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Going back to Europe TAC 2014 DE|FR|日本語 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 57 of 142 06 March 2014 at 7:12pm | IP Logged |
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Somehow I managed to get back from London without picking up too many Japanese books. The plan was mainly to go for a break, some sightseeing and spending time with my husband so I wasn't really planning on doing much language stuff anyway. I did pick up something from the series 日本語文法演習, as I have been looking, for a long time, for a grammar book aimed at intermediate to advanced learners which is not JLPT oriented, covers real grammar rather than just sentence patterns to memorise, and focuses on things you first learned as a beginner but still screw up, like particles, transitivity and tense/aspect. The 日本語文法演習 series does appear to do all of this, it's just a shame that it's spread over several volumes rather than packed into one neat little book.
I also picked up a volume of essays about music by 村上春樹 having been hooked in by the title: 意味がなければスイングはない. 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 58 of 142 15 March 2014 at 5:42pm | IP Logged |
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My language exchange at the end of last week seemed to go quite well. At least, a lot of Japanese seemed to fall out of my mouth quite naturally. I've noticed this happen before after taking a short break.
But this week I somehow decided that I was going to get my head down for some more intensive Japanese work. I did four hours of online classes and spent 45-60 minutes a day doing work with my two textbooks. But due to a combination of lack of sleep and slightly longer working hours than normal, I found myself with no time or energy to do other important things like watching TV and reading books. By the end of yesterday, it really started to show. My pronunciation was shot, using Anki to review what I'd covered in my textbooks was becoming a grind and I realised that things were becoming unbalanced. I'm sure if I'd actually achieved 7+ hours a sleep a night last week it would have taken longer to fall apart, but eventually it would have fallen apart anyway. So, first lesson is that four hours a week of online classes is too much. Second lesson is that despite the fact I am quite keen to cover the material in my textbooks as quickly as possible, if I don't find the time to get natural exposure to the language it becomes pretty meaningless pretty quickly. Really I should be spending at least half my available time on TV/reading and no more than half on self-study/classes. Also, I should work less and sleep more, but the responsibilities of adult life dictates otherwise. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5185 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 59 of 142 15 March 2014 at 6:22pm | IP Logged |
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I don't know if this will help you but I've found that doing two lessons on a day off when I have more time is actually not too bad at all. But doing 4 lessons during the week, especially if you do every lesson on a workday, burns me out a lot. Some weeks I can do it and then other weeks I just skip a lesson or two that I signed up for which stinks.
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| 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 60 of 142 15 March 2014 at 10:31pm | IP Logged |
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In a bid to procrastinate further work with Kanji in Context, I thought I would waste some time this evening with Google and searched for 漢字書き取りドリル. I have found treasure!
ちびむすドリル has a load of pdfs for download, including practice and and writing drill sheets for all the elementary school kanji and practice and reading sheets for middle/high school kanji. They also have some really nice sheets for learning some ことわざ and 四字熟語. And they have a page of links here to other free kanji practice resources for Japanese schoolkids on the web, from which I discovered the following gem: dorilu.net allows you to set parameters to create a page or two of reading and/or writing drills covering grades 1-6 (you can select the range within this as well). You can even choose whether or not to have the answers at the bottom of the page. There are some other interesting looking drills on the site, such as ones to choose the correct conjunction word. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5185 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 61 of 142 15 March 2014 at 11:32pm | IP Logged |
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I sent that link for the PDF's to a friend. I'm sure she'll love it when she has time to do it and I'm going try it out too. Although I'm a big fan of RTK, I'm thinking this'll help with the sounds. And I kind of want to just try it the Japanese way. I did a post on lang-8 about this very thing not too long ago btw and joked about breaking into a Japanese school to steal their kanji worksheets...
