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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 33 of 706 03 October 2012 at 3:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ah, as Ilhas Senkaku... That dominates the news over here nowadays. Either that or the people in Okinawa protesting the arrival of the Osprey, an American military helicopter rumored to be quite prone to accidents.
Obrigado, iguanamon. I have the three podcasts you mention on my iPod, although honestly I only listen to Café Brasil on a regular basis (regular means every now and then :) ). I also listen to a podcast called CBN Mix Brasil. Yeah, you are right. Ten minutes ain't gonna kill me. :) Conjuga-me looks really smooth. Thanks for that link. Linguee looks cool, too. I have finalized my decision to go back to the DLI course. One good point that I didn't realize before is that I can review past DLI units using only audio - great for those times when I'm on crowded trains, and my bag is packed and it's troublesome trying to pull out the text. :) 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 34 of 706 03 December 2012 at 3:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well... it has been a while since I last posted here, hasn't it? That is what a tough school term will do to a person. Life as a teacher has been quite rough the past couple of months, and that has taken a toll on my language log here. I've been exhausted some days, and after work, the gym and language study, I just want to relax. With final exams starting for my students, followed by winter vacation, things will be easier for me until January, and I will have some time to get back onto HTLAL and post my thoughts.
THE STATE OF MY JAPANESE STUDIES I am pleased to say that I have not completely gotten off track with my Japanese studies since before the summer. I've consistently done my SRS reviews, and I've taken more time to watch Japanese TV and read the news when it is not too painful. :) I have, at times, gone several days, and in one case a few weeks, without doing my textbook lessons, but I just consider that a minor problem. That said, I still wonder if I can do more. Back in August, I noted that I had increased my vocabulary with Anki, but I still had trouble conversating with people and understanding dramas. I told myself, "It's not about how much Japanese you can use and understand right now; it's about what you will be able to do in January 2013. Now get to work!" But here it is - December - and I feel like I haven't made that much improvement since August. Sure, I've increased my vocabulary, and I've learned new grammar. But I still lack confidence when I speak Japanese, and words and sentences that I know do not come fast enough in conversations, leading those conversations to end very quickly. My listening is the same way. I suppose the solution is simple: if I want to speak more, practice speaking. If I want to listen well, practice listening. But it is not that simple. The TV is on all the time at home, so I'm listening to Japanese every day. I hear Japanese at work, at the gym, and in the city. But if it is working, I don't know. But what to do? Keep at it? Or change my routine? Listen to comprehensible input? I stopped doing JapanesePod101.com podcasts in October because I was starting to get bored with them. Same for my textbook CDs. I do listen to them when I am working on textbook exercises, but it seems painful to put that audio in a playlist on my iPod and review it every now and then. I don't want to listen to that eight or nine times. As for speaking, I can't find anybody I know that I can speak to in Japanese who will speak at my level, be patient enough to deal with my mistakes and help me correct my Japanese. Not for free anyway. I could speak to myself, as I tried to do in the summer using Arekkusu's Self-Talk method. But I found that it is hard nowadays for me to be somewhere alone with nobody else around. So that is where I am in my Japanese studies. I have no solutions yet to the problems I talked about, but I'm hoping things will become clear as the New Year approaches. THE STATE OF MY PORTUGUESE STUDIES After switching from the DLI Portuguese course to the FSI Programmatic one, then back to the DLI one, I've once again switched back to the FSI course. I've found that to be more to my liking. I complained about the grammar explanations before, but I found that as you get deeper into the course, they revisit old grammar points and explain them in more detail when they think you will be able to grasp it more. Other than the FSI course, I regularly listen to podcasts and online radio. (Still searching for some reliable online Brazilian TV channels.) However... well, let me put it this way. As I approach 35 years of age, I find myself becoming more pragmatic. I can't just do what I want to do anymore. I find myself asking myself, "Is this going to be useful for me? How does this benefit me?" So, I've given up computer games, watch less sports (can't completely give that up), and reduced other diversions. Now Portuguese is under attack. Sure, the language is fun to learn; I enjoy studying it and speaking it. But what's the purpose? I'm not going to travel to Brazil, Portugal or any other Portuguese-speaking nation anytime soon (I would explain why, but this post is already too long. Let me know if you want me to explain later.) On the other hand, I could go next year to a place where they speak Spanish, French or Italian (three other Romance languages I'm interested in). So wouldn't it be better for me to put Portuguese on hold for now, and study one of those other languages? Of course, these are my problems and thoughts, so I don't expect any answers from you all. I just wanted to update where I am in my language studies. 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 35 of 706 03 December 2012 at 3:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ah, forgot something important about the usefulness of Portuguese: there is a large community of immigrants from Brazil in Japan. Of course, most of them are near Nagoya, not Osaka, but you never know when you might run into someone speaking Portuguese. But is that enough for me to continue studying Portuguese right now? Ah, my silly little mind...
