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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 609 of 706 17 November 2014 at 3:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm going to try to do updates on Thursdays Japan time from now on, but for now here is an update.
JAPANESE It's been an easygoing week so far. Most of my Japanese time has been watching dramas, news and variety shows on TV. I've also been reading some news articles online, with the help of a pop-up dictionary. It is "cheating", but I find I'm learning a lot, and using it makes some of the drier articles more tolerable as well as making the interesting articles more enjoyable. I wanted to continue with Chapter 15 of An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese this past weekend, but I didn't get around to it. Too much to do this past weekend. I'll leave it for another time. I quit using the JapanesePod101 podcasts (and the PortuguesePod101 ones). It was useful for me to pick up some good, contemporary Japanese and Portuguese. However, Innovative Learning is becoming more skimpy with their free feeds, and I don't like them enough to purchase an account, so I'm giving it up. I probably don't need it so much for Japanese. I can get listening practice from TV, around town, etc. (although above my level). But for Portuguese, I'm a bit worried. There is GLOSS, the DW Radionovela I've been working through, etc., and of course DLI has (old) audio, so I'm probably okay. PORTUGUESE OK, I already started talking about Portuguese in the Japanese section, but anyway... I didn't study Portuguese as much as I would have liked to this past week. I just did a little of the Futebol radionovela, plus watched a little RTP Informação on Saturday night. A long time ago, someone suggested in this log some travel videos called "Portugueses Pelo Mundo" available on YouTube. The show goes somewhere in the world (Los Angeles, Osaka, etc.) and looks into the lives of Portuguese people living there. I want to try watching those again, but I'm wondering about how to use them for my studies. The videos are "as is" with no subtitles, so it's hard to confirm what I hear. (Sometimes YouTube gives you an option to computer-generate approximate subtitles for some of its videos, but not in this case.) But the videos are very interesting to me. I love travel and watching shows about travel. Do I try to listen for unfamiliar words and look them up, or do I just not worry about it and watch and enjoy the video (even if I don't understand everything), or do I do something in between? Anyway, I'll see what happens. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6587 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 610 of 706 17 November 2014 at 10:07am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If these videos are fun you can watch several times :) First get a general feel for the content/story, perhaps even write down the key points. This may take 2-3 listens. Avoid boredom at all costs though! Switch to a different video or a different activity. If your online time doesn't allow watching more than once at a time, that's great! Especially if there's a narrator who appears in all videos, you can also switch between them and have several videos in progress. Much of the new vocabulary is likely to appear in more than one video.
And I'm sure HTLAL can help you figure out the unknown words! I assume you know how to link to a specific moment in the video? Also, you can try googling what you seemingly hear, in quotation marks along with the previous/next word, to see if the collocation is common (or exists at all). And of course there are various ways to extract new stuff from a video. During an early listen you can jot down the unusual forms or combinations of the words you already know, then see if you can pick up any new words without rewinding, then work through small parts intensively etc... plenty of possibilities! But if it feels like overkill, then it probably is. Keep it simple (and sorry for contradicting what I've already said :P) Basically, don't worry about developing a standard routine/procedure. Just watch the videos and do whatever you feel like, also on a micro level (ie vary your strategy also depending on how important the word is). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 611 of 706 17 November 2014 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@Serpent - That post was really helpful! Thank you! I'll try your suggestions. I think I am always trying to make a routine for everything I do, when I should just do something and try whatever I feel like, as you said.
If anyone's interested, here's the link for a Portugueses Pelo Mundo video about my city: Portugueses Pelo Mundo - Osaka. I just found that there's a nice description of the episode posted under the video; I could use that to help me understand what happens in the video. EDIT: I forgot to mention that I don't know how to link a specific moment in the video - just the video itself. Edited by kujichagulia on 17 November 2014 at 2:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4655 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 612 of 706 17 November 2014 at 6:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Their Englishpod1101.com had quite a few free lessons when I last looked and downloaded. I've not worked through them yet, but the first few I listened to had a decent amount of Japanese chit chat in them. Best of all, yif you don't like them, they've cost you nothing :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5156 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 613 of 706 17 November 2014 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If you want to go for your favorite variety of Portuguese, try Adnet Viaja, from the late MTV Brasil. They are on Youtube.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6587 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 614 of 706 18 November 2014 at 6:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Click share and mark the box for starting with a specific moment. The format is ?t=XmYs ie X min, Y sec. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 615 of 706 19 November 2014 at 12:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Whoa, ありがとう, dampingwire! I didn't even think about using the Englishpod101 podcast to get some Japanese! Chit chat is exactly what I'm looking for. I'm finding out more and more that spoken Japanese is quite different from written Japanese - which might be a hinderance to my listening skills - so I'm looking for resources with more natural, conversational Japanese. I'll subscribe to Englishpod when I get home today.
