dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4662 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 153 of 256 15 January 2014 at 12:09am | IP Logged |
W/E 2014-01-12 38h44m
Audio: 17:39
Vocab: 13:07
Reading: 5:02
Grammar: 1:52
Video: 1:04
The first full week of 2014. The traffic was poor on a few days so my commute was
longer - but that's OK as I get to listen to Japanese for longer!
I made a mistake with my use of Anki and ended up building up a mini-tsunami of reviews
once I fixed the deck limits. That meant staying up late a few nights to catch up. The
waves are still there but they're smaller now and only add about 10mins/day to my
vocabulary deck work. I'll be more careful in future!
I've colour-coded some of the entries in my spreadsheet so I can more easily pick out
various activities.
This week I've covered the following:
日本語総まとめ N3 文法 - 4 lessons
Intensive listening - up to S4 #12
日本人の知らない日本語 - 2 episodes (no subtitles)
NHK News - 5 articles (plus 1 NHK EasyNews article)
Anki additions: 50 new kanji
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4662 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 154 of 256 20 January 2014 at 11:21pm | IP Logged |
W/E 2014-01-12 38h41m
Audio: 20:14
Vocab: 7:09
Reading: 5:35
Grammar: 3:06
Video: 2:37
The M4 gave me a few uenxpected hours of extra listening pleasure this week -
fortunately spread over a few days rather than all in one go.
日本語総まとめ N3 文法 - 8 lessons
Intensive listening - finished S4, now starting 完全マスターN3聴解
日本人の知らない日本語 - 5 episodes (no subtitles)
NHK News - 6 articles
Anki additions: 25 new kanji words
I managed to find a few lunchtimes at work when I could usefully get some reading done.
The grammar in 日本語総まとめ N3 文法 this week was mostly a review of things I'd already
covered elsewhere and so that load was quite light. I'm thinking of putting together a
minimal grammar deck to start covering this stuff more often though.
Although I did get through 6 NHK News articles this week, the bulk of that was a
longish session on Friday after having read no articles on any of the previous days. I
think that consistency is pretty important and I'd prefer to cover an article every day
rather than "catching up" in one long session at the end of the week.
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4662 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 155 of 256 28 January 2014 at 11:28pm | IP Logged |
W/E 2014-01-19 38h27m
Audio: 19:04
Vocab: 4:06
Reading: 4:07
Grammar: 4:42
Video: 6:28
日本語総まとめ N3 文法 - 9 lessons
完全マスターN3聴解 - up to page 50
Films/Series: 七人の侍 (only 90mins), 十三人の刺客, 日本沈没, finished 日本人の知らない日本語
NHK News - just 1 article
A little new grammar in 日本語総まとめ N3 文法 this week, but it was stillmostly a review
of things I'd already covered elsewhere and so that load was quite light. I've yet to
start a grammar deck.
I've started to watch Japanese films on TV or youtube (or wherever I can fins them).
That's quite entertaining: I'd be lost without subtitles but I can still pick up the
occasional series of words or sometimes even a whole sentence. This seems to have come
at the expense of reading though, as I'm just not tackling NHK News at all. I guess I
can't have my cake and eat it too!
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4662 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 156 of 256 06 February 2014 at 1:14am | IP Logged |
2014-02-02 36h34m
Audio: 12:06
Vocab: 3:10
Reading: 3:30
Grammar: 5:45
Video: 12:03
日本語総まとめ N3 文法 - 10 lessons
完全マスターN3聴解 - finished (apart from mock test)
Films/Series: パプリカ, 紙の月 (ep. 1), finished 七人の侍, Great Teacher Onizuka (8 eps +1
special)
NHK News - just 1 article
Kanji deck: 25 new
I've finished going through 日本語総まとめ N3 文法, although no doubt I'll be back for
another run through at some stage. I've now started 完全マスターN文法.
I thought I'd find it difficult to find Japanese series to watch but there seems to be a
whole swathe of them out there. I started off with 紙の月 which seemed interesting but it
turns out to be a current series, so I'll have to wait for episode 2 to come out. In the
meantime I've started on Great Teacher Onizuka. The premise is quite silly, but it's
been fun to watch despite the complete lack of grip on reality from which the writers
seem to suffer. I really like the theme song too: I think I'm going to have to have a go
at translating the lyrics.
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4662 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 157 of 256 11 February 2014 at 8:41pm | IP Logged |
2014-02-09 33h56m
Audio: 9:36
Vocab: 3:23
Reading: 6:38
Grammar: 2:56
Video: 11:23
完全マスターN3文法 - 4 lessons
Films/Series: 婚カツ - 11 episodes
NHK News - 2 article, NHK Easy News - 4 articles
Kanji deck: 100 new
I've managed to get through 婚カツ, a series about people who need to get married. Quite enjoyable
really and I was interested throughout. I assume it must be the language thing, because I'd never
watch this in English :-) I've been managing to get through at least one episode per day and
quite often two episodes (although never back-to-back). I find that at the end of the day I'm
generally too tired to sit down and read NHK News or read through any grammar points, but
watching an episode doesn't seem like too much of a strain. In fact, this week is probably the
first time in a long time that listening to audio (during the commute) isn't my most time consuming
activity.
