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TAC 2014, tabidachi 旅立ち - dampingwire | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 105 of 118 25 September 2014 at 12:57am | IP Logged | ||
To start, I make an initial pass, just going through everything from cover to cover. 日本語総まと め is sufficiently "light" that I'll do the daily exercises, but I (usually) skip the "day 7" block of exercises. 新完全マスター has much more meat in it and takes quite a bit longer to go through. I think I managed 日本語総まとめ N3 in about 10 weeks, but N3 新完全マスター took more like 3 months. As I work through each grammar point I'll also look it up in All About Particles or the DO(BIA)JG or on renshuu.org or (failing all of those) randomly on the internet. That usually means that, at least on the day that I work through a given point, I usually have a reasonable idea of how it works. At this point I know that I'll probably only properly remember maybe a third of what I've seen, but I will (probably) recognise most grammar points when I see them in the field. I can then go back and brush up on the more common points as I encounter them. After this initial skim, for N3 I went back and re-read the grammar points and tackled the exercises. I did manage to complete this phase for 日本語総まとめ but 新完全マスター has so much drill material that I didn't have time to finish before the test. For N2, when I go back through the exercises, I won't re-read the grammar points beforehand. This way my incorrect answers will (hopefully) highlight those specific points where I need to brush up. Whether I get that far before I sit N2 or not, I don't know but that's the current plan. I have also started to make (electronic) notes for each of the grammar points that I come across in the various books I've used. I decided to do this because I thought it would help me put together an overall view of each grammar point based on the various different information that each source presents. I still think that's a good idea but it's sort of stalled because there don't seem to be enough hours in the day. I've covered most of the points in All About Particles, for example, but not very much from any of the 日本語総まとめ or 新完全マスター books. Rather than worrying too much about that, I'm just making notes now for those points that I've had some problem with. I did also think I'd be able to bring Anki to bear on the problem and I did set up a grammar deck. So I'd have an entry for (for example) さえ, a field describing the usage, another field describing the formations (e.g. Nさえ and Vてさえ and so on) and a few example sentences. 31 entries in and I found it just took too long to put the information in. So that's fallen by the wayside until I can find a better way of doing things. In addition I'm going through みんなの日本語中級 with my tutor. So I get to go over the grammar points in that series in detail and she makes sure that I don't skimp on the exercises (she even has the teacher's book with extra exercises, so I have to remember the stuff that cropped up in previous lessons). So that helps too, especially since the explanation is mostly in Japanese with just an occasional hint in English. So it's all a bit adhoc. I'd like to go through the books much more thoroughly and be sure that when I go and sit the exam I know each of the grammar points, but in reality that's not going to happen unless I give up my job. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 106 of 118 02 October 2014 at 12:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Time to review the September goals..
1. I'm going to read at least 50 pages for the Super Challenge each week. Done. I'm alternating between proper novels and graded readers. Each time I go back to the simple readers, they seem simpler, so the reading is coming along. 2. 新完全マスター N2 文法: one chapter each week. There are three full weeks left this month and I've already been through the first chapter, so I'll set myself the target of completing up to chapter 4. Actually I made it as far as Chapter 7. progress is sporadic: some days I manage a whole chapter and at other times I need a week to finish a chapter. If I had more free time, I think I could productively manage more grammar, but at the moment my time is mostly directed towards watching and reading. 3. I'm going to shadow 3 JPOD101 Lower Intermediate lessons each week. Done. I managed 15, which is exactly on target. 4. Continue listening to dialogue tracks. Done. 5. RTK: I'll continue to keep this up to date. Done. 6. Anki: Kanji. I just need to keep this one up to date. Done. 7. Anki: Vocabulary. I'll just keep plugging away. No specific target other than, say, at least 90m each week. Done. Under 2000 reviews pending now. 8. I'm going to watch at 3 hours of drama/anime for the Super Challenge each week. It will all be without subtitles. Done. I managed at least 4 hours most weeks, so more than the target but, to be honest, less than I thought I would manage. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 107 of 118 05 October 2014 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Time to set some goals for October.
1. I'm going to read at least 50 pages for the Super Challenge each week. However, as I plan to start on the 新完全マスター N2 聴解, I'll count 3 hours of work with that textbook as equivalent to meeting this goal in any one week. 2. 新完全マスター N2 文法: one chapter each week. At the time of writing, I've reached chapter 7, so I'll set a goal of completing up to and including chapter 12. 3. Anki: Vocabulary. I'll just keep plugging away. No specific target other than, say, at least 90m each week. 4. Anki: Kanji. I just need to keep this one up to date. 5. I'm going to shadow 3 JPOD101 Lower Intermediate lessons each week. 6 Continue listening to dialogue tracks. 7. RTK: I'll continue to keep this up to date. 8. I'm going to watch at 3 hours of drama/anime for the Super Challenge each week without subtitles. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 108 of 118 09 October 2014 at 1:00am | IP Logged | ||
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I went searching for a new drama yesterday and tried out ぼくらの勇気 ~未満都市.
