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Total Annihilation Challenge - Japanese | ||
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| Mcjon01 Newbie United States Joined 6300 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 12 01 May 2008 at 2:11pm | IP Logged |
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Well, here I am, on my way to totally annihilating Japanese. Or something. I suppose I'll start with my background in the language. I've taken and finished three semesters of Japanese classes as of today, all utilizing the Genki series, and miraculously managed to retain next to none of what I learned. It seems that at some point I simply slipped into my old habit of just studying for the tests. Aside from that, I also got to frame 850 of Heisig last summer, but haven't added new cards or reviewed old ones in months. Over the course of this challenge, I hope to finish Heisig, as well as make my way through the Beginning Japanese course by Eleanor Harz Jorden.
Resources Available To Me 1) Heisig's Remembering the Kanji: Given the extraordinarily long hiatus I've taken from Heisig's method, my first order of business will be reworking my way through the course, hopefully finishing it this time. The fist 850 should go fairly fast since I still sort of know them, and after that I hope to maintain a pace of about 50 to 100 a day. I managed it last year, and that was before I was used to the method. 2) Jorden's Beginning Japanese parts 1 and 2, along with the Reading Japanese supplement: This will form the core of my studies. For some reason, I don't find FSI-style drills to be as dreadfully boring as most people do, and this course covers a lot of ground. I want to be done with Heisig before I start with Reading Japanese, just so I can be familiar with the writings of all the kanji ahead of time. I'm currently on lesson four of the course. 3) Assimil's Japanese With Ease: I already tried this course once before, but it seems that the whole "global learning" thing isn't really my cup of tea. I hope that I can use this after Beginning Japanese, once I've already drilled the structure of the language into my head, in order to get a better "feel" for the language and help with vocabulary, since Beginning Japanese is pretty sparse. Aside from those actual courses, I'm probably going to be entering Japanese sentences into an SRS, and trying to expose myself to as much Japanese as possible. I've got the first two Harry Potter books in Japanese, along with the accompanying audiobooks, so I might even try some L-R once I'm more comfortable with the language. As I've said, I've never had much success with global-learning techniques until I already had a good grasp of the details, so I probably won't be making any attempts at that until I'm done with Beginning Japanese. I'll update tonight with anything I do today. It probably won't be much since I'm wiped out from finals, but I'm going to at least try to blast through some more kanji. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mcjon01 Newbie United States Joined 6300 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 2 of 12 02 May 2008 at 3:23am | IP Logged |
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Day 1 - May 01, 2008
Late update, since I was helping a friend move. I didn't get much done today except kanji. I tried to work on drills, but I didn't have the time or focus needed to work on them effectively. Up to Heisig frame 250 now. A lot more of the characters than I would have expected are still rattling around in my long-term memory, it seems. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mcjon01 Newbie United States Joined 6300 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 3 of 12 03 May 2008 at 12:33am | IP Logged |
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Day 2 - May 02, 2008
Hectic day today. I only had time to get through all of my expired reviews, and wasn't able to study anything new. Hopefully I'll be able to ramp up my pace by next week once I settle into summer break and things get less busy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mcjon01 Newbie United States Joined 6300 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 4 of 12 04 May 2008 at 1:24am | IP Logged |
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Day 3 - May 03, 2008
No progress again today, though I did make sure to keep up with my expired kanji flashcards. I did, however, go through a spiral notebook I had lying around with a ruler and converted it into something more appropriate for practicing kanji by sectioning the lines off into squares. I also entered about 200 sentences from Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar into Anki. I figured that as long as I'm not being productive, I might as well take steps to make the rest of the challenge easier on myself. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mcjon01 Newbie United States Joined 6300 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 12 05 May 2008 at 12:50am | IP Logged |
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Day 4 - May 04, 2008
Not much to report today. I probably spent about six to eight hours working on Japanese, but much of that was preparatory gruntwork and not actual studying. I finished entering the rest of Part 1 of Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar into Anki. The task sped up considerably once I found out that a deck with all the sentences up to that point already existed on the Anki website. Much thanks to Nukemarine, and all his hard work! On the kanji front, I completed all expired cards as usual, and then knocked out 50 "new" cards, putting me on frame 300. I've realized, as I go through them again, that there's a sort of "dead zone" of kanji between the very first ones I learned and the very last I learned before stopping. I haven't met one where the story doesn't jog my memory yet, but sometimes it can take a while for me to make my way from the story, assemble the primitives, and pop out a kanji. It's not nearly as fast as something like, say, 見, where the jump from keyword to kanji is nearly instantaneous. In other news, I received a flash of inspiration from Khatzumoto's latest blog post, and I finally know how I'm going to handle reviewing previous lessons from Beginning Japanese. I've been frustrated by things from earlier lessons slipping out of my head, and by the amount of time I've been spending reviewing old material to keep that from happening, and I'm kicking myself for not thinking o it myself. So, as of today, As I go through the lessons I'm going to be splitting up all the audio, from dialogs to drills, into manageable chunks and entering it, along with the accompanying text, into Anki. Edited by Mcjon01 on 05 May 2008 at 12:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mcjon01 Newbie United States Joined 6300 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 12 06 May 2008 at 12:51am | IP Logged |
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Day 5 - May 05, 2008
Went through another hundred kanji today, putting me at frame 400 of Heisig. Okay, so technically I didn't actually finish until just now, and it's after midnight, but it's still Cinco de Mayo somewhere in the world, right? :D I forgot that going through Heisig in chunks of a hundred at a time means that my flashcards are going to be expiring in chunks of a hundred at a time. It's tedious, to say the least. I also made a bit of headway data-mining Beginning Japanese for the ol' SRS. The first chapter was simple, save for the tedium, since all of the dialogs in that chapter are conveniently short and flashcard-ready. Chapter two proved harder, since with longer dialogs I have to edit them into chunks that are both short enough to be used as flashcards, but that still have enough context to be useful practice. It seems to be working well enough so far, but I fear that with later, longer dialogs I may have to sacrifice one aspect or the other. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mcjon01 Newbie United States Joined 6300 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 7 of 12 07 May 2008 at 1:06am | IP Logged |
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Day 6 - May 05, 2008
Managed to get through a hundred kanji again today, putting me at frame 500. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to tackle all 3007 kanji from RTK 1 and 3, or if I'll stop at 2042. I guess it depends on how motivated I am once I actually get to that point. I'm already chomping at the bit to start studying Japanese for really-reals, but I want to get this kanji demon off my back once and for all. I've started and stopped Heisig too many times already, it's time to just plow through it. Of course, that's easier said than done. Even though I still know most of what I'm going through right now, the hundred a day pace is getting to me. I couldn't study anything besides Heisig right now if I wanted to, just because the sheer number of reviews I'm stacking up is sucking up all my time. So, to make myself feel better, I've added a new component to my studies: constant, 24/7 Japanese background noise. Thanks to iTunes, I've got about 2000 episodes of pure, unadulterated Japanese podcast glory, that comes out to about 350 hours of chatter. I slapped it all in a playlist, and put it on repeating shuffle. I figure I'll just let it grow and run for the rest of the challenge. I don't think it'll actually do too much for my Japanese, but I figure at the very least it's equal to or better than silence. It can't hurt, in any case. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mcjon01 Newbie United States Joined 6300 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 8 of 12 08 May 2008 at 1:00am | IP Logged |
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Day 7 - May 06, 2008
Another day, another hundred kanji. Up to frame 600 now. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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