Obrigado pela informação, Expugnator! I'll look for it later on when I have time.
Thank you for the tip, Serpent! This will be very useful, both for here and for Lang-8! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 616 of 706 20 November 2014 at 2:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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WEEKLY UPDATE
JAPANESE I have a collection of Peanuts DVDs I bought years ago. I mainly use them in my classes to teach students a little about American life. After reading emk's Spanish experiment log, earlier this week I made a video file from one of those DVDs using Handbrake, with the intention of feeding it into subs2SRS and making a lot of neat Anki cards. The problem, though, is that the Japanese subtitles do not match word-for-word the Japanese audio. In fact, it's not even close. The word choices and grammar are quite different between the two roughly 98% of the time. An Internet search didn't turn up any subtitle files other than the one already included with the DVD. So I gave that up. But then a not-so-groundbreaking idea hit me: why don't I just put that video file on my Walkman and go through it intensively, the old-fashioned way? So that's what I did. During my Japanese time on the train the past two days, I've been working with that video, You're In Love, Charlie Brown. It's about 28 minutes long, and I've seen it roughly 50 times in English. My plan is this (please, if you have any suggestions, feel free to share them!). 1. Watch the entire video extensively once or twice. 2. From the beginning, go through a chunk of video and try to work out what's being said. Write out problematic lines, look up words in a dictionary, check on the Internet when you have time, etc. 2a. If something is too difficult for you to figure out, or it's taking too long, let it go and move on to the next line. 3. When you've worked out what is being said (more or less), replay that chunk of video and try to understand at real time. 4. Repeat steps 2-4 with the next chunk of video. 5. When finished with the entire video, watch the entire thing some more and revel in how much you understand. :) OPTIONAL: Record audio of each chunk and put it into your listening review playlist (when you have time). So far I've done #1, and I'm working through the first minute or so of the video. I've already violated Step #2a, though; there's one line that's bothering me to no end. I asked my wife about it, but even she couldn't say for sure what was said. Still not satisfied, I took a few minutes of my class preparation time this morning to test on Google various ideas of what I thought was said. And I still don't know what it is. The time I wasted repeating, repeating, repeating that single line on the train, asking my wife, looking up stuff on the Internet... that could have been time better spent. I'm finding it to be a really enjoyable way to use my Japanese time on the train. Since I stopped my Japanese textbook study on the train, I've mainly been reading news articles and listening to podcasts or the radio. That can be boring sometimes, so this is a pleasant change of pace. And I'm finding that I have temporary boosts in listening comprehension for a short time afterwards (especially if I don't go back into English mode). I have several of these half-hour Peanuts videos, so if this is successful, I have a lot to work with for a long time. PORTUGUESE Many of the aforementioned Peanuts videos also - surprisingly but conveniently! - come with Portuguese audio, in addition to the English and Japanese. It's surprising because, although there is a community of Japanese-Brazilian immigrants in Japan, the Chinese and Korean languages get far more attention in Japan than Portuguese, but there are no Chinese and Korean audio tracks on the DVDs - just English, Japanese and Portuguese. (There are subtitles, though.) No problem for me, though! I have plenty of other Portuguese material to keep me busy for a while, so I won't be watching those videos in Portuguese any time soon. This week is a DLI week, so I've been working on Lesson 36 from Volume 4. Two guys are planning what to do in Rio de Janeiro while their cruise ship is in port. The lesson introduces something confusing called the personal infinitive. It's easy enough to conjugate, but the usage is difficult to grasp right now. An example from the textbook: Acho aconselhável deixarmos o Corcovado para amanhã. I think it's advisable that we leave the Corcovado (visit) for tomorrow. I understand why it's deixarmos there; the subject of acho (eu) differs from the subject of deixarmos (nós). But then, the text explains another situation in which to use the personal infinitive: "For clarification or emphasis when the subject of the infinitive is also the subject of the main clause." What?!? I completely understand the meaning of that explanation, obviously, but when do I need to put emphasis or clarification on something? I think I'll let that one go for now. Edited by kujichagulia on 20 November 2014 at 2:52am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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