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TAC Team I: Luai’s JP, EO, & FR | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5647 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 41 of 55 20 June 2010 at 2:35am | IP Logged |
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RTK is going well. I've done 70 kanji now, and the skritter + kanji.koohii thing seems to be working, although
it's only been three days so it may not hold up, we'll see. I'm doing a lesson every day. I try to do them in two batches so I don't get overloaded and forget the first ones I looked at. RTK: 70 kanji Smart.FM: step 8 80% done FIA: finished ep. 4 I've not been using my time well at all lately, so I'm going to try to work on that and hopefully I'll be able to work on adding the other things I want to do every day since right now it's only the above three things. I want to also read some of Fajron Sentas Mi Interne every day, study French and Japanese grammar every day, and so forth. I know I am capable of doing all that without taking too much time out of my day, but I've been too disorganized lately. I will work on this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5647 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 42 of 55 02 July 2010 at 8:10pm | IP Logged |
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Getting a bit better at fitting it all in every day, although my plans are continuously foiled by things like my
grandma visiting or needing to change which day my D&D group meets because someone can't make it on our usual day, etc. RTK: 212 kanji Smart.FM step 8 100% done, step 9 50% FIA: finished ep. 6 Fajron Sentas Mi Interne: page 23 As you can see, I'm making good progress in Japanese but not at all in French. I've prioritized Japanese over French so when my time is limited it's French that ends up not happening. I'm going to work on ensuring that I can do FIA and RTK every single day. I also seriously need to sit down and study French verbs. I already know a lot about how they conjugate but I'm terrible at actually doing it, so I'm going to try writing out tables. It's boring but writing things out like this often helps me improve pretty dramatically, so I hope it will work. I've started talking to myself in Esperanto (having conversations where I play both sides) when I'm bored. It's good speaking practice considering there's no one here for me to speak it with. I seem to be getting a little faster; I used to have to speak very slowly to give myself time to think it all through. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5647 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 43 of 55 22 August 2010 at 1:49am | IP Logged |
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Well, it's been a loooong time. I have a pretty big update.
About a week after my last post, I stopped studying alltogether. I had a major depressive episode and lost interest in languages. After recovering from the episode, I found my interest had not returned. I no longer derived any pleasure from even the idea of knowing Japanese. I weighed the pros and cons and ended up deciding not to force myself to study something if I had no interest in it any more. I would begin studying again if and when my interest returned. I didn't avoid the languages, though, so I did still do a bit of reading here and there in both Japanese and Esperanto, whenever something would come up on a website or Facebook, etc, and I continued to watch anime. My interest only suddenly returned yesterday. I officially picked up my studies again today. I've decided to re- read all the lessons of RTK I've already done, as a review for all the kanji I did not study while I was disinterested. So far I'm at kanji #75. I also started up Smart.FM again and reviewed 50 out of 90 expired items. Lastly, I picked up Genki 2 and did quite a bit of grammar study. It feels good to have the language buzzing around in my head again! I only hope I can continue enjoying it. On that note, I'm also taking a hiatus from French until I can figure out how to approach it. Everything I've tried so far has just not worked for me. I found both Pimsleur and FIA to be frustrating, boring, and not effective at teaching grammar. The idea I'm toying with now is to sit down and read my grammar book straight through, and go straight to L/R after that (after all, I have enough passive knowledge of French vocabulary to get the gist of anything I read in French already!). However, I haven't been able to find a good audiobook download for free. I'd like to use Le Petit Prince, which I expected to find easily, but my google-fu has failed me, sadly. :( I currently have no particular plans for Esperanto. The friend who introduced me to it is back in town, but I've been unable to meet with her. I have no idea when she's returning to Mexico, so I don't know if I'll ever get to sit down with her. I think I'll ask her if she uses Skype. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5647 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 44 of 55 06 September 2010 at 3:46am | IP Logged |
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I got a job! This is great news for my wallet and terrible news for my language
studies as I now come home in the late afternoon feeling too tired for cerebral pursuits. It seems to be getting a little better as I adapt to the situation, though. As of today, I'm very close to completing Core 2000 step 9, and have completed my review of the 308 kanji I had learned so far from RTK. I will begin learning new kanji shortly (later today if I'm up to it; if not, then tomorrow). I also got a new book out of the library that I absolutely love. I've been disappointed in most language books I've tried but this one is really working out well for me. It's called "Handbook of Japanese Grammar" by Masahiro Tanimori, and among its features is a dictionary of "grammar words" which I am finding a very useful way of learning a lot of new grammatical structures. I've been reading it and practicing kanji handwriting during my lunch breaks at work. Still no idea what to do about French and Esperanto... because I'm just too lazy to sit down and work it out. I'll try to tackle that by next weekend. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5647 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 45 of 55 30 September 2010 at 2:16am | IP Logged |
