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TAC 2011 Team あ g-bod and 日本語 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5830 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 49 of 82 23 July 2011 at 3:01pm | IP Logged |
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Vocabulary isn't really so hard if you find the right approach for yourself. Last year it was the main staple of my
studies, and I'm definitely way ahead of where most people would be at my level, in terms of vocabulary. Combining the structured course in the book with the more free-form style of learning from the NHK broadcasts sounds like a great approach to me! Those shows really sound like an excellent resource, I will have to check them out as well. :) Galaxy formation is a very interesting topic! 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 50 of 82 23 July 2011 at 6:26pm | IP Logged |
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What kind of techniques and resources did you use for your vocab studies last year?
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| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5830 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 51 of 82 23 July 2011 at 10:17pm | IP Logged |
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Mostly Smart.FM, which not everyone likes but which suited me very well. Sadly they've changed over exclusively to
their new app, which is crap, and gone paywall, so I no longer use it. Instead I've been learning new vocabulary by writing a lot and using Anki. It's not quite as effective I think. If you're interested in using Smart.FM's core 2000 or 10000 wordlists, however, they can be found various places online, including as pre-made anki decks. The other big thing was that I really strained to hear familiar words when I listened to Japanese. Most of the vocabulary I learned that year that actually stuck with me is stuff that I heard later, even if only one or two times, in a native context. Whenever I heard a word I'd never made out before, there was such a huge surge of delight, it really provided the cement needed to keep it in my memory forever. I can see how finding material that uses your words would get more challenging as the words become more advanced and specific, however. Sorry I'm not of much help. ^_^; 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5186 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 52 of 82 30 July 2011 at 5:54am | IP Logged |
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I think if I reply here then it subscribes me to your thread. Just dropping in. I wish I were at the intermediate level in Japanese. In terms of vocabulary I find the spaced repetition flashcard method seems to work. Of course this is the meat and potatoes of my Japanese studying so probably anything you spend enough time at is going to get at least some results.
Regarding what Luai said - From studying other languages I will agree that seeing a word I've already tried to learn used in real life is awesome and really solidifies the word in my vocabulary. I've had this on a few occasions watching Japanese anime but my Japanese is so basic that it doesn't happen too often. If you can read Japanese I think that is a great way to increase you vocabulary since you read at your own pace and can look stuff up as you go (if you want). 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 53 of 82 30 July 2011 at 5:32pm | IP Logged |
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Hey Kraemder, thanks for dropping by. I've been doing this Japanese nonsense for over three years now so if I hadn't reached the heady stages of intermediateness by now there would be a problem. But I still can consider myself no more than lower intermediate and although my reading skills have improved somewhat my conversational skills are still rubbish. Which is why it is maybe still good for me to keep this log!
This week my time available for study was cut short considerably by me being sick over the weekend and then having a very busy week at work (when I was already tired from having been sick). It happens. I clocked up around 3 and a half hours study for the whole week, including an hour on Kanji in Context, just under an hour on the NHK Kokokoza site, a little bit of reading and my Anki reviews. I decided to drop the Nihongo Soumatome N3 vocabulary book already. I think it would make a great revision resource if you were preparing for the test itself, with plenty of practice questions, but it's not so great for learning a load of vocabulary from. There are too many new words and not enough context. So instead I am sticking with the amazing Kanji in Context and have started to throw in bits from the adverb section of The Handbook of Japanese Adverbs, which gives example sentences for over 200 different adverbs which should be a bit of a vocabulary boost for me, particularly for non-kanji vocabulary. Over the past few weeks I have been experimenting with and reorganising my Anki decks and have finally settled on a system I'm happy with. I have three decks now. One called "words" which tests single words written in kanji, the main test being whether I can recognise the kanji and sound out the words. I'm not worrying too much about the meaning (unless I get it totally wrong) because context is everything. I then have a "vocab in context" deck into which I am putting the example sentences I pick up with words I want to learn in, especially from Kanji in Context but not exclusively so. I underline the word I want to learn and the test is whether I understand it's meaning in the context of the example sentence. Very often I will have the same sentence on three or four different cards because I am testing a different word each time, and this system seems to be working quite nicely for me. I am doing something similar with a deck I've called "grammar in context" where I underline the part of the sentence with the grammar point I want to check I understand...I'm still not quite convinced about this but I am willing to run with it for a few more weeks and wait and see. 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 54 of 82 06 August 2011 at 1:31pm | IP Logged |
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So this week I was back on form, I clocked a massive 14 hours of study. 3 of those hours were spent Skyping my exchange partner last weekend. It was amazing, although I was pretty tired by the end of it. I still can't think of myself as conversational and I still rely on English far too much, but I'm chipping away bit by bit and for the first time I'm feeling hopeful that with regular practice it may start coming together. I've also started doing things like shadowing, working particularly with the example dialogues in Japanese for Busy People 2. I'd always written them off as a little stiff and business like but actually it's pretty good practice just to learn to get your tongue around certain common verbs in common forms and it has the benefit of being exactly the kind of stuff that I can already understand perfectly well but would still struggle to say.
