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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 57 of 706 19 December 2012 at 1:04am | IP Logged |
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@g-bod - Thanks for mentioning the Unicom N3 books. I'll take a look at those. But yeah... I think I'm going to limit IAIJ to just the kanji and grammar practice, plus SRSing some of the useful vocabulary in each chapter. The dialogs and accompanying audio are dry and university- or homestay-centric, and I'm tired of it. Same with a lot of the reading and listening tasks. I think that if those tasks are not university-centric, I'll do them, but otherwise I'll just skip over it. No harm in that.
@Brun Ugle - I'm definitely considering getting the A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series. I think that, at my level, that's all I need, in addition to access to native materials. Plus I consider myself a grammar freak. :) 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 58 of 706 25 December 2012 at 3:49am | IP Logged |
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KUJI'S WEEK IN REVIEW: 17 December - 23 December 2012
日本語 - JAPANESE JP - 僕は 中級教科書で勉強を続けるにしました。 しかし、漢字練習や文法練習の方がすると思 います。 他の練習は面白いらしいであれば、やります 。 そうでないと、やりません。 先週、 第６課に始めました。 ワークブックで漢字練習をして、新しい漢字 がAnkiに記入しておきました。 そして、一つ目の会話を読みましたけど、 新しい単語は Ankiにまだ記入しないです。 第６課は電車の乗る時のために写しをしてお きたので, 大きい教科書を持つ必要がありませんでした 。 僕の背中によかっただと思います！ EN - I've decided to continue with An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, but with a lot of reductions. I will concentrate on the kanji and grammar exercises. If the dialogs, reading practice, and listening practice in a chapter is interesting, I'll do it. Otherwise, I won't. Last week I started on Chapter 6. I did the kanji workbook writing practice, and I put the new kanji into Anki for review. I also went over the first dialog, but I haven't put new words into Anki yet. I decided to make a copy of Chapter 6 for use on the train, so I didn't have to carry around my big textbook. My back thanks me! Lately I started watching two popular cartoons in Japan - Chibi Maruko-chan and Sazae-san, which come on early Sunday evenings on Fuji TV - with a notebook. If I can catch any new words, I write them down for input into Anki. However, there are still so many new words for me, so I have to limit myself. The good thing about those cartoons is that they are relatively easy, there is a lot of conversational Japanese without much slang, and there are no monsters, ferries or cute, big-eyed girls. PORTUGUÊS - PORTUGUESE There won't be a blurb here in Portuguese for a while... not until I start learning past tense. I finished Lesson 5 of the DLI Basic Course and began work on Lesson 6. Other than that, just Anki reviews and not much else. Again, the pragmatic side of my mind kept telling me, "Switch to French or Spanish!" So I had to fight that off again. Sure, French or Spanish could be more useful, but why switch? The language is beautiful, and it's fun to study it, at least right now. It's early, but to fight the pragmatic me, I'm making a New Year's resolution to continue studying Portuguese until I've finished at least Volume 3 of the DLI Course (Volume 3 is Lessons 21-30). That will take me through past tense, imperfect tense, and past participles. If I feel a major urge to switch languages then, I'll do so. Otherwise, I'll keep going until I do. But I should do a huge chunk of DLI and see where it goes from there. Edited by kujichagulia on 26 December 2012 at 1:52pm 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 59 of 706 14 January 2013 at 2:55am | IP Logged |
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My TAC 2013 Log begins here!
