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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 |  | |
| 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 241 of 333 25 September 2012 at 9:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well I decided that preparing for N2 alone was not stressful or crazy enough so I signed up to a French class as well. It starts next week and claims that it will take me from a rusty B1 to a B1. I tried doing the same class a few years ago (pre Japanese and pre HTLAL) but dropped out towards the end. Essentially I wimped out because I did not feel confident in giving an oral presentation at the end of the course. Now thanks to having learned the wonders of self talk, if this is still part of the assessment I think I'll be fine.
Anyway I don't plan to work too hard for the class. I'll turn up, do the homework (including some review of any vocab and grammar covered), and continue reading things like Astérix, Harry Potter and Paris Match. I realised my latent knowledge of French isn't that far behind my Japanese. If I can reactivate it a little, I'll have two languages that are good enough to have some real fun with. 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 242 of 333 25 September 2012 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Now the weather has turned here in the UK, I've managed to catch a cold. I was just about to slink off to bed feeling sorry for myself for not studying any Japanese tonight when I paused and thought "hang on a minute, I've been sat here listening to Japanese music and reading about travel surveys on Japanese wikipedia". So now I can just feel sorry for myself for having a cold. It's interesting though how I seem not to value certain activities in terms of "language study", to the extent that I almost forget I've done them. I wonder if this impacts on how much I learn from them.
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| 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 243 of 333 26 September 2012 at 12:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think you'll enjoy the class. I love how the class I take gets me out of my apartment to socialize in a nice environment. Foreign language classes are fun like that.
I think I count everything I do but somehow when I go to bed I never feel like it's enough. I want to FEEL the progress I made that day. Doesn't usually happen. Unless I cram new material. And then I feel like I achieved something but in fact I will forget most of it pretty quickly. 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 244 of 333 26 September 2012 at 8:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think I have the same problem. I'll spend time actually doing something in Japanese sometimes, but I don't think to count it. For example, I was trying to read a bit about a Japanese book I have in order to get a basic idea of the plot and hopefully make it easier to follow. The book isn't translated into English, but there is a manga version that is, so I was trying to find out something about that, but I couldn't find anything useful. Then somehow I ended up on the Japanese wikipedia page for that book (which wasn't helpful either). But because I just ended up there "by accident," I never thought about it as actual Japanese study. Until now.
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| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4859 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 245 of 333 27 September 2012 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
I see. I thought you hated to miss improving your speaking skill more than picking up language use passively through language exchange.
Then maybe you should try what I wrote (if you haven't yet), which is basically the opposite of what you did with German. It's just one message below the message you were replying to. 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 246 of 333 27 September 2012 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Takato, suffice to say I have attempted exchanges with people who wanted to use your suggested approach (they speak English, I speak Japanese) and I did not enjoy the experience. I have attempted exchanges with people where we both use Japanese and have found it very helpful and enjoyable.
My earlier post was simply to emphasise that it is easy to be lazy when you know your partner has a good understanding. I need to make the effort to use more Japanese in my half of the exchange, that's all. And finally, speaking is fun but passive skills in Japanese are much more important to me personally. 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 247 of 333 01 October 2012 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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French class was pretty good fun. It was great to turn up to a class where the teacher speaks French a lot of the time and to find myself being able to actually understand it. Obviously my production is rusty as anything, but I seem to be no better or worse than my classmates, which is a good sign I've picked the right class. I really wish I could go to a Japanese class, but French is not so bad! The teacher is really enthusiastic and very keen to point out key differences between French and English. I like her style. Anyway, my plan between this class and next class is to set up an Anki deck to store all the words and phrases we covered today, revise a bit of grammar (I'm thinking reflexive verbs) and read some Astérix.
Now I'm going to try and squeeze in some Japanese before bed! 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 248 of 333 03 October 2012 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't know how I seem to have gone from focusing all my efforts into Japanese to suddenly stretching myself across three different languages. I think I might just be crazy, or at least I might just be setting myself up for failure. Just this evening I was wondering how best to make sure I integrate enough French and Japanese into my life when my Assimil German just jumped off my shelf and into my lap and started asking me awkward questions about why I'd been ignoring it for a couple of weeks. I guess this kind of inner conflict is quite normal for some HTLALers, but it's quite a new experience for me. It wasn't so long ago that anything that wasn't Japanese just left me feeling overwhelmed with guilt.
Anyway, the speed at which my French is returning is quite amazing. I'm already about as comfortable reading in French as I am in Japanese and have started work on Le Petit Prince. It's quite interesting having just read the same thing in Japanese - there are bits of the French that I wouldn't have understood without knowing the story from the Japanese translation, but on the other hand I'm also picking up things I missed when I was reading it in Japanese. I feel like I've gone from having one intermediate language to having two almost overnight. Obviously my French production needs a bit more work to bring it out of me, but that's what class is for! As for Japanese, well, it's coming in fits and starts I suppose. I'm still watching some of the NHK for Schools shows on an almost daily basis, and I usually go to bed with a podcast. The weekend was been a bit unsettling for a couple of reasons and followed up by the excitement of French class my flow has been disrupted for JLPT exam prep. I guess I need to do something about that. And my recent reading time has been taken up with French books rather than Japanese ones, so I need to do something about that too. It's nice to know that a few days off Japanese isn't going to do my level any real harm, but I really need to keep moving forward somehow. And I think I've done a deal with German. I'm just going to aim to finish Assimil, but I don't have to do it every day! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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