g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5982 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 785 of 1702 23 February 2013 at 9:45pm | IP Logged |
I know you would rather avoid another textbook, but one thing to bare in mind...
Japanese for Busy People 3 *really* helped me make the transition from N4 level to N3 level. Especially for the listening.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5184 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 786 of 1702 23 February 2013 at 9:47pm | IP Logged |
Oddly, I am feeling pretty positive with the Naruto scripts in Japanese to study. There's a lot of other anime on the site too... kitsunekko.net
Later I may try making one of those SRS sentence decks that rip the audio from the movie. For now I'll just be watching the whole show over and over on a regular basis.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5184 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 787 of 1702 23 February 2013 at 10:31pm | IP Logged |
dampingwire wrote:
kraemder wrote:
I'm looking for sympathy and I get this XD. The feedback is good
though. But to answer your question I expected to pass the N4 test which is an upper
beginner test.
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By no means is it easy lol. Upper beginner in a language like Japanese is still hard!
If you're reading material without furigana then it'll help prepare you a lot for the test. But I think everyone ran out of time on the reading. Do you best. And ace the rest of the test - don't bomb the listening. You can't run out of time on the listening (although you can't ask them to repeat it if you space). So save energy for it. And my tip for you on the listening is to write down the question when they say it. In English or whatever. Then focus 100% on the dialogue. This way you don't waste mental energy remembering the question and trying to understand the stupid dialogue. I figured this out on the -last- question. I'm sure I got that one right but I have no idea on the others =(.
*edit*
They say to save energy for the last part... but I don't see how you do something like that. So expect to have less energy and to be tired than what you're used to on your practice tests. I didn't think to write the questions down because during my practice test I didn't need to. But during the test I was more tired, it wasn't as easy, and that crutch would have compensated for it.
Edited by kraemder on 23 February 2013 at 10:57pm
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g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5982 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 788 of 1702 23 February 2013 at 10:47pm | IP Logged |
Argh failed by exam technique. Note taking is so important in the listening tests. The fact there is plenty of space for it on the exam papers should be a hint, but I only realised how important it was after reading other people's complaints about the test on a Japanese forum! My N2 listening paper was covered in weird half Japanese/half English notes (with some symbols for good measure). You can get some really nasty questions where they seem to spend loads of time discussing every answer on the paper, and only one little word tells you which the correct option actually is...
As for whether it's easy or hard, well, in my experience it's easy if you know the answer, and impossible if you don't. Regardless of the level :)
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g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5982 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 789 of 1702 23 February 2013 at 10:49pm | IP Logged |
kraemder wrote:
Later I may try making one of those SRS sentence decks that rip the audio from the movie. For now I'll just be watching the whole show over and over on a regular basis. |
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You should totally do this. I'm working my way through Tiger and Dragon 20 lines at a time this way!
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5184 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 790 of 1702 23 February 2013 at 11:00pm | IP Logged |
g-bod wrote:
As for whether it's easy or hard, well, in my experience it's easy if you know the answer, and impossible if you don't. Regardless of the level :) |
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I see what you mean by that but I think the N4 was really correctly leveled for me so that focus and little things really made the difference between right and wrong answers. Well towards the end when the sections got more difficult. The start of the test was so easy I figured I'd fly through it hehe.
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stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4873 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish
| Message 791 of 1702 23 February 2013 at 11:55pm | IP Logged |
You should look into subs2srs. If you got accurate Japanese subs and the audio, you can
make Anki cards out of them. (Only include Japanese/English definitions instead of
whole sentence translations, since some of them can be off, or not fitting the
corresponding line in the Japanese script, for instance when a sentence consists of
more lines which has to be "reordered" to make sense in English.)
If you like video games, or like watching people play them, I would recommend 実況プレイ
videos, because they are often really easy to understand and may be great fun at times.
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Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6620 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish
| Message 792 of 1702 26 February 2013 at 12:06pm | IP Logged |
I often watch things once without subtitles and then once with. That way I work to understand it the first time and then I get confirmation the second time. Or I find out what they really said and wonder why I didn't understand when it was so simple.
I've never figured out how to get Japanese subs so I've only done it with English subs, but it would be very interesting to try with Japanese. I might have to go through three times then though.
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