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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 5984 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 41 of 82 03 June 2011 at 8:42pm | IP Logged |
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I think I've done a reasonable job of studying bits and pieces this week. I started looking at the Unicom N3 books for reading and listening comprehension and...it was challenging, particularly the listening. I'm so glad I'm not doing anything stupid like sitting a Japanese exam this year. I then did some work with the listening practice in Japanese for Busy People and it was nice (but probably lazy) to be able to understand most of it.
I've been doing quite a bit of reading too. I finished vol. 6 of よつばと and I'm quite distressed that I only have 4 more volumes of it to read. In my box of goodies from Japan I got the first vol. of クレヨンしんちゃん because it was listed on this website (from the people who created the graded readers which I love so very much) as being easier than most other manga and supposedly at the same level as the graded readers I've been using at the moment. So I started reading that this week and I think in terms of difficulty it's on a par with よつばと but the humour (and the artwork) is very crude! I think there are about 45 vols in existence though, so that should keep me in comprehensible (or reprehensible) input for quite some time. In a fit of madness I decided to get stuck into ハリー・ポッター last night. I listened to the audio while following along with the book, and it was tough! Considering that I would expect it to be a book 8 year olds would read, there wasn't that much furigana. And the recording was at quite a quick speed in places. If I didn't already know the story, I think it would have been impossible, but as it was I could fill in the gaps in the narrative for myself where I couldn't really follow the Japanese. I'll stick at it though. I think it might prove to be quite a good benchmark for progress. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5984 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 42 of 82 12 June 2011 at 12:51pm | IP Logged |
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So the 6WC is over, except perhaps for Western Samoa, so I guess this is my chance to reflect on what has happened over the 6 weeks. I'm pretty happy, and also kind of surprised, at the total number of hours I was able to put in, which added up to just short of 12 hours a week. For a full time worker with other commitments, I think this is a pretty reasonable commitment of time, if I keep that up I can't fail to make progress.
I think my biggest achievement is I managed to polish off the whole of ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石 this week. As I mentioned last week, it was definitely tough, however it was also definitely worth it. I have started to really get a feel for reading in Japanese. After finishing Harry Potter yesterday, I was pottering around in the evening and picked up one of the 青い鳥文庫 books I have, called 霧のむこうのふしぎな町 which I'd tried to start reading a couple of months ago but gave up about ten pages in. I finished the first chapter in about 45 minutes. Again, there are still gaps in my understanding but I had a much better idea of what was going on than I did two months ago and perhaps most importantly, I am keen to read the rest of the book. My approach for Harry Potter, and now for this new book, is that I am keen to read extensively, so no dictionary or note taking while I am reading. However, I find that what happens is over the course of a chapter or two I notice a couple of words that keep coming back and I can't quite figure out what they mean. I make a mental note and go to the dictionary later on and learn the words. So I have picked up things like 悲鳴, 囁く, 黙る which seem to really help hang a narrative together, particularly in books for 8 year olds! I'm also getting a better sense of certain conjunction words like すると、それで、ただ、ただし which the N3 reading book was trying to teach, but perhaps they are better learned from children's novels after all. I think I would like to read Harry Potter again, but I would like to wait a few months for the dust to settle and I can see how much I have progressed. In the mean time, there is plenty more Japanese to be read. I think the other key thing to note over the past 6 weeks is I have improved my relationship with Anki. When I started the challenge I tried to tag my tasks quite honestly and thoroughly, but I really wanted to make sure that #Anki was not the biggest drain on my time. The fact that my extensive reading really took off saved me from what could have turned into a 6 Week Anki Challenge! I had to take a 3 day break from Anki when I was snowed under with work for my masters degree and when I came back to mountains of reviews I decided that enough was enough, deleted a load of decks and pretty much started from scratch. Now I am using Anki pretty much solely to learn kanji, simply because you can get instant feedback on whether you can pronounce a word correctly with a flashcard, which you cannot get from a text with no furigana. I have started using Kanji in Context again from the beginning, but this time making use of the workbook, which I should have been doing all along! I have set up a deck which operates a little bit like the system on readthekanji.com - so I add the example sentence with the word I am testing underlined, and it is my job to type in the correct reading. When I input the cards in the first place I don't see it as a mere data entry exercise (otherwise it would drive me mad), but I use it as a chance to make sure I understand the sentence, pick up any interesting new vocabulary