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| 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 62 of 142 17 March 2014 at 8:07pm | IP Logged |
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I've been having a closer look at the worksheets on ちびむすドリル. I'm thinking I might start working through them from third grade upwards, which is just the right level for a mixture of review and new material, especially when it comes to writing. The worksheets print rather nicely, and the benefit of home printing is that I don't feel insanely guilty about penciling over the worksheet. I have some serious psychological block about making my own mark on anything bound by a professional.
So why am I doing this? Didn't I already say I was going to commit to a load of other resources forsaking all others just a few days ago? Well, I'm going to have to take a multitrack approach to kanji. Kanji in Context is a reading course. When it comes to preparing for N1 or making the 朝日新聞 a more comfortable read, I am fairly confident it will do the job, especially given the capacity of the human brain to fill in gaps for you, given enough context. But it contains no exercises for differentiation of similar kanji, let alone any writing exercises. And I kind of miss the writing. It was the writing system which really drew me into Japanese in the first place, but my early joy for writing out kanji has long been quelled by the bleak utilitarianism of improving my literacy. Anyway, no pressure on the writing thing. I just intend to work through a few worksheets and enjoy the process of forming 漢字 with my own hand. 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 63 of 142 29 March 2014 at 11:26pm | IP Logged |
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I decided to take a break from Japonin classes since I was finding that I was spending all my Japanese time on study and no time on the really important tasks of reading books and watching TV. I figured I could claim a few hours back to get some quality input. But instead I spent the time on various other things totally unrelated to languages (but not totally unimportant, in some cases quite the opposite).
Things have picked up this week, as I'm still watching my way through Moto Kare, which was a bit of a slow starter but it's getting kind of interesting now. I like it how this guy has two beautiful girls fighting over him, and yet somehow you can't help feeling sorry for him... However on the whole I need to take, not a complete break, but just a period of time where I'm not pushing myself. If I have the time and inclination to chill out with some input, I'm doing it, but I'm not forcing it. I have too many other things competing for my attention right now. Speaking of input, I have discovered an interesting Japanese website at blogos.com - it basically collates a load of opinion pieces from a range of different writers with different backgrounds, with opportunity for readers to add their own comments. Plenty of articles on the hot issues at the time, which makes a nice contrast to the somewhat drier input I am getting from the NHK News podcasts. 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 64 of 142 01 April 2014 at 7:55pm | IP Logged |
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End of March Summary
My plans for March were all about Japanese and not really about anything else. Let's see how I got on: Japanese Speaking practice: Language exchange, JOI, iTalki I did 4 JOI classes, 2 Skype lessons and 3 language exchanges. This was despite having a week off for holidays. Writing practice: Write something! No, not yet. How hard can it be... Listening to JPOD101 I listened to 1 lower intermediate lesson Watching TV drama 4 episodes of Moto Kare Extensive reading I read this graded reader for 3rd graders Kanji in Context I completed 1 chapter 新完全マスター文法N2 2 chapters completed (or at least 1 chapter plus two halves) There has been some other language stuff going on which I can't/won't measure, like flicking through my weekly edition of Le Monde, browsing Japanese articles on Blogos and listening to German music, but since I can't/won't measure it, it's kind of hard to summarise. I watched a totally unrelated documentary the other day where someone pointed out that you care about what you measure. Pages in textbooks are easy to measure, but are they really what I should be caring about? I don't have the answer to that one. I also have to confess that just in the last two days I have started looking at Spanish! It's never been up there on my hitlist before (in the sense that it's as good a language to learn as any other, but I can't learn them all) however we've decided that our summer holiday this year will be in Spain. Since my fellow British tourists are already doing a good job of shaming my country with their lack of linguistic ability, I figure I should try and do something positive and at least learn the basics. All the more important since before Saturday I didn't even know things like "hello","yes" or "thank you". Plus, travel is more fun when you can at least understand some of what is going on around you. I don't have any great hopes or dreams when it comes to Spanish (except maybe a foot in the door of another major world language), and I don't intend to spend too much time on it, but at least my French should give me some kind of discount. Edited by g-bod on 01 April 2014 at 7:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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