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Luai’s Fully Fluent in 2012: TAC team い | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5829 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 17 of 35 12 February 2012 at 1:56am | IP Logged | ||
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I feel like I'm finally getting back on track! A few of my major accomplishments this week:
1. Watching a few episodes of anime straight through without subs and grasping the gist of almost everything! I'm finally getting to the point where I can follow even very lengthy sentences without losing track of the subject. Vocabulary is still an obstacle, of course- I've got a ways to go there still. But I can get enough most of the time that the holes aren't totally destroying my understanding. 2. Finally getting around to a big kanji review and starting to use my flashcards again. My deck got pretty big and I stopped practicing for a while and forgot a lot of the newer or trickier ones. It was a bitch to get through them, but now I seem to be remembering pretty well. 3. Adding a good number of new words to anki from my beloved birdwatching article (lol) and from the JLPT N3 vocab list. I'm gonna have to ramp up my vocab acquisition a lot to make it to C1 this year!!! 4. Listening practice. I'd gone through a dry spell where I didn't get any out-of-class exposure, but this week was saturated with Japanese audio. I got back into my music collection, and I also watched three movies and some anime. I hope to get a lot more exposure tomorrow in preparation for my end-of-chapter test on Tuesday. 5. Bringing my grade up to an A! So far I'm well on track to my interim goal of getting over a 93% for this chapter- I just have to do two more assignments and get a good score on the test. I feel pretty confident. :) Anki vocab deck: 741 Sentence deck: 169 Edited by Luai_lashire on 13 February 2012 at 4:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5829 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 18 of 35 03 March 2012 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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I didn't mean to go so long without an update! Well, a lot has happened.... I decided to up my meds some,
because they were helping but not as much as I want them to, and because of that I've had a crappy week or two while my body re-adjusts. I finished Chapter 7 with a pretty decent grade, not quite as high as I wanted, but ok. But now my grade has dipped to an 89% because of my crappy weeks- I fell massively behind in homework. It's spring break now so hopefully I will have some time to study hard and do well on the end-of-chapter test, to bring my score back up. I also have to write a first draft for my final speech project. I'm still slowly adding in words from JLPT and other sources. I have to be careful not to put them in while I still have a lot of new words to learn from the textbook, otherwise I can get overwhelmed. I'm still dissatisfied with my slowness in adding new sentences to Anki. Another thing to change over the break. Anki counts: Words: 793 Sentences: 180 I have to keep reminding myself it's only the beginning of the 3rd month of the year! It feels like so much time has already passed. I am anxious about falling short of my goals again this year, but I still have more than enough time, and things are going much better than before. My kanji flashcards are back on track, and I'm using them to great effect. I really think this method is great for me and I hope to keep it up all year. I've decided during the summer I want to start learning to write all the vocabulary I know in kanji, starting with the most common and the easiest, and working my way up. This way, even though it's haphazard, I will be able to use my kanji knowledge right away. I think I'll print out a copy of the Jouyou kanji list and highlight each new one as I go, to keep track of my gains. My other focus in the summer will be new vocab. I really want to gain several thousand new words this year. Health stuff This is going pretty good. I'm now regularly getting 2 or more servings of fruit and 1 of veggies each day. I need to work hard to up the veggie count; that's my current priority. I also took several steps to increase my whole grain intake, which was very effective- things like replacing my frozen waffles with whole grain ones and getting brown rice instead of white. My exercise is back on track and going great. I was able to up the amount of weight I was lifting on half my machines at the gym last time. I'm also adding free weights to my work out. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5829 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 19 of 35 26 March 2012 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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My grade is now an 82% or so. I had a really bad week last week and actually skipped my class twice! Yeesh. So
I don't think I'll be getting that A. Oh well. I can still scrounge a B+ for sure, maybe even an A-. Anki counts: Words: 864 Sentences: 220 I finally broke 200 sentences! Wooo! XD The big news this update is that my Sensei signed up for the teacher version of Skritter, meaning we all get a free coupon code to access it for four months free. :3 So I have dropped my physical flashcards in exchange for going back to Skritter. I think I will still practice writing them with pen and paper every now and then, but it needn't be as often anymore. There's some very important grammar in this chapter, so I'm working hard to really understand it. I'm frustrated by the fact that I've been doing this for 5 years and I still make particle mistakes, so I'm focussing especially on trying to remember which things take which particles and why. I plan to work even harder on this in the summer. I'm still fine tuning my summer plans. Besides the grammar weak points I already said I want to study, and reading Harry Potter, I think I want to get a few JLPT graded readers to help me pick up the JLPT vocab. I'm worried about piling on the reading, though, because I know I will not be able to read much each day and I'm afraid I will burn out and/or not have time to finish Potter. :/ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 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 20 of 35 26 March 2012 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ah you have piqued my interest now. What is this important grammar that you are studying?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5829 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 21 of 35 01 April 2012 at 1:16am | IP Logged | ||
