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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| CaptainLam Newbie United States Joined 4314 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 10 24 November 2013 at 9:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been trying my luck with learning Japanese. Its my first foreign language that I've improved on and I've learned most of the alphabet, basic words and grammar structures.
The problem is, I don't know what else I could do to improve my language comprehension. When I hear foreigners speak, I get dumbfounded about what they're saying, and even as I speak, I can't communicate as freely as I'm afraid to make mistakes. Where should I start to proceed? Downloading premade Anki decks? Working on grammar structures? Making my own vocabulary flash cards? I'm not sure where to go. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| betelgeuzah Diglot Groupie Finland Joined 4406 days ago 51 posts - 82 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: Japanese, Italian | Message 2 of 10 24 November 2013 at 10:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know how much exactly you've learned so far but I can give you some suggestions based on my own experience.
Grammar: I suggest studying grammar formally from the very basics if you haven't done so already. You can start by using free sources such as the Tae Kim's basic grammar guide. He doesn't explain everything you should know but he covers many of the basics. Later on you may want to use other grammar sources too. Personally I suggest the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. I read it from cover to cover but it can be used as a reference tool as well. The book explains some things better and more extensively than Tae Kim and teaches some new grammar structures as well overlooked by Kim. To go with the grammar guides I personally downloaded a pre-made Anki deck for both sources to help me internalize the grammar as well as one can without using native materials. I think it helped me to get past some tricky aspects of the language. Vocabulary: I have taught myself vocab using the premade Anki deck "Core 2k/6k" with good success. If you do not feel confident about your kanji recognition ability you may want to take a look at the book "Remembering the Kanji" by James Heisig, as well as kanji.koohii.com where you can find additional help for it. Essentially you would "divide and conquer" the kanji by focusing on recognition and writing first, and after that you would start studying vocabulary (so reading+meaning of the kanji). It worked for me, but it is a detour to studying real Japanese right away, so it may not be for everyone. Core 6k has 6000 words but I suggest starting to dive in to native materials long before you get there. Especially if you are teaching yourself grammar simultaneously. Don't be afraid to delete the useless business vocab if that doesn't concern you, as there is quite a lot of it in the deck. If you use Firefox you can download the plugin "rikaichan" which is an on-the-fly translation tool for the unknown words you encounter. It is a great tool as you can just hover your mouse over a word and get the translation right away. There is also another plugin called "rikaisama" with neat extra features like realtime Anki import for words to learn them later on with a button press (so making your own flash cards becomes infinitely easier). If you worry about making mistakes then you are artificially handicapping yourself. Maybe this is different to someone who had to learn English first but to me there is nothing to be ashamed about. How could anyone expect you to speak the language well after so little time? Use all the opportunities you have, nobody will care if you don't speak properly. 頑張ってください！ Edited by betelgeuzah on 24 November 2013 at 10:15am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6602 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 3 of 10 24 November 2013 at 11:20am | IP Logged | ||
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See this article and the links and the various HTLAL threads about improving your listening.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4712 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 4 of 10 24 November 2013 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | ||
Keep truckin'. Give your language context. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5537 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 10 24 November 2013 at 1:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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As betelgeuzah says, it's hard to give advice without know a bit more about what can already do. Can you, for example, more or less read easy books in Japanese? Can you usually understand when people speak to you directly?
We have a Learner FAQ with some useful information, including a list of several "roadmaps" for learning a new language. But this is all pretty generic, and if you have specific questions, the folks here can offer more detailed advice. In general, if you can't read written texts, or understand people when they speak, then find easier texts and people who speak slower and more clearly. If there's basically nothing you can understand, then work with parallel text and audio, and listen to and read short sections repeatedly, and try to figure out things you don't understand. Mix a decent amount of exposure with a smaller amount of memorization/repetition for stuff that's important but that refuses to stick. There are lots of pleasant, fairly painless ways to deal with memorization—everything from Anki cards (including recognition cards and MCDs) to gold lists to Iversen's word lists, and so on. Yes, this is very generic advice. :-) Edited by emk on 24 November 2013 at 1:29pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4670 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 10 24 November 2013 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you want graded vocabulary then the N5, N4, N3 and N2 courses (in that order) on
memrise.com will take you quite a long way with words. I can second the Tae Kim recommendation for grammar. It's pretty good and the price is right too :-) I'm using the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, but I think it's probably tough to read from cover to cover. You may be better off working through some more learner-oriented material. I used Minna no Nihongo, which puts the grammar right into your face, and Japanese for Busy People, which buries a little more. MNN seems to go further but for each of the two beginner levels you need the Japanese textbook and the English translation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4449 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 7 of 10 04 December 2013 at 6:05am | IP Logged | ||
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When learning any language, the bottom line is how much exposure you get throughout the day. In a classroom
you get 2 hours at most. Being brought up in a Chinese speaking background, my Chinese writing skills used to be stronger. Now I considered my English the first language and Chinese the second. 6 months ago I made a conscious decision. Normally I'd watch a few hours of TV a day and listen to the radio in English. Now I am doing half-half to get my Chinese comprehension up. I can pick up between 85-90% of a news broadcast except for a few words in between. Basically all the TV series I used to pick up (mostly American shows in English) I would go online and watch all the Chinese shows. The problems with relying on language classes is that you take your time and go through the basics: how to count, how to tell time, basic greetings, etc. When somebody talks to you, you rarely get a standard set of replies as in a phrase book. He /she can be talking about any subject that comes to mind. You have to spend a lot more time listening to the news, watch TV shows in your target language. In the beginning you may be able to pick up a few words and phrases. You basically write down all the words & phrases you don't know and look them up phonetically in a dictionary. Make a list and go over it occasionally. After a while when you spend at least half of your day listening and thinking in a language, having conversations become more natural. You don't have to translate back and forth between English and your target language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4694 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 8 of 10 04 December 2013 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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My recommendations:
1. Watch Japanese movies/tv shows. If nessesary, start off with English subtitles. Your brain will start to associate vocab and grammar that you know with the sounds that you are hearing. This takes a lot of time and a lot of practice. 2. Skype conversations and/or real-life meet-ups with native/advanced Japanese speakers. If you want to improve your speaking skills, speak more. If you want to improve listening skills, listen more. Conversations are perfect as it requires you to do both. Mistakes WILL be made. No getting around it. Embrace it. Each mistake you make is an opportunity to get feedback. Feedback makes you better. 3. Self-talk. Talk to yourself. Don't worry as much about mistakes and concentrate of fluidity and ease of speaking. If you want to say something and you don't know a word, look it up. Add it to your ANKI deck or what have you and move on. These are the bread and butter techniques that I use once I have a decent foothold (A2ish) in a language to improve speech and listening. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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