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TAC Team あ: Luai’s Climb to Trilingualism

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g-bod
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1485 posts - 2002 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 9 of 68
20 February 2011 at 5:56pm | IP Logged 
Glad to see you're back. I never really got into using Smart.FM as it didn't really suit me but I know a lot of people are unhappy about the paywall. It's very easy to make your own flashcards for vocabulary however getting the same kind of audio content is hard.

Which graded reader did you get?
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Luai_lashire
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United States
luai-lashire.deviant
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384 posts - 560 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto
Studies: Japanese, French

 
 Message 10 of 68
20 February 2011 at 6:32pm | IP Logged 
The graded reader I got is literally just called "Japanese graded readers Level 2 Volume 3". That's it. It seems to
be a fairly popular series from what I've read online. This was the only one I could find a torrent of though. If I
like it I might actually drop the money to buy some of the others, but I'm super super strapped for cash right now
(actually, at this moment I am literally totally broke) because ALL of my money is being saved to go to next year's
rent, so I may not have the opportunity for quite some time. :/

Smart.FM was really good for some people and crap for others. I've never been able to get any other flashcard
system or SRS to work for me so I really liked it, and now that it's gone I don't know what I'm going to do because
as I said, normal flashcard/SRS programs don't work well for me. I have no idea what about the smart.fm system
made it work for me so I have no idea how I could replicate it, either.
The audio content was nice, as well, because it helped me make sure I was getting the pitch right. I'm great at
pronouncing things right when I read them for the first time but I sometimes screw up the pitch if I haven't heard
it said. I can't for the life of me work out the "rules" behind pitch like Buttons can but if I hear it two or three
times I'll remember it forever, I have great audio memory/mimicry ability.

The one thing that was a problem with smart.FM was that sometimes the definitions were a bit off, and
memorizing a definition that's slightly wrong always struck me as a bad idea, even if the example sentences
helped you understand the true meaning better.
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fortheo
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187 posts - 222 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 11 of 68
20 February 2011 at 8:10pm | IP Logged 
I know if you download anki that it will allow you to download smart.fm core 2000/core 6000 flash cards and audio right into anki for you. I'm not sure if those are the lessons you were looking for though.

Anyways, keep up the good work!

Edited by fortheo on 20 February 2011 at 8:17pm

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g-bod
Diglot
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United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5982 days ago

1485 posts - 2002 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 12 of 68
20 February 2011 at 9:14pm | IP Logged 
I thought the plugin to download from smart.fm had been blocked, although I could be wrong. It's a shame that a system which worked for so many people has just been broken although I wonder if other alternatives will eventually fill the gaps. I would love to know what it is that makes it effective for some people though. Whenever I used it I just felt like it was a really nice interface, but I could still never recall anything I had not encountered outside of Smart.FM so I decided it wasn't worth my time. Although I quite liked the dictation programme they had on the site, which I did find helpful.

I find that SRS works for me but only for very specific tasks. I only drill individual words because I have a drive to get through the decks as quickly as possible so I find it better to deal with whole sentences in other contexts and the drilling on SRS just helps to support this. But it's taken a lot of experimentation and wasted time for me to realise this about myself and SRS has been such a huge part of my study programme that I have to fight with this belief I seem to have adopted that if it doesn't involve SRS it isn't study (and I won't learn), which is of course completely wrong!

I love the Japanese Graded Readers are great, I think, but definitely on the pricey side and despite how wonderful I think they are I never make as much use of them as I should.
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fortheo
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187 posts - 222 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 13 of 68
20 February 2011 at 10:57pm | IP Logged 
I just opened up anki and downloaded the smart.fm core lessons, so maybe they just haven't gotten around to blocking that plugin yet.
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Luai_lashire
Diglot
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United States
luai-lashire.deviant
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384 posts - 560 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto
Studies: Japanese, French

 
 Message 14 of 68
06 March 2011 at 10:38pm | IP Logged 
Update time!

Things got a little bit derailed this week because my bf is leaving on a trip so we basically spent as much time
together as humanly possible, but I still managed to work through all my review kanji, finally, and get started on
new kanji! I'm only going to be doing a very small number of new kanji each day, 5-10 kanji, to help prevent
myself from getting weighed down by tons of review each day. I find I get easily overwhelmed by large numbers
of cards to review, which is also why regular SRS's have never worked for me. However now that I understand
this, I may give SRS another chance for vocab study, just being careful not to weigh myself down with many new
cards per day.

I finished the first story in my reader, which was a very depressing story in which a fox gets killed. It made me
very sad. However I think it was beneficial to my learning so I will give the next story a try sometime soon. I just
hope it's not as sad. :/ I think my main problem with the reading is that my brain still isn't accustomed to
thinking of japanese symbols as actual writing, so I have to focus quite hard to read them. This should go away
with more practice.

I've also been watching Hana Kimi (the drama). I haven't watched this show in about three years, so it's been very
illuminating, seeing how much more I understand now. Besides this, it's also interesting to me that I'm picking
out an entirely new set of commonly-repeated words this time around. Last time I watched this show, I was
learning words like おまえ, たおれる, and はっぴょう; this time around, I've picked up りょうちょう, みとめる, and
the grammatical verb ending ~なくちゃ, among many others. I've found each time I watch a series, about 4 or 5
words or phrases that get used repeatedly will lodge themselves in my brain. It's interesting that now that I'm at
a higher level, it's a totally different set of words. Anyway it's not an especially effective method of vocab study
but since I'm not doing any other active vocab study it's nice.

Actually that's a lie, I am doing something else to learn new words. I've taken to memorizing the opening themes
of most shows I watch, and I've been looking up the words I don't recognize. For now I'm sticking to themes
because they tend to be fairly simple; I tried a few RADWIMPS songs and became hopelessly overwhelmed within
minutes because they're so insanely complex. Of course, this is also part of why I love RADWIMPS.
This also is a fairly slow way to learn vocab but it has the benefit that every time I listen to the song, it's
reinforced, and the fact that it's attached to a melody actually makes it easier to remember. I've got a great
talent for memorizing lyrics- I can get an English song down pat after two listens- and very strong emotional
attachment to music so this is a good method for me. I learn about 10 new words per song and it takes me
about a week to fully memorize it.

This week I'm just continuing with all of the above- kanji, dramas, music, and hopefully I will do a reading
session or two. Nothing new. I feel I am beginning to get back into the groove here, and also more interested in
Japanese again, so hopefully I can continue without any more breaks from this point!
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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 15 of 68
06 March 2011 at 11:59pm | IP Logged 
I think 5-10 kanji a day is quite a lot actually! Through January and most of February I managed around 5 new kanji a day, but even that proved a little too much and now I am back to 0 kanji a day. Oops!

I agree on the reading, for ages I would just feel really tired really quickly looking at Japanese text, although over time it's getting easier.
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Luai_lashire
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
luai-lashire.deviant
Joined 5828 days ago

384 posts - 560 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto
Studies: Japanese, French

 
 Message 16 of 68
07 March 2011 at 12:36am | IP Logged 
I used to do 25-30 a day, so 5-10 is a BIG drop for me, haha. ^_^; But thank you for saying so, now I don't feel
quite as guilty about going slow! I definitely need to work more on not pushing myself too hard. >.<;


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