TAC 2013, Sakura 桜 - dampingwire (Language Learning Log) Language Learning Forum

TAC 2013, Sakura 桜 - dampingwire
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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 129 of 137 18 December 2013 at 4:21pm \| IP Logged
	With all the talk in my team mates' logs about Kanji in Context, I've had a look at how much it would cost for the reference book and two work books. $85 excluding P+P. From JP Books in London it would be ~£90+P&P, so it seems to be better to ship them from Japan. So will I need all three books or is just the reference book a reasonable starting point? I'm also looking at the (New) Kanzen Master series and again, as long as I'm ordering more than one or two, it seems that shipping from Japan is cheaper than buying in the UK. Maybe I'm in the wrong business! 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 130 of 137 18 December 2013 at 7:38pm \| IP Logged
	The workbooks are more important. A good kanji dictionary would suffice to replace the reference book but since they are both linked it would make lookups more complicated without the reference book. 1 person has voted this message useful
dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English, Italian, French Studies: Japanese	Message 131 of 137 21 December 2013 at 10:34pm \| IP Logged
	I tried http://bliubliu.com/ for a while today after seeing a reference in another post here. I told it I was a beginner and it offered to dill me on some words. It thinks I know maybe ~40 words. I can see the list of words on which its going to drill me. It contains these gems: 吉田 - Yoshida Shinto 名古屋 - Nagoya 原発 - nuclear power plant So I tried "surfing at my level": I picked the shortest text on the first screen: 兵庫県高砂市は、１万９８２０世帯４万７１４８人に出していた避難勧告を、午前９時４０分に解除しました。 I do think the method has some merit, but, for Japanese at least, the level of the texts and the drills seems a bit "off" to me. I don't know if it gets any better if I stump up the $10 or so it would like each month. I think I'll stick to watching anime or j-drama or something for now. 1 person has voted this message useful
dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English, Italian, French Studies: Japanese	Message 132 of 137 24 December 2013 at 12:31pm \| IP Logged
	It's not quite the end of the year and the end of the TAC, but with Christmas just around the corner, I'm probably not going to get much more done before TAC ends. So this looks to be a good time to summarise the past year. I started out 2013 having just sat the JLPT N5, but still not knowing the result. I had a vocabulary of under 1000 words, my aural comprehension was woeful but (thanks to Pimsleur and my tutor) I could manage some very simple survival-type sentences. Despite my concerns, I managed to pass N5 and then sat and passed N4 in the summer. Since then I've been working hard to prepare for N3. I decided that trying that in December would be too hard, so I've put that off until TAC 2014 :-) I have, however, learned the necessary vocabulary and I've been through most of the grammar. Over the year, my vocabulary improvement is probably the easiest to measure. I've gone from an estimated ~1000 words at the start of 2013 to around 4000 or so now. The most noticeable gain has been in my kanji vocabulary. Although I'd already worked through RTK, at the start of the year I could only recognise a few hundred words incorporating kanji. That's nearer 1500 now (all of the N5 & N4 vocabulary). I don't know what I did that made kanji seem a less insurmountable obstacle, but I guess lots of exposure helped. At the start of 2014 my reading was weak. I'd look at a paragraph of text and, when I couldn't scan it as quickly as (say) French and get the meaning, I'd become disheartened. The difference now is that I dive in and have a go. It's still hard, but compared to where I was, it has improved massively. I've been reading A Homestay in Japan lately, which although a very basic book, is something I wouldn't have been able to tackle in the summer. That knowledge of kanji vocabulary makes the whole process so much easier. I've also started to read NHK EasyNews on a semi-regular basis and that is something that I could not do (in a reasonable time) at the start of the year. My listening comprehension has come on in leaps and bounds. I still miss most of what is happening when I listen to a Japanese podcast or listen to the Japanese news, but at least I can sometimes get the gist. I plan to put more time into instensive listening and shadowing as this seems to have made a big difference. Hopefully more native materials over the coming year will reinforce this too. My spoken Japanese is still pretty rudimentary, although it is less rudimentary than it was at the start of the year. This isn't too surprising as I've been putting a lot of effort into the "foundations" (vocab, grammar) and I've not gone out and sought opportunities to speak with native speakers. So overall 2013 has seen a very pleasing (to me) increase in my Japanese ability. It's such a long road and there's still most of it to cross but two years into my journey it seems as though I'm getting something useful out of it. If you're still reading: Merry Christmas! 3 persons have voted this message useful
dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English, Italian, French Studies: Japanese	Message 133 of 137 31 December 2013 at 4:52pm \| IP Logged
	TAC 2013 went well, so I've signed up for Japanese TAC 2014 too. Edited by dampingwire on 31 December 2013 at 4:53pm 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 134 of 137 31 December 2013 at 5:24pm \| IP Logged
