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5 years of 日本語 TAC 13 桜/Schnitzel | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 289 of 436 23 July 2013 at 11:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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That's great yuhakko, I look forward to reading your plan once you have worked it out. Maybe we can beat the kanji problem together!
I have set myself a mini goal of getting through the first 4 chapters of 留学生のための漢字の教科書, focusing mainly on writing, by the time I go on holiday at the end of August. I'm trying really hard not to think about the other 28 chapters while I do it! 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 290 of 436 24 July 2013 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I had a session with my Japanese tutor this evening for the first time in a few weeks. It was
great. I hadn't been asked to prepare very much but we talked about lots of different things and there were only a couple of occasions when I felt really lost for words and had to properly pause to think things through. If I could perform more reliably at that level I might actually start telling people I can speak Japanese. 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 291 of 436 24 July 2013 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Handwriting Japanese seems pretty hardcore to me. Actually, these days, handwriting in any language seems pretty hardcore to me. Apart from some (short-term) scribbled notes and my activity notebook at work, I don't do any handwriting to speak of. (The day and date in my notebook are written in Japanese ... I suspect that's as far as I'll go with that .... reading Japanese will be quite enough for me I think).
Are you trying to convince me that N2 isn't quite the level I think it is :-) You passed that so, judging by a brief glance at an old JLPT 2 paper, you can recognise a goodly number of kanji in words. You must know the reading/pronunciation of a bunch of them too. You're reading Japanese novels (as in actually reading and not spending an hour to work through a single paragraph, which is where I'm at). You've also managed to hold conversations with natives.
I promise to try to remember not to mention RTK again :-) I've found writing the characters down useful in remembering them (at least once I've missed bits of a few times). I'm still at the stage where I see 政治 and think "politics (correct taskmaster) + reign" but I do get to politics quite quickly. Then again, my kanji vocabulary is probably 100 words or so, so there's not much scope for utter confusion yet!
I'd agree. Even native speakers have some issues with certain kanji.
Monotonous drills are the Japanese way aren't they? Did you miss Cultural Orientation 101 :-) All the textbooks I've seen have a short explanation plus massive amounts of drill. Then you can buy the "teacher's edition", which is more drills. I'm sure there's a reasonably logical grammar aching to struggle out from under the weight of those drills. I wonder if what you are describing is really the "plateau" that advanced learners often hit? You've actually climbed 95% of the mountain, but all you see is the remaining 5%. Admittedly that 5% is a tough nut to crack and will take plenty of exposure, but surely you are well past the monotonous drills stage and can just enjoy reading and J-dramas knowing that they are maintaining and extending your hard-won Japanese? 3 persons have 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 292 of 436 24 July 2013 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Damping wire: sorry, I'm on my little phone and quoting is a bit of a pain. Just wanted to comment though
since you talk a lot about wondering what happens when you have a couple thousand kanji in your head and how it's different. In my experience it's not really confusing so much as it's kanji don't repeat themselves so often so you may not see a kanji in a really long time and when you see it again you'll think darn, I know I'm supposed to know this... I recognize all the primitives! At least that's my experience. Btw it makes me really happy to see someone else in these forums who appreciates RTK ^_^ I get the impression that you're pretty impressed with n2. I know I am. Of course I'm even more impressed with n1 but hey ;). If Gbod thinks a out it, I'd say she already can write and take notes in Japanese. Just using a lot less kanji than an actual Japanese person would use but still Japanese. Right? 2 persons have 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 293 of 436 24 July 2013 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I can, but not particularly quickly or comfortably. I didn't even care about this until I started playing with French again and realising how useful it was to have a handwritten notebook for vocabulary and not have to worry about even turning the computer on to study.
If your expectations are anything like mine were before I passed the test, then yes, it's not the level you think it is. There's no doubt that it's a tough exam, but I was sure I had to be at a more advanced level than I am in order to pass it. Since they changed the test specification, the 1000 kanji and 6000 words thing is pretty much irrelevant. In fact I'm fairly certain that I have neither 1000 kanji nor 6000 words, not even passively. The JLPT specification now tells us that N2 requires:
The thing is it's primarily a test of comprehension. If you've already put in the hours watching TV (or living in the country, I guess) and you've developed strategies to deal with reading things you don't understand fully, you're probably covered for two thirds of the paper. The really key thing is that although you might need to understand (at least the gist) of a businessman talking about the current performance of his company or the manual for your refrigerator, you don't need to be able to produce this kind of Japanese on your own. Even for the grammar/vocabulary section, if you read enough, watch enough TV and have enough conversations, you'll find that a lot of the words or expressions that come up so often you find yourself just having to find out what they mean, may well turn up on an N2 paper (or for that matter, N3!) Anyway, since you only have to score 50%, and I only just scraped 50% on language knowledge and reading (although with a more convincing score on listening), I may have just got lucky on the day.
Intermediate to advanced textbooks are even worse. You end up with pages of explanations that are so short you're not really sure what the point is, followed by a very minimal amount of drill! You end up thinking "what am I supposed to do with this then?" while wondering to yourself whether it might have been better to stick to European languages after all...
I've definitely hit a plateau, although I think you're a little too kind with your talk of "advanced learners" and "95%". I'm probably more like 80% there, although going by the Pareto principle this means I've still only done 20% of the work! I remember a few years ago reading somebody talking about the "long intermediate phase" of learning Japanese. They weren't wrong. I'm still not out the other side. Anyway, just to demonstrate that I'm not a completely "glass half empty" type of person, I do still really appreciate the fact that I can read, watch TV and communicate with native speakers "to a certain degree". But if I really want to hit an advanced level, I still need to get better at all these things. When I told one of my Japanese friends that I'd passed the N2 exam his response was something like "great, now you can actually start using Japanese". To reach this level takes a lot of hard work, but in many ways it's only just the beginning. 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 294 of 436 24 July 2013 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Well, the Japan Foundation website does have pages describing the "competencies" that people claim at each of the various levels. Even at N1 only something like 30% *I'm going from memory, so don't quote me!) claim to be able to understand the news on TV. As I'm using JLPT as a way to direct my studying, this doesn't worry me too much. I do realise that when I reach N2 there will still be a long way to go if my goal is to be able to speak comfortably on everyday topics. I realise that once (if?) I reach the N2 summit, it'll look like a molehill. Right now though, it looks like I'm at the foothills of the Himalayas. That's just the way challenges are: once you've achieved X you start looking for the next challenge. One thing I read early on in my studies was that the "drop out" rate for Japanese (and Chinese) was relatively high. Given that the drop out rate for languages in general is not low to start with, that makes achieving N2 something worth celebrating. Even if you think you scraped by in one section, you still passed. Remember the old joke: Q: What do you call the guy who came bottom of the class in medical school? A: Doctor! A pass is a pass. 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 295 of 436 25 July 2013 at 12:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Actually, I scraped by in two sections. I have the scores to prove it!
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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 296 of 436 25 July 2013 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I'm going to check this. That sounds odd. I know if I watch the news in German, despite being very rusty, and probably about a B1 level, I felt I could understand most of it. I'd think an N1 person would be able to passively understand just about everything... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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