kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1265 of 1702 02 February 2014 at 1:23am | IP Logged |
Well Kanji in Context arrived today (finally). The updated version. I just starting looking it over and it doesn't seem a whole lot different than say Essential Kanji: 2,000 Basic Japanese Characters Systematically Arranged For Learning And Reference [Paperback">. There's a few other books just like that. Basically just list kanji in a certain order designed to be more efficient for the student and include some vocabulary to go with the different readings.
It has a couple workbooks to go with it. The 1st exercise is just a list of words and I think the students job is to put the furigana over the kanji. Other exercises it looks like they do the same thing but put opposites next to each other.. and include sentences.
I kind of feel like this series was hyped. But it looks decent. I'm not sure if i should try to make flashcards to go into my SRS app or not. I might just do the exercises (using a notebook to keep the workbook clean) and progress through and just redo older exercises as needed.
There's an introduction in English as well as Japanese a few pages long. It pretty much says you will be fully literate regarding the vast majority of Japanese texts if you successfully complete the books. They include 3700 (about) must know vocabulary, and 9700 total vocabulary. You're supposed to go through the book doing the must know vocabulary and their exercises 1st and then redo the book doing the additional vocabulary.
The whole doing furigana for kanji is really similar to what my teacher does for our homework assignments at the local community college. It seems this is the preferred method for teaching kanji to gaijin.
I'm gonna give this book a chance. I'm not sure how it compares to the deck I have based off iknow.com where I was making myself draw the kanji for each word. I haven't gotten too far into the exercises but it doesn't look (yet) that the exercises include drawing the actual kanji. For now I won't be making any SRS flashcards from the book.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1266 of 1702 02 February 2014 at 4:11am | IP Logged |
I think (surprise) I will enter stuff in my SRS from kanji in context. I just did a quick google for some reviews of the series and I liked this guys review. He actually did the whole thing so he liked it. And he used an SRS program extensively along with the book. pera pera review kanji in context . It'll be a pain but I think I'll clearly learn it better. As per the introduction and also this guy's review, the exercises are supposed to have their own SRS built in.
I read another guy's review and it was pretty short. I don't think he got through all the books. He felt it should be called Some Kanji in Context, But Not All of Them. That was kind of my impression after doing the first exercise. The workbook gave sentences for some kanji and others were left out. Maybe they'll get tossed into future sentences/exercises in later chapters though. I have to say doing this whole thing in one sitting was had me pretty tired - I was a little tired to begin with though. So if they didn't want to overload me with too many exercises then I won't hold that against them.
I'm still thinking how I want to setup my SRS. I kind of would like to make myself write the kanji out. The way the reviewer who liked the series did it though was to just learn to read all the kanji and after doing that he is now learning to write all the kanji. It makes sense. He was intermediate when he started too - roughly my level. He said he knew about 1000 kanji. I probably know about that many - it's hard to say. I learn and forget kanji every day.
Edited by kraemder on 02 February 2014 at 4:14am
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1267 of 1702 02 February 2014 at 7:33am | IP Logged |
I decided to add and do all the hard exercises instead of doing the easy ones first and then going back. There were some new words but not many. Now it's just the other extreme. Tons and tons of new words. I'll have studied 9500 or something odd words if I follow through with this. So we're looking at at least a year even though there's a lot of review, that's a hell of a lot of words. I'll probably get distracted by other stuff as I go but I really want to finish this book and be able to say I know all the kanji. So I'll come back to it even if I drop it for a while.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1268 of 1702 03 February 2014 at 12:00am | IP Logged |
I somehow figured out how to access my JLPT results online. I actually passed the JLPT N3 test. We're not talking I aced the test, but a pass is pass. I'm pretty happy and I feel like I can legitimately attempt the N2 next December. My family was really hard on me for not retaking the N4 but with the amount of time I put into studying this language and considering how close I came to passing (seriously, my scores aren't too different, except this is a harder test so I obviously gained more knowledge), there was no way I would retake that test. However, if I failed this N3 I think I would have opted to retake it even if I studied a ton of N2 material.
Here's the results:
Language Knowledge (Vocabulary / Grammar): 34/60
Reading 32/60
Listening 30/60
Vocabulary: A
Grammar: B
(I got both an A and an A in Vocabulary and Grammar when I failed the N4..)
Now getting serious about the N2 really changes things for me. I really didn't think I'd passed. I mean I didn't think I bombed it but I knew there was room for improvement on the N3 level of material. Now I get to go spend money on N2 studying material XD.
Edited by kraemder on 03 February 2014 at 12:00am
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Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6550 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish
| Message 1269 of 1702 03 February 2014 at 6:58am | IP Logged |
Congrats on passing the N3! Do I understand it correctly that if you had gotten a 29 on reading or listening, you wouldn't have passed? If so, that's quite lucky then :)
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1270 of 1702 03 February 2014 at 8:16am | IP Logged |
Evita wrote:
Congrats on passing the N3! Do I understand it correctly that if you had gotten a 29 on
reading or listening, you wouldn't have passed? If so, that's quite lucky then :) |
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Thanks. Yes it was very close but I don't think you needed a 30 on any of the sections. They'll send a little
more detailed report in the mail and I could probably hunt it down online but I'll wait and just be happy it was a
pass.
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4663 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 1271 of 1702 03 February 2014 at 9:07am | IP Logged |
kraemder wrote:
I somehow figured out how to access my JLPT results online. I actually
passed the JLPT N3 test |
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Congratulations on passing the N3. (And on getting your results online - I remember it
being a little bit of fun when I did it last year :-))
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g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5980 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 1272 of 1702 03 February 2014 at 9:18am | IP Logged |
Congratulations! You must be so glad you went for N3 now! I think it really shows how much
you improved over 2013.
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