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Brun_Ugle flies again (TAC 2012 team い) | ||
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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 9 of 276 16 December 2011 at 9:14pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Brun Ugle. Just wanted to pop by and say I'm looking forward to seeing your progress in 2012. I read and listened to the first Harry Potter in Japanese last summer and it was great. It was (and still is) slightly above my level in many respects, but a combination of the text, audio, and some latent knowledge of the plot from when I read it in English really helped and I did enjoy the experience. I would love to get the second book but can't bring myself to pay the eye watering price for the audio right now.
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| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 10 of 276 17 December 2011 at 9:52am | IP Logged |
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Log for 2011.12.12-2011.12.16 inclusive
It’s not been a great week. The internet has been up and down. I have had difficulty focusing. And the neighbors have been excessively noisy, culminating yesterday with a party that shook the building. Literally! I felt the vibrations through the floor. It was like in that Tom and Jerry cartoon where Tom is having a party and Jerry is trying to sleep, but the vibrations bounce him out of bed. (That part is an exaggeration, but only because I knew better than to try to go to bed.) So, now for the numbers: Reviewing the Kanji: Time = 3:59 including reviewing and learning new kanji . Added 178 new kanji. The only reason it took quite that much time was that I was a little unfocused. Read the kanji: Time = 4:23. When I can’t manage anything else, I can often manage this. ANKI: Time = 3:47 Harry Potter Still trying to work out the best method for this. Audio only: Time = 3:20 Reading only: Time = 3:00. I also highlight words I don’t know while reading. Audio and reading at the same time: Time = 1:31. I listen to the audio while looking at English, and then again while reading Japanese. Other listening: Time = 1:42. A mix of TV, news, Erin, listening quizzes, etc. Writing: Time = 0:19. It is actually longer, but I have a tendency to forget to set my stopwatch right away. Though in terms of how much I actually wrote, I think a native speaker could have done it in 5 minutes. Total for period: 22 hr, 2 min Total since I started keeping track: 133 hr, 16 min I think if anything can make me tired of Harry Potter, it will be this. So far, I’ve been going through each chapter several times, sometimes just audio, sometimes just reading, and sometimes both. Some of the phrases from the audiobook (in the reader’s voice) are getting stuck in my head – like a song that plays over and over in my mind. This morning, I keep hearing Dumbledore saying, “有名だなんて、有名だなんて、有名だなん て” like a broken record. I find listening works best while walking in the woods. The steady tromp, tromp, tromp makes my mind focus somehow. Otherwise I tend to drift off as soon as there are several words in a row that I don’t easily recognize. (I drift off a bit anyway, but not as much.) Unfortunately, it’s been a bit warmer the past couple of days and the snow has turned to ice. It’s hard to focus on Harry Potter and focus on staying upright at the same time. I know I’ve made a lot of progress this past month and a half, because before I had great trouble with listening comprehension and it has definitely gotten better. For example, I had trouble with the dialogues on Erin before, and now they seem pretty easy. So either the first lessons on that site are harder than the others, or I have improved. However, at the same time, I frequently get the feeling of not getting anywhere. But I know from experience that I have times when I don’t seem to make any progress for weeks, and then suddenly a whole bunch of little things click into place at the same time and I make a great leap forward. 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 11 of 276 17 December 2011 at 10:31am | IP Logged |
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I think the thing with Erin is that the dialogues seem to be spoken very quickly. It's pretty natural dialogue but the downside is at times it feels like you blink and you miss it. It's a great site though, I wish I had more time to use it!
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| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 12 of 276 17 December 2011 at 11:59am | IP Logged |
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I like Erin in that the dialogues are fairly natural and quick, but I think in general that it is rather weird. I don't really understand why they think that someone who is advanced enough to understand a dialogue with Saki (who talks like a machine-gun sometimes), then needs a grammar lesson about これ、それ、あれ、どれ。 That's covered in the first lesson of almost any Japanese textbook. Anyone who understands those dialogues, would know that perfectly, I would think. And then there are those culture quizzes, with loads of Kanji, and questions like "How many square meters is the average Japanese house?" I don't even know how many square meters there are in my own apartment!
