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TAC Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Rekunoto Senior Member United States Joined 6167 days ago 104 posts - 105 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 1 of 44 04 August 2008 at 5:04pm | IP Logged |
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Introduction
I know it's a bit late, but I have decided to start up a TAC log for Japanese. This log will obviously replace my previous one. I will post some info to comply with Reineke's rules. Previous Knowledge I have been studying Japanese on and off since last September. I just started studying seriously about a month ago, but then I went on vacation and my language study was messed up. I had lost all of my drive to learn, and I plan to build it back up with this TAC. I already know the basics, like hiragana and katakana, although I could use a bit of work on those two scripts. I also know the meanings and writings of 2042 kanji. I also know quite a bit of vocabulary, but vocabulary is no good on it's own. The Plan My plan is to add 20 Japanese sentences to my SRS a day. I will also review the meanings and writings of kanji I have learned for 15 minutes a day until I am comfortable with them. I will also immerse myself in Japanese whenever possible. The Materials -An SRS (Anki) - Any sentence source (music,movies,dictionary) Additional Notes I am hoping to use this log to make my study more consistent. I am open to comments, questions, and advice. Edited by Rekunoto on 08 August 2008 at 12:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6439 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 2 of 44 04 August 2008 at 6:57pm | IP Logged |
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Welcome to the challenge and good luck. The rules are not very strict.
My guess is you're doing the 10,000 sentence method? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6431 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 44 04 August 2008 at 7:30pm | IP Logged |
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Good luck!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rekunoto Senior Member United States Joined 6167 days ago 104 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 44 04 August 2008 at 8:32pm | IP Logged |
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@Reineke
Yeah, that's right, I am doing the 10,000 sentence method. @Volte Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rekunoto Senior Member United States Joined 6167 days ago 104 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 44 05 August 2008 at 12:34pm | IP Logged |
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DAY 1
Everything is going well, but that is expected considering it is my first day. I found that 15 minutes is plenty of time to review kanji. It is not too short, and not too long. Mining 20 sentences took me about 60 minutes, so my total "study" time is 75 minutes, although I immerse myself in the language as much as possible when not actively studying. I have found the lyrics from Japanese songs are good sentence sources because, they often have an English translation (Right now my sentences are Japanese>English, but soon they will be Japanese>Japanese) As of now, I am thinking of acquiring 5-10 more kanji a day with James Heisig's book "Remembering the Kanji" volume three, but nothing is in stone. If I do decide to add it to my study plan, I will tell everyone with this log. I have also found that shadowing native speakers (that are the same gender, and around the same age) is a good way to improve your accent. I generally don't speak at the phase I am in now, because I don't want to reinforce a bad accent or bad grammar patterns. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rekunoto Senior Member United States Joined 6167 days ago 104 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 6 of 44 06 August 2008 at 11:02am | IP Logged |
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DAY 2
Yesterday was pretty difficult. My language study wasn't difficult, but actually doing it was pretty hard due to circumstances. I procrastinated adding sentences to my SRS until late at night. I had to do a two hour work out which almost made me throw up, but I still managed to come home, and finish my sentences. I also reviewed kanji for 15 minutes, like planned. So far so good. The 15 minutes of kanji review is really helping to reinforce those kanji. I used Heisig, and I remember a large amount of the characters, but there are a few that escape my mind from time to time, but once I see the meaning, they instantly come back to me. I have decided to put off learning more kanji for later in the TAC challenge. Instead, I have made a simple notepad documents titled "Kanji That Need Help". Yesterday when reviewing the kanji, there was one kanji that I didn't remember at all, even when I saw the meaning (even though it was in RTK1). There are not many kanji that I forget completely like this. Maybe there is 25 in total. In any case, I do not like having this 'gap' in my kanji knowledge, so I am going to put aside some time to make better stories for those kanji. Oh, and on a small side note, I got all of my sentences from Tae Kim's grammar guide today. Edited by Rekunoto on 06 August 2008 at 11:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rekunoto Senior Member United States Joined 6167 days ago 104 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 7 of 44 07 August 2008 at 12:47am | IP Logged |