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It's the end of March and that means it's time for my quarterly report! The year is a fourth over; how far have I
already come? Prepare for a big post! Anki counts: Vocab: 940 Sentences: 236 That's not quite 300 new words and 100 new sentences since my first post of the year. Not as much progress as I was hoping for, frankly! I will try to up my vocab in particular as much as I can from here on out. That said, some of that vocab is especially useful! I've dramatically improved in my ability to understand what I hear in TV shows, largely because I'm catching a lot more important words. Well, the grammar helps too. ^_^; Speaking of grammar, I think I'm making great progress there. I do really get most of what we cover in class and I not only can understand it (passive knowledge), I can use most of it (active knowledge). I confirmed that what we're learning corresponds to the N3 level grammar. After the semester ends, I will finish Tobira on my own, and then I think I will grab some N2 and N1 books off the internet and start working through those. And of course, reading Harry Potter! Kanji is going pretty well, in the sense that I'm not forgetting any, but I'm not satisfied with my method right now. I don't think I'll change anything until school ends, though, because I don't want to distract myself. I believe I've already discussed my summer plans for kanji, but basically, I'm going to learn to write the words I want to use and check kanji off my list that way. Conclusion: I'm moving along pretty well, but in order to meet my ambitious goals, it's gonna have to get faster. Now for my health goals! This is going AWESOMELY, and best of all it's having an impact on my ability to study languages, just like I hoped! I'm definitely finding it easier to knuckle down and study. Here's an overview: - I am now on Celexa and it's working pretty well for me. It's not like everything's fixed, but I'm seldom incapacitated by my emotions anymore. - I am now regularly getting the right amount of fruit and at least one serving of veggies a day, sometimes two. - I replaced about 1/2 my grains with whole grains. - I am regularly eating at or above maintenance levels. - I am brushing my teeth daily and showering 4 times a week. - I am attending the gym 2-3 times a week and doing stretches at home on off days. - At the gym, I have increased the number of machines, number of reps and sets, and amount of weight that I can do, and am swimming 2-4 more laps, at greater speed. I definitely feel much better. I think if I could just conquer the sleeping problem, everything would be great. It has a big impact on everything- it gives me headaches, makes it hard for me to pay attention or start working, makes me skip my evening classes because I get too sleepy, and I'm behind in my readings because I fall asleep if I read more than a page out of my textbook. So it's well worth fixing. But it's the hardest thing on my list. I've succeeded in getting to bed before 11:00 almost every night now, but I need to be more consistent about getting it earlier- 9:30 or 10:00. I'm also trying some things like herbal teas and relaxation techniques. It's a tough problem. Modified goals Since it's the beginning of the second quarter, it's time for a goal adjustment! Japanese Overall goal: reach C1 - Read a significant amount of Harry Potter (I'm not gonna demand that I finish it, it's long) - Finish Tobira - Work through the N3, N2, and N1 grammar lists And a quarterly goal: Hit 1,600 words and 500 sentences! Health - Increase what I'm doing in the gym - Focus more on flexibility training - Conquer the sleep problem - Regularly eat 2 veggies a day - Get legumes and nuts back into my diet That's a pretty good list I think. Some of these may even get done by the next quarter! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5829 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 22 of 35 01 April 2012 at 1:22am | IP Logged | ||
Sorry I didn't get back to you earlier! Honestly, actually, it's probably not that important in the grand scheme of things but it feels important to me because it's stuff I had heard a lot in TV shows and wondered about. For example, we're learning to use 限り and 対して. Others include なかなか〜ない、と言っても、と言った〜、 せっかく、 and にもかかわらず. So nothing earth-shattering, but they're all useful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6378 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin | Message 23 of 35 02 April 2012 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Luau,
I found your log by doing a search for the Tobira textbook and was curious to see what you thought of it. As I'm using the book for self-study it's fortunate that I'm already familiar with most of the grammar points because the material seems to reach a fairly advanced level by the end of the book. Mostly I'm just utilizing the online materials for listening practice, with the occasional shadowing. Good luck with your studies! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5829 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 24 of 35 02 April 2012 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's pretty good, I like it! I think that the grammar explanations and practice are a little limited for self-study; it's
really meant for teachers to give you extra in-class practice and advice. Otherwise I think it is a very useful tool. If you possibly can, I would get a conversation partner and do the practice dialogs together (the ones where you have a "model dialogue" but you make up your own version as you go). Most of them are specifically designed to address cultural concerns, like appropriate ways of apologizing or accepting compliments, which could be very useful to know if you ever want to go to Japan. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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