Interestingly this one has French subs, so I watched without masking off the subs. The story's not great but I thought I'd give it a go, plus I've not tried watching anything before with French subs. Turns out that episode 2 isn't available (although I didn't try too hard), so I switched to できちゃった結婚. That one starts with about 90s of Italian! - long enough that I was wondering whether there was going to be any Japanese at all (which, luckily, there was). I'm watching this one without subs, so if there was a reason for providing an intro/voice-over in Italian, I've missed it :-) Edited by dampingwire on 17 October 2014 at 11:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 109 of 118 05 November 2014 at 1:40am | IP Logged | ||
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October is over, so it's goals need to be reviewed.
1. I'm going to read at least 50 pages for the Super Challenge each week. However, as I plan to start on the 新完全マスター N2 聴解, I'll count 3 hours of work with that textbook as equivalent to meeting this goal in any one week. Missed this target. I slightly over-achieved in the first two weeks, but then I consciously decided to focus on vocabulary for the final two weeks. That had the desired effect with the vocabulary, but it did mess up the reading. Hopefully I'll get back on track in November. 2. 新完全マスター N2 文法: one chapter each week. At the time of writing, I've reached chapter 7, so I'll set a goal of completing up to and including chapter 12. I actually reached Chapter 13. They seem to be getting slightly easier! 3. Anki: Vocabulary. I'll just keep plugging away. No specific target other than, say, at least 90m each week. I've actually now got the reviews (caused by the massive influx of n2 vocabulary) under control. 4. Anki: Kanji. I just need to keep this one up to date. Done. 5. I'm going to shadow 3 JPOD101 Lower Intermediate lessons each week. I managed about half of my target. Again the time went into vocabulary instead. 6 Continue listening to dialogue tracks. Done. 7. RTK: I'll continue to keep this up to date. Done. 8. I'm going to watch at 3 hours of drama/anime for the Super Challenge each week without subtitles. Done. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 110 of 118 06 November 2014 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here are some goals for November.
1. Each week I'm going to read at least 50 pages for the Super Challenge each week or I'll do 3 hours of 新完全マスタ ー N2 聴解, instead. This time I'll try really hard not to let anything else edge this one out. 2. I'll aim to reach chapter 20 of 新完全マスター N2 文法 by the end of November. That should make it feasible to reach the end of part 1 of the book by Christmas. 3. Anki: Vocabulary. I'll keep going and reintroduce the corePLUS deck once things settle down a bit more. 4. Anki: Kanji. I just need to keep this one up to date. 5. I'm going to shadow to the end of JPOD101 Lower Intermediate season 5. 6 Continue listening to dialogue tracks. 7. RTK: I'll continue to keep this up to date. 8. I'm going to watch at 3 hours of drama/anime for the Super Challenge each week. Minor edit: I found 日本語総まとめ 読解 N2, so I'm going to allow up to 90m of my 3h reading to be from that. It's much shorter than 新完全マスター N2 聴解 so I don't expect it will last too long, but I still don't want it to distract me too much from the harder book. Edited by dampingwire on 19 November 2014 at 1:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 111 of 118 30 November 2014 at 12:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Right now my spreadsheet says I've put 4000h42m into Japanese.
About 40% of that has been listening to audio and 16% has been watching drama or anime, so that's about 1700 hours of active studying. I've not tried to work out how much time has been spent maintaining the spreadsheet :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 112 of 118 01 December 2014 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I started a new book a few weeks ago, イタリア幻想曲. About 20 pages in of extensive reading
and I realised that I had grasped very little of what was actually going on in the story. There's a trip to Europe, Italy's involved and that's about it. So I decided to read intensively for a bit but each of the first two pages took an hour. I don't think I could read a book at that sort of pace: apart from anything else, by the time I've worked through page 10 I no longer remember much about anything that might have happened on page 8! That's when I decided on a new strategy. Going back and re-reading the graded readers (and other "easier" books that I have) has helped speed up my reading. Because I remember a reasonable amount of what I read the previous time through, this time through I can work out more of the vocabulary without looking at the gloss or looking something up in a dictionary. So now I'm going to apply a similar tactic to イタリア幻想曲. I'll read through a section (say the prologue or a chapter) and work through it intensively. I'll try to learn some of the new vocab via Anki if I think it might help. I'll interleave this with the simpler material, so I might read a few pages of イタリア幻想曲 and then read a graded reader or two. Then I'll come back and re-read the section of イタリア幻想曲 and I'll repeat that re-reading however many times it takes for me to be able to work through it with reasonable understanding (I don't need absolutely every word, but I probably should get the gist of every sentence) at an acceptable speed (maybe 10 minutes per page). Then I'll move on to the next section. Hopefully this will allow me to work through イタリア幻想曲 while also keeping my reading up by simultaneously working through the simpler material that I have. Hopefully by the end of this I will be able to read the book from cover to cover with an acceptable (to me!) level of understanding. I'll try this out for a month or so (which at say 5 hours per week should see me through the first chapter or so) and see how it goes. In the worst case I guess I'll have a few hundred more words in Anki and I'll have memorised the first chapter of the book :-) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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