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| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 233 of 256 27 October 2015 at 11:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It may look that way in retrospect, but it didn't feel like it to start with :-)
If the kicking I think I just received from the 模擬試験 I just tried is in anyway representative of the real exam, then I think I need to do some focused study over the next month. The vocab was OK, but the reading parts were just a wall of kanji :-( I'll see how the listening goes tonight or tomorrow night. Anyway, you are well ahead of me. The exams are (largely) meaningless, other than being useful motivators. You are actually going to be in Japan! 本当に羨ましい! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 234 of 256 27 October 2015 at 11:46am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I suspect that the exact point depends on the individual. For reading I'd suggest starting with something like NHK Easy News. Try giving it a go for a few days and see how you get on. If you can't get anywhere even with Rikaichan or an online dictionary, then maybe it is too early. Expect it to be hard at first though. If it takes you 30 minutes to get through a typical 5 line article, that's actually OK - keep going. If you still don't know what's happening even after 30-45 minutes of study and that keeps happening day after day, then it probably is too early. Watching drama or anime is (for me at least) a little different. You can always watch with subtitles. At the start you'll pick up almost nothing. Occasionally skipping backwards and re-listening to a section is a good thing (I think). In the beginning this gives you a "feel" for the spoken language, but you won't necessarily pick up much vocab. Assuming you have enough grammar under your belt you will (hopefully) begin to hear various constructs in use, even if you don't know what the whole sentence means. I've tried subs2srs with a few episodes of one anime and it did seem to work, but I just wasn't interested in that anime I guess. I seemingly have a high tolerance for watching drivel as long as I don't understand the language (:-)) so I've watched hundreds of hours of stuff. Amongst all the dross were one or two series that I did think had potential. I've now found one with both Japanese and English subtitles available. So now I'm watching episodes of that repeatedly. I usually start out by watching a scene with Japanese subtitles: I find that helps me "hear" what is being said, especially when it is slang or clipped speech. Then look at the same section in the English subtitles (using an editor, not playing the scene with English subtitles) and work out roughly what it means (if needed). Then, once I'm happy that I know what's happening, I watch again (and again) with no subtitles. This can take maybe 4 or 5 hours (spread over a week or so) to get through an episode. I usually finish off with a run through the whole epsidoe with no subtitles. Then I move on to the next episode and repeat. I think this works as my abysmal listening comprehension has improved to just being terrible :-)
I think you should try adding supplementary native material now. If it turns out to be too hard now, try again in three months. You may find that you can get the hang of reading on the web well before you can cope with stuff from crunchyroll. Or you may be the other way around. I think I've learned a number of important lessons from the community here at HTLAL. The most important is that you can learn a language without a class. Perhaps the next most important is that what works for me may not work for you and vice-versa. By all means research the various techniques described by various people here (and elsewhere). Some will be helpful and some will not; and the effectiveness of some will vary depending on your experience (so if it doesn't work now, it may work later). The one thing I would caution against is looking for the perfect or most efficient method. I initially spent much more time than was necessary collecting and organising material and looking into various techniques. There's a balance to be had there as every minute researching is a minute that could have been spent learning. A final important point that I would stress is that studying along multiple tracks is perfectly possible. You don't need to "finish" JPOD101 before you try reading on the web or dive into native video. You can work through Minna No Nihongo and Tae Kim's grammar at the same time. It's also perfectly OK to decide that Minna No Nihongo doesn't suit you and move over to Japanese For Busy People for a while. As long as you are learning then you are moving forwards. One final point about JPOD101: there's an incredible amount of stuff there. Some of it is disorganised and chaotic, but it will (almost) all prove useful at some point. If you haven't downloaded it all yet (just a few clicks on iTunes and you can get the whole 30GiB feed ...) then you should do so. Disk space is cheap these days. I took out a 1-year subscription and then stopped using the web site. I didn't really find its extra features of that much use but the lessons are a old mine. You basically have over 1000 lessons each of which has native audio plus a (generally faithful) transcript. Admittedly most of the lessons are at the beginner level, but even if you were to stop there you'd have a decent vocabulary of 1000 words or so plus a wealth of example sentences (most of which you can copy+paste into Anki without worrying about checking for typos ... they have some, but far, far fewer than you would make if you were to retype them). It's just a pity that they are so spammy with their emails. (The sometimes intrusive in-lesson advertising is easily fixed with Audacity :-)) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 235 of 256 31 October 2015 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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W/E 2015-10-18 33h43m
Audio: 16:15 Vocab: 00:57 Reading: 11:49 Grammar: 04:20 Video: 00:22 SC: reading 66 pages, watching: 22m. W/E 2015-10-25 33h10m Audio: 13:31 Vocab: 00:29 Reading: 09:39 Grammar: 07:17 Video: 02:14 SC: reading 27 pages, watching: 1h28m. I've now finished reading さいころ空, which was the last book I was reading for the Super Challenge. My reading over the next month will probably be focussed on whatever seems to be appropriate for the JLPT N2 exam in December. That's likely to be mostly mock tests and perhaps the 新完全マスター N2 book. I've finished my pass through 新完全マスター N2 文法, but at this stage I think I need to use mock test to pick the remaining grammar points to solidify. I'll no doubt carry on working through the text book after the exam though. In my tutorials I've now reached the end of みんなの日本語中級 I: there are just a few remaining questions to clear up from the teacher's supplementary edition. That won't happen until mid November as my tutor is in Japan for two weeks. Someone at work recently became interested in Japanese and has started a lunchtime "club". I say "started" but I really mean "starting next Monday". It'll be interesting to see how it goes. Initially there are over 20 people who have expressed an interest. If there are still people keen after the first few meetings, it's possible that the company might spring for a tutor. Most will be complete beginners, but I think that if there is a tutor then the conversation practice would do me good. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 236 of 256 03 November 2015 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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So someone at work decided (as a result of being in a meeting where one of the Japanese guys was at the end of a phone and where another of the
