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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5252 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 177 of 706 12 April 2013 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Obrigado, Expugnator. It's not your fault. It is very difficult for foreigners to register or buy on Brazilian e-commerce sites. Even when it is possible, the cost of overseas shipping from Brazil (the "Brazil Cost") is outrageously expensive. What a shame they won't even send free pdf e-books! Most of the ones I saw on the Saraiva site come from Coleção Aplauso via the "Imprensa Oficial do Goberno do Estado de São Paulo" available as free pdf downloads without registering (click on "livros"). The pdf's are easy to convert to e-reader formats with Calibre. Some are books about actors/directors. Others are film scripts with stage directions. There are 51 pages with about five books for free download per page.
Since the Government of São Paulo had a hand in financing many of the films and has an interest in promoting Brazilian cinema, the scripts and ebooks are publicly available. Also, googling the titles will lead to many of the full length films on youtube. Edited by iguanamon on 12 April 2013 at 6:41pm 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 178 of 706 16 April 2013 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||
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KUJI'S WEEK IN REVIEW: 8 April - 14 April 2013
My Goals JAPANESE * Do one chapter of IAIJ a month. I'm putting this in purple because I should be 50% done with Chapter 8 now, but I think I'm about 40%. * Do one JP101 podcast a week, if possible. Yes. Did Lower Intermediate, Season 6, Episode 14. * Add any useful words/kanji from my notebook into Anki by Sunday. Yes. * Keep up with Anki reviews. I missed Saturday, but I did review on all the other days. PORTUGUESE * Do one lesson of DLI Portuguese Basic a week. Ugh. I'm still only halfway through Lesson 15. I should have finished it up over the weekend, but I didn't. I did no studying on Saturday. It's not a good excuse, but there was a somewhat big earthquake here on Saturday around 5:00 in the morning, and I was sleepy the rest of the day. * Do one PT101 podcast a week, if possible. Yes, Lower Beginner #5. * Add any useful words from my notebook into Anki by Sunday. Yes. * Keep up with Anki reviews. I actually missed my Portuguese reviews on Saturday and Sunday. Yikes, more red this week than last week. I need to do better. 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 179 of 706 26 April 2013 at 6:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I meant to post this on Monday or Tuesday, but better late than never, so....
* * * * KUJI'S WEEK IN REVIEW: 15 April - 21 April 2013 My Goals JAPANESE * Do one chapter of IAIJ a month. I'm on track to finish Chapter 8 by the end of April. I should wrap it up this week with no problem. * Do one JP101 podcast a week, if possible. There was actually no JP101 podcast available for my level this week, so in lieu of that I did some listening to, and reading, "The Little Prince". * Add any useful words/kanji from my notebook into Anki by Sunday. Yes. * Keep up with Anki reviews. Yes. PORTUGUESE * Do one lesson of DLI Portuguese Basic a week. I finished the second part of Lesson 15, then did about half of Lesson 16, so that counts as a full lesson, right? * Do one PT101 podcast a week, if possible. Yes, Lower Beginner Season 1 #6. * Add any useful words from my notebook into Anki by Sunday. Yes. * Keep up with Anki reviews. Yes. Yes, ALL GREEN! I'm green with happiness! I need more weeks like this. Edited by kujichagulia on 26 April 2013 at 6:14am 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 180 of 706 30 April 2013 at 8:29am | IP Logged | ||
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KUJI'S WEEK IN REVIEW: 22 April - 28 April 2013
My Goals JAPANESE * Do one chapter of IAIJ a month. Finished Chapter 8! I also got a head start on Chapter 9 by doing the kanji exercises. * Do one JP101 podcast a week, if possible. Again, no JP101 podcast available for my level this week, so in lieu of that I did some listening to "The Little Prince" as well as reading. * Add any useful words/kanji from my notebook into Anki by Sunday. Yes, all but three words I'm still debating on whether or not to put into Anki. * Keep up with Anki reviews. Yes. PORTUGUESE * Do one lesson of DLI Portuguese Basic a week. I finished Lesson 16, but that means I only did half of a lesson this week, so this is red. * Do one PT101 podcast a week, if possible. Yes - in fact, I did two podcasts. * Add any useful words from my notebook into Anki by Sunday. Yes. * Keep up with Anki reviews. Yes. Just a little red... not too bad. Hmmm.... it seems that a month is just right for an Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese chapter, but a week is not enough for a DLI Portuguese Basic lesson. Actually, it's not a week... it's a day. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and some time during the weekend are reserved for Portuguese study (with the remainder for Japanese). I'm scheduled to work with a PortuguesePod101 podcast on Tuesday, then do a DLI lesson on Thursday and during the weekends. However, I have a problem lately: I'm either busy or just plain lazy on weekends, so I end up only doing DLI lessons on Thursdays, which is not nearly enough time. So I'm thinking of scheduling DLI on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and doing PP101 podcasts when I have time during the weekend. That way, if I get lazy and miss some study time during the weekend, that's somewhat okay because DLI is my priority. But then again... if PP101 is not a priority, then why on earth do I have it listed in my weekly goals? Ah, nevermind what I wrote above. I just need to stop being lazy on weekends. * * * * OK, for a while after I started studying Japanese and Portuguese, my reading and writing skills were much better than my listening and speaking skills. Near the beginning of this year, I decided to make an effort to improve my listening skills. My method, inspired by Ari's Chinesepod method with a little bit of leosmith theory sprinkled in for extra flavor, basically consists of me listening repeatedly to new audio, making sure I understand it, putting it onto a playlist on my Walkman, and reviewing the audio while commuting to/from work. I've seen a gradual improvement in my listening skills, especially with Japanese, as I hear Japanese everyday when I'm out and about. I don't have anybody to conversate with, or eavesdrop on, in Portuguese, so I'm not sure about that language. So that leaves speaking as my weakest skill. But the problem is, speaking is the most inconvenient of the skills to work on. Reading? Just grab some books and read, or read articles on the Internet. Writing? Write a diary. Post some stuff online for natives to correct. Listening? Do what I mentioned above. Listen to the radio. Watch TV. But speaking? That is the only skill that you cannot do silently, on a train/bus or whenever you have other people around - at least if you do not want to be seen as crazy. To practice speaking, you need to either (a) talk to somebody in the L2, or (b) talk to yourself, alone, in a quiet place with nobody around. In any case, it's time for me to work on speaking skills. I'm not really in a position to pay a language tutor or teacher, or chat online with somebody, so if I'm going to practice speaking, I need to make some friends. Other than that, I need to find a way to utilize the precious few minutes a week that I have alone at home for speaking practice. Arekkusu's Self-Talk method is good, I think. I also think that orally answering some of the reading questions in my textbooks could be useful, as could be simple listening-and-repeating of dialogs and readings. What I do need, though, is systematic speaking practice. Just doing free conversation with somebody tends to be frustrating and ineffective. My Japanese speaking practice right now is solely free conversation with people I meet around town, and those conversations crash and burn quickly. 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 181 of 706 30 April 2013 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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You can do shadowing or self-talk in public if you put something on your ear pretending it's a hands-free set.
...I know, though. I'm too shy for this heh. 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 182 of 706 30 April 2013 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | ||
Hehe... I just might try that with Portuguese, but maybe not with Japanese, especially in Japan. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5972 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 183 of 706 30 April 2013 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you can't find a way of speaking Japanese when you live in Japan, work in a Japanese school and have Japanese in-laws, there is no hope for me, 6000 miles and several time zones away.
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 184 of 706 01 May 2013 at 3:15am | IP Logged | ||
You do have hope, g-bod! This is definitely a "me" problem. I definitely have opportunities to speak Japanese in Japan, don't get me wrong. I speak Japanese nearly every day, whether at the school where I work, at the supermarket or convenience store, at the gym, etc. I get sufficient amounts of "speaking practice." What I don't have are opportunities to sit down with a native Japanese speaker, chat and have him/her correct my mistakes, or speak while using Japanese at my level, and help me become a better Japanese speaker. My wife is not going to do that, my in-laws are not going to do that, the teachers at school are too busy to do that, etc. The people I know just want to talk, not teach or worry if I am saying things naturally. Not everybody can do that. Forgive the sports analogy, but when I meet people in Japan and speak Japanese, it's like going into a football/soccer match on Saturday without practicing/training during the week. If I haven't practiced my set pieces, tactics, ball control, etc., then I am going to embarrass myself in the match. Or let me use a music analogy: I can't walk into a concert with my saxophone with a piece of music and play in front of thousands without having spent the time practicing beforehand. I need to work on my scales, or spend a bit of time working on that one part of the music, that one progression, that continuously gives me trouble. I think what I need is speaking practice coupled with guided instruction, somebody I can count on to point out my mistakes and tell me that I'm stupid and people don't talk like that. Then, when I talk to "real" people in "real" situations, like I already do, I feel less embarrassed and more prepared. I would make less mistakes, and I, and the other person, would feel less frustrated. But again, (without going into much detail) I'm not really in a position to get a tutor, do a language exchange (regularly), or voice chat online, so I have to search for other means to get that guided instruction. Maybe write more on Lang-8 and get my mistakes corrected that way. But g-bod, maybe you can do the language exchange or get the tutor, so it is possible for you. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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