	It's been a pleasure watching you progress this year. I'm sure next year your intermediate Japanese will start to really blossom as you can start putting it to use. 1 person has voted this message useful
dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English, Italian, French Studies: Japanese	Message 135 of 137 01 January 2014 at 1:49pm \| IP Logged
	Thank you for all your help and encouragement this year. Having somebody who has trodden the same road before has been very useful. Good luck with FR & GE in 2014. 1 person has voted this message useful
dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English, Italian, French Studies: Japanese	Message 136 of 137 01 January 2014 at 1:59pm \| IP Logged
	Time for a final summary, the December goals. 1.Continue listening to dialogue tracks. I may throw in some lessons occasionally but for now it's still mostly going to be dialogues. I've continued to listen to dialogue tracks for all my commuting. 2. RTK: I'll continue to keep this up to date and not worry about getting through the remaining 1000 or so RTK3 kanji. I've continued to maintain RTK. It's only 10m each day. I have actually poked a toe into RTK3: as I've come across "unknown" kanji I've added them selectively to the "studied" kanji on the RTK website. So I've gone from 2042 to ~2060 kanji now. 3. Memrise. I'll continue to water the N3 course. I'll plant the related N3 kanji so that I see them occasionally but I'm not going to set any targets here. I'm going to make a gentle start on the N2 vocabulary but I'm only going to set a target of 200 words in total. . I've (temporarily) let memrise slide. I imported the N2 words into my Anki vocabulary deck and all the N5, N4 and N3 kanji into my kanji deck. I've put my time into that and just haven't made time for memrise yet. I did, however, make a start on 200 words from the N2 course. However, I did that by using my Anki vocabulary deck. 4. I will shadow lessons from the JPOD101 Lower Intermediate Season 3 but again I'm not going to set any targets for shadowing. I will however, set a target of working through the first 15 lessons, adding vocabulary and sentences to Anki. I did achieve this, although only in the final few days of December. It does show the value of concrete goals: I'd not have pushed myself if it hadn't been for this goal! 5. I'm going to listen to at least 10 episodes of 日本人の知らない日本語 (once with subtitles and once without). I listened to all the episodes (there are 12)although I completely forgot that I was supposed to listen to them without subtitles! 6. I'm going to work through at least one EasyNHK News article each day for the first three weeks. I'll set a concrete target of 21 articles. I found this quite "addictive" and managed to work my way through 39 articles in all. I even listened to an actual news report on the main NHK site. So I managed to meet most of my goals. Time to go and set some for January in my 2014 log. 1 person has voted this message useful

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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 129 of 137 18 December 2013 at 4:21pm \| IP Logged
	With all the talk in my team mates' logs about Kanji in Context, I've had a look at how much it would cost for the reference book and two work books. $85 excluding P+P. From JP Books in London it would be ~£90+P&P, so it seems to be better to ship them from Japan. So will I need all three books or is just the reference book a reasonable starting point? I'm also looking at the (New) Kanzen Master series and again, as long as I'm ordering more than one or two, it seems that shipping from Japan is cheaper than buying in the UK. Maybe I'm in the wrong business! 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 130 of 137 18 December 2013 at 7:38pm \| IP Logged
	The workbooks are more important. A good kanji dictionary would suffice to replace the reference book but since they are both linked it would make lookups more complicated without the reference book. 1 person has voted this message useful
dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English, Italian, French Studies: Japanese	Message 131 of 137 21 December 2013 at 10:34pm \| IP Logged
	I tried http://bliubliu.com/ for a while today after seeing a reference in another post here. I told it I was a beginner and it offered to dill me on some words. It thinks I know maybe ~40 words. I can see the list of words on which its going to drill me. It contains these gems: 吉田 - Yoshida Shinto 名古屋 - Nagoya 原発 - nuclear power plant So I tried "surfing at my level": I picked the shortest text on the first screen: 兵庫県高砂市は、１万９８２０世帯４万７１４８人に出していた避難勧告を、午前９時４０分に解除しました。 I do think the method has some merit, but, for Japanese at least, the level of the texts and the drills seems a bit "off" to me. I don't know if it gets any better if I stump up the $10 or so it would like each month. I think I'll stick to watching anime or j-drama or something for now. 1 person has voted this message useful
dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English, Italian, French Studies: Japanese	Message 132 of 137 24 December 2013 at 12:31pm \| IP Logged