I've also been chipping away at Kanji in Context again, I'm now halfway through chapter 14 but my Anki seems to have broken. Although the deck on my mobile still syncs perfectly well, I can't get Anki on the computer to sync at all. I've reached a point of absolute frustration with technology recently anyway, in both my professional and personal life and I feel about ready to give up the whole thing altogether. Perhaps pen and paper is the way forward to tame the kanji beast after all. I've listened to a few JapanesePod101 podcasts this week as well. I'm still following the Beginner Season 1 podcasts but it's huge and some of them don't feel very beginner like at all once you get to the 100s. 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 55 of 82 13 August 2011 at 4:18pm | IP Logged |
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So...what have I done this week? I enjoyed another lengthy Skype exchange last Sunday and will be doing it again tomorrow. I agreed to prepare a short written piece to discuss tomorrow which I am now having trouble putting together. I think my whole Japanese experience has centred so much around me on my own in my books, I've completely forgotten how to communicate. I would say that out of the other language learners I've spoken to, you can neatly divide into people like me, who get pretty good at reading but cannot communicate well, or people who can communicate well but are rubbish at reading (particularly when you throw in the unique features of Japanese script). So I already know what I need to do to improve my reading skills and am happy continuing to do just that, but I still feel pretty lost an frustrated at how best to improve my communicative ability, not least when most of the good communicators I ask for advice just tell me I need to start communicating (which is fine, except my mind always goes blank and I can't think of what to talk about). I do have one friend who started out as a good reader and broke into being a communicator, but the catalyst in his case was attending a class. He can't put his finger on what it was about the class that got him talking, however.
So, back to what I have been doing. I quit using Anki after the technical difficults last week lead to unprecedented levels of computer rage. I've started typing up word lists, expressions and sentences (complete with notes) from Kanji in Context into a word file, which I then print out and review as and when I feel like it. I'm pretty sure that most of my "learning" through Anki actually came through creating the cards in the first place as I never had any luck using somebody else's decks. I will report back how I get on - if I end up illiterate again over the coming months then maybe I will have to concede that Anki is the only way after all. I am still working through Japanese for Busy People slowly, trying to focus more on using the grammar points covered (rather than simply understanding, which at this level I can generally do anyway). I am also experimenting with shadowing the numerous example dialogues. I am still enjoying JapanesePod101 podcasts and still experimenting with that Kanzen Master grammar book. I'm using it in conjunction with the どんなときどう使う grammar dictionary, where I try to understand the Japanese explanations first before checking against the English, which is an interesting experience but not the biggest priority of my studies right now. I've also been looking at a couple of N3 level reading books I've had sat on my bookshelf, including the Unicom 実力アップ one which is currently befuddling my brain with a whole chapter on conjunction words, and the more interesting book here which does a very good job of explaining stuff in level-appropriate Japanese (that is, I can usually understand the explanations!) 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 56 of 82 19 August 2011 at 9:45pm | IP Logged |
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My Skype exchanges seem to be going really well and I am starting to use more Japanese. I prepared a short text for my session last week and we discussed it in the session. It was the first time I've attempted to write in Japanese since an attempt to use lang-8 several months ago so I found it quite hard to get started but it was well worth it and I didn't even make that many mistakes. I will need to prepare another text for this Sunday but I'm not sure what I'm going to write about yet.
In terms of my self study sessions, I am working more and more regularly with the Shadowing book. I'm definitely getting better at Shadowing, although it's still too early to tell whether that's helped my Japanese in general! My main study materials remain: Japanese for Busy People II, Kanzen Master 3kyuu Grammar Book, JapanesePod101 and Kanji in Context and I am making slow and steady progress with all of them. I've also watched a few episodes of an anime called Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. I'm watching it with subs (for the benefit of my husband I guess) but I find some days I seem more "tuned in" to the Japanese than others. The same goes when I listen to podcasts of radio shows and the like. I guess this is only natural. I've also been flirting with French a bit lately. I'm still not sure whether I can commit long term to a second language - especially as Japanese feels more like two languages at times. Although French should be a "quick win" in many respects. I studied it up to A level at school and took an evening class some five years ago so I'm hardly a beginner, it's just been neglected for a long time. Anyway, I have found it quite interesting following the reports about the recent UK riots in the French press which is a kind of peculiar motivation but I'll run with it while it lasts. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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