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DAY 3
Today was a real good day. I didn't expect to be mining sentences from media sources before I went monolingual. Due to something that seemed like a bad thing at first, I ended up having a lot of fun taking sentences from one of my favorite Japanese TV shows. Allow me to elaborate. It all started today when I was watching an episode of Bleach. I have a strong disliking to subtitles, but I accidently got an English subtitled version of the episode I was watching, so I decided to just ignore the subs. Then I realized that I could use the subs to my advantage. It (obviously) gave me an English translation that I could use. So I decided that I would mine some sentences from the show. Here is how it worked, with an example of each step in parenthesis. 1. Hear a sentence that you want to understand, and type it down to a notepad file in romaji (Kimi ga Ishida-kun dane?) 2. Look at the English translation and add it to the "Answer" side of your SRS card(You're Ishida right?). Keep in mind that I only look at the subtitles for sentences I am putting in my SRS. Besides that, I just enjoy the Japanese. 3. Convert the romaji to kanji with the help of a dictionary (君が石田くんだね). Obviously, you have to have a bit of kanji competance to be able to do this without error, but Heisig's RTK should get you there. There you have it. Up until now, I have been taking sentences from text sources, like Tae Kims grammar guide. That's nice and all, but I like being able to actively take sentences from audio sources. I feel like I can now pick and choose whatever I want to learn at the moment. In any case, all 20 of my sentences today came from that episode of Bleach. Since it is an anime, the senteces are very casual/rude, but I am at a stage in my Japanese studies that I can tell what is rude, and what's not (thanks to Tae Kim). Well, on a more 'normal' note, I did review my kanji for 15 minutes again today. I added three more kanji to my "Kanji That Need Help" document today (劇,離,瞬 as you can tell, they are a bit complicated). After finding 10-15 more kanji that are in danger of leaving my memory, I will spend some time on making good stories for them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rekunoto Senior Member United States Joined 6167 days ago 104 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 44 08 August 2008 at 12:35am | IP Logged |
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DAY 4
Today, I got all 20 of my sentences from a wikipedia grammar guide, and Khatzumoto's sentence starter pack number #4. I "know" the difference between "は" and "が", but I still feel a little uneasy about which to use in every given situation. So I am going to start looking for more sentences that use these particles so I will have a deeper understanding of them (Although I probably won't fully get it until I go monolingual). Since Japanese is my first foreign language that I have went this far with, I am kind of impressed by the logic of languages. For example, I have known the Japanese words "Ikimashou (let's go)" and "Gambatte" (do your best) for quite some time, and today when I was watching a Japanese drama, I heard the word "Gambarimashou". It was pretty easy for me to infer that it meant something along the lines of "let's do our best". That's just one of the cool things about language immersion environments I guess, you are always subconciously learning things. Anyways, I have noticed that my listening comprehension skills are lacking. I can hear the words (a lot of which I know), and I understand them, but it takes my brain too long to decrypt what the meaning of the words are when they are put together. Khatzumoto has an answer to this problem... "So, there you are. You’ve been mining your sentences diligently, but you still have trouble even following a conversation let alone participating, right? Maybe you still can’t follow your favorite anime. Right. OK, I have a question for you. How much Japanese are you listening to? Whatever your answer is, I can guarantee you that it hasn’t been enough for long enough yet. " So, I have been doing my sentences and reviewing kanji everyday, but that's no good if I am not building my listening comprehension. So, I have a simple plan. 1. Cut back on English 2. Do more stuff in Japanese Sadly, I spend about two hours on this site a day, and that time could be used for Japanese immersion. So I have decided to come here only once a day, just so I can update this log. Edited by Rekunoto on 08 August 2008 at 12:39am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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