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TAC 2011 Team あ g-bod and 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 5981 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 9 of 82 15 January 2011 at 2:48pm | IP Logged |
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Assignment was completed and submitted yesterday. It turned out to be a lot more
involved than I was expecting (and I knew it would be big) so I ended up feeling pretty burned out, not sleeping enough and generally grumpy. Even now when it has been submitted and I should forget about it, it is still occupying my thoughts far too much. I'm so single minded! Working full time and studying part time together is hard - and then I go and complicate things with this Japanese nonsense! Speaking of Japanese nonsense, it should now be business as usual for a few weeks, so I'm hoping to be able to show off next week about how amazing I've been. For now I can report: Kanji in Context After a pause, I picked this back up yesterday. Up to kanji number 310, and have added 卒 and 趣 to my arsenal so I can now write 日本語は趣味だけで、卒業することは一番大 切です (yes, I have to keep reminding myself). I intend to take a look at the workbook this afternoon. Japanese for Busy People Nothing to report Grammar - 完全マスター Nothing to report Extensive Reading Nothing to report, even よつばちゃん was put on hold this week Listening Practice Good intentions to listen while studying didn't materialise. Nothing to report. Writing Nothing to report yet - trying to motivate myself to get back onto lang-8. Speaking Did my first skype exchange this morning since before Christmas. Learned a bit about Japanese New Year traditions, which was interesting. I was particularly taken by the concept of 忘年会 - a drinking party with the aim of forgetting the last year. I had an awful 2010, I think a 忘年会 would have helped immensely! After a lot of thought (or at least a lot of getting behind on my reviews) I decided to drop my sentences deck for good. With exposure to Japanese elsewhere, it seems pretty unnecessary and time consuming. I only started it because of AJATT, which is not as great as some people claim, and only continued it because after you have been maintaining a deck for a long time it can be hard to let go and admit that this time was actually probably wasted. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5981 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 10 of 82 22 January 2011 at 11:54am | IP Logged |
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It feels so good to have spare time for Japanese again! Of course, I don't have as much time as I do in my fantasies because I still have to do stupid things like going to work, but I think I'm making progress of sorts again.
Kanji in Context I have now worked through the reference book up to kanji no. 350, meaning I covered a whole 40 kanji last week, finishing off part 2. Of course, most of these kanji are already familiar to me but new additions are 橋 犬 悲 苦 辛 甘 退 and 屈 and honestly, I don't know how I've managed without them. Part 3 of the book seems to open with a lot of new kanji so I don't think I will be able to cover it at such a rate in future but I am hoping to be able to cover around 20 a week. I have also started working with the workbooks at long last. I think that having a delay between drilling reading and writing of words through flashcards and then approaching the sentences is actually helping me because it means that I am not focussing on whether I can pronounce a word in the example sentences, but rather whether I can understand it. All I am doing is working through the sentences and making sure I understand them, clarifying with a dictionary or grammar if I don't, and if I am still confused I make a note and query with one of my exchange partners when they are available. I am also trying to write out each of the sentences neatly in a nice notebook to try and reinforce them. I am only just halfway through chapter 2 so it's going to take me a long time! Japanese for Busy People Nothing to report - I'm not quite ready to drop this yet but for now my will to do anything with it is weak. Grammar - 完全マスター At long last I started working with my 完全マスター grammar book this week. As it is for the old JLPT ３級 syllabus it is all revision so far, but that's no bad thing. I have a nice new notebook specifically to use for this and again, I am copying out the example sentences and making sure I understand them, before doing the relevant exercises. This week I have been revising constructions use the -masu stem of verbs such as ～かた、～やすい、～にくい、～たい、～な がら. It's revision, but it is relevant and very, very useful. Extensive Reading よつばと is my bedtime reading now. I have also read a couple of the short stories from the Japanese Graded Reader Level 3 Volume 1, complete with audio recordings. I really love this series. Listening Practice I am listening to NHK Radio 594 Tokyo right now thanks to KeyHole TV. I'm getting quite good at picking out the weather forecast. A few months ago I listened to a JapanesePod101 Beginner podcast about the weather forecast and it was surprisingly close to the real thing. I was listening to TBS Radio last night and they were talking about the city where I live! However, my Japanese is not good enough to make up for the fact that the audio stream kept skipping so I'm not quite sure what they were talking about, I think it was to do with rugby. I've also watched a couple of episodes of some TV drama but nothing worth writing in detail about! Writing Still nothing to report here. Speaking After everything was put on hiatus over Christmas I have made contact again with my Skype exchange partners and spent a couple of hours talking to them last weekend, and intend to do the same this weekend. I have noticed that "Intensive Reading" seems to have dropped off my list entirely. I think perhaps I will edit my goals, and maybe just combine into one "reading" category. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5981 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 11 of 82 29 January 2011 at 1:39pm | IP Logged |
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It seems like Team あ has fallen a little flat lately but if any of you need some external motivation or a just friendly pat on the back, feel free to get in touch!
