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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6913 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 9 of 25 16 March 2008 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't managed to do much this last 2 weeks, work is taking up too much time but this should be changing soon hopefully.
I've switched tactics with Cantonese. I've decided I wasn't learning enough on how to speak with Teach Yourself so I've changed to FSI Cantonese. The plan is to get myself able to talk comfortably in basic situations with FSI and then enhance my vocabulary with Teach Yourself. I'm onto unit 3 and I'm finding it a lot easier to work through than TY. RTK has ground to a bit of a halt. I've decided to study all of the kanji that I've failed, which is still around 200, so I've got quite a bit to get through. However, I have the next few days free so hopefully I can get this all finished and start learning some new kanji again. Almost finished chapter 13 of Japanese for Everyone and I'm onto episode 44 of Coffee Break Spanish. I've also been listening to a lot of Japanese & Cantonese podcasts. As for French, I've found a fantastic podcast that I've been listening to loads. It's 'Revue de presque' from Europe 1 and it's a comedy show where one person interviews someone famous (i.e. Nicholas Sarkozy etc). All totally faked of course, but it's very funny & all in French. It's nice to listen & realise I can still understand French, even if I haven't studied it for ages. I've also decided that mid-April I'm going to change tactics and start an authentic materials learning plan. I'm still going to carry on with all the stuff from now but I'm going to add in a lot of native material practice, i.e. watching movies, reading books/mangas, talking to people on Skype, playing games, all in the target language. I've been neglecting that element recently and hopefully this will help improve my passive knowledge. Oh and thank you to Rob for pointing out the Nei5 hou2, Lei5 hou2 issue. I'm aware most people pronounce it Lei5 but I just haven't decided which pronunciation I should use. I guess I'm a bit scared of ending up speaking 'lazy sounds', as they call it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rob Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6164 days ago 287 posts - 288 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 10 of 25 17 March 2008 at 3:12am | IP Logged | ||
No problem. Not too long ago, I was told by a group of people from HK and Shenzhen that "No-one says "Nei" any more... except maybe my grandparents". Perhaps this information will help in your decision :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6913 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 11 of 25 30 March 2008 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, so maybe 2 weeks after my last post and how am I doing. I've actually gotten back my enthusiasm recently and have been clocking in quite a few hours of language learning each day.
I've finished chapter 14 of Japanese for Everyone and I'm a little disappointed at how slowly I'm getting through this book. It took me almost 2 weeks to get through the last chapter, although I was only actually studying it for 6 days. Still, my target had been to do 1 chapter every 4 days, which I've been consistently failing since I set the target. I'm going to try splitting my JFE study into two sessions a day, one morning and one night, to see if that will help. I'm up to unit 6 of FSI Cantonese and the pace has been pretty good so far; one unit every 2 to 3 days. I'm happy with the decision to switch from Teach Yourself to FSI and I think it's really helping me form sentences. Saying things in Cantonese is becoming more automatic, which is just what I had hoped would happen. :) And remembering the kanji is going fantastically! I've finally got my failed kanji stack almost down to zero, which means I can get back to learning new characters! I've also been getting excited about my 'authentic learning' plan for mid-April. It'll be great to start using all of the stuff I've learnt recently, and I'm looking forward to talking with some native speakers. I've been fiddling about on LingQ a bit in preparation and I plan my 'Breaking into Japanese literature' reader. I also want to use some Cantonese texts (preferably with audio). Does anyone know any good resources available online? The next post will be in April, after my holiday to Japan. I'll outline my 'authentic learning' strategy more then. P.S. Thanks rob for that comment about 'nei5'. This has helped clear my mind a lot and I will start using 'lei5' from now on. I don't really want to sound like I'm 70 odd! ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6913 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 12 of 25 07 May 2008 at 8:59am | IP Logged | ||
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So I'm back from my holiday in Japan. I bought a lot of stuff, books, games, CDs, movies etc that I think is going to be really useful, especially as I don't normally use a lot of authentic materials. I also ended up speaking a LOT of Japanese and I actually did okay (!)
It was the first time I'd ever been to Japan and it more than lived up to my expectations. It's really given me fuel for my studying and a huge desire to improve so that I can go back. :D Progress wise ... nothing much has changed. I wasn't able to study much straight after my holiday but this is slowly changing. My plan has changed a bit recently, I've been incorporating more authentic materials and easing up a bit on the regular study. I think my previous targets were a bit unrealistic and unnecessary; especially as I'm am still going to be able to study a bit when I return to university. So I'm getting into the pattern of splitting my language study up. Half of the 'study' and all of one language's 'authentic' one day, and the rest the next day. My two day schedule includes FSI Cantonese, Japanese for Everyone, RTK, Assimil Using French, my kanji game and listening & reading comprehension for all 3 languages. Edited by unzum on 07 May 2008 at 7:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6913 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 13 of 25 16 May 2008 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've signed up for the TAC challenge but I'm keeping this journal. From now on though, I'm going to be doing my best and fitting in as much language study as I can.
