive to understand as much as I can to increase my vocabulary as much as I can. But I am sometimes just content with the 50% and take what I understand easily and don't really try to understand more. 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 1701 of 1702 30 January 2016 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
Long time no hear! Sounds like the Japanese experience is going really well for you. You are clearly getting something very useful out of the class.
Funnily enough that one is one I've been struggling with in Anki right now. I have a feeling I'm going to remember it now :-) 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 1702 of 1702 31 January 2016 at 2:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah the class is helping my Japanese. It's just a bummer I can't really make friends with people. Yes,
remember 散らかる or you will be judged ;p. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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