It feels like last weekend was so long ago already. Japanese has been studied this week, but I feel like I could be doing more, and I'm not sure if I am making the best use of my time. I think I'm getting a little too preoccupied by kanji. However, I did a little count of which jouyou kanji I could both confidently write and recall some associated vocabulary for, and the grand total was 517! So I passed the 500 mark without even noticing, thanks mainly to the hundreds of different books I have used. My "official" goal is to double that this year, however my preoccupied self is still pushing to try and cover the whole jouyou even though I know this is not the most balanced approach, and I am fighting myself over it right now. Kanji in Context I have studied up to kanji number 375 this week. I haven't looked at the workbooks though. I really need to do this. The first two parts aren't too bad because most of the vocabulary and kanji were pretty familiar from the reference book anyway, but now I am on part three there is a lot of new material and I really need to ground myself with some context. Japanese for Busy People Last weekend I wasted a lot of free time but one thing I did do was edit down all the audio for JfBP II in Audacity to cut out all the English and I am left with half an hour of dialogues for the whole book which is proving to be quite useful review material. I had never realised how annoying and off-putting the English announcements were. I worked through part of Chapter 3 in more detail this week as well. The grammar is nothing new but I am surprised at how much useful new vocabulary I am picking up from it. The only thing I don't like about this series is how they take so long to start using kanji - if they reprinted with kanji and furigana throughout I think I would rate it much higher, as the explanations on language use and quality of the audio is fantastic but for reading passages it is not so good. At least it's not in romaji though. Grammar - 完全マスター I moved on to て形 forms this week and with review of ている and てある I realised I have quite a problem with transitive and intransitive verbs. I think I understand how each one functions quite differently but I have to think long and hard about which verb is which. I somehow have the sentence ボールを落とすと落ちる burned into my brain (I think it might be from Tae Kim) which I think is a neat way of remembering those two verbs and 開く and 開ける are fine too, thanks, of all things, to learning 開いています as a set phrase from Pimsleur years ago, but for all other pairs of verbs I really have to think hard to get the right one and I often make mistakes. Any suggestions on improving this would be much appreciated. Reading I feel I haven't read enough this week. I ordered a couple of weekly magazines from the Japan Centre in London and was a bit put off about how little I could actually understand. I think this is why I am having a bit of a kanji crisis right now! Listening Practice I have been listening to TBS Radio a lot this week. I like the fact that if I tune in after about 9pm at night I get the breakfast programmes from Japan! I'm getting more confident at listening to the weather forecast of all things. I can pick out the financial news sections thanks to some of the vocabulary (like 円高ドル安) but I find it hard to follow, although the same might be said for financial news in English too. I have also managed to pick out news stories on major events this week, such as the bombing at the airport in Russia. It's kind of depressing, given the subject matter, but it also feels like my listening is really making some progress now. I also listened to a couple of JapanesePod101 podcasts. There are a couple in the "Beginner" series devoted to understanding announcements on mobile phone messaging systems...pretty useful stuff if you are living in Japan I suppose but the language used is definitely not a "beginner" level (although I guess if you needed it to function you could just memorise as set phrases). Writing Still nothing to report here. Speaking I'm still managing to speak to a couple of people on skype every weekend. We speak English too so overall I think my Japanese speaking practice is a little less than an hour a week, but it is practice nevertheless. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5981 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 12 of 82 05 February 2011 at 12:57pm | IP Logged |
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This week has gone from greatly motivated to greatly unmotivated as I seem to have picked up a nasty cough-cold-burning eyes type of virus, so I shall keep this update brief.