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| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4836 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 36 of 706 03 December 2012 at 7:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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After writing the previous two posts, I decided to sit down and figure out if I want to continue studying Portuguese or drop it for the time being in favor of French or Spanish.
Why those languages? Besides me having an interest in Romance languages, my wife and I are talking about going to Spain in December 2013, and we certainly want to go back to France someday, not to mention visiting New Caledonia or Tahiti or Quebec. Meanwhile, my wife has ZERO interest in Portugal and Brazil, two countries that I really want to see as well. But we have an agreement to go only to the countries that we are both interested in. So I sat down to list the pros and cons of studying Portuguese, French, and Spanish as it relates to me. Usefulness when traveling was a heavily-weighted criteria, and because of that the results were as follows: (1) French (2) Spanish (3) Portuguese But before I could go to the FSI website to see what kind of French materials I could download, I went to HTLAL, did a search, and came across this excellent thread. I was particularly struck by the posts that my buddies iguanamon and Serpent typed. Let me quote:
Thank you guys! You helped me focus on what's important here... once again, I might add, because you guys were there for me before. (Hopefully this is the last time!) I study Portuguese not because of reasons of usefulness (although it could be useful) or travel (although it is certainly not a zero chance that I will go to Brazil or Portugal someday). I study Portuguese because I like the sound of the language, and because I am interested in aspects of Brazilian culture. I don't know if wanderlust can last a few months, but since I started this summer, the more I study Portuguese, the more I want to learn. And most of all - and I always forget this - the only language I NEED to study is Japanese. Other than that, it doesn't matter. So why not do something fun? Besides, if we go to Spain next year, or a French-speaking area in the future, I can always pick up some travel French or Spanish. I did that for my trip to the Netherlands last winter (although I needed to use Dutch only once; it seems that they all speak English over there!). So, my Portuguese studies will continue. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5971 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 37 of 706 03 December 2012 at 9:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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Have you tried subs2srs yet? I discovered it only a couple of weeks ago but have been completely won over by it already! It's such a slick way of breaking down the audio of a drama that could be comprehensible, but still has sections that are just out of reach.
Oh and I totally understand your Portuguese dilemma - I often wonder if I should suit Japanese in favour of a more 'useful' language for someone located in northern Europe! But for me, Japanese is so much fun I can't leave it alone for too long. I think you may feel the same way about Portuguese. 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 38 of 706 04 December 2012 at 12:52am | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, I don't know what it is, but something attracts me to Portuguese, even though the pragmatist in me tells me to study something "more useful." Sure, I want to study French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, and some other languages. But my primary goal right now is to get over this B1 hump in Japanese and eventually become fluent. So why not have a fun language to be a diversion from my Japanese studies? As for subs2srs, it looks nice, but I have no idea where to get multimedia files of dramas, etc. If I could somehow get it from the HDD in my TV to my PC, then get the subtitles from somewhere, that would be nice, but it sounds too complicated. Plus, I really don't spend much time on my home computer. 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 39 of 706 04 December 2012 at 3:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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JP - 最近lang-8で日本語の書きを 再び書いたいと 思ったんですけど、
どんな方法で いいかなあと 思っています。 たいてい一回に 三、四節で書きますが、 かなり時間がかかります。 今の 考えは 八、九、十文で限って 書くのです。しみたいです。 EN - Lately, I've thought about returning to Lang-8 to practice Japanese writing. It has been a while since I've done that. But what is the best way to use Lang-8? How do I get the most out of that? Also, my journal entries tend to be three or four paragraphs, but it takes a long time to write. I could spend 30-40 minutes writing it out on paper on the train or wherever, then looking up any words I couldn't think of at that time, then getting to a computer and typing it out there... That takes much of my study time. A possible solution that I'm thinking of is limiting myself to 8-10 lines per entry. That way, I could write more often. In addition to that, I still haven't found the most effective way for me to use the corrections that I get. Put corrected sentences into Anki and pound them into memory? Print out corrected entries and use them for extensive reading? Any ideas? 1 person has 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 40 of 706 04 December 2012 at 9:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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I haven't been writing much on lang-8 either for the same reason. It takes forever.
My way of studying corrections is to cut and paste them sort of inter-linearly with my original sentences and compare. Sometimes several people correct the same things in different ways, so I compare those too. If they give an explanation for why mine was wrong, I include that. Then I just compare and try to see the difference and sometimes look in my grammar dictionary to find out the subtle differences between words that almost mean the same thing. I know my description is hard to understand, so here is what it looks like: I) My first Japanese sentence A) Correction #1 for my first sentence 1) Explanation of correction #1 B) Correction #2 for my first sentence II) My second Japanese sentence A) Correction #1 for my second sentence B) Correction #2 for my second sentence 1) Explanation of correction #2 C) Correction #3 for my second sentence And so on. It takes a bit of time, but since it is copy-paste, it doesn't take as long as you might expect. And it really lets you compare them easily. I save them as word files so I can look back at them later too. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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