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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| berabero89 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4644 days ago 101 posts - 137 votes  Speaks: English, Amharic* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 1 of 8 03 July 2013 at 7:41am | IP Logged | ||
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Note: Although the language this is under is Japanese, I'm also studying French and
Spanish. Now that we're into the summer and I've begun to study Japanese, this seems like a good opportunity to make a log on this forum. I've been studying French and Spanish for the last year and a half and my levels in each are high B1/low B2 in Spanish and low B1 in French (mind you, these are rough estimates). I actually started studying Japanese about a month and a half ago, but because of school, I didn't really "get into it" until about 2 weeks ago. I have to say that while I thought French was difficult, when I started Japanese, I saw how much easier I had it with French (which has now greatly accelerated my learning in French), so I guess that in a way, Japanese's difficulty has actually helped my other languages. My long-term goals in each of my languages are: Spanish: Both AP tests by senior year (I'm a high school sophomore, junior this coming school year), C2 by the time I graduate from college (it'll be very useful in the medical field) French: AP test, B2 by the time I finish high school Japanese: AP test, JLPT N3/N2 by the time I finish high school Mandarin: AP test Here are my resources: Spanish: Using Spanish, native material French: New French with Ease, (Using French soon), I plan to move on to native materials in a week when I'm done with my third wave of French with ease Japanese: Japanese for Everyone, Assimil Japanese with Ease Mandarin: LL course (eh...), Linguaphone, Chinese with Ease (I haven't actually started studying Mandarin yet) Amharic: native materials, Cultural Reader I know that my goals are ambitious (and that I probably won't be able to fulfill all of them), but at least they give me something to aim for even if I won't make it all in the time span I want. Edited by berabero89 on 03 July 2013 at 7:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| berabero89 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4644 days ago 101 posts - 137 votes Speaks: English, Amharic* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 2 of 8 03 July 2013 at 7:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, Japanese is giving me a lot of difficulty at the moment. The grammar concepts are
not too hard to understand and the basic conjugations (informal) are giving me some trouble, but not as much as I expected (I can get conjugations right 80-90% of the time). My real problem is vocabulary because my passive vocabulary is a LOT bigger than my active. I've been using mnemonics lately, but I end up forgetting words anyway a lot of the time and that's pretty frustrating when I've looked that same word up 3 or 4 times already. Also, I am having a hard time getting used to the Japanese way of dealing with numbers--dates, Japanese vs Chinese numbers, counters (which aren't THAT bad), 4-digit basis instead of a 3-digit, etc. At least I can pick out words and whole sentences I hear from conversations in Japanese, which is a step up from not understanding anything in some Spanish conversations I hear. So if anyone has any tips, those will be greatly appreciated! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| berabero89 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4644 days ago 101 posts - 137 votes Speaks: English, Amharic* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 3 of 8 04 July 2013 at 3:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Well today, I started lesson 6 of Japanese for Everyone and did lessons 17 and 18 of
Assimil and I did some free-reading in Spanish (Cuentos y diálogos). I was a bit busy today so I didn't really get the chance to do more. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| berabero89 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4644 days ago 101 posts - 137 votes Speaks: English, Amharic* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 4 of 8 05 July 2013 at 4:16am | IP Logged | ||
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I started reading "Le Crime de Lord Arthur Savile" in French today and I'm pretty
surprised by how much I understand. I also began to read Dune for the second time, this time in Spanish, and I'm sure I would've been lost if I hadn't first read the English version 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4341 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 5 of 8 05 July 2013 at 5:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Looks like we're studying the same languages! (Although, Spanish is kind of on the back
burner for me currently)
I find that most people have difficulties building up their active abilities in Japanese, like in any other language. It may be a bit more accented in Japanese, though, because of the abundance of new concepts and the words that are difficult to translate directly into another language. I can only suggest speaking more, and if you don't know anyone or don't have the confidence to do that, then start vocalizing (or sub-vocalizing) your thoughts and doing them in Japanese. Other than that, you can always try to make creative sentences with new words that you learn. Make sure they're good sentences though! No simple 3 word, SOV sentences. :) Have you at all started learning Kanji? I found that after getting used to their shapes, I was able to associate the Kanji to sounds and the sounds to words, which was kind of a memory reinforcement when learning new words. It sounds like you're still in high school, so you should still be exposed to a good few numbers and dates in your classes, right? You should take that opportunity to convert those numbers into Japanese numbers. I did that, and it helped me familiarize myself with the dates and the 万 (man) base. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| berabero89 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4644 days ago 101 posts - 137 votes Speaks: English, Amharic* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 6 of 8 08 July 2013 at 5:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Today I did lessons 18, 19, and 10 in Japanese with Ease and I've realized that until I
have finished it, I should keep Japanese for Everyone as a supplementary text--I can remember vocabulary with a LOT more accuracy when it comes from Assimil (also, there seems to be an eerie number of coincidences of similarity of course content-- for example, "honya no tonari desu" has appeared in both books and I've never seen "bookstore" taught in an Assimil course). I'm going to be buying Assimil Using French soon and maybe that'll serve as motivation for me to finally finish Assimil French. じゃ、 行って勉強をします！ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| berabero89 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4644 days ago 101 posts - 137 votes Speaks: English, Amharic* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 7 of 8 08 July 2013 at 11:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm finally falling into a routine and finding methods that work for me:
For Japanese, I'm doing 1-3 Assimil lessons a day and then when I get to the review session, I translate from Japanese to English the six previous lessons. I then later translate them back into Japanese and correct my errors. For French, I'm doing the same as Japanese except that I'm doing them in groups of six lessons every day (it IS my third wave, after all) For Spanish, I'm doing 2-3 lessons a day of translation of Using Spanish (at least until I get back to the lesson that I left off on a few months ago, then I may switch to doing what I do with Japanese). Doing these translations has really helped me in my fluency with French and my Japanese vocabulary retention seems to have really gone up, too. Unfortunately, I'll probably only be able to devote this much time to languages for the summer, and after that, school comes with my 5 AP classes... I'm trying to figure out how to manage my time so that I can not only maintain but also improve my current languages during the school year (maybe 2 hours a day, 1 hour each of a language, switching languages every other day?). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| berabero89 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4644 days ago 101 posts - 137 votes Speaks: English, Amharic* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 8 of 8 30 July 2013 at 3:04am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm really bad at updating my log -_-
Well, after asking for advice on this forum, I decided to go through the 30 or so lessons I had gone through in Japanese Assimil using Scriptorium. I've gotten a MUCH better grasp on everything. As for now, learning kanji can wait. I am doing Heisig's and have gotten to lesson 7. During the Active Wave, when i've finished Heisig, I can then re-scriptorium everything, this time learning kanji as well. I've noticed that I have a MUCH easier time remembering characters/words if I know the meaning of the character beforehand. As for Chinese, I haven't been very good at keeping up with the lessons and I don't think that I'll be spending much time on it until I'm really into my Japanese, it's more of a "time-waster" for when I'm bored with everything else. I bought a Dover parallel text book of "representative Spanish literature" which has hugely accelerated my vocab and I've read a few chapters of "Le Petit Prince". Also, can anyone give their opinion of Assimil Using French? I feel like my French is not at the same level my Spanish was when I finished Spanish with Ease and I'm wondering if I should go with more language courses or go with full-on native material. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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