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5 years of 日本語 TAC 13 桜/Schnitzel | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6612 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 105 of 436 28 February 2013 at 11:45am | IP Logged | ||
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If heard of others who use that method successfully. They divide the year into quarters or something and alternate between intensive study and maintenance for each language. So you could try doing 6 weeks with studying mostly German and only watching dramas or whatever you need to maintain your Japanese. Then after 6 weeks, switch. Try for a few months to see how it works for you.
I tried looking for some threads about the method because I know I've read about it before, but I guess I don't know what search words to use because I couldn't find them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 106 of 436 28 February 2013 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well I remember Ellasevia working to a three-monthly schedule. And I'm pretty sure I read that Moses McCormick has scheduled his languages quarterly too although I can't find a reference to that at present. Then of course there is leosmith's learning in spurts thread which may be relevant.
But all these guys are pretty accomplished at studying many languages. Little old me has so far only really done one language to a half-decent level. I have really no idea if this could work for me or not. I also really don't know what it is I actually need to maintain my Japanese anyway. It seems in terms of effort, there is only a tiny gap between "making progress" and "losing progress", and I haven't worked out where that gap is. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 107 of 436 28 February 2013 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I forgot to add...the last two days I have been focusing exclusively on Japanese and in that time I've had two quick wins. I listened to a news podcast from TBS radio and although my comprehension overall was pretty low (no surprise as I've spent very little time so far on news vocabulary) I could pick up the main gist of the world's events of the day. And then I had a go at reading a short article on Yomiuri and could comfortably read it without resorting to dictionary help.
And yet I still seem to wake up every morning with fragments of German on my mind. When I was working quite intensively on Japanese through December, including getting very involved in reading some short stories and very involved in watching a TV drama, I actually started forming coherent thoughts quite naturally in Japanese first thing in the morning. It was pretty cool. Now I get fragments of German and they don't even make sense!!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 108 of 436 28 February 2013 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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OK, final proof that there is nothing wrong with my Japanese.
I received an English language book in the post from Amazon today. When I opened the parcel and looked at the book, the first thought that came to my mind was "hey, they've printed the cover the wrong way around". 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6612 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 109 of 436 01 March 2013 at 8:04am | IP Logged | ||
That sounds like something I'd do. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 110 of 436 01 March 2013 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Last night I didn't really do any "study" (5 mins of Anki reviews doesn't count, it's only 5 mins after all). Instead I ordered a takeaway and watched 90 minutes (2 eps) of a Japanese TV drama. Most of the first episode I watched was still a little tough. I would have given up were it not for the fact I was busy eating my dinner, so I just kept it running. Somewhere towards the end of that episode, suddenly everything started to make sense again, I started to get the hang of what was happening between the characters and it left on a bit of a cheesy cliffhanger so I just had to move on to the next episode. And there it was - my Japanese listening ability came flooding back, in a matter of minutes, just like that! Lesson learned: at an intermediate level, never underestimate the power of TV.
I still can't decide which language I actually want to study though! Edited by g-bod on 01 March 2013 at 11:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 111 of 436 02 March 2013 at 11:32am | IP Logged | ||
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After a lot of thinking (and more studying than might be expected) I have come to a decision.
For the next 6 months (basically until the end of August) I am planning to focus my studies on German. I'm still going to spend some time using Japanese (books, TV, conversation, basically all the fun stuff that actually has a lot of value at my level anyway). But I'm going to pack away my kanji and intermediate textbooks until the autumn. The main aim with German is to basically get it to a level where I can use the language (in the same way I already can with Japanese). Hopefully I'll then be able to start alternating study languages. While I'm working on German, I'll have to try my best not to panic about what happens to my Japanese. For the last 3 days of February I did no German, but lots of Japanese, and it did come back, so I think on the whole I should be ok. I've settled on 6 months because I think this period of time gives me enough time to realistically cover the following: Assimil German with Ease (in which I'm about two days away from starting the active wave already) Deutsche Welle's Warum Nicht radio course (I've already listened to the first series of 26 lessons, so I have three more series to go) My A1 textbook, probably an A2 textbook, and probably at least part of a B1 textbook too That should at least give me a grounding in the most important things I need to know about basic German. I plan to pick back up my audio review playlist again and add to it for regular access to comprehensible audio. I'm also going to face the issue of genders head on (makes sense if I'm actually commiting to German from now on) and memorise and review nouns in Anki. I've just set up a very basic deck drilling single words, going from German > English then English > German. I'm going for single words to keep things as quick and simple as possible at this stage. It worked for learning kanji for basic Japanese, it's just once I got to 1000+ entries context became both more essential (thanks to abstraction/synonyms etc) and more useful (thanks to having developed enough grammar and vocab to understand the context in the first place). In addition to giving the article, I'm also colour-coding the German entry according to gender. I've no idea if this will help, but it's at least made Anki a little prettier. Hopefully as I progress I'll be able to start picking up a wider range of listening and reading material too. And eventually, I hope I'll be able to start finding people to talk to! To be honest, switching from German back to Japanese for a few days this last week really drove home to me the biggest problem I have with German right now. I hate being a beginner! Hopefully six months is enough time to get over 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 112 of 436 03 March 2013 at 3:04am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with you. My biggest problem with japanese was that I hated
being a beginner all over again after working so hard to be intermediate in 3 European languages. I've hated it for every language I've done. The beginner period for Japanese seems to take longer than the rest but probably not that much. Anyway I think you're doing the right thing. I think you'll really enjoy German once you start getting better. And i get those incoherent thoughts in foreign languages all the time. It used to be German but now it's happening in japanese and it's making me really happy lol. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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