dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 49 of 118 08 March 2014 at 12:07am | IP Logged |
March's goals. (I know I'm about a week late ...)
Again I'm going to set real goals and optional ones.
Main Goals:
1. Continue listening to dialogue tracks or UB/LI/UI lessons during the work commute.
2. RTK: I'll continue to keep this up to date.
3. Anki: Kanji. 650 kanji words to learn. I'll set a goal of 100 kanji per week. That worked
well in February and I'll still have the option of doing more if I choose to.
4. Anki: Vocabulary. I'm merely going to maintain this. However, I have entered some vocabulary
from the new みんなの日本語中級, so I'm going to activate the first three chapters worth.
5. 新完全マスター N3 文法: I'm going to stick to cover 5 "chapters" per week. I'm on part 2 of the
book now, but I'll continue to treat a "chapter" as a two page chunk. That seems to have worked
well so far. As I'm also working through みんなの日本語中級 with my tutor I need to allow some time
for working through those chapters too. So I'm going to arbitrarily decide that any single 25m
session or longer for みんなの日本語中級 will count as fulfilling that day's grammar work.
6. I'm going to watch at least 3 drama episodes or two films per week. If I watch an episode
shorter than 30m, then I'll only give myself a pro-rata partial credit. With the exception of タイ
ガー&ドラゴン, anything watched with subtitles won't count. (I'll log the time, but it won't help to
meet this goal).
Optional Goals:
7. I still want to work through 新完全マスター N3 聴解 but I've just not found the time. I'd like to
get 2 hours done each week.
8. I'm going to work through at least four NHK News articles each week. To help with consistency
(and building good habits) I must read at least one article on three separate days of any one
week. So no binging and covering all four articles on a Sunday!
These goals are basically a tweak of the February ones, but those kept me going quite well so
I'm happy with them as they are for the moment.
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 50 of 118 16 March 2014 at 1:43pm | IP Logged |
I've now finished タイガー&ドラゴン. It took me a few episodes to get into it, but by the
end I was quite enjoying it. The Japanese is certainly quite tough (for me) and quite a
lot of the time the pronunciation is (again, to me) unclear. I have found what I think
is a set of Japanese subtitles for it, so at some point I think I'm going to work
through it with those and see what more I can get out of it.
I've also finished あじむ ~海岸物語~. I'd picked it because it only had 4 episodes
available and I thought I could use it as practice for different ways of working
without subtitles. It turns out that it is a complete series - they only ever made 4
episodes. I can't say I'd recommend it as something to watch, but the language does
seem to be quite straightforward compared to some of the other things I've watched
(although still hard enough to be a challenge for me).
I've found a bunch of Japanese subtitles (fan subs I guess) so I think I'm going to
pick one of those series and work through the episodes, firstly without subtitles and
then with Japanese subtitles and see how I get on.
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 51 of 118 30 March 2014 at 11:22pm | IP Logged |
I've managed to get hold of 茶の本 (The Book of Tea) for about three weeks. It's a
parallel page translation by Bilingual Books. It looks like there are about 84 pages of
Japanese. So if I can manage 4 pages per day then I might be able to get through it in
the time allotted. I'll probably not manage to ready every single day so I'll aim for 5
pages 6 days a week (or 30 pages a week) and see how I get on. As it's just about the
time to set my April goals, I think I'll work this one in: it's about time I did some
real reading (i.e. not a graded reader or textbook and something longer than a news
article).
I've finished activating the required N3 kanji vocabulary in my deck. I did push
through 116 new words on Saturday just to get it finished; today's reqview was OK, so
I'm hoping that (as I'm not adding new words) it'll all settle down and I'll have a few
months to consolidate the knowledge before the exam. With any luck the book reading
will reinforce that.
I decided that I'd do my RTK every other day or so, and that way I would work it into
my lunchtime routine at work. Right now I'm looking at 236 reviews so you can tell how
well that plan worked :-) The idea was to avoid doing a really short (say 7/8m) review
that would break up my lunchtime studying. The problem turned out to be that if I
missed a lunchtime then I'd not bother at night, thinking I'd catch up the next day. So
7 days later, after a busy week at work, here I am :-)
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 52 of 118 31 March 2014 at 12:37am | IP Logged |
RTK turned out not to be too bad: 53m to get it done.
I should mention that I've started to work through 新完全マスター N3 文法 from the
beginning again. I'll revise two grammar "chapters" (four pages) plus the associated
questions (a further two pages) twice a week (at least). I'll leave the consolidation
exercises for a final pass, but this time without covering the grammar points just
before I take the exercises. Instead I'll use that final pass to note those points that
still need more work.
If I have time after all of that, then I'll give 本語総まとめ N3 文法 a similar treatment.
Hopefully by that stage most of that book will have been covered (either by 新完全マスタ
or by みんなの日本語中級).
Edited by dampingwire on 01 April 2014 at 1:14am
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 53 of 118 01 April 2014 at 1:14am | IP Logged |
I've started to read through 茶の本 (The Book of Tea). As it took me ~80 minutes to get
through the first page and a bit, I'm not sure that I'm going to get through it in three
weeks. I want to keep going with it for now, but I think I'll set a reasonable time limit
(say 30m - 60m) for my daily reading so that I don't neglect the other areas of study.