Japanese guys was providing translation as required), that learning Japanese would be a good idea. So I pointed them at "Japanese for Busy People 1" in the cupboard, suggested where to start on the net and left it at that. About a week later, a "Who'd be interested in learning Japanese?" email arrived. Apparently about 30 people are now interested! I often chat about Japanese to the one other person who I know is actively learning and going to (private) tutorials and I know of two other people who have dallied with Japanese but never really got stuck in. So it was quite a surprise to find that there is such a level of interest. We had a quick meeting this week, just to gauge the level of interest. Some people have actually bought books, so at least some of them are in it for the long haul I think. It seems that, what with the keen interest shown by the office and the support of one of the higher-ups in the US, we're going to be getting a tutor. It will (probably) be for an initial 10-week taster course or introductory course (I don't know how it's going to be billed). We'll be split into two groups (we only have one meeting room big enough to house all of us at once, and anyway a class of 30 just seems too big). Most people are complete beginners, a few fall into the category of "did a one term course years ago" and a few others described themselves as "intermediate" (which I guess is about as well defined as "fluent" :-)). So I expect that the courses will be pitched at the beginner level. I think that, as long as there is some conversation, then I'll probably find them to be of some use. Speaking even beginner-level Japanese must be better than speaking no Japanese! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 237 of 256 03 November 2015 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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(I know that previous post is an expansion of the last paragraph of the post before
it, but I had an old and out-of-date tab open when I wrote the newer post and post before it wasn't there ...) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5184 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 238 of 256 03 November 2015 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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im so negative I assume everyone is going to quit and give up unless they have shown he ability to self study
consistently for a couple years at least. Even when I was in Japan at a language school, on one hand you think people who go all the way to Japan with the intent of studying Japanese are in it for the long haul but most I'm sure won't get too far. They were all at the beginner level and if you think about it, it takes three years of consistent studying to get N3 never mind N2, ah well. That's really awesome that so many people at your company want to study though. It always makes me happy being around people studying Japanese regardless of the level. I think you'll enjoy the class even if it's a lot of beginners. Just speak only Japanese in class ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 239 of 256 04 November 2015 at 1:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think your scepticism is probably reasonably well founded.
I'm surprised: you'd think that having made the effort to go, they'd make the effort to take advantage of the situation.
Like you, I'm assuming that a fair few will drop away quite quickly. But with a starting cadre of 30 I'd hope that there would be enough survivors to keep at least one tutorial beyond that initial 10 week period. (Always assuming the budget is found in the first place :-)). Another four Japanese guys got shipped over this week (they'll be here until Christmas it seems). If I were management I'd be a tad embarrassed that they can find enough people who can speak (at least some) English to ship over here and we'd struggle to find one who can even begin to survive in a Japanese office ... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4665 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 240 of 256 15 November 2015 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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W/E 2015-11-01 37h37m
Audio: 14:12 Vocab: 1:06 Reading: 11:15 Grammar: 7:04 Video: 4:00 W/E 2015-11-08 35h23m Audio: 13:53 Vocab: 0:50 Reading: 11:01 Grammar: 3:49 Video: 5:50 I've stopped posting times for the Super Challenge as I've now finished that, although I'm still tweeting on a weekly basis the totals for dramas that I've watched. Again I've missed posting for a week, so this is an update for a fortnight - and it's almost a week late for that too :-) I have two new colours for my spreadsheet to represent Mock Tests taken and the subsequent Analysis. I've now worked through three JLPT mock tests, at least the vocab+grammar parts. One of the tests has no listening section and of the other two I've only sat one so far. I think the results so far suggest that I need to do more reading, specifically of material tha tis likely to crop up on the test. So that's 新完全マスター N2 読解, the reading passages from the mock tests I have and, perhaps also the passages in みんなの日本語中級 I. I'll put some reading time into re-reading clean copies of the mock test passages I have. I also have some tests from 2009 and before, so those should provide more reading material too. I've kept Anki going, although without activating any new material. I will be selectively activating anything that crops up on a test shortly, but other than that I'll just stick to rehearsing the vocabulary that is already activated. I've also stopped any book-based grammar work, although, again, I'll be going over anything that crops up on a test or that just feels weak as a result of reading something. I did do some intensive listening over this fortnight. I may do some more if time allows, but it's not my current focus. I have started a new drama series, 学校のカイダン, I'm continuing to watch ふるさ と再生 日本の昔ばなし and I'm still working through ミス・パイロット more intensively. I may do a review pass of 新完全マスター N2 聴解 to practice certain fixed patterns, but that's only if time allows. Similarly, once I've been through all the listening test I have, I'll review those more intensively, as they're probably more representative of what I need to do in the exam. Other than that, I think RTK is the only other activity that I've been working on. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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