Kanji in Context Up to kanji no. 410 in the book, the kanji I "know" is now up to 534 so I learned 17 brand new kanji this week. Japanese for Busy People In a moment of madness I signed up for a "Februarathon", pledged to complete JfBP 2 and 3 in a month, ploughed through Chapter 3 and then got sick. Grammar - 完全マスター No progress Reading No progress Listening Practice Still listening to the radio, a couple of random Japanese podcasts which were on my phone and watched a couple of Ghibli films. With subtitles for the benefit of monolingual husband! Writing Still nothing to report here. Speaking Lots of good skype sessions last weekend, but I've cancelled most this weekend as I'm probably not very pleasant to listen to right now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5981 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 13 of 82 12 February 2011 at 11:30am | IP Logged |
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Another week, another update.
Kanji in Context Up to kanji no 440 now, my total kanji count is now around 555 so that's 21 brand new kanji! Except it doesn't feel like kanji such as 最 or 初 are really brand new, but at least I can confidently write them now as well. I've realised I've been a bit of a fool when it comes to the workbook. I was really overworking it trying to find ideas of how to use it and yet this week I had a lightbulb moment in that the most important thing with a huge list of example sentences is to read them and make sure I understand them. So I have been taking two chapters a day and working through them, referring to a dictionary or grammar where necessary and taking notes to hassle my Skype partners on things I still don't really understand. No flashcards and no writing things out (except the notes on problem areas). I think the problem is that the language in the workbooks starts well into an intermediate level, so it can feel a bit intimidating at first but quite frankly, I should be working to that level anyway. There does seem to be quite a bit of repetition though and I can see how with regularly study it should all start to fit into place. If important things still don't stick I may pull the flashcards out again but I'm in no hurry to. Japanese for Busy People Still no progress, despite my flurry of enthusiasm two weeks ago. I'm not really in a textbook mood right now (or maybe I'm making excuses). Grammar - 完全マスター No progress Reading No progress Listening Practice Still the same mix of TBS radio and random podcasts. Writing Still nothing to report here. Speaking I got one session in Skype last weekend but as I was feeling pretty rubbish the whole time I didn't get much out of it and I doubt my partner did either, sadly. I'm feeling much healthier this weekend though and looking forward to catching up properly on Skype. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lycan Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 5030 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 14 of 82 17 February 2011 at 5:38pm | IP Logged |
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Hey good going
after reading your posts I decided to start with ぞつばとas well. Althought i have to look up a lot of words, the grammar is really simple most of the times. Get better soon! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5981 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 15 of 82 19 February 2011 at 1:42pm | IP Logged |
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Lycan - thanks for the post. I have no idea why よつばと is so good for beginners but I started reading it when I'd only been studying for a few months and could get something out of it (including some of the jokes) where any other reading material just left me feeling frustrated. Most importantly, I didn't feel like I had to reach for the dictionary all the time because even the bits I didn't understand were not enough to interrupt my reading.
Now for my update... Kanji in Context Now up to kanji no. 470 in the book, bringing my overall knowledge to around 574 characters. Looking forward to hitting 600 some time soon, it feels like a milestone of sorts. Speaking of milestones, my anki deck of kanji words now contains over 3000 entries. I'm sure this is meaningless, but it feels like an impressive number. Speaking I'm back on form and back on Skype now. Had a great chat this morning about breakfast and driving licenses among other things. I love talking about transport, it's my job after all. Last week I queried some things I didn't quite understand in my Kanji in Context workbook and heard the words I really don't want to hear "well, it means this, but it's not very natural..." I think I need to get a second opinion on this...simply because I caught myself out once, a couple of years ago IMing a Japanese guy I've since lost contact with. He asked me "what does xxx mean" (I forget the phrase now) so I explained and then said it didn't sound natural... and then he pointed out that I'd used that exact phrase earlier in the conversation. It was there in the log, plain to see. Sometimes things out of context are enough to sound strange. Either that or the book is rubbish (and perhaps I have strange English after all), but I'll work that one out soon enough. Everything Else So I'm on a roll with drilling kanji, and I'm getting in a little bit of skype practice because the pressure of not letting down other people is enough to keep me going, but I'm not doing much of anything else. I know exactly what I need to do, and I have the resources sat on my bookshelf waiting, I'm just not very motivated to sit with a book right now. I need to get out of this rut because otherwise all the kanji drilling I'm doing will go to waste as flashcards are only preparation for seeing things in the wild. I guess occasional lapses in motivation are only natural so I'm just going to tell myself off publicly here and hopefully get more stuff done for next week! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6785 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 16 of 82 22 February 2011 at 11:28am | IP Logged |
The bird recommends a strong finish to February. Keep at! (When something has a beak, I usually do what it says. I value my eyes.) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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