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 54 of 118 01 April 2014 at 1:52am | IP Logged |
Time to review the March goals.
Main Goals:
1. Continue listening to dialogue tracks or UB/LI/UI lessons during the work commute.
Done.
2. RTK: I'll continue to keep this up to date.
Done. I leave it for a few days at a time but then I catch up all in one go.
3. Anki: Kanji. 650 kanji words to learn. I'll set a goal of 100 kanji per week. That worked
well in February and I'll still have the option of doing more if I choose to.
Done. In fact I've now activated all the N3 kanji words.
4. Anki: Vocabulary. I'm merely going to maintain this. However, I have entered some vocabulary
from the new みんなの日本語中級, so I'm going to activate the first three chapters worth.
Done.
5. 新完全マスター N3 文法: I'm going to stick to cover 5 "chapters" per week. I'm on part 2 of the
book now, but I'll continue to treat a "chapter" as a two page chunk. That seems to have worked
well so far. As I'm also working through みんなの日本語中級 with my tutor I need to allow some time
for working through those chapters too. So I'm going to arbitrarily decide that any single 25m
session or longer for みんなの日本語中級 will count as fulfilling that day's grammar work.
Done and exceeded. I've now started my 2nd pass through this book.
6. I'm going to watch at least 3 drama episodes or two films per week. If I watch an episode
shorter than 30m, then I'll only give myself a pro-rata partial credit. With the exception of タイ
ガー&ドラゴン, anything watched with subtitles won't count. (I'll log the time, but it won't help to
meet this goal).
I've met this goal but I do feel I could have done more. However, I've now switched
my focus to working through episodes more intensively to help with listening comprehension.
Optional Goals:
7. I still want to work through 新完全マスター N3 聴解 but I've just not found the time. I'd like to
get 2 hours done each week.
I've done some work here but not as much as I would have liked. There just hasn't been the time.
8. I'm going to work through at least four NHK News articles each week. To help with consistency
(and building good habits) I must read at least one article on three separate days of any one
week. So no binging and covering all four articles on a Sunday!
Done. I'd like to work through some articles in more detail rather than just achieving
a superficial understanding, but the goal as set has been met.
I've managed to meet my goals for March, which feels good. Overall I managed ~130 hours of Japanese,
of which about half was listening during the commute and otherwise dead time. Then again that means
~65 hours of dedicated study got done too. I'll have a think about some goals for April and post those
soon too.
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 55 of 118 06 April 2014 at 9:33pm | IP Logged |
Looks like my wizard wheeze of leaving RTK to build up for a few days so that I could
catch up at work during lunchtime isn't working out. The idea was that I'd leave myself
a reasonable length session (say 20-30m) and make better use of the lunchtime. Well
this is the second Sunday where I've spent about ~60m catching up on a week's worth of
RTK.
I can cope with an hour of RTK, as I just break it down into (say) two 30m chunks. But
faced with what is now an unusually large chunk of kanji I try to push through it and I
don't concentrate anywhere near enough. So my strike rate goes down and that's probably
leading to more work overall.
I think I'll go back to doing RTK each day, perhaps in the morning before I set off for
work. I'll fill the lunctimes with NHK News or mining JPOD101 lessons and so on.
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 56 of 118 06 April 2014 at 9:48pm | IP Logged |
Some goals for April.
I'm now signed up to the JLPT N3 in July so I'm going to focus on 新完全マスター work.
Main Goals:
1. Continue listening to JPOD101 dialogue tracks or lessons during the work commute.
2. RTK: I'll continue to keep this up to date.
3. Anki: Kanji. All the N3 kani words are activated now. I'll maintain this deck for April
with a view to re-activating the suspended cards in May.
4. Anki: Vocabulary. I'm going to maintain this deck. I will mine みんなの日本語中級 and
activate those words, but only as I feel the need to do so for lessons. So far each new
chapter has only led to 10-20 new words.
5. 新完全マスター N3 文法: I've been through this book once and I'm now working through it
again, this time doing the exercises. I plan to do four sets of exercises per week. If I
keep up that pace I should finish again by the middle of May. That would leave time for
revision for the rest of May and all of June.
6. I've managed to find some time for 新完全マスター N3 聴解 lately and I want to keep that
going. I need to cover ~40 more pages to get to the end. To finish by the end of the month
I need to cover about 2 pages per day. So I should aim for 15 pages per week, split any way
that happens to work out.
Optional Goals:
7. I'm going to keep watching anime or drama. I aim to average 30 mins each day. That
includes both watching (without subtitles) or intensively studying (i.e. working through an
episode with Japanese subtitles in order to understand what is being said).
8. I'm going to work through at least four NHK News articles each week. I've managed to
keep this up so far and I think if I get into the habit of working through one article each
day at work (on most days ...) then I'll start to see an improvement in my reading speed.
I'm assuming that JLPT N3 articles are not going to be as touch as NHK News can be!
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