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Erwin’s quest (Team い - TAC 2012) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ErwinHiggs Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 4711 days ago 12 posts - 13 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 20 31 December 2011 at 9:02am | IP Logged |
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I'm really looking forward to next year with high expectations, with such an energetic
team as い! I've read some of my teammates log with attention and more logs will be read tomorrow. Even though I am new as a member, I am not as a visitor, my first visit dating back to the summer of 2010. Since then, I was amazed by the passion shared by so many of the members and couldn't wait to hop in. I've really looked into which language I thought would bring me the most pleasure for this challenge and the years to come and japanese always came first. There is something intriguing about the japanese culture, something beautiful about the language and it's people that makes it a first choice language. I am aware of the difficulties ahead, but I am willing to make the necessary sacrifices in order to one day feel comfortable with the language. With a commute to college of more than two hours a day, I feel like this time could be better spent by actually doing something fun such as learning japanese. All in all, I expect to spend around 16- 18 hours a week on this endeavour. There is no illusion however, with a knowledge of kanas and kanjis approching nada, I don't expect anything huge for the end of the year, nor do I want to declare this challenge as a success or failure based on futility such as vocabulary or kanji count. I strongly believe that if one can work his way through a year of studying, then no matter what where the accomplishments or failures, one should be proud of himself. But then again, there is nothing wrong with setting some high objectives in order to push myself to the limit. In this spirit, I am planning to get through Heisig's RTK Volume 1 and 3, Pimsleur complete course (I was delighted to find that my local library actually had it) and Assimil before the end of June. For the last six months, I still haven't really figured out my objectives, but they will probably be a mix of some sort of listening and reading comprehension. Again, I don't expect to read philosophical texts but at least to be able to read simple texts and understand most of what is written, hopefully being able to pick up vocabulary by context and with my dictionnary. It is getting late 'round here but I just wish everyone reading this to enjoy their respective journey and hoping that this log may inspire someone next year to take part in the TAC, be it with japanese or any other language! Edited by ErwinHiggs on 31 December 2011 at 9:03am 2 persons have 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 2 of 20 31 December 2011 at 12:41pm | IP Logged |
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Welcome to the team!
I'm a big fan og RTK myself. If you want to use RTK, I recommend this site for reviewing. It also lets you share stories which can be very helpful. If you are doing it in French, you can change the keywords manually by clicking on the word and writing in the keyword you want. I think there might be a way to import all the keywords at once for common languages like French and Spanish, but you'd have to check their forum because I don't know how to do it. How do you commute? I used to do a lot of commuting by train and that was great for all kinds of study, but if you drive yourself, you are pretty much stuck with just listening materials. Pimsleur sounds like a good choice in that case. I've never tried those courses, but there are many here who sing their praises. If you don't know the kana yet, I would definitely start with that. At least hiragana. Also, if you want to use a textbook in addition to Pimsleur, you should get one that uses kana right from the beginning. It will better prepare you for reading. They usually start with everything written in kana and with romaji underneath and then take away the romaji after a few chapters. And then they slowly introduce the Kanji. I think this will be a great year and hopefully we can all help each other toward our goals. Some of us have studied Japanese for some years, so we can probably give a bit of advice about how to do it (or at least how not to do it). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 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 3 of 20 31 December 2011 at 1:51pm | IP Logged |
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ErwinHiggs, welcome to the team. I look forward to following your log. With 16-18 hours work a week, you will not fail to make progress this year.
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| ErwinHiggs Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 4711 days ago 12 posts - 13 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 4 of 20 01 January 2012 at 8:26am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for all the tips Brun! I'm sure this website will be quite helpful (No offence to
Heisig, but some of his stories aren't very helpful) Indeed, I was planning on using as less romaji as possible, as I consider it will probably be more confusing as time goes by. As for my commute, it is by bus from a suburban area. This gives me one hour before and after college to review the kanji on Anki (a costly app on the app store, but worth it) and listen to a lesson of Pimsleur on my iPod. Anyhow, Happy New Year to all! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6083 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 5 of 20 01 January 2012 at 7:50pm | IP Logged |
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I really like the optimism in your first post -- perfect for 2012! 明けましておめでとう (Happiness for the New Year!)
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| fortheo Senior Member United States Joined 5034 days ago 187 posts - 222 votes Studies: French | Message 6 of 20 02 January 2012 at 6:08am | IP Logged |
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good luck, Japanese is a very difficult language but it is also very fun!!!
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| sundance Newbie United States Joined 4712 days ago 20 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 7 of 20 02 January 2012 at 4:31pm | IP Logged |
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Even though I'm not a part of Team い, I'll be following your log. It seems like we're both in a similar place with Japanese. Good luck!
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| ErwinHiggs Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 4711 days ago 12 posts - 13 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 8 of 20 03 January 2012 at 2:01am | IP Logged |
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Thank you all and best wishes for 2012! I'll sure look for your log then sundance, we
will probably be able to learn from one another. For my first and a half day of this new year, I've studied RTK for about 5 hours, taking the time to adapt myself to the technique, and managed to reach the 100 kanji mark. I think that I'll be able to manage a pace of 150-200 kanjis / week, but yet again, I don't expect anything more or less. Moreover, I bought the iPod app of Anki, a 25$ that I believe will be well worth it, considering the 2 hours gap I have to fill every week day going to college. You can export your own desktop decks and there is also the option to import sound files which is perfect for later on. I'm starting at 30 new cards a day, but I'll adust the pace in the following weeks if I consider it too slow or too fast. In the following days, I will continue to learn the kanji and hopefully try to gradually learn the hiragana and katakana. Tae Kim's grammar seems a good way to start considering there is a sound file for each character. I would prefer to make Anki cards without any kind of romaji, as it can be detrimental later on (even though the vowel have a similar sound when you compare french-japanese). Anyway, it's only 8pm here. Time to learn more kanji! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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