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日本語 and me the next round TAC 2012 Team い | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4995 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 177 of 333 17 August 2012 at 5:46am | IP Logged | ||
You so should have spoken Japanese! But I know what you mean about feeling funny speaking Japanese when it's expected that you won't. I'm starting to get to the point where I could try to speak some Japanese at the Japanese restaurant around the corner but I hardly do because I'm so embarrassed. But my Japanese isn't as good as yours anyway ;p. Edited by kraemder on 17 August 2012 at 5:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5793 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 178 of 333 18 August 2012 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ah the Japanese restaurant closest to my house is mainly staffed by Chinese people, so most of the time if I tried using Japanese it would be awkward for all of us!
WARNING: An incredibly long post follows. But writing it was therapeutic (I think I answered my own concerns) and this is my log after all... I feel in a bit of a strange place with languages at the moment. I'm not sure if it's just an epic case of wanderlust or the start of an exciting new adventure. For most of the time I have studied Japanese, I was always focussed on the idea that I would stick with Japanese until I reached a fairly advanced level. I certainly haven't reached that level yet and instead I am on a very wide intermediate plateau. I think this means that I can maintain my level with a very small amount of effort, however if I want to improve beyond my current level I will have to put in a lot more hours and experiment with intensive study in different ways. The problem is that I am not motivated to ramp up my Japanese efforts at present and feel I would rather spend my time on the "big" European languages. When I started studying Japanese, I couldn't afford international travel and couldn't picture myself having an international career (actually, at that point in my life, I wasn't really sure what sort of career I could picture myself having at all). Now I've found myself a career path, the cost of which was around three years where I had neither the time nor the pocket money for international travel (or any kind of holiday really). But my efforts are paying off and now I have enough spare time and money to really take advantage of how accessible Europe is from the UK. On the other hand, travel to Japan is still prohibitively expensive. For the price of the flights alone, me and my husband have spent a week in Germany, a long weekend in Paris and still have some money left over to think about doing another trip before Christmas. I would still like to make the trip to Japan but I expect when I do it will be a trip of a lifetime. Plus my Japanese is already more than good enough to survive as a tourist. In terms of where my career might take me, well, on the whole I'm happy in the UK, but I am open minded about the possibility of going to work in another EU country. However I have no desire to relocate to Japan for work. When I started learning Japanese, my motivation was mainly intellectual. I was bored, lost, and desperate for a challenge. I picked Japanese partly because I had enjoyed watching some Japanese movies and thought I liked anime on the basis of the Ghibli movies I'd enjoyed. But it was also because of the reputation Japanese had of being such a tough language, and because I had a genuine interest in finding out exactly how the writing system worked and whether it was really as bad as many people had described. To a certain extent my intellectual interest has been satisfied and maybe I have found that there is little utility, at present, in taking my Japanese to a higher level. As I described above, Japanese doesn't really figure as a necessary language to meet my travel and career aspirations. I have no need to develop good written Japanese, so I am simply not working on it at all. But also I am finding it very hard to make and maintain opportunities to develop my spoken Japanese. I can get what I want with simple language, and if I do lots of listening practice, a little bit of preparation, and accept that it takes me a little while to get "warmed up" if I haven't spoken Japanese for a few days, I can have quite satisfactory conversations despite all my errors and less-than-optimum range of active vocabulary. If I did have the desire to work on this more intensively, I'm sure I could achieve better results, however I'm starting to feel that there is not much point. Apart from my weekly Skype sessions (which I have no desire to give up, by the way) I have found it hard to maintain regular contact with native speakers. A couple of opportunities came up while I was doing the evening class, but I haven't been able to maintain the meetings regularly, unfortunately. I could make more of an effort with language exchange websites to try and build a bigger list of Skype contacts, however thanks to the time difference there are not that many learners in Japan who are eager enough to stay up until 4am to talk to me. But also, I don't want to be stuck spending too much time in front of the computer either. The same goes for classes and tutors. I can't find a decent tutor at a reasonable price in my city, and I have exhausted the options for classes because there are no more options here for intermediate to advanced learners. The online tutors I used with Japonin were pretty helpful, however nothing beats real live conversation for helping to improve spoken ability, and again I end up spending too much time in front of the computer. Passive ability is a bit different of course. I've collected enough reading material to last me a while and have enough films, anime and drama to watch. Even so, access to books in Japanese is hugely expensive thanks to shipping costs from Amazon and the massive mark up that any Japanese bookstore I've been to in Europe seems to charge. It is possible to buy some Japanese films and anime on DVD in the UK, although the range appears to be skewed