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Books books books. 语학子’s TAC 東亜 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 185 of 203 05 March 2015 at 10:57pm | IP Logged |
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Well, it appears my last 2 posts disappeared after the forum's "maintenance".
To put it in a nutshell, February wasn't a good study month as I was looking for a job. I read only a bit and only in Japanese, didn't practice much my Korean nor Chinese, had 2 days of full Japanese showing around paris to 2 of my ex-flatmate's friends, and I learnt one song for the Asian team's february challenge (which I did mostly just by listening to it whilst reading the lyrics.. but I did it so much I can even sing it "a cappella" :) ) As for March, the challenge this month is to do something for 100 minutes everyday and I've decided to do 100 minutes of reading. On my first day I read 40 pages (so about 2.5 minutes for 1 page). On my second day I read 95 minutes (god knows why I lost the motivation for the last 5 minutes). On my third, I didn't read at all. On my fourth day I read about 35 pages in 100 minutes. Today I read 125 minutes. Thus catching up on my second day and starting on catching up on the day before yesterday. Because of all that reading, I finally finished the second book of ノルウェイの森 by 村上 春樹. All in all, it was a good read. The end kind of left me hanging, wondering if a third book existed but it seems it doesn't. The story follows ワタナベ, a young guy who lost his best friend who killed himself at 17. He and his bestfriend's girlfriend move to Tokyo to get away from the now-daunting city they live in. The meet again long after and start seeing each other from time to time. I won't go in details but his bestfriend's girlfriend ends up being "sick" and going to an establishment lost in the mountains. The story goes around Watanabe and the people he meets. After a while, the story kind of ends up working around him having sex here and there and his approach to love and life. A good read, with very descriptive texts and details about everything thus making the book feel a bit slow at times but nevertheless interesting. I would advice anybody to read it if you don't mind the (numerous) intercourse allusions/descriptions. I have started yesterday a new book called 愛がいない部屋. It appears to be a collection of 10 short stories happening in the same building and talking about the people's feeling about their husband, flatmate, etc. Seems fine so far but nothing extraordinary (I've only read 2 stories (58 pages) for now) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 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 186 of 203 09 March 2015 at 4:24pm | IP Logged |
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Re-post from the week that never happened:
On February 28th: Bad bad month for study.. but hey, I guess it can't be helped. I am looking for a job after all. I read a bit of my Japanese book and some articles and talked to a few friends in Japanese and Korean. I saw a few episodes of some animes and asadora in Japanese and a few of Kill me heal me in Korean. I did have 2 of my ex-flatmate's friends who came to paris and I spent 2 full days showing them around and talking 100% in Japanese. Gosh I was rusty! Many simple words just didn't come back to me. I could just remember half of them and telling them "政。。なんとかなんとか" and then going around until they got the word and told me (this happened a lot with compounds with this Kanji). I couldn't even remember 政府！ But anyway it got better at the end and I now realize I need to practice more regularly! Non language related, I've had a few interviews and I'm gonna have a second (and last if I understood well) interview tuesday for a job in Prague. So if I come to get it, I guess I'll have a new language to work on! But let's not get to far ahead, I don't have it yet and I have some other interesting interviews beforehand. For the February challenge, I got quite lucky actually because I found a music which I got to love and learnt it perfectly by listening to it many many times. It's quite easy sentences but the rythm wasn't so much at first. I didn't know the singer but I found out many of his songs are really nice so I'm learning some others little by little. On March 1st: So, the first day of March has almost past and I've read for 100minutes as the Challenge is this month for the Asian Team. I read only my Japanese book ノルウェイの森 and I read exactly 40 pages which means I read in average 1 page per 2 minutes and a half. This is rather okay, but I have read faster before. I'll make sure that my last day of March is an all-japanese reading day to see wether my reading speed will have increased by then. Just to be clear, this month the challenge is to do something for a number of minutes everyday. I choose to do reading for 100 minutes. However, this includes any type of reading (except conversation) in any of my language. Thus I'll try to switch here and there between languages although my main focus will stay Japanese. Apart from that, nothing really today. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 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 187 of 203 09 March 2015 at 4:37pm | IP Logged |
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It's now been 9 days since the 100-minute challenge started, I've thus read 900 minutes. I caught up with the day I didn't read and hope I won't have to
do it again because 120 minutes of reading gets tiring. 100 is long enough ^^ With all that time, I've ended up finishing already the collection of 10 short stories I started on the 5th. Indeed, it was nothing out of the ordinary. However I quite liked the format of the stories. They were about 20-25 pages long which meant I could read 2 per day in 2 sessions. However as each time a new story started, I had to get in the story quickly, get the context. This probably slowed down my reading a bit. Indeed, I read about 45 pages in 120 minutes (catching up on the previous missed day) per day. The stories were interesting and talked about all the difficulties one can have, all of those happening in the same 32-stories building. It went from a girl interested in her flatmate, a wife cheating, a husband hitting his wife, a boy withdrawing on himself, a couple moving in, etc. In this aspect, it was interesting to see those life, however I think it could have been interesting to see those person start to interact with one another. All in all, if you have nothing to read or want everyday vocab, I'd say read it. But if you have something else you're more interested in, go for it. This book is not a must-read ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 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 188 of 203 25 March 2015 at 10:32pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I've got some bad and good news.
Let's start with the bad: I've given up on the 100 challenge for this month (planning on catching up next month and do a double challenge whatever the next one is). It's been almost 2 weeks since last time I read. The reason? I'm very far behind on my thesis which I have to hand in on April 7. As a result I'm focusing on it and doing nothing else. As for the good news. It's actually a GREAT one! I got a job in Japan, Tokyo, today! It's a 1-year contract renewable (usually renewed. It's a french contract called VIA). So I'll be heading once more to the other side of the world in June ! Which also means that after I finish my thesis, I'll be in real holidays and thus can work like hell on my languages (and of course especially my Japanese). Anyway, I'll write more next time ! And more about languages! 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 189 of 203 25 March 2015 at 10:39pm | IP Logged |
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Really happy for you, yuhakko! I'm sure you will do a great job in Japan.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5650 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 190 of 203 26 March 2015 at 11:58am | IP Logged |
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Congrats on the job Yukahakko!
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| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4869 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 191 of 203 27 March 2015 at 8:03pm | IP Logged |
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yuhakko, congrats!!! That's great news. I knew you'd get a job in Asia ;) What a great basis for improving your languages.
Wishing you the best of success for your thesis. You'll do well on that, too :) Edited by druckfehler on 27 March 2015 at 8:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 192 of 203 28 March 2015 at 10:46am | IP Logged |
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Congratulations, yuhakko! がんばってね！ Here's hoping I'll be able to make a similar announcement in a month or so...
1 person has voted this message useful |
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