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Solaren’s 日本語 log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| solaren Newbie United States Joined 3525 days ago 36 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 1 of 32 22 March 2015 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Greetings! I've been ghosting on the forums for a few months now, and decided that
it's finally time that I start a language learning log for my Japanese efforts. About Me: I'm a 32 year old monolingual from California. Apart from a single semester of Japanese 1 in college about 10 years ago, I have not had any experience with the language. My goal is to reach fluency through self study. Specifically, I want to watch movies and shows without subtitles, and do so without trouble understanding or following the plot and characters. I would also like to converse comfortably with native Japanese speakers here in my hometown. Current Level: I have been studying for 4 months so far, every day for about an hour a day. Currently, I can eat at local Japanese restaurants without using English. I can also make very basic smalltalk with Japanese people about daily life as long as the other person speaks clearly and with basic words and sentence structure. If I had to estimate my current abilities, it would be N5 level. What I've done so far: I spent the first couple of months trying to figure out the best way to self-study. I looked at the sentence methods using Anki, like AJATT and JALUP. I went through my old college textbook, I did Pimsleur 1 from a local library, I purchased and completed the basic Michel Thomas course, I purchased Assimil and have completed up to lesson 30, and I also purchased the audio book set from JapanesePod101. I've also read up a lot on this forum concerning methods, courses, etc. So, after some trial and error in trying to figure out what works for me and what doesn't I've come to a few simple conclusions. *The sentence method is way too boring for me to stick with. This goes for Anki in general. It's just not enjoyable for me. (EDIT: Months in I've decided it may not be the most enjoyable method, but it's very efficient and has become an integral part of my study method. I'm using it to review everything I'm learning.) *Textbooks are informative but the information doesn't stick very well. I have Genki, Colloquial, and Tae Kim's guide, and both basic and advanced Human Japanese which I honestly regret purchasing. *Assimil worked great, I felt like I made real progress but the dialogs, personally speaking, were slow and boring. It started to feel like a chore, but I felt that the method worked well. My Current Study Plan: Okay, so here's what I'm doing every day right now to progress in Japanese. So far it's working for me, it's maintaining my interest and I feel real results. Each Morning Before Work: 45 Minutes of Japanese Pod 101 lessons, in a passive phase. This is basically Assimil method using Jpod content. The PDF's for Jpod are great, they have Romaji, Kana, Kanji, and English transcripts for each conversation. Plus some example sentences and grammar points. I edit out everything but the dialog using Audacity, and treat it just like I did with Assimil. The nice thing about Jpod is the conversations are at natural speed, and more entertaining than what I did with Assimil. On my Lunch Break: 30 minutes of Project LRNJ to work on Kanji recognition. It's basically a game that uses the RTK method to drill Kanji. Probably the same as 30 minutes of RTK flashcards, but I find it more fun. So far I'm up to 250 Kanji after about a week or two of this. It has yet to feel like a chore. Pretty fun actually. Before Bed: 15 minutes of passive dialog review, I basically play through most of my recent dialogs that I've worked on through Jpod, using my edited dialogs back to back. I then do about 30 minutes of Active phase work on previously completed Jpod lessons, by translating from L1 into L2 and checking for mistakes. In the Car: I listen to previously completed dialogs from Assimil and Jpod. So far this seems to be my preferred method, and so far so good on the results end. I actually had a moment earlier this week where I forgot I was listening to Japanese for a bit. It just felt like I was listening to a regular conversation. :) I'll make sure to keep this log updated. Being able to share my progress is very motivating for me. If I am able to hit my goal and gain proficiency in Japanese as my first secondary language, being in my 30's with a full time job... then I really think that anybody can succeed at it. cheers! Edited by solaren on 28 October 2015 at 9:11pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| solaren Newbie United States Joined 3525 days ago 36 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 2 of 32 22 March 2015 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If anyone feels like participating in this thread, please feel free to do so. Whether
you'd like to offer advice, or ask questions; I'm looking forward to speaking with other language learners and discussing Japanese, and the language learning process. Edited by solaren on 22 March 2015 at 11:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rotasu Newbie United States Joined 3549 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Studies: Japanese | Message 3 of 32 23 March 2015 at 4:34am | IP Logged | |||||
Why not just download only the dialog file, instead of having to edit each lesson? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| solaren Newbie United States Joined 3525 days ago 36 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 4 of 32 23 March 2015 at 6:52am | IP Logged | |||||
That's a good question. The reason is actually because I'm not a Jpod101 subscriber. I purchased the lessons separately through Innovative Language as an audio book set. In this format, they don't include individual dialogs. Just the lessons, with PDF, and a review track. The review track is dialog only, but it's one giant file instead of many separate files. So, in order to listen to the same dialog on loop, I have to break out the dialog into individual files using audacity. It actually takes about 30 seconds to do, so it's not really a problem. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3524 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes  Studies: Serbian | Message 5 of 32 23 March 2015 at 9:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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Good luck with your Japanese, like you I studied it many years ago now when I was in college but have pretty
much not used it this whole time except for a short trip to Japan a few years ago where I was surprisingly still able to read hiragana and katakana and a little kanji. Japanese is somewhere on my list of languages to learn eventually, I definitely sorta miss the initial drive I had which was mostly powered through my love of anime at the time. Once again, best of luck and I'll keep an eye out here to see you progress! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| solaren Newbie United States Joined 3525 days ago 36 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 6 of 32 23 March 2015 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for the support basica! It's really awesome that you retained so much after college. I wasn't that lucky, I had to relearn everything over again. However, it did come back more quickly so maybe it was still there in my head all along.
