budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5805 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map
| Message 1 of 5 26 December 2010 at 8:54pm | IP Logged |
Since I have started and stopped so many times, I think this will be a good way to stay
on track.
As my user ID indicates, I am a martial artist. I have been training for over 20 years.
That is how I came to be interested in Japanese and Japanese culture.
I have enough material, I need to make time around the family. Since I recently got a
smart phone, I now have some portable material to review when I have a few minutes.
My current main book is Japanese with Ease. I get lazy and read the romaji. I think I
will need to take a sharpie and cross it out. I have a Lingq account and want to start
using it more for listening comprehension.
I would like to aim for B1 for the end of the year. B2 would be a stretch goal. I will
try and come up with milestones later.
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g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5982 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 2 of 5 26 December 2010 at 9:28pm | IP Logged |
Good luck with making it to B2 - I look forward to following your log.
I have never used Japanese with Ease - I hadn't really heard of Assimil when I started
out so I chose other resources. How do you find it? Does it have romaji throughout or
does it switch to kana only later on? I have a few reference books which use both
throughout and I find the romaji can be quite distracting (my eyes are just drawn to the
romaji over the kanji) but I can't bring myself to actually put pen to the books to cross
it out!
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budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5805 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map
| Message 3 of 5 26 December 2010 at 9:54pm | IP Logged |
I was introduced to the Assimil method here. I got the French books and liked it so much
I got the Japanese books.
Each sentence has both. Kanji with furigana and kana with romaji underneath. My reading
speed is still slow. But, the only way to get faster is to practice. I am trying to find
the balance of wanting to build my vocabulary vs increasing reading speed.
How do you plan to break down your study time? Listening, reading, writing, conversation?
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g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5982 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 4 of 5 26 December 2010 at 10:12pm | IP Logged |
I think vocabulary knowledge and reading speed probably go hand in hand - if you are
seeing familiar shapes on the page, you can scan through it faster perhaps? Do you have
any other reading materials you can practice with?
I don't have a solid plan for breaking down my study time, except conversation relies on
the availability of other people, so depends when I can co-ordinate with my skype
contacts. The rest tends to go according to what I feel like - which is perhaps one joy
of self study!
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budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5805 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map
| Message 5 of 5 05 January 2011 at 3:56am | IP Logged |
I have been working with Erin's Challenge online. Video with subtitles and supporting
lessons. Also, Japanese with Ease. They are giving my conversational input.
I also found an Android app call Obenkyou. It has all the kanji with flash cards and quizzes. Good to get some extra work with short breaks.
I have also been entering the Japanese With Ease vocab into google spreadsheets and then
loading it into a flash card program. It helps review the words I have read in the book.
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