or grammar points that I think I ought to study (which I then do separately). So I study a whole sentence to start with, which makes the data entry period actually feel like real and useful study, but then the Anki reviews are solely on whether I can read one word. It seems to be working for me for now. I hope the rest of the TAC will incorporate much less Anki and much more fun stuff. I am also aware that while my reading is beginning to take off (yay!) my production is still in the doldrums. I have started going back over some of the audio drills in Genki II and some of the written exercises in Japanese for Everyone as some useful revision and practice using the language. It's not as ideal as a regular chat with a real Japanese person however it is much easier to arrange. I think in the whole 6WC I only managed one Skype conversation with my exchange partner, thanks to us both being adults with busy lives operating across a 8-9 hour time difference. But we should be speaking again this afternoon. I'll have to see whether Harry Potter has positively influenced my conversational ability too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5984 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 43 of 82 18 June 2011 at 7:51pm | IP Logged |
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Following the end of the 6WC last week, I have had bit of a reality check when it comes to time available to me for self study. I was quite self-congratulatory about my 12 hours a week for a while, until I started to think about how I could actually use those hours. If I were to spend half that time doing 多読, I would be left with 6 hours for formal study. This would cover 15 mins a day Anki reviews, and then per week perhaps two chapters of KiC and a couple of JPod101 podcasts and maybe a tiny bit of supplemental grammar. Having looked back at the very first post of my log, I have set out a revised, and much simpler plan of action below:
Kanji in Context I have just finished Chapter 7 in the workbook, following my new approach of "doing it properly". Everything the reviews say is true: it's a fantastic resource, it's not for beginners, and you need to use the workbook and the reference book together. It is such a rich source of vocabulary and useage, I no longer care if it takes me several months, or even years, to supposedly learn 2,000 kanji. I still think I will be reading novels without furigana much sooner than this. JapanesePod101 I will continue listening to podcasts as and when I find the time and making sure to review things if I find a lesson a bit tricky, although recently it's not been so bad. I am about two thirds through Beginner Season 1 and they are doing an interesting mini series on the differences between male and female speech. 完全マスター３級 I'm back to using this book. I went through Part I (first 40 grammar points covers a lot of modal verbs etc) by putting all the example sentences in Anki and reviewing. Well, that was a waste of time. I have deleted the deck, but have gone straight onto Part II (which covers passive, causative, potential, giving and receiving so very useful revision for me). Instead of flashcards, I am taking my own notes in a nice neat notebook so I can revise as and when I feel like it. And of course, revision also includes running through the practice exercises. Extensive Reading I have signed up for the tadoku challenge in July. I see that in previous challenges, some people manage to log up to 5,000 pages. Well, that's not going to happen here, but if I manage 1,000 pages I will be very pleased. I have stocked up on graded readers for elementary school kids and some more Aoi Tori Bunko books. I didn't realise before, but these are graded too. 初級 and 中級 level seems to have almost all furigana, but 上級 has less (I guess it assumes you have the kanji knowledge of an average Japanese 10 year old). I seem to have been holding back on reading this last week though. I still read a bit of クレヨンしんちゃん and a bit of a graded reader, but I think I am scared I will run out of "easy" reads before the challenge starts! Even though I know that realistically this won't happen and even if it did I could order more. It's funny how sometimes things that are supposed to motivate you end up being a bit counterproductive but I suppose a couple of weeks doing a little more study and a little less reading won't do too much harm in the long run. Language Exchange Having done two Skype exchanges since last week, I can confirm that my conversational skills are still not great. But when my partner uses Japanese I can understand an awful lot more of what he says. My partner is also helping me with lots of short words and phrases which help to move a conversation along (such as many different ways of saying "yes", "no", or "I agree") so I am actively trying to make use of these as well. He is also incredibly good at explaining things when my dictionaries and grammar books fail. I'm so glad to have finally found such a helpful exchange partner. Of course, I still feel like I want to do more, but I have to be realistic about the time available to me. If I have a particularly quiet week, I can always do some other things, but I will try not to expect myself to. I was very disappointed to see that Yahoo Kids News is going to be discontinued at the end of June. Normal Japanese news articles are so hard to read, I really will miss the kid's versions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5984 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 44 of 82 26 June 2011 at 11:15pm | IP Logged |
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Well I haven't done as much this week as I hoped I might. Sometimes life gets in the way when you don't really expect it to.
