sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6374 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin
| Message 41 of 197 05 August 2007 at 3:07pm | IP Logged |
Nordlicht, thanks for letting me know. I added a new link for the transcript.
Edited by sheetz on 05 August 2007 at 3:08pm
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tpiz Diglot Groupie United States cvillepayne.blogspot Joined 6361 days ago 77 posts - 79 votes Studies: Portuguese, English*, French Studies: Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 42 of 197 05 August 2007 at 4:00pm | IP Logged |
Yo sheetz, I was wondering, what was your plan with using Assimil? By that I mean, how did you go about learning every lesson? Did you just read and look at the translation, and keep doing this over and over until you memorized it? Also, do you plan on using the intermediate Assimil course once you have completed this?
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sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6374 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin
| Message 43 of 197 05 August 2007 at 4:20pm | IP Logged |
tpiz, I do lots of reviewing, but I don't keep listening to that day's lesson over and over. What I do is listen to that day's lesson along with the last 5 or 6 lessons, doing so 3 times per day. Also I don't immediately put the new lesson into the SRS for a day or two. Finally, when reviewing sentences on the SRS, I try not to be too strict when I grade myself on new sentences because, as I'm sure you've noticed, the course is written in a way such that you'll be seeing a lot of the same vocabulary again in the future. So, for instance, if I understand the meaning of a sentence, but get the reading slightly wrong for one or two words, I go ahead and give myself a passing grade.
I'm going to go through both volumes of Assimil this way, but I think I'm not going to go through the active phase when I'm done with lesson 49, although I may do so at some later point. Instead, I'm going to just continue on with volume 2 and finish up with Heisig, at which time I intend to begin with some L-R.
Edited by sheetz on 05 August 2007 at 4:23pm
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Nordlicht Triglot Groupie Germany Joined 6410 days ago 47 posts - 50 votes Speaks: German*, English, Latin Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
| Message 44 of 197 05 August 2007 at 4:41pm | IP Logged |
Thank you very much for the new link, sheetz!
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sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6374 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin
| Message 45 of 197 09 August 2007 at 7:20pm | IP Logged |
I've just reached a couple of major milestones in my studies. First I just completed the first volume of Assimil Japanese with Ease, and second I'm now two thirds of the way through Heisig.
I've also begun collecting books to begin L-R as soon as I'm done with Heisig, which should be around the end of this month. I'll probably be getting most of the books I've listed in the first post, and I might even buy one of the Harry Potter audiobooks at some point. But first I want to see how I do with the ones I have right now.
Finding more audiobooks online has become very difficult as I suspect I've already found virtually all the easy to locate ones. Finding more works of decent length with available translations will likely require much more effort as well as much better Japanese language skills on my part.
Edited by sheetz on 09 August 2007 at 7:21pm
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reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6444 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German
| Message 46 of 197 09 August 2007 at 9:54pm | IP Logged |
Congratulations and good luck with the L/R project. Great job on the audiobook page! There are two additional Heisig books concerning reading. Japanese characters will pose a rather specific problem. Breaking into Japanese literature, a rather carefully compiled book covers about half of the characters. This means that it is possible to go through a whole book without encountering even half of the characters in use (which can additionally have different readings). One of the strengths of reading while following the teacher's voice/audiobook with European languages is that it is perfectly possible to cover all the letters and a great number of sounds that certain letters and their combinations cover within one page or so. Roman letters reinforce each other and the sounds they represent very efficiently. The more phonetic a language the easier the job. Japanese will be tough. Perhaps learning the readings separately and then following up with the audiobook would be a better way to go.
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sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6374 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin
| Message 47 of 197 09 August 2007 at 10:37pm | IP Logged |
Well, ready or not, I'm going to go ahead with the L-R. LOL
Seriously, though, I think I will do ok. By that time I will be almost done with Assimil. And I'll start off by using the easier reading materials first. If you look at the transcript for "Le Petit Prince" there are virtually no kanji at all in it! Also the book of short stories by Kenji Miyazawa has furigana over most of the kanji. Come to think of it, if you look carefully, most of the Japanese transcripts I've linked to have furigana in parentheses following the less commonly used kanji.
Overall, I believe there's enough material for a lot of the readings and vocabulary to be reinforced substantially into my memory. Compare them to Breaking into Japanese Literature, which only has about 2 hours worth of audio in it.
The key point, however, is that trying to learn the readings via Heisig II would likely bore me to death and make this learning experience too unpleasant. So far I'm enjoying what I'm doing and I think the way I've outlined is the best way to keep me motivated.
Edited by sheetz on 09 August 2007 at 10:47pm
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reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6444 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German
| Message 48 of 197 09 August 2007 at 11:08pm | IP Logged |
That's a good plan. I do believe there is enough material there to go from beginner to advanced and there's no need to break your back and look for more. I did notice the furigana and was very pleased. Prior to looking up your links I only had a few children's stories (absolute beginner level no kanji at all) and Breaking into Japanese literature (which I think is a great book). The point I was trying to make is that it will take a whole lot of reading to learn and then reinforce the characters and readings that do not occur often. I will certainly be rooting for you. Just in case it does not work however it might be a good idea to copy and paste some really nice example sentences into mnemosyne.
Edited by reineke on 09 August 2007 at 11:09pm
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