At this point, I'm trying to cut down on the things that I used to do that were mostly a waste of time. So I made the decision to just use Erin to go through the various dialogues and skip over all the questions and elementary grammar points. I went through one lesson yesterday in less than fifteen minutes. It used to take me hours because I did everything, even though a lot of the exercises were useless to me. I have a tendency to feel I have to complete everything. (It's an Asperger thing. We can never stop until we're finished, even if it kills us.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 13 of 276 20 December 2011 at 10:09am | IP Logged |
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Yesterday my Christmas present to myself came in the mail – one day before it was expected. It’s the “Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar” by Seiichi Makino and Michio Tsutsui. I’d heard it was really good, so I thought I’d try it out. So far I’m very impressed, and if I like it and find it useful, I will also get the “Intermediate” and the “Advanced.” (Just for a little light reading.)
I spent about an hour reading it yesterday, and an hour so far today (You didn’t think I was going to wait until Christmas, did you?). So far, I’ve read the explanation of grammar terms and part of the section about characteristics of Japanese grammar, which is just a sort of overview of Japanese grammar. The actual dictionary part doesn’t start until page 63. Anyway, so far I am very impressed. Up to this point, I haven’t actually read anything I didn’t know before, but the way it is presented makes me think about things in a new way and gain new understanding. I think I will probably read this book several times and learn something new each time. One word of warning though, if you are thinking of getting this book – it is definitely not an “easy reader.” You have to think. I love grammar and Japanese has plenty of it, so this is lots of fun :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 14 of 276 20 December 2011 at 10:04pm | IP Logged |
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These past few days, I’ve been doing a lot of Listening-Reading with the Japanese translation of Harry Potter. It’s an amazing technique. I can’t believe the improvements I’ve been making in this short time! It took me a while to get the hang of it, but now it’s great.
This is my way of doing it (a slight variation on the original): I’ve already read Harry Potter many, many times, especially the first books because I reread them before each new release. So I know the book very well. This is important. It’s also important that it is a book you like well enough to read it again and again. So, that’s the first step (knowing the book in your own language) down. The next step is reading in the foreign language (Japanese) while listening to the audiobook in the same language. And the third step is to read the book in a language you know well (English) while listening in the foreign language (Japanese). It takes a little practice read in one language and listen in another, but it gets easier. I find it nice to alternate back and forth between these two steps, although that isn’t how the original poster of the technique recommended. I haven’t gotten to the shadowing part. The audio is very fast and I am not a fast talker usually in any language and certainly not in Japanese. I’ve also found it best to go through the whole book each time. I was doing one chapter at a time, but not anymore. I think meeting the same word in different contexts helps me learn it. And in a whole book, most words are bound to be repeated several times. Anyway, this seems to have given my Japanese a turbo-boost. The improvement in listening comprehension is amazing. I still have a long way to go, but it has allowed me to take a great leap forward in a very short time. I have some hypotheses about why this is so. One thing I’ve noticed, and which seems counterintuitive, is that (up to a point) the faster he speaks, the easier it is to understand. I started thinking about why this might be so, and came up with the following. One thing is that he speaks faster and faster as the story gets more exciting. It is natural to assume that the most exciting parts are often also very concrete and easy to visualize. That means that I probably have a stronger image of these scenes in my mind and it is thus easier to attach the Japanese to the image. However, I think there is more to it than that. I think the speed itself is also somewhat important. I am a visual thinker. When I hear words, they create images for me – not just pictures, but also sensation and such. So when I read or listen to a story, I am there inside the story. However, this doesn’t work as well in a foreign language when there are a lot of words I don’t understand. The words I know well work as they would in English – they come into my head, become images and the words themselves disappear, leaving room for new words to come in. The problem is with words I “almost” know. These are words that I’ve seen before, perhaps studied, but don’t know well enough for that instantaneous translation into images. Before, when I would listen to something, my mind would latch on to these words trying to remember what they mean. Of course, then I would miss the next three of four words, maybe more. These could be words I might have understood had I heard them. This latching on to words lowers my listening comprehension. When he speaks fast, it seems my mind doesn’t get the time to latch on and try to figure out the words. By letting the words go, I actually understand more! I think another clue to why listening-reading works is that even if you only understand one word in four, the images are already in your head (from having read the story before), so those words easily call up that image. Since the image is already there, the “almost known” words often become clear because the context of the image is enough to remind you of their meaning. Gradually other, formerly completely unknown words also become clear because you hear them several times and over time naturally fit them into the image. Like a half-done puzzle – the missing pieces are easy to fit in. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 15 of 276 21 December 2011 at 8:42am | IP Logged |
