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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜

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kraemder
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 Message 913 of 1702
04 May 2013 at 5:41pm | IP Logged 
Yeah it is. It was a good three semesters. I'm gonna miss it.

I just finished the take home portion of the final. We have review for the final on Monday (and we pass in the last reading translation), and then I have the final on Wednesday.. then it's over.
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g-bod
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 Message 914 of 1702
04 May 2013 at 6:05pm | IP Logged 
Are there any more courses you can do once this one finishes?

I really miss the class I did too. I wish they'd run a more advanced class, but I guess the demand just isn't there.
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kraemder
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 Message 915 of 1702
04 May 2013 at 6:24pm | IP Logged 
We're waiting to see. Last year the professor offered a non official
course as a follow up that was more like a study group every two
weeks. He charged a certain amount for it that everyone split. I don't
know how well it worked out.. I talked to one kid who found it to be
too much on top of his other courses. It's basically a college course
that you don't get college credit for. So for college students I think
they have to prioritize the credit courses and this one which mostly
self study may get pushed aside. Last year there were a lot of strong
students in the class but I can only think of a few from this class who
might be able to do well with this. And really probably just 2 of us.
And maybe even just me at that. Without the other students to share
the cost I don't think this extra course is going to happen. But I don't
know for sure yet. Maybe people outside class are interested.

There's the university in town but it's several thousand dollars for the
class. I'm not that motivated to do a class. I'd pay more than I do
now but there's a limit and the university of Arizona is beyond it.
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g-bod
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Speaks: English*, Japanese
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 Message 916 of 1702
04 May 2013 at 6:58pm | IP Logged 
Yeah, for several thousand dollars you might as well just pack your bags and go learn Japanese at a school in Japan! I wish I could do that...

It's sad that a language like Japanese still can't get enough interest to keep classes going at a real intermediate level.

You can study French, German, Spanish or Italian in evening classes for 7 years at the university here, however Japanese (along with things like Chinese, Russian etc) only runs for 4 years. I guess most students give up having barely covered the basics anyway, whereas at least with popular European languages they also get business from students who learned the languages at school and can pick a class at a fairly advanced level already.

Edited by g-bod on 04 May 2013 at 7:01pm

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kraemder
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Speaks: English*
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 Message 917 of 1702
04 May 2013 at 8:12pm | IP Logged 
g-bod wrote:
Yeah, for several thousand dollars you might as well
just pack your bags and go learn Japanese at a school in Japan! I
wish I could do that...

It's sad that a language like Japanese still can't get enough interest
to keep classes going at a real intermediate level.

You can study French, German, Spanish or Italian in evening classes
for 7 years at the university here, however Japanese (along with
things like Chinese, Russian etc) only runs for 4 years. I guess most
students give up having barely covered the basics anyway, whereas
at least with popular European languages they also get business
from students who learned the languages at school and can pick a
class at a fairly advanced level already.


4 years? That sounds pretty advanced to me? As in 4 college years?
We get 2 years worth at the community college before we have to
pay rip off university degree prices. But maybe my 2 years is like your
4 years? I'm not sure. In terms of grammar we've gotten through a lot
but it's so weak on vocabulary and kanji we will need a lot of self
study to be able read much. The grammar is quite good though. I
was reviewing the Oxford japanese grammar and verbs paperback I
bought a while back and I'm familiar with 95% or so of it. I'll
scrutinize it in more detail because I still find that hard to believe lol.

There's still a lot of more advanced grammar though. But it doesn't
seem so important.. Not needed to start reading anyway. The
dictionaries of basic grammar published by the Japan times (3 big
volumes) are far more extensive than that paperback I mentioned. I
don't think we've covered much if any of the intermediate volume and
I haven't reviewed the basic volume yet but I am going to use that in
think as my next step. I'll see what the professor recommends
though.

I'm currently reading the Japanese penguin parallel text series. I
think I tried it a year ago and gave up. It's no problem now with a
dictionary and I like how short they are. I am going to read several
stories from it next I think.
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g-bod
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1485 posts - 2002 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 918 of 1702
04 May 2013 at 9:33pm | IP Logged 
I expect the 4 year Japanese course probably covers a similar amount to the 2 year course you have just done. They take 4 years to cover the whole of the Japanese for Busy People series, which basically gets you to N4 level. For the European language ones, 4 years gets you to A2/B1 standard - similar to what you'd have if you'd studied the language for A level at school. So it's very slow paced. It's not really a university level course (for that you'd need to attend in the day time and pay ridiculous amount of money for tuition), although they are delivered at the university.

It seems to me that a lot of the stuff packaged as grammar for the intermediate level is basically learning how to use various expressions correctly, rather than the fundamentals of how sentences are constructed or what tense or particle to use. So long as you've got a solid foundation on the fundamentals, picking up intermediate grammar expressions is just a matter of need - which will arise the more you read!
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kraemder
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Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 919 of 1702
05 May 2013 at 7:46am | IP Logged 
I'm going to review RTK. After my course is done. I'm debating if I will make an attempt at learning the
sounds of the kanji at the same time. I'll probably just start with the meanings and then decide. There's a
lot of RTK kanji I haven't seen in ages but as I move outside the textbook with its filtering of harde kanji..
I'll need it. And it's so easy it seems a waste not to review. Last time I did this I stopped studying
Japanese to learn RTK but I don't plan on doing that this time. I'm curious how long it'll take.
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kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5179 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 920 of 1702
07 May 2013 at 3:58am | IP Logged 
Well the class is done except for the final on Wednesday. We asked
the professor about the secret course that is offered afterwards and
found out he uses a book called とびら. His suggestion on what to
do next regarding japanese is to read as much as possible. He
doesn't seem to think we need more grammar per se.

We got dvds of the speech contest. I'm in the process of figuring out
how to rip my speech off of it for YouTube. I'll post a link here soon
so you can all see how scared and terrible I was heh.

Edited by kraemder on 07 May 2013 at 5:05am



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