I've managed to get into NHK News a bit more, so hopefully I'll be able to keep that up.
I've made a start on my grammar deck. As part of each 完全マスター lesson, I'll include
updating the deck with the new grammar points.
Anki & RTK are up to date and I'm listening to Lower Intermediate dialogues during the commute.
Edited by dampingwire on 11 February 2014 at 9:08pm
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4662 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 158 of 256 17 February 2014 at 7:01pm | IP Logged |
2014-02-16 30h13m
Audio: 10:15
Vocab: 2:34
Reading: 5:39
Grammar: 5:02
Video: 6:43
完全マスターN3文法 - 4 lessons
Films/Series: モンスターペアレント - 9 episodes
NHK News - 7 articles
Kanji deck: 75 new
I've still yet to find a Japanses that is boring; mind you there are plenty more for me to sample!
I think that the trick with NHK News at my current level is to choose an article that has only one
or two paragraphs at most. That way I know I'll be able to get through it in 30 minutes or so. If
I can do that consistently then I may be able to fit one into each most lunchtimes.
I've made no progress with my grammar deck. I've nearly got through the 完全マスター section that covers
the mechanics of grammar points in detail. Once I've done that, and completed the associated electronic
notes, I'll go back and revise each point and add it to the grammar deck. Then I'll move on to the next
section but also interweave that with going through the two-section summary exercises. Those exercises
are something else that I skipped but I think I need to go through them to really begin to grasp the
various grammar points in detail.
The Anki decks are going OK but I think I need to step up with the various Kanji words. They're not (yet!)
proving as tough as I'd feared they might be and as I'm working through the kanji I'm finding that it's
beginning to reinforce some of the vocabulary words that I used to find easy to forget.
Edited by dampingwire on 17 February 2014 at 7:38pm
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4662 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 159 of 256 25 February 2014 at 9:47pm | IP Logged |
2014-02-23 29h59m
Audio: 6:32
Vocab: 5:08
Reading: 4:58
Grammar: 6:01
Video: 7:20
完全マスターN3文法 - 3 lessons
みんなの日本語中級 - Chapter 1
Films/Series:
モンスターペアレント - 2 episodes, series finished
タイガー&ドラゴン - q episode
リストランテパラディーゾ - 11 episodes (no subs)
フラクタル - 2 episodes (no subs)
NHK News - 5 articles
Kanji deck: 100 new
It seems my strategy of picking a short NHK News article each day is working. I didn't do one each day,
instead I managed to get through 5 articles in 3 days. I'll try to work on the consistency later on.
I've concentrated on activating more (N3) entries in the Kanji deck in Anki. As of now I need to activate
another 860+ entries. If I can continue at the present pace then I should have all the N3 vocabulary down (in
kanji) by the end of April or so. That leaves two months for them to bed in before the exam, so that should be
fine.
I've now been through the first set of lessons in 完全マスターN3文法. I've made notes on all of them, although I've
yet to add them to the grammar deck and begin drilling. The next section explains various usages and compares
and contrasts various grammar points. Having only very briefly skimmed through it I think I'd describe it as an
overview of how some of the various already known grammar points fit together,
I've now finished reading the book that I was going through with my tutor and we've started on みんなの日本語中級.
That means more grammar work than I was managing before. Going through Chapter 1 took about 4 hours. That's
every exercise and listening and so on. I still need to put in a bit more work to internalise everything, so it
will probably be nearer 6 hours per chapter. I doubt that I'll get through a chapter with my tutor in less than
2 sessions, so that's 3 hours per week. In future I may have to schedule less 完全マスターN3文法 work as there just
won't be time to fit both in every week. That shouldn't be too much of an issue: I'm about halfway through so
far (in terms of pages) and it's been 6 weeks. If I slow down to 1/2 speed then I'll need 3 months to get to the
end. That would leave me one month in which to revise the grammar one more time.
The anime and series that I'm watching I'm mostly fitting in when I'm too tired to do any other study
effectively (i.e. mostly at the end of the day before going to bed). I'm now trying to switch to watching
without subtitles (except for when I try タイガー&ドラゴン, because that's really quite tough!) I've tried watching a
series almost entirely without subtitles (except for once or twice for a few seconds each episode when I
completely lost the plot). That was リストランテパラディーゾ and I'll probably go through that again, this time with
subtitles to see what I missed. For new episodes I'm going to watch once without subtitles and then immediately
again with subtitles. For the moment I'm focussing on anime, and as each episode is ~20m long I just need to
find a 40m block of time (or two 20m ones), which isn't too hard to do.
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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 160 of 256 26 February 2014 at 7:40am | IP Logged |
I'm really a believer in turning off subs after not doing it for years. I liked the plot and characters and just didn't
want to lose it and thought as noted by some other learners that it would make me no longer enjoy watching
anime. But you get used to it. Your listening really will get better thanks to turning off the subs I think and you
can pretty much follow a lot of the plot just watching anyway. It does take some getting used to of course.
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