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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4836 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 17 of 706 28 August 2012 at 4:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I must admit that I have never read HP. I am probably judging the book based on the movies, which I could never stay awake for. The books might be better than the movies, right? I guess it doesn't hurt to try.
Yeah, you are probably right. It was pretty easy for me to pick up how to conjugate and use ser, but as I get more into the language the drills may become more useful. No problem about Marcelo D2. Thanks for the links!
Thank you, Expugnator. I only knew about bossa-nova and samba before now, but as I explore the Internet, I'm discovering how many varieties of Brazilian music there are. It's very exciting! Thanks for the links! I'm amazed. The support I'm getting for Portuguese makes me happy and encouraged. Thank you all.
Thanks, ZombieKing. Despite my newfound interest in Portuguese, I will strive not to neglect my Japanese studies. :) Whoa, I didn't know about perapera. I will check it out. Thank you! The problem with reading actual books is that it takes so much time to look up unknown kanji. This method sounds much better.
Thank you for the tips, atama warui. This is very helpful. (ugh... I hate how this website garbles Japanese.) I think using lang-8 will be the next thing for me to improve on concerning my Japanese studies. It is such a useful tool. Again, seriously to all, thank you for your advice and suggestions. This helps me to stay motivated. I hope I can help you out in some way as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| ZombieKing Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4516 days ago 247 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* | Message 18 of 706 28 August 2012 at 5:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Definitely do check out perapera! It's the best popup dictionary for Chinese and Japanese you'll find for free. I don't think I would make as fast of progress if I didn't have access to this tool.
If you use firefox, you can just download it in the addons section. I'm not sure what other browsers it supports though. About Lang8, are you already using it now? I'm trying to decide how I should go about it. For German for example, I feel like if I tried to write first in German, my lack of active vocabulary would hold me back from expressing what I want, and I'd end up producing very basic and boring texts. But what if I write first in English, and then translate to German, after searching up all words I don't know? Are there any downsides to doing so? How do you get around having a lack of vocabulary in Japanese? I'd imagine your passive vocabulary is stronger than your active one? Edited by ZombieKing on 28 August 2012 at 5:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4836 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 19 of 706 28 August 2012 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I do use Lang-8, although I haven't written in it for a couple of weeks now. My lack of active vocabulary does hold me back. What I do is write something on paper at first (because my computer time is limited... probably because I spend too much time in HTLAL... but you can do this directly into Lang-8), and I substitute English for anything I can't express in Japanese. Then I look those words up and gradually replace the English with Japanese. (For Japanese, they have a somewhat useful dictionary right there on the website under the box you write your entry in.) Then I post the entry and wait for corrections. That seems to work for me, because I can find new and useful vocabulary that way. But the whole process is so tedious. You need time to write, then you need time to look up words, then you need time to rewrite the English parts into your TL, then you need to note and study the corrections. On top of that, proper etiquette requires you to spend time correcting others' mistakes as well. I honestly do not see how people can write in Lang-8 every day. Me? I limit a Lang-8 writing to one per week. Once I start writing, I tend to write a lot. So it takes time to type out what I write. It's better to spread that out over a few days. Then I also have a day or two to help others. I think it is important to try to use the German that you know for expressing ideas in writing, to give your "active mind" some practice, rather than translating from English. Of course, if you hardly know any vocabulary, you will probably have to translate anyway. And don't be afraid to write boring, basic texts; the people there are friendly and will correct anything. Edited by kujichagulia on 28 August 2012 at 6:54am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6609 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 20 of 706 28 August 2012 at 6:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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The Harry Potter movies and the books are very different. When I watched the movies, I often wondered if someone who'd never read the books would even be able to understand them. There was so much left out or covered in such a superficial manner, that I thought it would be hard even to understand the story. I don't know if having watched the movies first will have ruined you for the books though.
