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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 65 of 276 05 February 2012 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I love how you mark 22.5 hours of study as a bad week. I don't think I could reach such heights even if there wasn't a frog in sight! I love Big Bang Theory too. I know a Japanese guy who really developed his English thanks to that show. I sometimes wish I could find something that would do the same for my Japanese.
Quick question - in your opinion, what would constitute an easy novel? Apart from Harry Potter, I've not yet managed to read a whole Japanese novel from cover to cover. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4795 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 66 of 276 07 February 2012 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, 22.5 hours....a bad week?! I think you're doing great. Energy levels rise and fall with everyone, so rest
assured, you're not alone. You've had some serious setbacks, as I can see from your post, and it's amazing that you've managed to get so far with everything you've had to put up with. I don't know if I have your strength. :). Yeah, I tend to think along the same lines as Sheldon sometimes :) It's a funny show. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6618 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 67 of 276 09 February 2012 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I’ve started using iknow (formerly known as smart.fm, formerly known as iknow – they keep changing their name back and forth apparently.) Anyway, they have a free trial where you can do 5 sessions, but that’s not really enough to know if you like it or not. But I decided it might be useful. So I signed up for 6 months, which isn’t really all that expensive, but expensive enough that I hope it won’t be a waste of time. I don’t know how far I will get in 6 months. It doesn’t go super-fast, but we’ll see.
I took the placement test and got placed into Core 4000. It’s hard to believe I already know the 3000 most common words in Japanese, but that’s what the test said. Maybe I’ll have a quick glance through the sentences for the first three levels and see what I really know. There are probably at least a few that have escaped me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6618 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 68 of 276 09 February 2012 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | ||
Light novels are the easiest. They are written mostly for young teens. The sentences are often short and easy and there is usually a lot of dialogue. They are of course easier than novels written for adults, but in my opinion, they are also easier for foreigners to read than children's books. Japanese children's books have too much hiragana, which I find much harder. Light novels have just the right amount of kanji -- enough to give you some clues (especially if you've done Heisig), but not so much as to be intimidating. Also any kanji that kids of that age wouldn't be expected to know, have furigana. I think it also depends on genre. Romance novels are the easiest. You know what's going to happen. Boy meets girl and they either hate each other at first and after many misunderstandings, gradually come to like each and live happily ever after, or they like each other from the first but other obstacles come in their way until finally they overcome them all and live happily ever after. Mysteries are a little harder, even though they also follow a sort of formula. But in a romance novel, it doesn't matter if you only understand every fourth word, you can still follow the plot. In a mystery novel, there are subtle clues that you need to understand or it won't make sense. Science fiction and fantasy are in some ways even harder because anything can happen, so you have no idea what to expect and won't be sure if you misunderstood something or if there really are time-traveling, flying sheep on the moon. I was reading one and it appeared that the main character/narrator died in the first chapter and I figured she was now a ghost. I was going along with this until she got into a taxi in the normal fashion and went to her mother's house. At that point, I realized I had totally misunderstood something and decided to put the book aside for a little while and try again later. I've also learned in my research, that some of the most popular light novels later get made into manga and anime. So, if there is some particular manga or anime you like, you might want to check if it is based on a light novel series. In which case, I would think genre doesn't matter since you are already familiar with the characters and the basic storyline. Here is a list of some of the best from each year. They didn't really interest me, but maybe you would like them. Otherwise, you just have to do some searches and see what you come up with. I was thinking of doing some book reviews of all the novels and manga I read, but as it takes me approximately forever to finish one book, you might have to wait a while. I just ordered a few books and they should be here any day, so I'm very excited. I hope I'll be able to read at least a few of them. Some of them are for adults, so I probably don't have a chance there, but a couple are light novels and some are manga, so maybe I'll manage those. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6618 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 69 of 276 10 February 2012 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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MY BOOKS CAME!!!!!!!! YIPPEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I got the books I ordered from amazon.jp. I only ordered them on Sunday, and they are here already! Actually, they came yesterday, but I wasn't home, so my landlord told them where I work (it's only a four minute walk away). I wasn't there either, but one of my colleagues signed for the package, and it was waiting on my desk when I got there this morning. I was so excited, I could barely control myself, but I waited until I got home to open it. Now I'm too excited to read any of them. Every time I look at the pile, I say to myself, "I'll start with this one .... no, this one .... wait a minute, maybe this one ..." So I never manage to read more than a paragraph. Hopefully, by tomorrow I will be calm enough to read. I haven't even studied one minute today. Maybe I should take a walk to calm down. (What a nerd, so excited over a box of books.) I did look through the books though. Some are manga, so those shouldn't be so hard. Nor should Harry Potter #2. I also have some novels for teens that I think I have some hope of being able to get through. Then I have some for adults. I was surprised to see that two of them actually look a little difficult, but readable. The last one is definitely going to have to wait a few months though, but maybe by the end of the year I will be ready to tackle it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4795 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 70 of 276 12 February 2012 at 6:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, I envy you. You know you're a nerd when you start losing it over books, and a language nerd when you
lose it over foreign language books :) In which case, I'm both! I'll soon follow suit and place an order too, and the link you provided is great. Thanks a bunch! And hope you enjoy you're newly-minted treasures! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6618 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 71 of 276 12 February 2012 at 9:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Log for 2012.02.05-2012.02.11 inclusive
Reviewing the Kanji: Time = 3:24. New kanji = 43. Read the kanji: Time = 2:58. ANKI review: Time = 4:37. Reading: Time = 11:01. Sounds impressive, but remember, even a little tiny light novel takes me 3+ minutes per page. So the amount of time might be impressive, but the number of pages would be anything but. Writing: Time = 0:13. iKnow: Time= 3:01. I’m not sure that this is the best method for me to learn vocabulary as I need to write things down to remember easily, but it is very good for listening and repeating, which I need. Textbook/grammar: Time = 1:48. Total for period: 27 hr, 11 min Total since start of TAC 2012: 155 hr, 42 min Total since I started keeping track (2011.11.06): 350 hr, 5 min Although I said that iKnow might not be the best way for me to learn vocabulary, as part of a multi-track approach, it definitely helps. I see new vocabulary words in Anki, read the kanji, iKnow, and of course in reading. If I used only one of these, they probably wouldn’t stick that well, but when I see a word one place that I’ve already seen somewhere else, I feel excited and think, “I’ve just seen that, what did it mean again?” Seeing it two or three completely different places works even better than seeing it on two different cards in Anki. I suppose it’s partly because it’s a completely new sentence, but also because meeting it again is like meeting a friend unexpectedly. I think I might have mentioned, in my quiet and subtle way, that my books came from amazon.jp. I also mentioned/ complained about how expensive it is to order from them. Well, I’ve been thinking about it, and realized that they aren’t really expensive at all as long as you order enough books to spread out to shipping charge a little. I bought ten books and it cost me about 1 200 NOK. If I bought paperbacks in Norway, they usually cost either 99 or 129, or 59 if they are on sale, if I remember correctly. So buying 10 books in Norway would cost me nearly the same amount. And if you consider that one of the books I bought was non-fiction and therefore more expensive, the actual price in terms of cash is about the same, maybe cheaper. Now, let us consider price as a function of time. I read Norwegian at about the same rate as English, which means pretty quickly. So I could, if I wanted to, read an ordinary novel in a weekend or even a day, depending on thickness. Japanese on the other-hand takes me 3+ minutes per page to read a light-novel. Since said light-novel is shorter from top to bottom and from spine to edge than a Norwegian paperback, and each sentence is a paragraph unto itself, and ね can be considered a whole sentence sometimes, you can see that I read pretty slowly. I was trying to read a slightly more grown-up novel recently where the height and width of the book are about the same as a Norwegian or English paperback, and the paragraphing is more normal. I felt like I was getting pretty good at this reading thing, and after reading for a few hours, decided to check the ratio of pages to time. It came out to over 7, closer to 8 minutes per page. So I’m not exactly a speed-reader. Anyway, what is my point? The point is, if you consider how long it takes me to read a Japanese book, compared to a Norwegian book, I’m spending a lot more reading time on the Japanese book. So the price of the Japanese book in terms of the hours of reading pleasure it gives, is extremely low. Therefore, Japanese books are actually quite cheap ;-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fortheo Senior Member United States Joined 5034 days ago 187 posts - 222 votes Studies: French | Message 72 of 276 13 February 2012 at 2:44am | IP Logged | ||
I have this same reaction when ever I get a box of new learning resources *__* lol also 22.5 hours a week is good!! I don't keep track but I probably only manage around 14-20 hours a week :( keep up the good work, your log is motivating. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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