I am half way through Chapter 9 of Kanji in Context. I did not listen to any JapanesePod101 this week. I revised the causative and causative-passive this week. Still not very comfortable with it, particularly getting the right particles, but I guess it just needs lots more practice. After worrying that I would run out of easy reads for tadoku, I decided to start reading something a bit harder (that is, not much furigana included) and have been reading a book called いもうと物語. It is about a girl growing up in Hokkaido in the 1960s, and was on a reading list I found recommended to Japanese middle school students and which I've now rather unhelpfully lost the link to, but I will post it here if I ever find it again. I've also gone back to watching a few eps of Azumanga Daioh, without subtitles, and was rather pleased to notice that I can understand an awful lot more of the dialogue than I could last time I watched it, about a year ago. I guess I have made progress after all then! Yesterday my ISP lost the internet for the whole day, meaning that I had to cancel my weekly Skype exchange, so I was quite annoyed about that. Indeed, sometimes life really does get in the way... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5984 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 45 of 82 01 July 2011 at 10:03pm | IP Logged |
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So today I started to get stuck in to the tadoku challenge. I have managed to pick up a reasonable collection over the last couple of months so I don't think I will run out of anything to read. I started today with a few chapters of ちいさいモモちゃん, a rather whimsical book about a little girl called モモちゃん and her cat プー. They are marked as 初級 level and seem to be just about right for me. I don't understand everything but I can still read reasonably comfortably and quickly and I seem to understand the main points of the story. Every so often I get this wonderful feeling of "wow, I'm really reading Japanese!"
I plan to mainly stick to books that come with full furigana, primarily the １０分で読める graded readers for Japanese elementary school kids and the 青い鳥文庫 books at 初級 and 中級 level I have collected. I read a couple of news articles on Yomiuri today to see if this would be useful material for tadoku. Now that Yahoo Kids News has closed for good I thought I would have a go with an adult version instead but I don't think my vocabulary is quite ready yet. Perhaps I need to cover a few more chapters of Kanji in Context (currently up to chapter 10...of 143)! After my internet blackout last weekend I finally decided to invest in a smartphone with Android. I downloaded AEdict which has turned out to be the most convenient Japanese dictionary solution I've found so far (perhaps bad timing right before tadoku though). I've also put AnkiDroid on there, which seems to have been quite liberating. Rather than trying to burn through a load of reviews in one go on the computer in the evening, I am doing a few minutes here and there, in my lunchbreak or on the bus ride home. I am making use of time that I didn't feel I had before but also freeing up study time in the evening to concentrate on more interesting things. I actually feel like this tiny, simple little device is going to be revolutionary, in a tiny and simple way! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5984 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 46 of 82 11 July 2011 at 12:13am | IP Logged |
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I guess I'm not really in the zone for tadoku after all at the moment. But there are still 3 weeks left so maybe I can recover something. I'm not really into playing computer games and I find watching TV with Japanese subs to be rather annoying (or at least, I haven't found a show I really like which happens to have Japanese subs available) so tadoku for me is limited to books, which is great when I am in a real mood for reading, but at the moment I am not. I would actually rather study a bit of grammar and vocab at the moment, so that is what I have mainly been doing. I have gone back to my Kanzen Master 3kyuu grammar book, I've also been reviewing some stuff in Japanese for Busy People, and flicking through things like The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs and Basic Connections. It's all full of useful stuff, but I'm still not sure how to learn any of it!! I am experimenting a little bit with Anki (yet again) but have not reached any firm conclusions to report here yet.