	It's not quite the end of the year and the end of the TAC, but with Christmas just around the corner, I'm probably not going to get much more done before TAC ends. So this looks to be a good time to summarise the past year. I started out 2013 having just sat the JLPT N5, but still not knowing the result. I had a vocabulary of under 1000 words, my aural comprehension was woeful but (thanks to Pimsleur and my tutor) I could manage some very simple survival-type sentences. Despite my concerns, I managed to pass N5 and then sat and passed N4 in the summer. Since then I've been working hard to prepare for N3. I decided that trying that in December would be too hard, so I've put that off until TAC 2014 :-) I have, however, learned the necessary vocabulary and I've been through most of the grammar. Over the year, my vocabulary improvement is probably the easiest to measure. I've gone from an estimated ~1000 words at the start of 2013 to around 4000 or so now. The most noticeable gain has been in my kanji vocabulary. Although I'd already worked through RTK, at the start of the year I could only recognise a few hundred words incorporating kanji. That's nearer 1500 now (all of the N5 & N4 vocabulary). I don't know what I did that made kanji seem a less insurmountable obstacle, but I guess lots of exposure helped. At the start of 2014 my reading was weak. I'd look at a paragraph of text and, when I couldn't scan it as quickly as (say) French and get the meaning, I'd become disheartened. The difference now is that I dive in and have a go. It's still hard, but compared to where I was, it has improved massively. I've been reading A Homestay in Japan lately, which although a very basic book, is something I wouldn't have been able to tackle in the summer. That knowledge of kanji vocabulary makes the whole process so much easier. I've also started to read NHK EasyNews on a semi-regular basis and that is something that I could not do (in a reasonable time) at the start of the year. My listening comprehension has come on in leaps and bounds. I still miss most of what is happening when I listen to a Japanese podcast or listen to the Japanese news, but at least I can sometimes get the gist. I plan to put more time into instensive listening and shadowing as this seems to have made a big difference. Hopefully more native materials over the coming year will reinforce this too. My spoken Japanese is still pretty rudimentary, although it is less rudimentary than it was at the start of the year. This isn't too surprising as I've been putting a lot of effort into the "foundations" (vocab, grammar) and I've not gone out and sought opportunities to speak with native speakers. So overall 2013 has seen a very pleasing (to me) increase in my Japanese ability. It's such a long road and there's still most of it to cross but two years into my journey it seems as though I'm getting something useful out of it. If you're still reading: Merry Christmas! 3 persons have voted this message useful
dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English, Italian, French Studies: Japanese	Message 133 of 137 31 December 2013 at 4:52pm \| IP Logged
	TAC 2013 went well, so I've signed up for Japanese TAC 2014 too. Edited by dampingwire on 31 December 2013 at 4:53pm 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 134 of 137 31 December 2013 at 5:24pm \| IP Logged
	It's been a pleasure watching you progress this year. I'm sure next year your intermediate Japanese will start to really blossom as you can start putting it to use. 1 person has voted this message useful
dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English, Italian, French Studies: Japanese	Message 135 of 137 01 January 2014 at 1:49pm \| IP Logged
	Thank you for all your help and encouragement this year. Having somebody who has trodden the same road before has been very useful. Good luck with FR & GE in 2014. 1 person has voted this message useful
dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English, Italian, French Studies: Japanese	Message 136 of 137 01 January 2014 at 1:59pm \| IP Logged
	Time for a final summary, the December goals. 1.Continue listening to dialogue tracks. I may throw in some lessons occasionally but for now it's still mostly going to be dialogues. I've continued to listen to dialogue tracks for all my commuting. 2. RTK: I'll continue to keep this up to date and not worry about getting through the remaining 1000 or so RTK3 kanji. I've continued to maintain RTK. It's only 10m each day. I have actually poked a toe into RTK3: as I've come across "unknown" kanji I've added them selectively to the "studied" kanji on the RTK website. So I've gone from 2042 to ~2060 kanji now. 3. Memrise. I'll continue to water the N3 course. I'll plant the related N3 kanji so that I see them occasionally but I'm not going to set any targets here. I'm going to make a gentle start on the N2 vocabulary but I'm only going to set a target of 200 words in total. . I've (temporarily) let memrise slide. I imported the N2 words into my Anki vocabulary deck and all the N5, N4 and N3 kanji into my kanji deck. I've put my time into that and just haven't made time for memrise yet. I did, however, make a start on 200 words from the N2 course. However, I did that by using my Anki vocabulary deck. 4. I will shadow lessons from the JPOD101 Lower Intermediate Season 3 but again I'm not going to set any targets for shadowing. I will however, set a target of working through the first 15 lessons, adding vocabulary and sentences to Anki. I did achieve this, although only in the final few days of December. It does show the value of concrete goals: I'd not have pushed myself if it hadn't been for this goal! 5. I'm going to listen to at least 10 episodes of 日本人の知らない日本語 (once with subtitles and once without). I listened to all the episodes (there are 12)although I completely forgot that I was supposed to listen to them without subtitles! 6. I'm going to work through at least one EasyNHK News article each day for the first three weeks. I'll set a concrete target of 21 articles. I found this quite "addictive" and managed to work my way through 39 articles in all. I even listened to an actual news report on the main NHK site. So I managed to meet most of my goals. Time to go and set some for January in my 2014 log. 1 person has voted this message useful