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5 years of 日本語 TAC 13 桜/Schnitzel | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4657 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 313 of 436 06 August 2013 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Good :-)
Tracking what I'm doing was my initial motivation for logging and then this "TAC" thing started ... If you don't feel the need to log, or to log as frequently, that's no problem. Although I, for one, am looking forward to your first post about your new Welsh studies, written in Japanese ... 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 314 of 436 15 August 2013 at 9:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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A bit about my dilemma:
Things are very uncertain at work. Put simply, now might be a good time to change jobs. I've been thinking how cool it would be to use languages for work. I've realised none of my languages are good enough for this. I'm full of self doubt over what to do (naturally this extends well beyond languages). I'm procrastinating a lot. When I do study a language, my heart isn't in it (because of the doubt) and whatever I do I don't learn very much. I seem to have installed my very own affective filter. Edited by g-bod on 16 August 2013 at 9:38pm 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 315 of 436 16 August 2013 at 9:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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I disagree about your Japanese. Sure it could be better, but there aren't that many British people with very good Japanese skills. English speakers stink at languages as a whole (everyone speaks English anyway..) and westerners are just bad at eastern languages. An N2 certificate is pretty darn good.
But your post reminds me of something AJAT said in one of his entries.. basically the only foreign language he's studied is Japanese and he uses the analogy of it's better to have one sharp tool than to have lots of dull ones. Anyway it's a shame if you have to switch jobs. It sounded like you have a really nice one with travel opportunities and everything. 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 316 of 436 16 August 2013 at 9:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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I had another tutoring session with this online Japanese Institute. I had the same tutor as I for a session last weekend. She's super friendly and outgoing and made the lesson fun just as I expected. This time I was the only student so I got tons of speaking practice. Unfortunately, with it being a work day, I wasn't as up for the lesson as I'd have liked. It makes a difference. Being a full time student would sure be nice. One thing I'm noticing about the lessons is that they're doing what my Japanese teacher in class at the junior college did - they're keeping the vocabulary simple and focusing on the grammar. I totally want to improve my vocabulary. Particularly in a lesson where the grammar is review for me. Obviously if I can introduce newer vocabulary myself into the lesson then that's good but it's hard to produce it off the cuff. I did some - I got 顔好き out of my mouth haha. Normally I'm just producing N4/N5 vocabulary when put on the spot and the rest is passive. I am going to have to push myself more to use harder vocab. At least in these classes, unlike my junior college one, if I use my own vocabulary the teacher goes with it instead of discouraging it. I've got more sessions lined up. If I want to I can literally sign up for a tutor session every day. I'm going to sign up for a lot.
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| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4624 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 317 of 436 16 August 2013 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree with Kraemder, you definitely have a good level in Japanese! Although like you
with my N2 I felt I didn't have the level, while searching for internship in Japan I've seen maybe job offer asking for the JLPT N2. And in my actual internship right now, I've had a few Japanese clients and had no trouble with my Japanese! Don't underestimate yourself! That said, I know the feeling that your Japanese is not good enough.. I've had it enough myself. Regarding your choice of stopping your log, even though I find it a bit sad, I understand it. It was nice having someone to follow with a level similar to mine and similar challenges! 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 318 of 436 16 August 2013 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@kraemder was your second post meant to be an update to your own log? Either way, I'm really glad that Japonin lessons are going well for you. I think their format provides excellent preparation for the grammar section of the JLPT and I definitely owe my pass mark on the N2 language knowledge paper to them!
@yuhakko I'm glad you have faith in my Japanese too! It really lifted my mood to see that. As a hobby language, I guess I'm doing reasonably well with it. But naturally I'm still trailing behind professional standards. I'm good enough to be aware (and frankly terrified) of many pitfalls that can lead you to unintentional rudeness in Japanese, but I'm not good enough to be confident that I won't screw up in a big way the first time I open my mouth. I really don't know how I'd deal with the pressure of representing an organisation in those circumstances. As it is I already get nervous just writing an email to my Skype tutor. Actually at work today I was getting slightly nervous over how formal to make an email (in English, of course) to somebody very senior in my organisation. I'm sure I wouldn't have this problem if I wasn't a student of Japanese! 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 319 of 436 17 August 2013 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm back! I guess rather than a retirement, I just took a kind of summer holiday...
This week I've started trying to break in to Japanese news. I found the NHK Radio News on Tunein Radio. The news readers speak in a very clear and formal style, and yet I really struggled to follow anything apart from the weather reports. I clearly have a huge vocabulary gap of news words, which I am now trying to fill. I've been working with the written news articles on the NHK website, mainly because I'm hoping there will be some synergy between the content on the website and the content on the news broadcasts. I copy a few lines of the article into a word document and highlight the words I don't understand. I stop once I've highlighted the first 10 words or so (in practice I usually continue to the end of the sentence because it makes more sense that way). I then look up all the words and make sure I can understand the sentences they appeared in. I was somewhat disheartened at first to find that I would only cover the first one or two sentences before reaching my unknown word quota. However, I discovered that once I'd looked the words up I could then return to read the rest of the article with good enough comprehension to read it extensively, which would be impossible going in cold. Since the news is pretty repetitive anyway, I'm hoping that with a few weeks of work like this I'll be able to start enjoying radio and web news extensively. Maybe "enjoying" is the wrong word, it's generally pretty depressing really, but at least it's helping me expand my vocabulary in domains such as crime, disasters and politics! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4624 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 320 of 436 18 August 2013 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well I did think myself I wouldn't be able to work in Japanese but it turned out that
on the spot when you have no choice, it flows out quite easily. Usually, the longer I stay with my Japanese clients, the more polite I get :p Anyway, good for you to be properly back! (and for my motivation to study Japanese, since seeing you log in makes me motivated in order to keep up!) Concerning the NHK website, if you check out the Easy news (unfortunately with furiganas), you'll see that you can actually go to the real news article from there. I use it daily (2-3 articles per day for me) by just reading the easy article with the audio and then the real one with the audio. Like that when I watch the real one, I already have an idea of the topic and it trains me with reading speed and gets me to see more complicated synonyms of the words used in the easy news. And finally, concerning the NHK news radio, I don't know which kind of phone you have but I know that on android, there is an app where you can download the news from there on your phone (or listen directly) It's quite practical! I've been listening to it for a few months and I am (finally!) starting to understand more of the content. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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