As a side note... Even though there are many challenging aspects of Japanese as a second language, one thing that is really great is the amount of learning material out there. There is a huge variety of materials to choose from. So I've been pretty fortunate to be able to bounce around and find out what works for me and what doesn't during these early months of study. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| solaren Newbie United States Joined 3525 days ago 36 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 7 of 32 23 March 2015 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For this log entry I'd like to talk a little bit about a program I've been getting a
lot of use from lately: Project LRNJ So, I frequently see a lot of beginning Japanese learners ask questions on how to best learn Hiragana and Katakana. I see a lot of people recommend the Heisig book "Remembering the Kana", but I think that there are quicker, free options to learning Kana. One of these is Project LRNJ, but really quick I'll go over what seem to me to be the most common ways of learning kana and I'll talk about what I prefer and why. The Textbook Approach This is how I originally learned Kana in college. Basically you learn the kana by learning to write them properly. A lot of students supplement this method by making kana flashcards. I consider this to be the most thorough approach because you come out of it knowing how to read and write. In order to really write kana well though, you need a teacher or tutor to correct your mistakes. There are a lot of small subtleties to writing kana that are very easy to miss. The Pure Flashcard Approach This is the most straightforward method. You blitz through flashcards until you have it down. If you are doing this for an hour or two a day, I think you can learn to recognize both syllabaries within a week. It's really not too difficult. You have lots of options for this method and a simple google search is all it takes to find a number of free sources for kana flashcards. I would consider this the fastest method of learning to read, but you will not learn to write this way. Properly writing kana takes practice and someone to correct your mistakes. Remember the Kana I haven't personally tried Heisig's book on kana, but I have worked with his Kanji book. If you really love mnemonics you will probably enjoy it, however... I personally think that Mnemonics for kana is probably unnecessary. Again, I haven't tried this method but I would be surprised if it is faster than just drilling flashcards. I could be wrong though! So if someone has tried this approach and had incredible results, like they learned katakana and hiragana within a few hours... please speak up :) Ok say, the whole point of this post was Project LRNJ right? I haven't even talked about it yet... https://lrnj.com/ The free version covers Hiragana and Katakana. It combines flashcards and Heisig into a RPG style game. I haven't played the adventure mode, but the endless forest "storyless" modes are probably just as fast if not faster than any other method for quickly learning kana. Ultimately, kana is not as bad as it looks. It really isn't... no matter what method you choose :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tangleweeds Groupie United States Joined 3563 days ago 70 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Irish, French | Message 8 of 32 23 March 2015 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for the post on learning Kana. I studied a couple years of Japanese in college, and
eventually want to bring that back, though right now I'm focusing on Irish, which is plenty to get my head around. But I've been thinking that just re-learning my kana might not really interfere with my Irish, any more than learning the IPA symbols, which I've been learning as they come up. Anyway, Project LRNJ looks like it might be right up my alley, as I've been a sucker for "edutainment" software since forever (lose hours playing with my laptop while feeling productive at the same time!! yay!!). I've downloaded the Linux version, but I'm not sure where to unpack it. You don't happen to be a Linux person, do you? I'm OK with the command line, but it's unclear where things belong on this new-to-me Linux/Ubuntu/Unity machine. It seems like every *nix system I've used wants to arrange things somewhat differently (my previous laptop was a Mac). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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