towards either arthouse movies (which, to be fair, can sometimes be really good) or things which are more of interest to teenage boys. Normal mainstream movies and TV dramas are pretty much impossible to buy on DVD here and if you try to order from Japan you are first stung by the fact that DVDs are very expensive there anyway, secondly by the high shipping costs and finally by the fact that you have to pay import duty, not only on the DVD but ALSO on the shipping costs (and there's usually a handling charge involved too). So there are lots of reasons why Japanese has lost its appeal to me a bit. But there's also still a nagging voice at the back of my head which says "you only feel like this because you're at a plateau. It's wanderlust, pure and simple. Once the going gets hard with a European language, you'll quit that one too". But...as I mentioned earlier, Europe is just so accessible from here. In around 5 hours by rail I can be in France or Belgium. Within around 7 hours I can be in Germany. On some of the trains I used the other week, there were announcements in four languages! Maybe there will be fewer people interested in tandem exchanges, but I have already found a tutor for face to face German lessons and am happy with this arrangement so far. The classes on offer in my local area go up to much more advanced levels for languages like French, German, Spanish and Italian. Books are similarly priced in France and Germany to the UK, and I can order a lot of them with free shipping from Book Depository. Amazon is still a rip off for international shipping, however I have some American TV show boxsets in my DVD collection already which just happen to have dubs in French, German, Spanish etc. I also picked up a few random boxsets from HMV today when I was in town, just because a German dub was available. The provision is a bit hit and miss (e.g. you can get German for some seasons, but not for others), but at least there is some provision! I also discovered in the WHSmith in town they stock things like Der Spiegel (I picked up a copy, just because I could) and Le Monde. They seem to carry a Chinese paper too, but certainly nothing in Japanese. Anyway, I feel like I am really starting to take to German thanks to the 6WC. Every day I study, I feel like I'm making progress. I know that there is an issue of diminishing rate of returns when you get to a higher level in a language (see, that nagging voice of doubt again) but at the same time, it's just such a relief to study a language that uses an alphabet! I'm not quite ready really to read real German yet, but I don't think it will take too long before I am. Whereas real Japanese is still problematic and will take hours of further study to resolve this. But I'm also starting to get the desire to pick up my French again. At which point I'm wondering if this really is just wanderlust... I don't know. I think the answer is to not worry about my Japanese. I can spend a couple of hours a week maintaining what I've got, enjoying the native materials I've collected and whatever conversation I get the chance to have. It means I'm probably not going to get much better at it, but at the same time I shouldn't lose anything either. I can keep working on my German for as long as I sustain an interest. If I plateau early and get bored, I'll know it was just wanderlust. If I take it further, then I'll have gained another language. As for French, I guess I need to be patient and find out where my German is going first. I'm not a beginner in French, so it's going to be a little bit different anyway. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4995 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 179 of 333 18 August 2012 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think you've put enough time into Japanese to show that you're able to tackle a foreign language and stick
with it until you get solid results. So I wouldn't worry about becoming too unfocused that you don't achieve your goals. I have faith in you. Especially if you passed the JLPT 3 which to me is a solid achievement even if you personally thought it would have taken half the time to get there. I'm impressed by it. And I hope you write about learning German/French online because I like reading your posts ;). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6431 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 180 of 333 18 August 2012 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I read all your posts, even the long ones -- which is only fair, since I write some pretty long ones myself.
I understand your feelings about Japanese. I think part of it probably is the plateau thing. I have that sometimes too, but having learned Norwegian to fluency makes me realize that I can get past this and makes me less likely to jump off than I was before, even though it can be very frustrating. As far as advice goes, I would say, go for the European language. You will probably get a lot of joy learning something that you can actually use, especially since you seem outgoing enough to do so. (I kind of like having a language I'll never be called on to speak. I like to hide in the background and be invisible anyway.) However, while you're enjoying French, German or both, don't neglect your Japanese entirely. You might decide one day that you would like to take it further and it would be very frustrating to have to start almost from scratch because you allowed yourself to forget it. Trust me, I've done this several times and regretted it. From reading through your post, it seems like you've come to pretty much the same conclusions, so this is just an affirmation. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5793 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 181 of 333 19 August 2012 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the input and reassurances. It's not that I'm giving up Japanese completely, I am simply accepting that, at present, I'm not going to work at it intensively and therefore do not expect to improve beyond my current level. For now. I am going to keep focused on German until the end of the 6WC (which is nearly half over already).