* * * * * In the beginning of last week, I changed the email address in my profile and I was unfortunately locked out of my account before I could start my TAC 2013 log. I did start it under a temporary account (I didn't know it was going to be temporary at the time; I didn't think I would get this account back). With this account reactivated and that account closed, I am going to post my TAC adventures here. I will re-post any important posts from my temporary thread here. But if you want to see the thread itself, just click here. * * * * * INTRODUCTION Thank you for checking out my log. I'm kujichagulia. I am a 30-something male American living in Osaka, Japan. I've been here for nearly 10 years, but you wouldn't know it from my Japanese skills. I studied on-and-off for 9 years, mainly due to my laziness and lack of motivation. I changed that in the summer of last year by coming to HTLAL and posting my language-learning adventures, which helped me to stay consistent in my studies. Now I am ready for TAC 2013, my first. I'm excited to be a part of Team Sakura, and I hope that I can be half as helpful as those who will help me. Japanese is my main target, but on the side I study Portuguese as well. Japanese is a necessity, but Portuguese is something I actually want to study. I am very interested in the Romance languages, and Portuguese sounds very nice to me (although others like French or Spanish may be more useful). Other useless stuff: My interests include sports (any kind), music (very picky), reading non-fiction (history and biographies), and cooking. JAPANESE Current Level: B1 Target Level: B2 Materials and Methods: - An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese - A textbook by The Japan Times. I also have the workbook for written exercises. I've finished the first five (out of 15) chapters, and am now working my way through Chapter 6. A somewhat dry, student life-centric textbook, but the grammar exercises and kanji exercises are beneficial. - Japanese TV. I live in Japan, and the TV is always on at home, so I am bound to learn something. - NHK Easy News. My goal is to read one article a day, as time allows. I'll note any new, useful vocabulary and put it into Anki for study. - (Free) Books. I really need to start reading stuff. Actual stories. The problem is that I'm very picky about my fiction. No goblins, fairy tales or spaceships. I like stories that mirror real life. It's nice to find stories online, so I can easily look up numerous words using rikaichan. Part of my TAC 13 quest will no doubt be to find such stuff. - Speaking. You can go to my old log to find out about my paradox of living in Japan, yet having difficulty to get consistent Japanese speaking practice. Anyway, I need to just start speaking to myself and/or having conversations with myself in my mind. - Writing. My goal is to write at least two diary entries per week. I'll post the better of the two on Lang-8 on the weekend for corrections. PORTUGUESE Current Level: starting nearly from scratch Target Level: A1/A2 Materials and Methods: - DLI Portuguese Basic Course - I've done the first six lessons of Volume I so far. - Listening to Portuguese radio and watching TV on the Internet. Radio is easy to come by, but not so much for TV, especially that from Brazil. USEFUL JAPANESE LINKS Yahoo JAPAN's English-Japanese dictionary Weblio's English-Japanese dictionary - Good for translating phrases Tatoeba - Large database of example sentences Japanese Folk Tales using Ilya Frank's reading method (Haven't used this yet) USEFUL PORTUGUESE LINKS Defense Language Institute Language Courses - Public domain and free of charge. It's where I got DLI Portuguese Basic. A nice alternative to the free FSI courses at fsi-language-courses.org. dict.cc Portuguese-English dictionary Tatoeba - Large database of example sentences Linguee.com - Nice dictionary/example sentences database HTLAL thread about where to find Brazilian TV Rashomon in Japanese with Portuguese subtitles - English subtitles - Portuguese subtitles User Expugnator explains about Brazilian music: a must-read! Also, some suggestions for Brazilian singers/groups are listed here and here. FORMER LOG The first log I made at HTLAL (July-August 2012) Lang-8 - A place to write in your target language and get it corrected by native speakers Italki - Like Lang-8. Fewer users, but some interesting features. Plus, unlike Lang-8, you can write in more than two of your TLs for free. Brun Ugle's suggestion on what to do with Lang-8 corrections GLOSS - A number of language activities TuneIn - Online streaming radio stations from around the world. Radiko.jp - Like TuneIn, but concentrates on Japanese radio. (The main Japanese radio stations do not seem to be on TuneIn.) Edited by kujichagulia on 08 March 2013 at 1:20am 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 60 of 706 14 January 2013 at 3:03am | IP Logged |
