kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5181 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 537 of 1702 15 September 2012 at 8:30pm | IP Logged |
I just finished my first session on iKnow and I find it interesting that the session says it will take me 16
minutes but in fact took me an hour and fifteen minutes... Granted I did a couple of extra steps in that I
handwrote some of the kanji when it gave me the audio only to test myself. But a whole hour longer than
they thought it should take seems excessive.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5181 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 538 of 1702 18 September 2012 at 6:05am | IP Logged |
Well Rosetta Stone got back to me about their telling me I'm vulgar. I apparently said damn in the chat room
and this was offensive. Frankly their form letter was far more offensive to me than my saying damn could
possibly have been to anyone who was listening. I'm going to cancel my subscription to their service. I don't
want to feel like I'm walking on thin ice whenever I open my mouth and their service isn't so good that I want
to deal with that.
Anyway.. I am still doing the iKnow thing. I sort of am flip flopping back and forth with it. I don't really mind
the cost if I feel it's the best way to learn more vocabulary. The flashcard app I have doesn't conveniently test
me with using the kanji, kana, English, or audio alternatively the way it does. I'm sort of thinking of ways to
make it do that. I might post to the author. I don't know how repsonsive he'll be on it as setting it up might be
a bit time consuming and whatever changes he implemented in the app would need to be useful for lots of
users not just me studying Japanese.
Had class today. It's sort of annoying how little time I have to myself after work and class etc. Of course I'd
spend it watching anime or studying Japanese anyway but still.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5181 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 539 of 1702 20 September 2012 at 7:26am | IP Logged |
The new iOS 6 is out - and I finally got Siri XD. I believe there's a way to get it to do Japanese. So far I've
only made it open my App Store. It was sort of silly. I had to press the home butgton to bring up Siri then
press the microphone icon and then say App Store at it to do this. But I didn't have to repeat myself so that
was neat. I am gonna play with it a bit more but if it's just a novelty thing which it seems to be I'll definitely
prefer to have it going in Japanese instead even if it has a hard time understanding my accent.
I'm still doing iKnow for vocabulary. I might try configuring my SRS flashcard app a bit because I really like
that app to be more like iKnow. But iKnow might end up being my vocabulary learning tool of choice for a
while. It drills the words over and over in a way that doesn't make you feel like you're struggling to learn new
words and it's nice. I also enjoy the example sentences - making myself repeat them from memory - at least
after listening to the audio once. I think that helps my Japanese quite a bit.
I'm gonna start throwing some of the vocabulary I'm learning into my sentences in class. I got a little annoyed
at the teacher today - he told me my Japanese translation was wrong, and I'm not 100% positive on this so I'll
have to ask him, simply because I wasn't using the structure that he wanted me to use but instead was using
one that we're going to learn next week which is equally correct. I was just using と to signify when in place
of the 時 structure.
Well back to iKnow. It's past my bed time but I'm not ready to go to bed heh. 悪い. Occupational hazard for
people who work full time and go to school I guess.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5181 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 540 of 1702 20 September 2012 at 7:36am | IP Logged |
This seems a little odd. When I hear a word and I can't remember its meaning (IE usually a new word I'm
learning) I'll try to get my brain to visualize the kanji. If it has Chinese sounds then that's generally pretty
easy. And I'll get say 2/3 kanji in my brain right away and that can help. But it seems it works for new words
like 届ける. No Chinese sounds there. I saw this word for the 1st time about a half hour ago. iKnow reached
the point where it gave me just the sound and no other clues and I'm sitting here thinking darn I know this and
it wasn't coming so I made my brain focus on a kanji that came to mind and I visualized the flag with the
sprout and then click I knew the word. Studying kanji is really helpful.
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g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5979 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 541 of 1702 20 September 2012 at 8:45am | IP Logged |
There is a difference between use of と and とき. I can't really explain it myself but I have been corrected for using the wrong one before.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5181 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 542 of 1702 20 September 2012 at 6:32pm | IP Logged |
Well I'll find out next week and update here. I'll say this.. This teacher doesn't always go into why your
answer is wrong; he's more about getting the right answer out of you. It works and he gets the class
motivated to pay attention and give the right answer but once in a while I'm like why am I wrong??
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g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5979 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 543 of 1702 20 September 2012 at 7:00pm | IP Logged |
I know exactly what you mean. It can be really difficult to find decent explanations of Japanese grammar problems for learners. I often find myself stuck between very brief explanations plus example sentences on the one hand, and explanations that are too detailed to be useful on the other. Sometimes I wonder how I managed to learn anything!
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5181 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 544 of 1702 22 September 2012 at 5:36am | IP Logged |
I was listening to Japanese Pod today doing chores and I couldn't help thinking darn this pretty good. I then
later broke down and got a premium membership. The reasoning being that I can do the line by line audio to
shadow the native speaker audio pretty well. I could probably get by just as well with a basic subscription but
the added convenience looked nice. I'll be listening to a few lessons a week now. I don't know how fast I'll
go with it. So much material I'd like to study and only so many hours in the day. I wanna quit my job and
study full time XD.
I was looking at the new iPod and bought it and then cancelled my order. It looks so sweet! But I have a
couple tablets already so I wouldn't use it as a tablet really or if I did then I wouldn't use the ones I have
anyway. So I think I'll be using my old iPod 4th gen for a bit longer =/. Unless I break down and get it
anyway heh. Oh and I ordered a new clam shell case with keyboard for my iPad 3. I was hoping it would
come today. I have a keyboard case already but it just collects dust - the keys are a tad too small for me to
type comfortably but this one is supposed to have big keys. I'm pretty excited about it. Touch typing on the
iPad is doable.. sorta...
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