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TAC 2014, tabidachi 旅立ち - dampingwire

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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4674 days ago

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

 
 Message 9 of 118
02 January 2014 at 10:38am | IP Logged 
yuhakko wrote:
Just one advice I could give you would be maybe to start reading the
actual NHK news articles related to the NHK easynews. You have a link before the
article normally and if you read the easy article before the real one, you'll know the
topic and the outlines as well so it'll feel easier ;)


I read through a few EasyNews articles last night and then read one NHK News article
(about 書き初め) that happened to be one I'd just read on the EasyNews and it did seem to
be far less daunting than I was expecting.

So although I hadn't thought about tackling the "full" news that way, it does seem to
be a useful way of approaching the problem. Thanks!

BTW: it does seem that there's a rich cultural vein related to "the first X of the New
year" ... clearly a lot of vocabulary waiting to be picked up!

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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4674 days ago

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

 
 Message 10 of 118
03 January 2014 at 3:07pm | IP Logged 
(Quoting from my TAC 2013 log)

g-bod wrote:
The workbooks are more important. A good kanji dictionary would suffice
to replace the
reference book but since they are both linked it would make lookups more complicated
without
the reference book.


I asked for these books (plus a few Kanzen Master ones for N3 and N2) at work and, as a
Epiphany gift, they said yes. :-)

They even paid for the (somewhat expensive) trackable airmail option. So $300 of study
books will be here in a week or so!

1 person has voted this message useful



dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4674 days ago

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

 
 Message 11 of 118
03 January 2014 at 6:45pm | IP Logged 
I found it quite useful last year to try and make some sort of estimate for a time budget on a monthly basis. I
think I'll do that this time too, but I'll start by trying to plan the next 6 months.

My aim is to be ready to sit the JLPT N3 in July.

So I'd like all my studying to be done by the end of May, leaving me June for consolidation (or, more likely,
catching up on whatever I've let slip!).

So let's call that 20 weeks of study time (not counting June's revision).

Looking at the spreadsheet I've been keeping, I think that RTK + Anki reviews will take about 40-50m each day. If
I call that 50min daily that allows for new Kanji in RTK.

My Anki Kanji deck has ~2800 entries I'd like to learn for the N3 test, which means about 140/week. My vocabulary
deck has ~3500 entries, which means 175/week. Allowing for new words from NHK News and general reading etc.,
let's call that 350 new items per week. I seem to be able to get through 50 words in ~20min, so 20min/day for
7days/week seems like a manageable target. In practice I'll probably go a little faster than this, but not
much faster.

Getting through one full NHK News article takes me about 20min, including adding new words to SRS etc.

There are ~275 JPOD101 lessons that I want to work through (listen to intensively). I don't expect to get these
done before the N3 test, but I would like to get them done by the end of the year. That works out at about
15m/day.

I certainly want to work through 日本語総まとめ N3 文法, but that comes with a handy built-in timetable. The N3
grammar book will be 6 weeks of work, assuming I do one lesson per day. I'm going to assume that each lesson is
30m.

完全マスター is harder to judge. There are roughly 150 pages of learning material and each "unit" is roughly 2
pages. I'm going to assume that I can manage that in 30m. That's probably an underestimate for those occasions
when new grammar is involved, but probably an underestimate for exercises etc. So hopefully it will balance out.
At one "unit" (2 pages) per day, and 5 days/week, that's 15 weeks.

So if I can manage 30m/day I can get through both of those grammar books in 21 weeks. That's close enough to my
target that it's worth aiming for.

On top of that I'd like to fit in 6 books and 6 films or dramas or similar in the same time period. I'm not
really sure how to count those, but I'll just assume that I'll fit them in at the weekend and then see how things
work out once my spreadsheet has a month or data to chew on.

On top of that there will be 2-3 hours of tutorial plus preparation.

So that works out to the following daily load:

RTK + Anki reviews: 50m
Anki learning:       20m
NHK News:         & nbsp;  20m
JPOD101 Shadowing:   15m
N3 grammar:        &nbs p; 30m
Tutorial + prep:     30m (averaged out over the week ... but probably mostly happening Tues/Wed)
Film/Drama/Book:     15m + Weekends

That's 3 hours per day. I may or may not be able to find that much time. I can probably get up earlier and do 30m
of my reviews before I go to work and I can usually find 30m at work to do more reviews or some grammar boo kwork
maybe. That should leave me with 2 hours to find each evening, which is tough but doable.