So I think it's about time I gave a proper update on what is going on with my German! Since getting back to the UK I'm pretty much back in the groove with a study routine. I think I have fallen in love with Assimil. The first couple of weeks of lessons were not great because I wasn't quite sure what the course was really trying to do. It didn't help that I didn't study it at all on most days when I was on holiday. But the first day I got back I basically spent some time revising all of the lessons I had covered so far and then got stuck back into a routine of one lesson a day, and it is working really well. I think initially I didn't pay enough attention to the lesson notes, but they are really important. Things get introduced a bit subtly to start with (I guess that's the point) but then they get more important a few lessons later. Now I find that if I ask myself the question "what is this lesson trying to teach" I find it really helpful. Hopefully I should be on course to start the active wave at the end of the 6WC and I will be interested to see how the passive and active wave lessons complement each other. I am also making good use of the Deutsche Welle materials. I listened to Mission Berlin on the way to Berlin and loved it (and it really set the mood). I would like to listen to it again before the end of the challenge because I think there is plenty more I can get from it. I am now enjoying Radio D. A lot of the Deutsche Welle stuff seems to be really quirky, but this makes it fun. I can listen to a couple of episodes in a row, with a few minutes to refer to the script if there is something I want to confirm or couldn't quite make out. It seems to be a good use of 30 minutes or so. I had another look at Deutsch Interaktiv last night and spent just over an hour going through the first lesson. I did half of the first lesson before going away so some of it was revision. When I looked at it then I still wasn't sure how to approach learning German and I think I felt a bit overwhelmed. Coming back now I've settled down again and it is quite useful. Although it is delivered online, the format and content feels quite similar to a regular textbook. It does not seem to have the same quirkiness factor as the other Deutsche Welle stuff I've looked at, but maybe this approach makes it a nice counterpoint to Radio D/Mission Berlin/Assimil. I started looking at drawing in the dreaded Anki this week, with mixed results. I picked up a vocabulary book with 4000 common words and example sentences and tried the old method of putting a few words and sentences into Anki and drilling them. Needless to say, I got bored and decided by the end of the week not to worry about it. The book is actually good to refer to if I pick up words from my study materials due to the example sentences and details about any irregular forms. But I'm not going to study from it systematically at present. I am using Anki, for now, with the things I covered with my tutor last week. I can study from my books and online materials every day and they will self-reinforce, but I only get a German lesson once a week, so I thought a few SRS prompts about the things I looked at last week, combined with the fact that most of the material I developed some hooks for as part of the lesson, should help me revise and be prepared ready for next week. And I have started interacting with native materials, having been learning the language for just over a month. I think I mentioned on here a few weeks ago that I felt it was pointless watching German TV etc because I didn't have enough knowledge to get anything out of it. I might as well have been listening to some kind of ambient music. Anyway, enough proper study has meant that I can now start actually getting some proper benefit from native audio. I now have a limited vocabulary of common words which I can enjoy sitting back and trying to pick out. But also I have a much better understanding of the sound system used in German so I can start picking out the form of sentences, phrases and words, even though I don't have the vocabulary to understand them yet. It means I can start to properly engage with the audio, rather than just zoning out and treating it as noise. Deutsche Welle have a number of TV shows which you can stream from their website. You need to make sure that the website is in German mode and not English, however, otherwise you will just get a list of their English language shows. I am enjoying a show called Hin und Weg, which is a travel show focusing on tourist destinations in Germany. As I am experiencing a bit of physical wanderlust as well as the linguistic variety, I am finding it quite satisfying. I've already asked my husband if we can plan a trip to München as a result. And then of course there is written German. After so many years of struggling with written Japanese, I can't even begin to describe the relief of looking at written German. I've bought a small handful of reading books aimed at beginners (A1/A2) level and looked at one of these last night. It came with some audio too, which was nice. My comprehension still isn't great, even for this kind of simple material, but it's better than it was when I started the 6WC. I also mentioned in my earlier post that I picked up a copy of Der Spiegel, so I spent some time last night flicking through it. Of course I've still got a long way to go before I can have a proper understanding of the material, but I could often get the gist of headlines and summaries. It's a very good start I think. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5793 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 182 of 333 19 August 2012 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ohh dear, it seems that I am looking at a catastrophic hardware failure on my PC. Which means I may well have lost nearly all the fansubbed Japanese stuff I've collected over the years. I knew this would happen eventually, which is why I recently bought an external HD to start backing stuff up on. Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough at backing everything up.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6431 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 183 of 333 19 August 2012 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have a question about Assimil. I've never used it myself, but a lot of people seem to. What I was wondering about is this passive wave/active wave stuff. Is it something that is explained in the directions for the course? Or is it something made up by the people on this forum? I tried reading some of the threads on it, but found them very confusing. I probably would have understood them much better if I had one of the courses myself to look at.
I'm so sorry about your PC. I hope you will be lucky and be able to recover some stuff. I should take it as a warning to back up my own computer. It's been a while since I last did it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5793 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 184 of 333 19 August 2012 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, the passive wave/active wave forms part of the course instructions, although in the introduction to my German with Ease it calls them "first wave" and "second wave" but the principle is the same. Basically for the passive wave you just listen and repeat the audio, read the text, translations and notes and do the exercises at the end of the lessons. There are two types of exercise, the first involves listening to the German and reading the text and then translating it out loud into English, the second is a fill in the blank type of exercise. Obviously I haven't started the active wave yet, but my understanding is that once you get to lesson 50 in the passive wave, you go back to lesson 1 and translate the English translation back into German and you double up the lessons so that each day you do one lesson passive wave and one lesson active wave. From lesson 50 onwards in the text there is a note to remind you which active wave lesson you should also do that day.
Fingers crossed I will be able to rescue my PC. It was giving me a disk read error and hanging on boot up, which was rather scary. But when I opened up the box I discovered that it was exceptionally hot inside because the system fan had packed in. It seems that the enemy is heat, because as long as I keep the cover removed from the side of the box the system boots up and is stable. So I am now copying all my data onto the external HD. I tried replacing the fan with the one from my husband's broken PC but it didn't want to work either so I'll need to find another solution, although I'm in no hurry. I have my laptop which fulfills all my practical computing needs anyway. For now I am satisfied that my data is safe. It's already eaten into so much valuable language time today. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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