I've never tried perapera but there is also this other pop-up dictionary for Firefox, Rikaisama. It's what I use. It gives pop-up definitions with audio. You just hold the mouse over the word to get the definition and then press F is you want to hear the word. I've been told that the voices are from Jpod101. I don't know if it's better than perapera though since I've never tried that one. When writing for lang-8, I usually make some kind of mind-map or outline so I have an overview of what I want to write about. Then I write in Japanese. I always have to look up a lot of words and even grammar, but I think it is better to write directly in Japanese rather than writing in a language I know well and then translating. I also write by hand to get practice writing kanji, and sometimes I have to look those up too, but I think it is better to write by hand because it forces you to start remembering what the right kanji is in each word and how to write it. If you write directly on the computer, you only have to pick out the right kanji from a list and that doesn't help develop your active knowledge as much, I think. Once I'm finished writing by hand, I type it up, usually discovering and correcting some of my mistakes while doing so. Finally I translate it to English so that people can figure out what I really meant in the places where it doesn't make sense. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4836 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 21 of 706 28 August 2012 at 6:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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As per ZombieKing's suggestion, I downloaded the Firefox plugin Perapera. It seems quite similar to a plugin I already have, Rikaichan. They both work the same way, as a popup dictionary.
They both also have a function for copying and saving words and definitions that one comes across when reading, but I was surprised to see that Perapera's Wordlist function works well for me. With Rikaichan, you have to go into the Options, then manually set which text file you would like to copy your words into, for importing later into Anki. This is no problem if you do all of your work at one computer. But for me, I often work at various computers at my workplace. I have a portable version of Firefox on my USB drive, and it's a pain to go into Rikaichan and change the file path when the drive letter changes. With Perapera, it saves words into a list right there in the browser. When I want to export the list, the menu is right there in the browser. I choose where to save the file, and BAM! It's on my drive and ready for import into Anki. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4836 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 22 of 706 28 August 2012 at 6:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Brun Ugle, I tried downloading rikaisama before, but (1) I don't think I installed it well, and (2) I'm not sure where to find the dictionary files. Maybe the software has improved since then. I'll try it again when I have time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| ZombieKing Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4516 days ago 247 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* | Message 23 of 706 28 August 2012 at 7:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I'm glad you like perapera and find it works well for you!
As for the suggestions you both gave for writing in Lang-8, I think you're right... I should probably write directly in German... Well, I actually just finished my first text, but I did it the translating way. Next time I'll try and write it in German from the start. Yikes :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4836 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 24 of 706 03 September 2012 at 4:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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KUJI'S WEEK IN REVIEW: 26 August - 1 September 2012
JAPANESE When I (re)started my language log, I set a goal of finishing one chapter of my textbook An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese every two weeks. Right out of the gate, I've already missed one deadline. I did not do any textbook work at all this past week. Late July and most of August is summer vacation time at the high school where I work, so I had a bit of free time every day at work. I, uh, went to school on IAIJ during that time. (I'm very sorry for the terrible pun.) However, summer vacation is now over and the students are back for the second term, and I took IAIJ home. Unfortunately I get easily distracted in my small condominium. With the computer and the TV and my wife and my rabbit... it's hard to sit down and quietly study. (AUTHOR'S NOTE: Actually, I did do some IAIJ study at home yesterday, finally beating the distractions, but, being Sunday the 2nd of September, that didn't fall into the time period listed at the beginning of this post.) Despite that, I did do some studying (and enjoyed it more). I watched some Japanese dramas with my wife, and I read some articles on the Internet. I've kept up with my podcasts, too. And of course Anki was done with no problem. So... It wasn't a bad week at all, really. I guess I just want to finish IAIJ so bad and get rid of it that I get disappointed when I don't do any work in it. But the point should be to study Japanese everyday, no matter the method. In that sense, it was a successful week. PORTUGUESE A couple of weeks ago, I browsed through both FSI Portuguese Programmatic and DLI Portuguese Basic, and decided on the DLI course. However, after doing the first two chapters of DLI, early last week I looked at the FSI course and found it was more to my liking. Sure, I don't get the nice grammar notes and verb conjugation tables that DLI provides in every chapter, but FSI does focus a lot on pronunciation drills and speaking fluency while slowly introducing vocabulary, at least at the beginning. It wasn't a factor in my decision to switch, but I also found that I can copy and paste phrases to Anki. So I'm going with FSI for now. Of course, I reserve the right to switch back to DLI at any time. :) The only other thing I did with Portuguese last week was listen to some bossa nova on my iPod and some radio on the Internet. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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