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Going back to Europe TAC 2014 DE|FR|日本語 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5980 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 121 of 142 18 November 2014 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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So despite a relatively strong start in the 6WC, it's all gone downhill since last week.
I caught a cold, which is never good for studying. Work is really difficult and there is stuff going on with that which is likely to take up much more of my free time towards the end of the month (and is already taking up a lot of free mental capacity). Our house is a total mess as we have various sets of builders coming in to fix various problems which seem to have appeared all at the same time. It's winter, and I just feel kind of low. I suppose I'd rather spend my November getting fat on chocolate and then hibernating... I went to German class last night and despite the quality of the teacher and the other students and the appropriateness of the level of the class I just really struggled to engage with it. New words were just going in one ear and out the other and I couldn't hang on to any of them. Normally my working memory is pretty damn good too. And although I keep looking longingly at my Japanese textbooks and reading books and thinking "I really need to crack this", I've not made it past the sitting down and staring at the page blankly phase of studying. I did manage to get a few hours of casual TV watching in, which is my favourite low intensity maintenance method, but it won't help me read anything. I've even let my relatively light Anki deck load just pile up. I think I'm going to continue ignoring it and maybe it will go away... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5980 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 122 of 142 23 November 2014 at 11:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm generally not a fan of the 日本語総まとめ JLPT prep books, but I think I have found an exception in the form of the N1 kanji book.
First the negatives: just like the other 総まとめ books, this one was rushed to fill the gap in the market that promptly appeared when the new test specification was released in 2010 and as such could have benefited from better proof reading. Also, like the other books in the series, the suggested pace of study is far too intense for somebody like me (but maybe there are more hardcore students out there who would be better suited to it). The practice questions and opportunities to play with all the new material in some kind of context are quite limited. Finally, while the book covers plenty of material in the N1 range, it is (probably) not thorough enough to cover everything you may need to know about kanji to sail through the N1 exam. But unlike the other 総まとめ books I have looked at (and, add to that, unlike most other kanji books I have looked at), a serious amount of thought has gone into the way that kanji information is ordered and presented in the N1 kanji book. Rather than just grouping several hundred characters together either arbitrarily or according to meaning, (or, in the case of Kanji in Context, putting a lot of thought into the order of the characters without spelling out the reasons why) the book deals fairly transparently with various kanji issues in separate sections, including: Kanji which share the same on-yomi and phonetic component Kanji which share a phonetic component but there have been some shifts in pronunciation for some of the characters Rarer kun-yomi readings for kanji that an intermediate student will already know Homophones Word building with various kanji used for suffixes and prefixes Lookalike kanji Set phrases and yojijukugo Kanji based vocabulary that tends to show up in newspapers Given that I've been stuck in the kanji wilderness for quite some time, I am finding the approach taken to be refreshing and very, very useful. But it's going to take me longer than the promised 8 weeks to work through the book! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 123 of 142 24 November 2014 at 4:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yeah eight weeks would be nice and I think that's one of their selling points but not so realistic. Unless you're
unemployed (Ie a student). That's sounds very interesting though. Depending how my current method of just using Japanese for iOS to make kanji flash cards from my vocab goes I might give it a try. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4663 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 124 of 142 24 November 2014 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Join the club :-) Actually for N2 読解 I think 日本語総まとめ is too easy (so far) and 新完全マスター is too hard! I suppose I should count myself lucky that I have access to both.
It does sound useful. Does it assume that you already know the N5-N2 kanji or does it cover some of those too?
If you're like me I suspect that you can work through it in 8 weeks, you just can't usefully learn it in anywhere near that time frame. For 文法 at least, I found it useful to go through 日本語総まとめ reasonably quickly just to get a feekl fro the "lie of the land" and then do a few passes of 新完全マスター in order to try and actually learn stuff. 新完全マスター just has so much more material. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5980 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 125 of 142 25 November 2014 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Actually, I think the reading practice in 新完全マスター is a pretty good match with the level of the real exam. Unless you meant that it's just too hard for you now - in which case just keep going, it gets easier!
Yes and yes! I think it assumes you have recently passed N2, but it doesn't overlook kanji at N2 or below where it makes sense to include them. So for example, in the On-yomi section it groups 五 語 and 悟 together, to make the point that they share the phonetic element 五 and the on-yomi ゴ, even though the first two kanji in the set are very basic ones. This is particularly useful for helping to flag up new kanji that look similar to ones you've already studied - although maybe that's not so much an issue since you have already installed RTK into your personal memory system. It also expands on kanji you should already know with some of the rarer readings which you might not have studied before, which is something I think is often overlooked when courses categorise kanji by level.
Although there is a ridiculous amount of information to learn in each "day" of the text, it's pretty easy to break this down into smaller chunks which still make sense. I have the benefit of not having any deadlines to meet so as long as I keep learning new and useful stuff, it doesn't really matter whether it takes 8 weeks or 8 months. Although I do sometimes despair that I seem to have reached something of an equilibrium where I forget about as much Japanese as I learn! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4663 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 126 of 142 26 November 2014 at 11:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is what I meant. I'm hoping it does indeed get easier. I presume it will: the N4 stuff looks really simple now and it didn't then, so there is hope!
I promise you, you aren't the only one! It does sometimes feel like I'm one of those cartoon characters running across a bridge, desperately trying to keep ahead of a wave of collapsing planks behind me by laying down new bridge planks in front of me as I go. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 127 of 142 26 November 2014 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm wondering if I've plateaued as well. I'm hoping not. I'm thinking of switching my SRS to just focus on kanji
sounds exclusively. If I could read more I think that would be a big boon. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4663 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 128 of 142 27 November 2014 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think it just feels as though no progress is being made. I know when I go back to look at N4 stuff now it doesn't seem anywhere near as daunting as it did just a year ago. the N3 stuff looks to be quite a bit easier too. As I'm going through 新完全マスター N2 文法 I'm adding all the unknown words to a spreadsheet that I periodically pour into Anki. Even though I've not yet activated many of these words, I'm finding fewer and fewer examples of new vocab to add to anki. I guess the problem is that it's easy to see the long road stretched out in front of you leading to some far off goal and to forget that if you turn back and look at where you've come it's actually quite a long way. Well, that's what I'm telling myself at least! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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