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Tackling Japanese...Again | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5483 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 1 of 7 15 June 2012 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have a bit of a long and somewhat emotionally rocky history with Japanese. Originally I took a semester and
a half of it in college then studied it off and on with no real commitment. This time I'm going to try some different tactics in hopes of a. being more efficient, b. learning in a more well rounded way, and c. making it more fun for me. I'm at a false beginner stage at this point. I remember some things that I've learned in the past and have forgotten others. I have a number of Japanese texted base resources but this time I am going to begin by only working out of Genki 1 (the first edition) and Kanji Look and Learn which published by the same publisher as Genki (The Japan Times). What's very different about this attempt is that this time I have a language tandem partner who I will be meeting with at a coffee shop once a week. She's a native speaker whose English is very good but she doesn't know, in her words, "hard words". Some examples are "context", "liberal arts", and "dietitian". I brought Genki, Kanji Look and Learn, and Japanese for Everyone (not Minna no Nihongo) noting that, while I really like Japanese for Everyone, I don't like the way it's laid out. Emi (my tandem partner) really like the first two books, especially Kanji Look and Learn. I also have a book called Konichiwa Nihongo which she is really interested in in part because there are Korean translations of the words, along with English and Chinese. Emi and I met for the first time yesterday at a coffee shop that is open 24 hours a day near my house. We ended up speaking in English first and then spent time working on my Japanese. I read the reading sections in Genki first and then we read through some of the dialogues until I was too tired to comprehend anything (I was so tired that I felt tipsy when I got up to go to the bathroom). Throughout my reading she helped me when I was stumbling in words, corrected my pronunciation on some particle words (such as "へ") , and answered my questions on what words meant and why some things were said in certain ways. All and all I think we both had a lot of fun. We ended up meeting at the coffee shop at 7pm and left at 9:45. Which was much longer than I thought we'd spend there. I also wrote all of the words that I didn't know down and I'm going to input them into my flashcard software of choice in my iPad. I'm going to try to spend two hours a day working on Japanese at first and then increase that time over time. I'll be working through chapters in Genki and Kanji Look and Learn. I'm not going to stress the vocab in Genki a while lot just because long lists of vocabulary overwhelm me and I get stressed out and discouraged quickly. That said I have figured out a way of learning kanji that works for me which is why I'll be spending more time on the kanji out of the kanji Look and Learn book. Edited by aokoye on 15 June 2012 at 4:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6562 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 2 of 7 15 June 2012 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I was exactly the same way. I started learning Japanese many times and always had to stop for some reason or other. Then I'd have to start all over again. This time, I just jumped in and didn't worry too much about starting at the beginning. All of the rest of my skills are still very weak, but my reading is now good enough to at least be able to read Harry Potter. So I think that now that I've finally come to a point where I can enjoy myself and learn without really studying all the time, I'll stick to it.
I really liked the book Japanese for Everyone. It was the main textbook I used. The only problem I found with it is the lack of recordings. I found the exercises very helpful for teaching me grammar, and it has made a great reference afterwards. I've often looked up half-forgotten grammar points there when I'm trying to write something. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5483 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 3 of 7 15 June 2012 at 10:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ugh - HTLAL ate my post so I'll write a shorter version of what I originally wrote.
I actually really like Japanese for Everyone, I have the work and kanji books for it as well but, for whatever reason, it doesn't really jive with me. I like it in theory but I just can't figure out how to put it into practice. At this point, I figure that I already have found a textbook that is good and also works for me so I may as well stick with it I also really want a grammar book with exercises that are in kana and possibly kanji that is geared towards a beginner. When I think about it I really that I don't really need one, but I tend to learn really well from exercises. I have only seen a a few grammar books that are geared towards beginners (both were on The Japanese Shop's website) though I'm sure there are plenty on amazon.jp. I swung by Kinokuniya today when I was grocery shopping (there is a store in the Japanese grocery store that I go to) and they only had one grammar book (with exercises) aimed at beginners and it was all in romanji and English. Not very helpful. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6562 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 4 of 7 16 June 2012 at 10:27am | IP Logged | |||||
ALWAYS use ctrl-c to copy your post before posting it. I have a bad internet connection, so my posts have disappeared several times. I learned quickly to copy them before posting.