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I've worked out an evening study schedule that is doing wonders for my progress in Japanese! After dinner, I do
a first round of kanji study, learning 20-30 new kanji and writing them out in a notebook. Then I watch an episode of an anime show (currently I'm watching Naruto, which started just so I could understand the references to it in American "otaku" culture, but now I actually like the show), paying close attention to catching every word. I usually knit or pin garments that I'm working on (I'm also a seamstress) while I watch- yay for multitasking! After the episode, I go to Skritter and review the kanji I just learned (and any old ones that are due). I find this is a good amount of time after which to reinforce my studies. After that, I study a second round of kanji (10-20 this time) and repeat the process. I usually stop after that but if I'm very enthused and/or start early I can manage more. I usually do my Smart.FM reps earlier in the day. My stats as of now: Smart.FM core 2000 step 10: 54% completed Heisig's RTK: Kanji #450 At a rate of 30-40 kanji per day, I'm definitely going to be able to reach my goal of finishing them before the new year begins! :D Also, I should finish the core 2000 series in less than a month- which will be the second language goal I can tick off my list! (the first was being able to express myself comfortably and fluently in written Esperanto) Well, it might be the third if finishing Gerda Malaperis! counts. >.> I still haven't devoted much time to planning my new approach to French. I kind of want to just read straight through my grammar book and dive into L/R, but I don't think I'll have time for that, since L/R is VERY time consuming. I might be able to swing reading parallel texts though. Anyway, at the moment I really am enjoying pursuing nothing but Japanese, so I'm letting myself ignore French for a little longer. Now I'm off to finish today's kanji! I've only done 20 so far. :3 I'll report back in a week or two. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5647 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 46 of 55 09 October 2010 at 3:51am | IP Logged |
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Missed several days of kanji/Smart.FM but trying not to stress it, I just had a very hectic week and my weekend is
also going to be packed tight, so I will just try to keep up my reps and get back to adding new things when life calms down a bit. However, something new and exciting has started. Last Tuesday I met with my old Sensei from high school and two of my old classmates for a review session. She told us that in exchange for babysitting she would give us a free lesson every Tuesday. She has exceptionally well-behaved kids so this is a pretty sweet deal, not to mention she is a phenomenal cook and naturally, being very compassionate, polite, and Japanese, she cooks food for us whenever we are at her house! Today I went to babysit for the first time, and she made me delicious vegetarian spring rolls and sushi, and a whole cheesecake. It was sooooooo good. And then I got to watch AstroBoy with her kids. Basically it was awesome. I didn't get much opportunity to practice Japanese except overhearing her talking to her kids, but that's ok, we'll have another review session next Tuesday. The last review session was really good for me! Basically I confirmed what I already knew: My passive understanding has skyrocketed, to the point that I understand nearly all basic conversation, but my ability to produce sentences is sucky, mostly on the grammar end of things. I'm still kicking myself for saying "mitte ni iku" instead of "mi ni iku", I KNEW it was wrong but I just couldn't remember to use the stem. >.<; Anyway she's doing the review in the form of conversation with each student in turn, so I get a chance to actually converse and speak, which is what I sorely need right now. And now I'd like to take a minute to describe what happened today in more detail, even though it's not language related. My Sensei's family is really interesting- she is Japanese, with dual Japanese-American citizenship, and her husband is American but speaks Japanese well. They have one biological son, Seiji, and an adopted daughter from China, Megumi, and an adopted daughter from Ethiopia, Sapphire. All three are bilingual in Japanese and English. Everyone in the family sort of naturally switches between the two languages regularly, which is fun to listen to. We watched AstroBoy in English- I get the feeling most media is consumed in this language in the household- and didn't talk at all so there was no practicing. But halfway through, Sapphire (who is five) started crying and saying she wanted her mom. Now, a lot of kids get upset when their parents leave, but apparently (according to her mom) Sapphire often gets triggered by upsetting things in movies, and connects them to traumatic events in her past (which led to her being adopted, if you get my drift). This led to me having a really interesting conversation later with my Sensei about what it's like for her, being a minority in this country but having grown up being in the majority in her country, raising a girl from a totally different minority group, and trying to help her form her identity in a healthy way. We talked about how often there are no or very few minority characters in media, and what kind of effect that has on kids. We also talked about the effect on Sapphire of her own family members all being visibly different from her. It's a very serious issue, and I'm glad that it's something her mom puts a lot of thought into. I also talked to her and her husband a lot about sciencey stuff, mostly neutrinos, dark matter, and Bose-Einstein Condensates (they're my favorite) and about travel. It was fun. :) Tomorrow I am doing volunteer work setting up a haunted house for charity, followed by a birthday party; then Sunday I have to go shopping for sewing supplies in the morning followed by dinner with my boyfriend's family. I have too much going on in my life.... but it's a good kind of busy, and I'm happy. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5647 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 47 of 55 21 November 2010 at 2:15am | IP Logged |
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Time for an update!
