kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5185 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1593 of 1702 30 January 2015 at 7:32am | IP Logged |
Just thinking of how to tackle more grammar. I know I improved grammar with easier languages by reading
and flipping through my grammar book on a whim. I would seriously read the grammar book on occasions too
but it wasn't like anki and srs. I'm thinking flash cards may not work so well with me for grammar. At least not
by themselves. I have some nice lamenated cheat sheets or condensed grammar sheets that are very
portable. I think I could just bring it with me to work and read it in my lunch break. The class I'm taking lets me
speak Japanese and I could throw stuff in. Yeah it's not what we're studying but I think this teacher is more
lenient than my last one. Actually I know she is. This seems like an idea. Just study the sheet and try to think
of s few sentences in my head and then use them while talking.
Looking at those test results. I know it days I have an A in vocabular but that's just for specific sections and
not for the reading. I'm sure more better vocabulary would help my reading and my reading score too.
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g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5983 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 1594 of 1702 30 January 2015 at 8:11pm | IP Logged |
Bad luck on N2. You can take comfort in the fact that it is a hard exam!
I think you're already doing pretty well on vocabulary and your listening score proves that watching all that anime really does work.
I also have struggled over how to deal with Japanese grammar at the advanced levels. I don't like the way Japanese grammar is just presented as hundreds of sentence patterns to be memorised. It's easy to lose track of the bigger picture of how everything fits together. Which is a shame, because the basic principles of Japanese grammar are fairly regular and predictable and I am sure there are other general patterns covering some of the more advanced expressions which I just don't know about because of the "sentence pattern" approach.
In any case, I think it might be a good idea to focus more on reading. Rather than assuming that more vocab/grammar will help your reading, just trust that more reading will help your vocab/grammar, as it does in any other language. When it comes to a test like N2 (and even worse N1) there are always going to be words in reading questions that you don't know, and developing coping strategies so that you can retain the thread of the narrative despite a few unknown words is really useful, both in passing exams and in real life. You can also kill two birds with one stone and spend time on the "grammar in reading" style of JLPT practice question...
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5185 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1595 of 1702 30 January 2015 at 9:18pm | IP Logged |
Thanks Gbod. I thought I did horrible on the listening. I could have done better so watching anime really does
help your listening skills. Reading is a pain in that I need to find material right for me. Manga is too dumbed
down using casual grammar for speaking only. Ebooks I find online tend to be more literary than I'm up to
tackling right now. I really want light reading like mystery or suspense or something along those lines. I know
reading non fiction is best for the N2 since well all of the reading material on it is non fiction. Ah well. If my
vocabulary gets bigger than that non fiction stuff will get easier and maybe become easier to do regularly.
Edited by kraemder on 30 January 2015 at 9:19pm
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 1596 of 1702 30 January 2015 at 11:40pm | IP Logged |
kraemder wrote:
There's a password recovery process... anyway I didn't pass. But I'm
not too disappointed with the
results. Actually, I'm glad I didn't fail by one point like the N4. Or maybe it was 2
points. Anyway, 5 points
is close enough for me to feel like I'm not an idiot but not so close that I feel
robbed or unlucky. And I
personally think it confirms that if I had spent the time I had on Korean on Japanese
instead then I would
have passed.
vocab/grammar 25 / 60 85 / 180
reading 26 / 60
listening 34 / 60
Vocabulary: A
Grammar: C
When I finished the listening I felt like I had let myself down compared to my practice
test. |
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Wow. Given that you've more or less only just sat N3 and that you were fitting in a
good deal of Korean too, then that's pretty impressive.
I'm sure that you'll nail it next time around.
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 1597 of 1702 30 January 2015 at 11:45pm | IP Logged |
kraemder wrote:
Thanks Gbod. I thought I did horrible on the listening. I could have
done better so watching anime really does
help your listening skills. |
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Personally I'd kill for a listening result in that range. I need to watch much more
stuff, and I would if I lived on a planet with a longer day :-)
Yes. It does get better though. I'm thinking of picking one (short) article at a time
from NHK News, trying to read it and translate it without looking up anything and then
repeating the process looking up anything I need to. I don't know whether this would
necessarily help with N2, but it would hopefully lead to being (much) better at reading
the news and, in my case at least, that would mean that there was some reading I could
do each day without it being too much of a chore at work (say). Perhaps the vocabulary
would not be all that useful for N2, but I expect that the grammar would be exactly the
sort of thing that is required.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5185 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1598 of 1702 31 January 2015 at 2:19am | IP Logged |
Yeah NHK news is probably a good idea. The articles are short enough to do every day and there's tons of
new vocabulary in there. The grammar isn't too hard however but even so I think it's really good practice.
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yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4633 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin
| Message 1599 of 1702 31 January 2015 at 12:21pm | IP Logged |
Well, too bad you didn't pass, but you definitely did good!
Actually, seeing your results kinda reminds me what happened to me. I sat the JLPT N2 in December of 2011 for the first time (after about 3.5-4 years
of study which seems to be similar to you considering you started your log in Jan 2011) and I failed by 4 points. When I sat it, I knew I'd fail but
still, 4 points was tough. Well, since I went to do an exchange in Japan the following semester, I tried it again 6 months later and passed with flying
colors (60/60 for listening and rather good for the rest although I remember well the rest). So if you try it next year, you'll pass without any
problem.
The N1 however is on a whole other scale I think. I still haven't sat it and I know I'm still far from it.
In any case, I agree with Dampingwire and G-bod, reading will probably be the best for your grammar and to prepare you for the reading part of the
exam. For the listening, I'd say just continue with watching stuff. Maybe add some news here and there (although understanding in the beginning will be
tough, it gets better). I know there's a NHK Radio News with a 10-minute podcast everyday.
Anyway, Good luck for this year! Now you have a clear hint that N2's not so far from your level! I hope that feels good because I know it did for me ;)
NB: I find it very reassuring to see you progress at your rate. I've always wondered how my progress rate had been and I see yours is similar to mine
(although the stronger areas may be different: I've never been good with Vocab but more for Listening ^^)
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5185 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1600 of 1702 01 February 2015 at 10:53am | IP Logged |
I'm taking some steps regarding the grammar. I'm making a Memrise course for grammar and it's coming
along pretty well. Somehow it takes longer than you'd think to make a deck but it's worth it. Thankfully,
grammar isn't endless like vocabulary. I'm using the nihonshock.com cheat sheets to start but I'll probably
add to it from other resources later since it's so condensed. Yes I will start reading diligently after I do some
more grammar studying to get ready.
my grammar course on
memrise
Late. Sleepy.
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