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Japanese Assimil Strategies | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| berabero89 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4453 days ago 101 posts - 137 votes  Speaks: English, Amharic* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 1 of 3 22 July 2013 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm currently at lesson 31 of Japanese Assimil with Ease and I really do not feel as if
I have "gotten" the language. That is to say, my vocabulary retention is very low (although I have had no problems with grammar so far) and the only words I find myself remembering are the words that appear in almost every lesson and English loan words. My strategy is to do the Assimil lessons by blind shadowing the audio, listen while reading the Japanese text and then slowly read through the dialogue, carefully comparing the English and Japanese translations to get an idea of the literal and intended meanings (I really do love the Assimil literal translations) and then I read through the dialogue much faster to see if there's anything I need to look up again. I do this a few times (at this point I've begun listening to audio again) Once I have near-complete textual comprehension, I once again listen to the audio several times, shadowing once more until I feel that I really have understood the text. Using this strategy, I got through about 2 dialogues a day but now I've slowed down to 1. Every 7th lesson, I translate all the Japanese dialogues into English in the morning and then translate them back verbally into Japanese in the evening while comparing it to the Japanese text. This method has worked very well for me when I use Assimil for Spanish and French, but its not really effective anymore. I'm beginning to wonder if the Assimil methodology of simply letting the language sink in works for languages so far removed from English and if I should attack it with brute force (such as Professor Arguelles' method of simply memorizing each text) rather than sitting back. For those of you who have used Japanese with Ease successfully, what did you do to make full use of this course and how difficult was this for you? I feel like I'm doing something wrong as I have seen next to no complaints about this course. I have a feeling that their strategy is to give more vocabulary to "make up" for the lack of cognates in the two languages rather than give a few examples and let the rules sink in (e.g. English -ity vs French -ité vs Spanish idad). Thank you all in advance Edit: I forgot to add that I used mnemonics, and that while they were useful at first, they have really stopped helping me. Edited by berabero89 on 22 July 2013 at 11:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gitaa Brother Newbie United States Joined 4912 days ago 23 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 3 23 July 2013 at 8:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Writing down all the lessons with the scriptorium method is what made it stick for me.
However, I did know how to write all the Kanji at this time. Having to think about how to write a character would definitely break the flow of the exercise. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| berabero89 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4453 days ago 101 posts - 137 votes Speaks: English, Amharic* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 3 of 3 24 July 2013 at 2:44am | IP Logged | ||
At the moment, I'm not paying attention to stroke order, so I'm not looking it up as I write, but I tried doing Scriptorium, and while constantly looking at kanji DOES break the flow of the exercise, I found that it really helped me stick the words in my head. I started Assimil again and did 5 lessons again, so I don't know how long this will keep me going, but thank you! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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