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TAC 2013, Sakura 桜 - dampingwire

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kujichagulia
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Japan
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 Message 9 of 137
04 January 2013 at 7:55am | IP Logged 
Wait... let me get this straight. You are planning to work through JP101's Upper Intermediate episodes before you do Japanese in 30 Days (is that not a beginner's book?)?
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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
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United Kingdom
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Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
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 Message 10 of 137
04 January 2013 at 2:37pm | IP Logged 
kujichagulia wrote:
Wait... let me get this straight. You are planning to work
through JP101's Upper Intermediate episodes before you do Japanese in 30 Days
(is that not a beginner's book?)?


"Planning" is a rather grand word for what I'm doing :-)

My subscription to JPOD101 ends in June. Before then I want to make sure that I've
verified that I've downloaded everything and that it has downloaded correctly. That
means listening to everything. I'm moderately lost with the Upper Intermediate stuff
and I expect that I'll be totally lost with the Advanced blogs. I have found, however,
that when I move to a higher level the lower level stuff seems to magically become
easier. Some of the later Beginner series stuff seemed tough at the time but (now that
I'm listening to Intermediate stuff) when I go back to it lately it seems much more
understandable.

The Berlitz stuff turned up unexpectedly at Christmas. I expect that it will turn out
to be be fairly standard "tourist fare" so I'm in no great rush to switch from my
current commuting habits to using the Berlitz stuff. However, since I now have it I
want to at least go through it. There are only two audio CDs so I expect that two days
of commuting will get me through it, but I want to work through the book at least to
start with so that I give it a proper chance.

I seem to have gone from "not a lot" of non-audio material at the beginning of December
2012 to "actually quite a bit of stuff to work through" now in January. That's a good
thing I guess. I do want to work through the basic stuff soonish as I expect that by
the end of the year I probably won't want to go back to the really basic stuff (which
means I may miss out on some things that I really ought to know but missed the first
time around).

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g-bod
Diglot
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United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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 Message 11 of 137
04 January 2013 at 7:15pm | IP Logged 
In terms of what to move onto after you finish Minna No Nihongo II, to be honest I wouldn't worry too much about it until you actually get there. There's no single good intermediate textbook out there, so it will be down to what your strengths, weaknesses and goals are once you get to that point. I think if you want to start looking beyond what is in your basic textbook, it would be more useful to look at investing in some good grammar reference books if you haven't done so already.

I wouldn't bother getting Japanese for Everyone as most of it will be too basic by the time you've finished with MNN. I bought a copy as it was going cheap on Amazon, but in the end I never used it. I found that the third volume of Japanese for Busy People was quite a nice bridge to get towards lower intermediate from the stuff I'd learned in Genki - however one of the limitations of Genki is that it is aimed at university students so all the scenarios and vocabulary are very oriented towards student life rather than working adult life. I'm not sure this is a problem with MNN, as I've never used it, so you may have all that you need with that already.

For the N3 exam, the most useful books I found were the Unicom 実力アップ books for listening and reading, which both do a good job of combining practice for the listening and reading sections of the exam and introducing useful expressions and vocabulary. The Kanzen Master books for N3 hadn't been published yet at the time I was preparing for the exam, so I never used them, but I quite like the ones for N2. They are very much oriented towards what you need to pass the exam though, rather than improving your language skills in general.

I think the easiest to understand anime show I know is Azumanga Daioh. One character speaks with an Osaka dialect and another is permanently overexcited and speaks too fast, but apart from that most of the characters speak very clearly, and a lot of the vocabulary used seems to be quite common, everyday stuff, so it is easy to follow. For a graded list of dramas, check out
Japanese Level Up's Ultimate J-Drama Guide - however I think Azumanga Daioh is much easier to understand than any of the 1 star dramas I have watched from this list.
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mrwarper
Diglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
Spain
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 Message 12 of 137
04 January 2013 at 7:33pm | IP Logged 
Love the many placeholders, I placed only 2, which is far too few in retrospective. If I enroll in another TAC in 2014 I'll make sure to follow your example. Now I'll keep watching (and hopefully learning)...
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kraemder
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United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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 Message 13 of 137
04 January 2013 at 9:19pm | IP Logged 
Good idea with the placeholders. I wish I'd had that foresight when I
made my log... But I can always update the first entry I guess. I too
was a little taken aback that you were doing a beginner book and
upper intermediate lessons on jap pod. But if you like it then I'm sure
it's helping.
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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 14 of 137
06 January 2013 at 7:59pm | IP Logged 
g-bod wrote:
I wouldn't bother getting Japanese for Everyone as most of it will be too
basic by the time you've finished with MNN.