I've finished chapter 15 of JFE and started on the next chapter today. I didn't have much time so all I could do was input the vocab into my SRS. Didn't manage to do any RTK today either but I revised about 100 kanji yesterday. I'm a bit confused about Revising the Kanji and wondering whether I'm using it right. For the past few weeks all I've been doing is revising all the expired kanji since my holiday. I haven't managed to do any new kanji at all. I might think about moving my kanji to another SRS, reviewing kanji that's no older than a month, and continue learning new kanji. Flashcard reviewing old cards isn't that important to me, as I get kanji practice from a lot of authentic materials already. I'm up to lesson 7 of FSI Cantonese and I've almost finished it. Should be done tomorrow. I visited my Cantonese friend today, (we don't talk in Cantonese, I'm not good enough yet) and met some of her friends. One had lived in Hong Kong in the 80's as a policeman and we chatted a bit about learning Cantonese. It turns out my friend speaks Hakka as well, which was a complete surprise. I might have to ask her to teach me a few words ... I've been reading through Assimil's Using French and I'm up to lesson 14. It's been quite useful as what I'm mainly doing is just relearning words & getting used to the language again. I did find an amusing error where they translated 'Elle ment comme un arracheur du dents' as 'She lies in her teeth', which conjures up an altogether different image. :) Authentic material studying has been going really well. Everyday I'm getting some kind of input from authentic materials in Japanese & French. I've left Cantonese for a while because I'm still at a very basic level. As for French I've rediscovered my French manga series (Monster, 18 volumes) and am working through that. The story still really interests me & I'm having to read a lot of advanced language (it's a crime thriller). For now, passive learning is helping me out a lot with French. I plan to add some conversation practice later. And for Japanese I'm spending most of my time playing the video games I brought back. Happily there is a lot of text (it's almost like a visual novel) and I'm learning lots of words. Another cool thing is the range of accents the characters can have. One character speaks really heavy Kansai-ben, which I didn't understand at all at first but am now getting used to. I'm also reading through my manga collection, sometimes using my (new!) electronic dictionary to look up words. I'm planning to work my way through all of my manga, then move on to children's books & finally to novels. I brought back a lot of stuff from Japan so I won't be short of material any time soon! :) I've been watching dramas and movies without subtitles and I'm surprised at how much I can understand! The first time round I watch without subtitles and the second time I watch with subtitles, to catch anything I didn't understand the first time. So far I've watched Zettai Kareshi, Tonari no Totoro & Nobuta wo Produce. Because watching anything takes a long time out of studying I've watching 20-30 minutes at a time. Anyway, this was a rather long post but while I'm on the TAC challenge I'm going to be posting up every two days. See you in a while then. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6913 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 14 of 25 19 May 2008 at 5:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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17th May, Saturday:
I worked on FSI Cantonese, finished unit 7. I read a Japanese manga and a French manga and did some translating for someone, Japanese to English. 18th May, Sunday: I studied some Japanese for Everyone and reviewed the flashcards for FSI Cantonese (didn't get enough time to study it properly). I read lesson 15 of Assimil Using French. I played on one of my Japanese games for at least half an hour (reading & listening) and read my Japanese & French manga. 19th May, Monday: Listened to a lot of podcasts while walking: 2 Japanesepod101 episodes, 1 Naked Cantonese episode, 20 mins of a native Japanese podcast & 20 mins of a native French one. Worked on Japanese for Everyone & FSI Cantonese and did lesson 16 of Assimil. Read my French manga and my Japanese ones. I also watched about 1 hour of [世にも奇妙な物語」with subtitles. As you can see I didn't do any kanji work at all. I'm fed up with all the flashcard reviewing on kanji.koohii so I'm going to take a new approach from now.I'm getting a lot of reading input so honestly I think all this flashcard reviewing is a bit pointless, as I get practice seeing the kanji in context. I'm going to make flashcards in jMemorize & start from kanji 700. When any card has been in jMemorize for more than a month or something I'll delete it. Edited by unzum on 21 May 2008 at 5:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6913 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 15 of 25 21 May 2008 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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20th May, Tuesday:
Read through the grammar section of FSI Cantonese and did a lot of work on Japanese for Everyone. I entered some kanji flashcards into my SRS and reviewed the last 20 I learnt. Did lesson 17 of Assimil and read 「山田太郎ものがたり」for about an hour. 21st May, Wednesday: Learnt 10 new kanji from RTK, finished chapter 16 of JFE and did the first few pages of chapter 17. Didn't manage to do any FSI except reviewing flashcards. Did lesson 18 of Assimil & read 'Monster' and [山田太郎ものがたり」. I'm kind-of disappointed with all my progress except for JFE. With FSI I basically wasn't learning anything new, just reading passively or reviewing vocab and I didn't listen to any authentic materials. I'm going to try to do better these next couple of days. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6913 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 16 of 25 26 May 2008 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Since Wednesday I've finished lesson 8 of FSI Cantonese, did a bit of kanji learning and worked on chapter 17 of JFE. I haven't managed to do very much these last few days due to various reasons however, I've been doing a lot of reading authentic material.
I'm on the 6th volume of my French manga, Monster, and once I've finished re-reading the entire collection (18) I plan to move onto my French novels. I'm onto the 3rd volume of my Japanese manga and I'm finding it so useful. Normally I use my DS dictionary while reading, and looking up words again and again is helping them stick in my mind. I'm also half-way through another Japanese manga. I view this as a big improvement because prior to my trip to Japan I found it difficult to read anything, it took me a whole year to read one manga and the rest I just ignored. Hopefully by September I should have finished the majority of my Japanese manga (all 34 volumes!). Once I have read enough manga that I feel comfortable reading without a dictionary I'll move onto my children books, then teenage fiction and then adult novels. It should be a nice progression. I also watched a few Cantophilia videos, I plan to try doing this more often, to get more exposure to Cantonese. My speaking ability has deteriorated recently so I'm going to try talking to native speaking also. Also, on a fun note, I watched the Eurovision and really enjoyed the Spanish entry. El Chiki Chiki se baila asi! It's not that difficult so I'd recommend it as something fun to listen to. Edited by unzum on 26 May 2008 at 8:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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