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Log for 2011.12.17-2011.12.20 inclusive
I was too tired to finish this last night after my long post about LR, so I’m doing it now. I haven’t been doing so badly on my studies so far, but I will be leaving to visit someone on Thursday and will be away several days, so I might not get much studying done during the Christmas holidays. I don’t know if I will post again before that or not, so I may be silent for a week or so. (I suspect I won’t be the only one.) As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been mostly doing LR. (It’s a good thing I like Harry Potter. I think I will know this book better than J.K. Rowling herself before I’m finished.) I’ve also been keeping up my reviews and learning more kanji. I will add a few more kanji today, but then I will take a little break because I don’t know how much I will be able to review when I’m away. I’ll take the last hundred or so just before New Year’s. Then maybe I’ll take a few weeks off from learning new kanji before I start on RTKIII. I’ll also go a little slower on them, unless I get so excited I can’t stop. Here’s what I’ve done the past few days: Reviewing the Kanji: Time = 3:05 including reviewing and learning new kanji . Added 133 new kanji. At this point, I have a lot of reviews every day, and of course Heisig saved a lot of the hard kanji for the end. At least it feels that way. Read the kanji: Time = 2:57. I don’t entirely like the add/review algorithm here. Some words seem to come up too often and it is a bit too slow to add new words. I liked it better when you could adjust that yourself. Now they’ve changed it so that words are supposed to come up at the ideal time, but it isn’t ideal for me. ANKI: Time = 2:19 Harry Potter I think I’ve finally found out how I like to do this. I don’t highlight or look up vocabulary anymore, but I might do that with any leftover unknown words at the end. Now I just try to learn them from context. I’m also just doing listening and reading at the same time, alternating between reading Japanese and reading English. And I go through the whole book, not just one chapter at a time. Audio only: Time = 0:56 I still listen to audio-only when I take a walk in the woods, but it’s been too slippery for walking most days. Audio and reading at the same time: Time = 12:25. One time all the way through with Japanese text (a little over 10 hours for the whole book – Philosopher’s Stone). Plus the first four chapters with English text. Writing: Time = 0:22. Again, I forgot to set the timer right away, so it’s really a little longer. Grammar: Time = 1:46. My lovely new grammar dictionary came in the mail the other day. I’ve only just gotten started reading it, but I love it already. Total for period: 23 hr, 50 min Total since I started keeping track: 157 hr, 6 min 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 16 of 276 22 December 2011 at 7:59am | IP Logged |
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I was going to post this last night, but my bad internet connection wouldn’t let me, so I had to save it and try again today. Here is yesterday’s post:
I’ve been reading in my grammar book again – and loving it. I like the way it explains and solidifies things I’ve subconsciously learned from my reading of Harry Potter and Star Trek scripts, but hadn’t managed to get a fully conscious understanding of. So now I will write a little about what I’ve learned because writing things down always helps me remember, plus it might be of interest to someone else. One thing I learned today was about the sentence-final particles “-kai” and “-dai.” I’d managed to figure out from Star Trek that these were particles to mark questions in informal male speech. What I hadn’t noticed was that “-kai” marks a yes/no question and “-dai” marks a who/what/when/etc. question. I will definitely have to keep my eye out for that in the future, next time I’m reading Star Trek scripts, and also in Harry Potter of course. The other thing I learned about that I already was starting to get a subconscious feeling for, was about giseigo (phonomimes /onomatopoeia = words like bang and meow that imitate sounds), and gitaigo (phenomimes = phonetic representations of things perceived by other senses & psychomimes = phonetic representations of feelings and psychological states). Japanese is full of these kinds of words and they are used all the time. However, most textbooks seem to barely touch on them. Harry Potter is full of these kinds of words and I’d started to get a feeling of how the different sounds represent different kinds of feelings, but my grammar book has made me much more aware of it. Some examples are voiced vs unvoiced (voiced consonants often indicate something dull, heavy or dirty while unvoiced consonants are more often for things that are bright, light or sharp), k and g are often for sharpness or sudden change, s and sh are often for quiet states or emotions or quick, quiet motion. There are dozens of others plus many examples in the book (great book, highly recommended). So I will definitely be “listening with new ears” next time I LR Harry Potter. And now, I’m finally finished reading the introduction to the grammar dictionary and can start on the dictionary itself. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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