I've already asked for my employer to buy it; even if I don't use it, there are two
people at work who can make good use of it.

g-bod wrote:
I found that the third volume of Japanese for Busy People was quite a nice
bridge to get towards lower intermediate


Well someone else at work has added volumes 1 & 2 to the list ... if no-one beats me to
it I'll ask for volume 3 to be added to the library (in a few months).

g-bod wrote:
I found that the third volume of Japanese for Busy People was quite a nice
bridge to get towards lower intermediate from the stuff I'd learned in Genki - however
one of the limitations of Genki is that it is aimed at university students so all the
scenarios and vocabulary are very oriented towards student life rather than working
adult life. I'm not sure this is a problem with MNN, as I've never used it, so you may
have all that you need with that already.


I've not found myself too bothered by the various situations in MNN. I've not used
Genki, but I don't think it being full of students would bother me too much either. I
generally don't care hugely about those fictional characters, I see them as a useful
and instantly forgettable stepping stone to fluency :-)

g-bod wrote:
I think the easiest to understand anime show I know is Azumanga Daioh. One
character speaks with an Osaka dialect and another is permanently overexcited and
speaks too fast, but apart from that most of the characters speak very clearly, and a
lot of the vocabulary used seems to be quite common, everyday stuff, so it is easy to
follow.


Thanks for the recommendation (and the book advice). I'll try to start some viewing
soon.
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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 15 of 137
06 January 2013 at 8:06pm | IP Logged 
I decided to start looking at the Berlitz course. As expected it's a fairly
straightforward beginner course. So far it has used roomaji throughout, although it has
started to introduce the kana. After about 70 minutes of study I've been through the
first 12 chapters (of 30). I've not tried the exercises, but the grammar covered so far
is pretty basic. There have been some useful bits of vocabulary, so I think I'll keep
going to the end. I expect (unless it suddenly jumps a gear) that I'll be done with it
by the end of the week. I'll probably try the audio out when I'm commuting again (I'm
working from home most or all of next week).

I've also started working through the Japanese Reader. The first 12 chapters are a
basic review of ひらがな and カタカナ. I've used those mostly as a source of vocabulary
for SRS> Chapter 13 is where the 漢字 starts and I'm now on Chapter 14. I expect that
this is the point at which it is going to become more interesting ...

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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4675 days ago

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

 
 Message 16 of 137
06 January 2013 at 8:16pm | IP Logged 
I'm going to use this post for two things. Firstly I'm going to see if I can
successfully link to a specific post in a log like this:


Brun Ugle's January Goals.


Following the suggestion in that post, I'm going to set myself some goals for January.

1. Listen to the remainder of JPOD101 Upper Beginner S2 - S5 by the end of the month.
This will be mostly during the commute or when I go out cycling in the evening. So it's
time that would otherwise be wasted.

2. Do at least 20 mins of Anki each day.

3. Keep the memrise N5 course watered and plant all 800 words of the memrise N4 course.
I think that's going to be 40 words per day. It sounds like quite a lot, however, they
won't all be new and I've found with both Kanji and Anki, they do begin to stick after
a while. I think that'll be about 60 mins per day.

4. Work on the Japanese Reader for at least 10 mins each day.

5. Keep up the Kanji reviews at Reviewing The Kanji.
This is rarely more
than 20 mins each day.

That's less than two hours to find each day.

Edited by dampingwire on 06 January 2013 at 9:10pm



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