I did enjoy another lengthy Skype language exchange today although as usual I ended up talking more about Japanese rather than in Japanese (always the down side to having a partner who is much better in your native language than you are in theirs). But altogether this week has felt a bit flat in terms of Japanese. I was feeling a bit down about it but actually most of my efforts seem to fluctuate. The problem is when I expect my performance at my peak to be the standard throughout and when I don't match this standard the rest of the time, I create problems for myself that don't actually exist. When I just relax and treat Japanese as a geeky hobby, I seem to get my best results (and best enjoyment) out of it, however I never seem to learn from this! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5984 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 47 of 82 16 July 2011 at 1:53pm | IP Logged |
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Still no tadoku activity. It's funny how the 6WC was very motivational, but I've reached a point with tadoku that I'm just not interested. I know I've browsed a few news sites this week but I couldn't be bothered to count pages and log them. I guess the system is not working for me.
However, tracking time still seems to be quite a neat little motivator for me. I'd tried to do this previously and found it distracting, but it worked quite well during the 6WC (maybe because I have a better idea of how I like to study now) so I've set up a little spreadsheet to track time (at least until it stops being motivational) and I do still quite like to challenge myself to spend more time on stuff that isn't Anki. I can report that since last Sunday I have spent just over 6 hours studying, split mainly between Anki, JapanesePod101, the Kanzen Master 3kyuu grammar book and the mighty Kanji in Context. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5984 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 48 of 82 23 July 2011 at 9:52am | IP Logged |
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I'm still keeping up my little time tracking spreadsheet and it's still working very nicely for me. I managed to double my study time this week to 12 hours 40 minutes. Yay!
Last weekend I did the example test questions on the JLPT website for levels N4 and N3 and I gave up with N2 after the first 8 questions as I only got half of them right and most of those were just lucky guesses thanks to the multiple choice system. The good news is I sailed through the N4 questions and most of the N3 questions were also ok but it seems I have a marked weakness in vocabulary - I think this is a problem for many English speakers once they hit the intermediate phase of Japanese and it seems that a couple of my friends at a similar stage in their language learning to me have experienced the same. I picked up the Nihongo Soumatome N3 vocabulary book that had been gathering dust on my bookshelf and have been working through it all week as directed (two pages per day). It is too early to tell whether it has actually helped, but I plan to use it over the six week period it is set out to cover, and will report back at the end! I also made an amazing discovery this week, the NHK 高校講座 which is basically a series of TV or radio courses covering elements of the Japanese High School curriculum. You can stream the audio and video directly from the website http://www.nhk.or.jp/kokokoza/ The particularly great thing is that for the TV courses, if you click the "内容を見る" button next to the video window, it will bring up a very close transcript of the show. It doesn't include any banter between the hosts, and sometimes they deviate from the script a little bit, but all the important information is there. I have started following the 地理 course and the 地学 course and for each episode I read the notes first, using rikaikun to look up any vocab I don't know/can't read. Key technical words tend to be repeated a lot (I guess because these are the concepts they are trying to teach) so it's easy to pick up what I need to listen out for. I then watch the show. I'm not taking notes or using Anki or anything silly like that, I'm just enjoying the process of learning about things like galaxy formation and plate tectonics through the medium of Japanese! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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