I'm still not really doing kanji at all. Every now and then I do a few cards of review on Reviewing the Kanji or Skritter but I only get through 50 or so before stopping, and I have about 200 that I have forgotten. X( I'm really really close to finishing the Smart.FM core 2000 series, probably only two sessions away from being done, but lately I only bother to do a session a week or so. I'm hoping I can get myself back on track this week. Things broke down recently due to the combination of getting used to my job, and the pressure to finish a lot of stuff before the Harry Potter movie came out. It premiered on Friday and I made costumes for myself and two friends, as well as baking pumpkin pasties and cauldron cakes, because I am a HUGE nerd. The prep didn't leave me a lot of time or energy for studying. Now that it's behind me, I can put my studies back up to #1 priority status. This is especially true because I have found out that I will need to take a Japanese placement test in the spring to see whether I start out in Japanese 3, Japanese 101, or Japanese 401. I honestly believe I can manage to bypass the first two, if I study in the right ways. I'm going to do a review of Genki 1, which I expect to go quickly since the only things I've forgotten from it are kanji and perhaps a few words; then I'll work the rest of the way through Genki 2. If I finish both of those on time, that in itself should be enough to take me to Japanese 401. My only real concerns here are knowing the right kanji and not failing spectacularly at the spoken part of the test. The review sessions with my sensei should help with the latter part of that. We've had to skip some of them, but the ones I have gotten to do have helped a lot. I make a ton of mistakes and I get very anxious, but when I get home later I find all the things I couldn't remember come rushing back to me. My hope is that as I go on, I'll be able to remember more and more- that is, to activate my vocab. Last time, in our conversation we ended up talking about esperanto, and my sensei asked me to say something in it. Switching languages like that was very challenging. If I had to put the feeling in words, I'd say my thoughts felt like they were bogged down- like slogging through molasses. I ended up switching from Japanese to English to Esperanto to Japanese in the course of a few minutes, and the interference between the three was immense. It was somehow kind of fun though. I tend to like challenges. I recently watched an episode of Durarara!! (my current obsession) in the raw, without subs, and found something interesting. I could understand enough to follow most of what was going on, some parts more than others, and the main obstacle was definitely vocab, not grammar at all. There were a few places where verb endings tripped me up but really, that was rare. I would say I understood the complete sentence about 30% of the time; missed only one or two words 20% of the time; and completely failed to understand the sentence about 30% of the time. This is definitely an improvement. I plan to rewatch the whole series without subs (it's one of few that I feel I would enjoy even without subs) and possibly rewatch the first episode over and over until I memorize it. As for Esperanto, it always feels like it goes for months without changing and then suddenly, for no apparent reason, drastically improves. I was reading Libera Folio today and found I could understand it almost perfectly, a big improvement over the last time I read one of their articles. I think this most recent leap occurred about a week ago; since then, I've enjoyed eo media a lot more and have been reading much more in eo for fun instead of for study. I may even have a go at a novel again! (p.s. I have seen that people are wrapping up the Team TAC logging.... I will post a sort of "final post" describing my progress over the year, but I will wait until mid-December to post it. I still have a little time left!) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6289 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 48 of 55 21 November 2010 at 9:09am | IP Logged |
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Way to go!
By the way, how is your spoken or written Esperanto? Have you practiced much? Are you planning to go to an event? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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