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The 1-year challenge: Japanese

  Tags: Japanese
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
38 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 35  Next >>
Lizzern
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5908 days ago

791 posts - 1053 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 25 of 38
02 April 2014 at 12:15am | IP Logged 
@dampingwire: I'm not going to memorise the readings either. I would get too bored for my own good... So I'll probably learn words I feel like I need. Seems to make sense. I don't really have a specific goal in mind though, and I'm not going to sit any of the tests, so it's hard to set a sensible target. But I guess it'll become more obvious as I go along...

-----

I seem to have hit a bit of a roadblock - not feeling very motivated these days. It's probably more to do with other things than Japanese itself, but I've been bored and annoyed during my Japanese study time over the last few days. It didn't help that the episodes I've been going through today and yesterday had a character that sounded a lot like another character that really annoyed me in one of the earlier seasons. Also, I took a few days off last week and have been trying to catch up - probably not the best idea right now though.

I think this is just one of those natural things that happens at a certain point - I get temporarily sick of it and can't tell if I'm losing interest or if I'm just having a phase. I'm kinda bored with the whole thing right now. It might be because I don't have an end goal, despite the title of this log. Right now there isn't anything compelling to keep me going. I'm not going to quit, but this is a log, so I might as well make note of it here. Right now, Japanese isn't fun.

Liz
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Lizzern
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5908 days ago

791 posts - 1053 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 26 of 38
06 April 2014 at 12:10pm | IP Logged 
Started Lower Intermediate today... Yay, I guess. I don't feel like any kind of intermediate though... Anyway I'm feeling more positive about Japanese at this point - the week's gotten better overall, and I'm back on track now, at least with the lessons. (The kanji plan... not so much.) I think for now I'll just keep going with the basic plan for a bit, and try not to get discouraged, then try to incorporate a bit more. I don't really feel like doing more than the basics right now, and I have a busy week coming up anyway.

Liz
1 person has voted this message useful



Lizzern
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5908 days ago

791 posts - 1053 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 27 of 38
11 April 2014 at 10:10pm | IP Logged 
Just passed 500 lessons at JP101. Now seems like as good a time as any to make some changes in my study approach, which I've been planning to do for a while anyway. Tomorrow is the 3-month anniversary for this log and I'm at a round number today, so starting tomorrow I'm going to start adding to my Japanese background noise compilation and keep that running more often when I'm doing other things. I'm going to try to add one new thing every day for now, then we'll see how that goes. And just set it to shuffle, and have it on in the background whenever possible. That's really helped me with other languages, and I feel like it's time :-)

Liz
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Lizzern
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5908 days ago

791 posts - 1053 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 28 of 38
08 May 2014 at 12:59am | IP Logged 
Just finished Lower Intermediate 1 at JP101, four days late because I had the cold from hell for weeks after Easter. I liked the course well enough. They've started explaining things more in Japanese and translating the relevant bits to help us understand, which is really helpful and makes the whole thing a bit less passive for me. It feels like good practice - but a lot of it still goes way over my head. Sometimes it feels more like they trail off into conversations amongst themselves though, and there have been times when they went on and on about something that sounded like it was probably interesting, in Japanese, and I didn't understand, and then they just summarised it but much more briefly than what I just heard and didn't understand, and it sounded much less interesting. Feels like a waste when it happens. And sometimes I wonder if I'm missing important things that they only explain in Japanese. But overall it's a good thing, good practice.

While the forum was down I finished the last of the Newbies that I was using for review. Quite happy I'm done with them.

I'm way behind on my kanji plan but whatever. I really don't have the energy to prioritise it on any level right now so it will just have to sort itself out when it does.

My audio collection is developing nicely, but I've already noticed the same thing I've seen the other times I've had audio running in the background - that some of them annoy me just a tad and will need to be replaced. Right now I'm just including things indiscriminately as long as people are speaking clearly and there isn't too much noise interfering with their speaking, and no one sounds particularly annoying... I can cut some parts out... But I'm quickly noticing which audio sources I should have just avoided in the first place. I've been pretty tired recently though and haven't had it on much so I'll see how it goes and change my audio sources later.

Liz
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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4664 days ago

1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 29 of 38
08 May 2014 at 7:56pm | IP Logged 
Lizzern wrote:
Sometimes it feels more like they trail off into conversations amongst
themselves though, and there have been times when they went on and on about something
that sounded like it was probably interesting, in Japanese, and I didn't understand, and
then they just summarised it but much more briefly than what I just heard and didn't
understand, and it sounded much less interesting. Feels like a waste when it happens. And
sometimes I wonder if I'm missing important things that they only explain in Japanese.
But overall it's a good thing, good practice.


I think the grammar points are always covered in English. As for "a waste" I just found
it made me want to understand now so that I'd stop missing out. Still waiting for
that to happen :-)

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Lizzern
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5908 days ago

791 posts - 1053 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 30 of 38
14 May 2014 at 1:01am | IP Logged 
@dampingwire: Yeah I think most of it is covered in English, but not the stories necessarily. I'm not going to re-listen to any of the lessons because there are just too many of them and it would take too much time to review, so if I don't understand the story now, it's basically lost to me... It does push me to want to understand, but I AM missing out on things, unfortunately. But most of the time, it doesn't really bother me. I just hope that I'm eventually able to understand the things that matter to me :-)

-----

Just passed the 600 lesson mark at JP101. One of the hosts made a comment in one of today's lessons about our level being quite advanced if we're listening to that level (Lower Intermediate 2) which I don't really agree with. Maybe if I had ALL the vocab and grammar down, but I don't. But there are some things I'm quite comfortable with now. It sneaks up on you... But I have no idea what my level is right now. My speaking is definitely lagging behind my understanding though. I'm still only about 4 months into my 1-year thing so I'll just keep working and see how I feel about it by the time I'm done :-)

Liz
1 person has voted this message useful



Lizzern
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5908 days ago

791 posts - 1053 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 31 of 38
17 May 2014 at 12:18am | IP Logged 
Just finished Lower Intermediate 2 at JP101. On time, but I'm still a bit behind overall... I'll be caught up in a couple of days though, until the next time I get sick or just need a break :-)

Just realized today that for some reason I've stopped reading all the sentences out loud like I used to. Not sure when it happened, but I don't do it anymore. So I'll try to start doing that again. It was good practice. But I've noticed it's easier for me to get sentences to flow well now, probably because I have a better model in my head of what it's supposed to sound like... So maybe it was a good thing that I kept quiet for a while ;-)

Liz

Edited by Lizzern on 17 May 2014 at 12:27am

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Lizzern
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5908 days ago

791 posts - 1053 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 32 of 38
28 May 2014 at 11:54pm | IP Logged 
Done with Lower Intermediate 3 at JP101. Busy times, so I'm not feeling very inspired right now, but I've been getting through my average of 3 lessons a day overall. Life should get less busy starting 2 weeks from now, which I'm really looking forward to - guess I'll see what I do about Japanese then :-)

Liz


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