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TAC 2011 Team あ g-bod and 日本語 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 33 of 82 08 April 2011 at 9:52pm | IP Logged |
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Your enthusiasm is communicable! Now, I'm looking forward to my weekend of study :)
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| 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 34 of 82 21 April 2011 at 10:41pm | IP Logged |
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I feel like I've gone off the boil a bit with Japanese over the past couple of weeks. I didn't even do a log update last weekend, so I thought I'd write one now instead.
I did promise an update on some of the goodies I got from Amazon Japan the other week. I got volumes 9 and 10 to add to my よつばと collection. I also got a copy of the novel インザ・ミソスープ which I own in English translation, and read a few years ago before I started my Japanese adventure. Having flicked through a few pages, the language seems a lot easier than NHKにようこそ, which I haven't read much more of since my last post, so I'm tempted to switch for my first full novel experience. I also picked up a couple of children's books published by 青い鳥文庫. I think they are aimed at middle and upper year 小学生. The big thing for me is that the language is much more standard than that used in books for younger children, but everything comes with furigana which means I am much more happy to leave the dictionary on the shelf and do the whole context thing with unknown words. My other purchase was a pair of books to help with learning to read kanji. Between them, all 1006 elementary school kanji are given with an example sentence for each which uses all the main readings school children are expected to learn. The books are called 1行読んでおぼえる小学生必修1006漢字. I'm on holiday now for a week and a half and it feels like the first proper holiday I've had for over a year (I had leave last year but I was either moving house, doing coursework or grieving so it wasn't much of a holiday). I'm not sure how or if I will balance relaxing with Japanese. I have borrowed a couple of Japanese films from the library, so I need to watch them before they are due back on Saturday. If the weather turns I will probably watch rather a lot of drama, but while the sun is shining it seems like a waste to be inside... 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 35 of 82 24 April 2011 at 12:57pm | IP Logged |
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I watched two Japanese films on Friday night. Instant Swamp, which I thought was rather silly but still left me feeling quite warm, and then All About Lily Chou-Chou which, if it wasn't for the fact that it was still Japanese practice, I think I would have turned off half way through - it wasn't my thing at all!
I have decided to switch my novel reading from NHKにようこそ to インザ・ミソスープ as I can generally follow what is happening in the latter without recourse to a dictionary. I have also noticed how certain key words tend to be repeated which means I can target what I do look up, but not worry about it if I don't want to turn it into a study exercise. 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 36 of 82 30 April 2011 at 10:42pm | IP Logged |
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Well another month is nearly over and so, it seems, is my holiday. As predicted, not much study occured as I had more important things to do. I've been idly flicking through "Making Out in Japanese" which contains a surprising number of explanations for things I seem to hear a lot on dramas and suchlike. Perhaps it is not so trashy as the name suggests (it even goes so far as to present phrases in Japanese script along with the romanisation, after all).
I decided at the start of my holiday that it might be a good idea to read through the introductory pages on Japanese Grammar in the Basic, Intermediate and Advanced Dictionaries. I got through the Basic one on a sunny afternoon in the back garden which was quite helpful reinforcement for me, but lost the will to continue through the Intermediate volume. These dictionaries are very comprehensive with lots of explanations and examples, but the choice of English terminology to describe the language does not lend itself to leisurely reading. However, it did provide a timely reminder of a general, and perhaps obvious principle of Japanese, which is that the modifier always comes before the modified. Which can be quite helpful when trying to break apart lengthy sentences in order to work out who is doing what, where (and with what) to who. I have decided I need to get on with my kanji again. I'm still turning back to flashcards because although it's boring and painful, it still seems an efficient method to approach the one aspect of Japanese which does seem to boil down to rote memorisation. I am trying to lessen the load a bit this time though. I am still keeping my old deck going to practice writing only, to which I shall only add cards for one word representative of each of the main readings for that kanji (as given in Kanji in Context). I have also found that lumping all the vocabulary with the same kanji together helps reinforce itself, so I have set up a fresh deck to test reading only, in which I'm putting (for now) all the example words in Kanji in Context, plus anything else that keeps popping up and demanding to be read. I'm sure I will tumble again into a pit of kanji despair in another month or two. I think this is just part of the process. I had a couple of Skype voicechats today. The first was with my regular partner who helped me understand the difference between としては and にしては, which I'm sure will be useful. The second was with a friend who I usually default to English with but he forced me to speak Japanese this time and didn't hold back at all with his Japanese, which meant I was lucky to catch the gist of anything he said. It was really frustrating but utterly necessary - I get the sense that at least he is using real Japanese with me. And I did learn a few more words despite the stress of the whole thing! 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 37 of 82 08 May 2011 at 1:32pm | IP Logged |
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So it seems I signed up to the 6 Week Challenge, after reading Arekkusu and Luai_Lashire's logs about the same. I was a few days late but managed to get a good start until yesterday when it all fell apart. I think my husband is getting quite jealous of Japanese; he insisted I spent the day with him instead.