I also have the 完全マスター N3 聴解 book turning up at work soon. I'm not sure how much time that will take, but
I'll have to fit it in somehow as it's clearly going to be beneficial. I may be able to fit some of it in over
lunchtimes too, but I'll need to see the layout first. So I may be back to revise this study plan in a few weeks.

Kanji In Context also turns up at work soon. As with the 聴解 book I'll have to see whether I can fit this in to a
daily schedule or whether I'll have to aim to do some work every 2nd or 3rd day or similar.

So it looks like working through everything in time for the N3 is doable (especially as I've left myself a
month's worth of slack at the end), but I'll need to keep on top of the work and not let a backlog develop.

Time to stop posting and actually get started I suppose :-)



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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4674 days ago

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

 
 Message 12 of 118
05 January 2014 at 12:33am | IP Logged 
I thought I'd try rikaikun in Chrome (on Linux Mint) to try to speed up working through
an NHK News (not EasyNews) article. It loads OK but, even after restarting Chrome,
it never pops up anything.

I had to resort to using rikaichan with Firefox to work my way through the article.

I'd prefer to use only one browser rather than having to fire up Firefox just to use
rikaichan, so I'd be grateful for any suggestions.

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g-bod
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5991 days ago

1485 posts - 2002 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 13 of 118
05 January 2014 at 10:51am | IP Logged 
I want to work where you work! :-)

Have you based your time assessment for Soumatome on your own experience of using it? I found
there was no way I could get through it in 6 weeks. It might work if you were just using it
for review, so apologies if this is your intention. I just found that 5-6 grammar points a
day, 6 days a week, was too intense. I passed N3 having only covered the first "week" though,
so I wouldn't worry too much.
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Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6561 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 14 of 118
05 January 2014 at 11:50am | IP Logged 
dampingwire, I am in awe of your studying skills and your endurance and especially how you manage to get through so much vocabulary on both Anki and Memrise. I could never dream to learn 3500 words in half a year. I have a question though. You estimate that you will have 350 new items every week - aren't you afraid that the number of reviews will get out of hand? You will probably have to review several hundreds of words every day, maybe even close to a thousand. How can you manage that? Will you already know most words and simply press the "Very good" button?
1 person has voted this message useful



dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4674 days ago

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

 
 Message 15 of 118
05 January 2014 at 12:23pm | IP Logged 
g-bod wrote:
I want to work where you work! :-)


It was a nice surprise. I was expecting a "do you really need all of them?" reply.
But I guess there are now four or five people who've expressed an interest, so building
up a library is a reasonable thing to do.

g-bod wrote:
Have you based your time assessment for Soumatome on your own experience of
using it?


Not really. I have been through it all once before, just to see "the lay of the land", so
to speak. However, some of the points I've already covered either through みんなの日本語 or
through JapanesePOD101.com so very little of it is completely new territory. I've
covered the first two days worth so far and it took a total of 65 mins, which is close
enough to my estimate that I'm not (yet) worried.

As I think I've said before, the explanations in that book vary between sparse and non-
existent, so I often end up reading up grammar points elsewhere. That adds to the time
taken, but I do want to make sure that the points stick this time around.

I expect that as I move along, there will be various parts that are quite a bit more
challenging and that the time I take may double or triple or worse. But that's OK: I've
hopefully got enough time to get through this book before July. By the time I get to 新完全
マスター, I'm hoping that a good deal of it will be revision and consolidation.

If I find that I'm nowhere near the end of 日本語総まとめ by the time I need to book the JLPT
N3, then that might be a sign that I need to reconsider the timing of the test, but I'm
hoping it won't come to that. I think I'm ready vocabulary-wise and probably reading-wise
too; I've no idea where I'll be listening-wise, so no change there :-) That just leaves
me with grammar as an area where I'm sure I can improve noticeably between now and July.

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g-bod
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5991 days ago

1485 posts - 2002 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 16 of 118
05 January 2014 at 12:39pm | IP Logged 
When it comes to booking the test, I would say the official practice test is a much more reliable guide than Soumatome as to whether or not you are ready. The Soumatome books were rushed out when the JLPT syllabus was initially changed (I guess there was a clear gap in the market that needed filling) and while they contain a lot of useful information for Japanese in general, I know a few people who sat either N3 and N2 after using the books and found that a lot of the stuff in the books didn't seem relevant to the test.


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