Well, it's dead boring, so it's not really a fun textbook. One of the main reasons I bought it was because back then almost all textbooks were in romaji. It was the only one I found that wasn't. Things have changed these days and texts are more likely to be in the script of the language you are studying. Back then, publishers must have thought we were too dumb to even learn a new alphabet. So textbooks in the correct script were only available for advanced students. I didn't even know there were workbooks and kanji books for it. They are probably new. There isn't any mention of them in my textbook, so they probably didn't exist back then either. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5483 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 5 of 7 16 June 2012 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You're right, it is pretty dry so that might be part of it. It has great content and I like the sheer lack of romanji -
I'm sure if I was faced with a bunch of other textbooks that primarily used romanji I would have kept up with Japanese for Everyone. The work and kani books actually aren't new at all, they were both published in 1994 which is, I think, when the first edition of the textbook was published. If I didn't have access to at least the workbook there is no way that I'd be able to get Japanese for Everyone to work for me, but that's just because I need lots of exercises to learn things like languages. I'm really glad that Genki stops using romanji and starts introducing kanji in chapter 3. I am going back and doing the workbook exercises in chapters 1-4 now, doing one chapter's worth of exercises a day. On Thursday I read through the reading exercises in those chapters relatively easily so it makes sense to me to review those chapters as I know that I don't know all of the vocabulary. That said, I think I'm going to have to take a different approach to learning vocabulary this time. Instead of drilling them via flash cards, I think that I'm going to write multiple sentences using the vocabulary, get those sentences checked in Lang-8, and read them over and over again. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5483 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 6 of 7 19 June 2012 at 12:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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This will probably be the first of two posts that I write today.
I didn't do a whole lot of structured studying this weekend I went through so vocab and finished a chapter in my workbook for Genki I but other than that there wasn't much targeted study. That said I did do a lot of strategizing as far as tactics in which to learn Japanese that make sense for my learning style and the amount of time I have. My original plan of primarily using Genki I and Kanji Look and learn are the same, however I've gotten smarter and am actually going to be setting goals which are reasonable for me. I am going to try to make it through one lesson of Genki a week and a lesson of Kanji Look and Learn every week and a half to two weeks. My Kanji Look and Learn schedule is so slow because I know that I will get overwhelmed if I go any faster than that. That said, if I feel like things are going well I will speed up with the kanji book as opposed to with Genki. That said, If I feel like I"m doing really well I will sped up with Genki as well. Today I started on chapter 3 and will try to finish that up by Saturday (I start my calender weeks on Sunday). That means that as of today I need to do 9 chapters which will take 9 weeks. If things go as planned, I will finish the book by August 19th. At that point I want to do in regards to a book/books to use next. So now I'm off to study some vocab using iVocabulary Pro on my iPad. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5483 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 7 of 7 19 June 2012 at 4:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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I probably spent two and a half hours this late afternoon and early evening studying
vocabulary and doing work out of the Genki textbook. I also studied vocab on the bus a little bit. I probably could have done more this evening but I was starting to get grumpy and needed to eat. I ended up getting through all but two pages of chapter 3 and have committed the vocabulary from that section to my short term memory. It seems as though my plan may be a little too conservative. I'm more than likely going to keep the kanji plan the way it is but i'm going to up the Genki plan to 2-2.5 lessons a week. That'll have me finished in, at the latest, four and a half weeks which seems really fast. We'll see how this goes though. That said I do have an absurd amount of unstructured time on my hands as I'm not in school right now and I'm not working so I may as well fill it with Japanese. I may also start reading the Graded Japanese Readers collection I have. I have the second volume of level 0 somewhere in my room. If anyone has any other ideas as to what to read I'd love to hear them. Especially easy free things to read as I don't have the money to spend on books. Edited by aokoye on 19 June 2012 at 4:10am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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