My main motivation for joining the challenge was that the Twitterbot seems to offer a very simple way to track how much time I am spending on Japanese. I seem to have an ongoing issue about how much time I spend on Anki reviews rather than doing other things so I will be interested to see how things really tally up at the end of the period. I am also making more of an effort at looking at how I can fit Japanese into other gaps I have in the day, rather than set study periods. I have started taking よつばと to work and reading in my lunch breaks. If I am struggling to get to sleep at night, I listen to a podcast. 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 38 of 82 14 May 2011 at 9:09pm | IP Logged |
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The 6 Week Challenge has been an interesting experience so far. In my first week I managed to clock some 15 hours of study and for the first time in a long time I started to feel like I was understanding that little bit more when reading or listening to things. It's a good feeling.
But...life is still getting in the way. I have the final work to do to finish this stupid group project I am doing at university. It has been a substantial research project, pretty interesting in its own way but I think it will make some demands on my time over the next couple of weeks. I did nothing Japanese yesterday and today I have only done Anki reviews and already I can see my name slipping down the rankings. I have to tell myself not to be competitive and single minded, job comes first, then school, then friends and family, and Japanese fits into the gaps. 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 39 of 82 21 May 2011 at 4:17pm | IP Logged |
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I'm finding the 6WC is still very motivational for me. Even though I've had quite a tough week with work and university, I even dropped my Anki reviews for three whole days but thanks to plenty of quality time with some good TV dramas I'm still getting satisfaction from putting the hours in.
The three day pause on Anki has caused me once again to reflect and reconsider what I am doing with it. I deleted my kanji writing deck for good, after accumulating nearly 200 overdue reviews, I just realised the load was too much and I need to be able to take the odd holiday without an Anki meltdown! I've really started getting into the whole extensive reading thing. I've been dipping into よつばと for a while now and realised that my comprehension has gone from: getting the jist with the help of the pictures, to understanding a lot but missing out on a few sentences and words, to understanding almost everything and generally being able to figure out the meaning of new words from the context only. I've never really used a dictionary with this manga, unless a particular word kept cropping up and it seemed important but I couldn't figure it out, and that just doesn't seem to happen any more. A couple of years ago I wanted to find out a bit about Japanese history and one of my exchange partners at the time suggested I read a 2 vol. どらえもん manga I think is aimed at elementary school students preparing for history exams. I bought it, flicked through it, decided it was too hard and it's been languishing on the book case ever since. Last Sunday in my now regular Skype language exchange we were talking in the English part about some famous Japanese shoguns, and I realised that most of them I had never heard of. I went back to this manga and tried to intensively read it and it took me an hour to get through two pages. The next night I was lazing around on the sofa and picked it up again, but this time I couldn't be bothered to go and find my dictionary. A few times I thought it was too hard and was about to give up but I persisted until the end of the first chapter and then realised that I had actually got the jist of it with the help of the pictures, I had actually managed to figure out the meaning of some of the words from the context, I had actually learned a little something about prehistoric Japan and I even got some of the (rather lame) jokes. I'm now 4 chapters in and feeling rather pleased with myself (although よつばと is still a much easier read and the jokes are actually funny). I've been thinking a lot about my Japanese goals, particularly now things are wrapping up on my university course. I still have a dissertation to write but now the taught part of my course is over it should be easier to find time for Japanese without feeling guilty. I think all the time I've really wanted to be able to read Japanese. In fact I've wanted to be able to read Japanese ever since, in my early teens, I watched a documentary about a Japanese high schooler showing her cramming kanji at night school... I know speaking is important and I also accept that it's something which doesn't come easy to me, which means I need to push myself here, but this doesn't detract from the fact that I really want to read Japanese. I think perhaps a nice goal would be that I will be reading contemporary novels (even if it's something straightforward like a Banana Yoshimoto one) comfortably within 12 months. Languishing in the lower intermediate stage as I am, I think this is something that I can't quite do yet, but I think it is also achievable with some structured study of kanji, vocabulary and grammar, accompanied by plenty of extensive reading. I will let you know how I get on. 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 40 of 82 28 May 2011 at 2:47pm | IP Logged |
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OK, so this week I spent rather a lot more time on university work (not to mention the day job) than I thought would be the case, so Japanese has been limited on some days to just 10-15 minutes of Anki reviews. It's amazing how quickly you start to slip down the 6WC rankings when life gets in the way!
Anyway, in the post today I got a box full of Japanese books I ordered earlier in the week, including a couple of graded readers aimed towards １年生 and ２年生 and, finally, I caved and got the first Harry Potter in translation. I've already acquired the audio so I think it will be a nice one to move onto once I have finished with all the readers I have for Japanese learners which came with audio too. Apart from Anki and a bit of reading (but not as much as I would have liked) I have studied a bit of basic grammar which I should have got the hang of by now but hadn't, like ～ところだ (which I've now started using) and ～ずに(which I want to use but still can't conjugate in my head quickly enough!) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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