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In that temporary thread I was talking about in the last post, I evaluated how far my Japanese had come since July. While my vocabulary had increased, and my reading, writing and speaking had slightly increased, I felt that my listening had not increased at all. Following the suggestions of some great users, I wrote the following:
* * * * * A few posts ago, I said that my listening in Japanese has not improved since my re-commitment last summer. In response, g-bod suggested something so simple yet, as it turned out, much needed: work on listening! Then iguanamon provided a link to Ari's Chinesepod method post. I poured through Ari's process, and the last two days I've been experimenting with ways to use the audio I have for detailed listening practice. I have come up with a routine that I'm satisfied with and that I think can help me improve my listening immensely. Now, I know that a lot of this will be stuff that most of you do anyway; I'm always late to arrive at the party, if you can understand what I mean. :) Also, a lot of this is influenced by Ari's Chinesepod method, tweaked to fit my learning style, but I'm sure there is nothing original here. So I need to give credit where it's due: thank you, Ari! * * * * * KUJICHAGULIA'S LISTENING PRACTICE ROUTINE - Version 1.0 1) Get some new audio. For Japanese, I use the audio from my lessons in An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese (each lesson has three dialogs, plus audio for a listening exercise and audio for a reading exercise), and I have re-subscribed to the free feed for JapanesePod101.com. For Portuguese, I use the dialogs from my DLI Portuguese Basic Course lessons, and I have subscribed to two podcasts: PortuguesePod101.com (the free feed) and BrazilianPodClass (all podcasts are free). All of the above sources come with transcripts, and all are free except for IAIJ. 2) Listen to the audio intensively. I listen to it once or twice at first. Then I look at the transcript and look up any new words or grammar structures, writing them down for input into Anki later. I make sure I understand the entire dialog. Then I listen to it about three more times. If there is anything I do not catch at first, I'll rewind a few seconds and listen to that sentence again. If I still can't parse that sentence, I'll rewind it again. I'll keep doing it until I can parse the sentence successfully. I find this to be powerful for training my ear to parse the sounds of the language. If I have time, I'll keep working with the audio until I can listen to it one time through and understand it with no problems and without having to stop and rewind part of it. 3) Put the audio into a review playlist on my mp3 player. When I am standing on the train or walking, I set this playlist to play randomly. I listen to and review the audio. If I come across something I have trouble with, I rewind a bit and listen to it over and over until I get it. In that case, when I reach the end, I'll play that audio again until I can go through it without having to stop and rewind a portion of it. Then I go to the next random track. If I forgot some vocabulary or grammar, I'll try to make a note of it for research later, or I check the transcript if I have it in my bag. * * * * * I've done this over the weekend with some of my Japanese audio from previous lessons, with great results. The dialogs from IAIJ are spoken at normal speed, and I always found them challenging. But before now I had always listened to them once or twice. Now with repeated exposure, combined with concentrated and repetitive focus in some difficult spots, I'm able to listen to those dialogs, parse them, and understand them with no problems. That is a TREMENDOUS confidence booster. Not only that, but I think it actually helps my listening in real-life situations. This weekend at the gym, more people spoke to me than usual. (I'm not that religious, but it was as if the Divine was tapping people on the shoulder and telling them, "Hey, that guy is doing some Japanese listening practice. Go talk to him a bit for me, okay?") While I still couldn't understand everything said to me, I did notice a very slight improvement in my ability to parse spoken Japanese and pick out words. This was after doing roughly an hour of listening practice both yesterday and today. If two days of this routine has already given me a small boost in listening, then I am salivating at what it could do for me after several months. I'll post regularly about it and keep you updated. Edited by kujichagulia on 15 January 2013 at 1:59pm 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 61 of 706 15 January 2013 at 2:00pm | IP Logged |
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KUJI'S WEEK IN REVIEW: 7 January - 13 January 2013
