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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| HopeTea Newbie Japan Joined 4273 days ago 37 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 21 04 April 2013 at 7:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm new to the forum, but keeping a language log seems like a great way to stay accountable and motivated. It seems everyone does things their own way as well, and that suits my style. I hope some of you will read this.
Despite having a number of things in my life which make it hard to study and practice, I have a strong desire to learn languages. It's something I've felt incredibly passionate about for a long time, but in the past I let other things get in the way. I'm going to work hard to try and overcome some of my smaller obstacles and make a lot of headway this year. JAPANESE: I've been living in Japan for about three years now. My level of Japanese before I moved here could perhaps be described as “upper beginner”, and now I might call it “lower intermediate”. My listening is very good, but I almost never write anything and my speaking is pretty slow for my level. Despite understanding almost everything anyone says to me, I have a hard time putting together what I want to say in reply. As you would imagine, this shuts down a lot of conversations before they even get off the ground. The only “regular study” I do is watch TV and listen to music, which I enjoy and do every day. I owe most of my current Japanese level to TV. A lot of people say you can't really learn that way, but it does help a lot once you are somewhat familiar with the sounds of the language. I started to notice when I heard the same word or phrase more than once, and then I look up the word and commit it to memory (or add it to Anki, where I seem to enjoy adding but not so much reviewing). I started with TV shows that were highly visual, and gradually moved to more and more talk-based shows. Now I can understand almost anything on TV, though certain topics do still elude me, such as politics or some kind of technical subject (mostly due to low interest). If I said my goal was so go out and buy a textbook to study, that would be hopeless from the start. Before I moved to Japan I spent hundreds of dollars buying up every book I could find. Every time I tried to go through one, I would literally fall asleep. I'm not a reader. Or at least I wasn't. Getting a Kindle kind of changed my life. For some reason with the Kindle I can actually focus, and I've gone through quite a few English suspense/thriller books. My current goal is to slowly ease myself into reading in Japanese. If you count young childrens books, I've already started (I have a 6-month-old son)! I think a noticed improvement of any kind could really help me out. Feel free to recommend books to me, and I'll try to always post here which books I'm reading. I know I could make many other goals, but I think maybe one at a time for me for now. I've had way too many false study re-starts. I'm sure there are some of you out there who can relate to me. I've gotten to that notorious plateau. I'm comfortable in daily life, I can communicate as much as I “need” to (which isn't a lot, honestly), but I haven't felt any substantial improvement in a long time. So why do I suddenly care now? Well, as I mentioned above, I have a son. He's just a baby now, but one day he will be entering the school system, and frankly, I don't want to be the weird foreign mom with bad Japanese – just the weird mom. SPANISH: Spanish is a language I've only started in the past two weeks. If I'm honest, I originally chose it because of its relative ease for me as an English speaker. You hear that all the time, right? For English speakers it's supposed to be cake. Being busy with my son, I thought I'd have to put off some of my higher-interest languages like Russian, simply because I wouldn't have the time to devote to it. So I chose Spanish, reasoning that I could use a few audio courses to start off with, and wouldn't need to practice writing (at least not with a new alphabet). So I started Pimsleur and Michel Thomas, and lo and behold, I fell in love. It's really really fun. For now my plan is just to continue these audio courses, as well as listening to Spanish-language and Spanish-learning podcasts. I do other things here and there as well, YouTube videos, internet browsing, the occasional romp with Anki, dissecting a paragraph or so of text, but nothing too intense yet. I've set a tentative goal to be able to start reading simple books by August. Sorry for such a long first post! I'm not great at regular updates, but I'm going to try my best to update at LEAST once every two weeks. In the meantime, I'm really enjoying the forum. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6622 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 2 of 21 04 April 2013 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'll be following your log with interest, especially since I'm also studying both Japanese and Spanish.
We seem to be fairly similar in level, although my Japanese skills are the opposite of yours. My reading is far above my other skills. And I have also just started learning Spanish this year. I'm using the free FSI courses. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| HopeTea Newbie Japan Joined 4273 days ago 37 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 3 of 21 05 April 2013 at 2:21am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for the comment. I checked out your blog. I hope you end up doing more reviews! How are you finding the FSI course? I'm not sure I could handle a written course yet (I definitely don't want to give up), but I've heard good things. I'm thinking of attempting FSI or another written course when I get towards the end of Pimsleur. But maybe FSI is best for people who study well with books? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| HopeTea Newbie Japan Joined 4273 days ago 37 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 4 of 21 05 April 2013 at 4:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yesterday after posting I went to the used bookstore down the street. I can get books there super cheap, often for ￥105 (about $1) a pop! I bought 9. Now the only question is what kind of goal to set for myself.
Does anyone have any recommendations on this? Would it be better to set a time goal (read for # minutes/day), a page goal (stop after # pages), or a new word goal (stop after reading # new words)? I'd love to hear some of your experiences. I'll try to have a specific goal worked out by next week. In the meantime, I'll be reading a manga I bought last year and never read. It's a compilation of several short stories. Edited by HopeTea on 05 April 2013 at 4:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4849 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 5 of 21 05 April 2013 at 4:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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Nice introduction! It's nice to see logs from other foreigners in Japan.
I'd say a time goal or a new word goal would be better than a page goal, just because if you have to look up a ton of words per page, reading a book will drive you crazy. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6622 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 6 of 21 05 April 2013 at 6:35am | IP Logged | |||||
Actually, I do have a few reviews to write. I got behind when doing the 6WC and I simply haven't gotten around to writing them since then. I think the FSI course is great. I wasn't sure I'd like it at first, but I held out and after a few chapters, I started to realize that it was quite good. I'm using the Programmatic course. I tried the Basic, but found it too difficult for me studying on my own. I was a little surprised at the "written course" comment and had to look back to your first post about what materials you are using. For me, FSI has a lot of audio since many of the courses I've been able to do in the past had virtually no audio, just books. Audio was often hard to get and very expensive before. Anyway, I just thought it funny that you would consider it a course with a lot of writing, and I would consider it a course with a lot of audio. Really, when I think about it, FSI does have a book, but it is still heavy on the audio. You should have the book open to glance at now and then, and there are a few grammar explanations to be read here and there, but a great deal of the course is audio. It usually starts out with some pronunciation stuff and then there are dialogues that are supposed to be done with the book closed. (I close my eyes rather than the book.) Then there are a bunch of drills which are mainly audio and a whole bunch of recorded sentences which are variations of things you've learned in earlier lessons. At the end there are some suggestions for dialogues with your teacher and some reading sentences for testing comprehension, but they don't seem to be as important. There is also a workbook, but I don't think that is entirely necessary either. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| HopeTea Newbie Japan Joined 4273 days ago 37 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 7 of 21 05 April 2013 at 7:11am | IP Logged | |||||
Oh! Perhaps I had the wrong idea about FSI. I'll look it over properly sometime today if I have time. If there's a lot of audio, I could start it sooner than originally planned. I definitely need lots of audio! I did glance over the Programmatic course once, but it looked too boring for me. There were a bunch of circles and an explanation on syllables or something. Perhaps I was looking at the wrong book! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| HopeTea Newbie Japan Joined 4273 days ago 37 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 8 of 21 05 April 2013 at 7:17am | IP Logged | |||||
Hello, fellow in-Japaner! Thanks for your input. I agree with you - a page goal at this stage might just be frustrating. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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