日本語 - JAPANESE JP - 僕は IAIJの第６課がゆっくりやっています。 １２月始めたのに、仕事が忙しいし、 一週間旅行したし、 ちびちびしています。 今まで会話のほうがよく聴いて、 新しい単語を調べて Ankiに記入しておきました。 今週、 新しい漢字を習って、 読み物や聞き取り練 習をするつもりです。 前にしゃべっていた日本語の聞くの決まりき った仕事について わくわくです！ 僕の日本語聞くの力はちゃんとしていないか ら、 これがうまくいけば、 とてもいいと思います。 EN - I'm working my way slowly through Chapter 6 of IAIJ. I started back in December, but I have yet to finish it due to work and a week of travel. Plus I haven't had many chances to sit down on the train and do some Chapter 6 work. (I could have done a lot of it this past weekend, but I was working on a listening practice routine.) So far, I listened to the three dialogs in Chapter 6, and I also went through and put all new words into Anki. This week, I plan to learn the new kanji and do the grammar, reading and listening exercises. I'm quite excited about the new listening routine that I talked about earlier! As I said earlier, I already noticed some miniscule benefits from doing it, even after two days. If this goes well, this will be amazing for my listening skills. PORTUGUÊS - PORTUGUESE I'm just about finished with Lesson 7 of DLI Basic. All I need to do is the Free Conversation part. At the end of every lesson, there is a Free Conversation section with about 25 questions based on that lesson. I haven't found an effective use for that yet; obviously I have no one to do Free Conversation with. If I'm alone, I try to answer the questions out loud. Otherwise, I do it in my mind, or if I am extremely tired I'll just write the answers out. I think that, after posting this, I'll answer the questions out loud, then Lesson 7 will be done. After that, three more lessons, then Volume 1 will be done, and I can go on to Volume 2! I'm glad that, after swapping between DLI Basic and FSI Programmatic, I finally settled down on DLI. Programmatic did help me with my pronunciation somewhat, but DLI has much more vocabulary and grammar. Other than DLI, I plan to apply my new listening routine to Portuguese this week, using the audio from DLI, PortuguesePod101 and BrazilianPodClass. 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 62 of 706 24 January 2013 at 1:06am | IP Logged |
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KUJI'S WEEK IN REVIEW: 14 January-20 January 2013
A quick review because I've been quite busy lately. Because of that, my language studies were slow, but they did not stop (yay to consistency!). For Japanese, Chapter 6 of IAIJ is still going slow. I think that there is so much to cover in a chapter, even without the roleplay/group work exercises meant for a university course. New kanji, three dialogs (and the new vocabulary and expressions), a longer reading passage (with more new vocabulary and expressions), lots of grammar (and corresponding workbook exercises), a listening exercise and a review exercise. That's probably enough to do one chapter every week at a university, but for my self-study purposes, it probably takes me about a month to do one chapter. I started Chapter 6 in mid-December, if I recall correctly, and I'm probably not going to be done until next week at the earliest. Now, I'm not complaining about how long it takes; the more I have to learn, the better. But it puts things into perspective for me. Finishing IAIJ will take a while. At least my listening routine is keeping things interesting. I used to find the IAIJ dialogs somewhat boring. But now that I have them in a review playlist on my iPod nano, when one comes up, I'm doing my best to listen through and catch everything. It's like a game. When I miss something, I feel like when I used to play Super Mario Bros. on Nintendo as a kid, and I would fall down in the pit or get beat up by Koopa. (You young people have no idea what I'm talking about, with your Final Fantasies and X-Boxes and smartphones and other stuff.) For Portuguese, I'm midway through Lesson 8 of DLI Basic. The listening routine is doing wonders for my Japanese listening as well, although with the poor quality of the audio in DLI, it is sometimes hard to properly catch some words. On a side note, the song The Girl From Ipanema came up on my iPod for the first time in a long while, and I realized that now I can basically understand the first two lines of the song! Olha que coisa mais linda, mais cheia de graça É ela a menina que vem e que passa I understand everything except cheia de graça. How about that? This was the song that first made me interested in Brazil and Portuguese almost 15 years ago. It's like I'm coming full circle. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| FireViN Diglot Senior Member Brazil missaoitaliano.wordpRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5219 days ago 196 posts - 292 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2 Studies: Italian | Message 63 of 706 24 January 2013 at 2:15am | IP Logged |
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"Cheia de graça" means literally "full of grace". Blessed, lovely.
It seems that you're doing a good job! Keep it up! (: 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 64 of 706 24 January 2013 at 3:44am | IP Logged |
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@FireViN - Obrigado! Now I know all of the first two lines of the song. :)
1 person has voted this message useful |
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