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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4629 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 193 of 706 14 May 2013 at 3:43am | IP Logged | ||
Wow... thank you for the kind post, g-bod! I did look back at some of my earlier posts, and wow... I'm ashamed that I was that whiny! By far, the biggest benefit to posting a log here at HTLAL has been a change from a negative attitude regarding learning Japanese to a positive one. I've gone from "These various kanji readings are ridiculous" and "The language isn't pretty" to "I can do this!" and "It's only a matter of time." As for inspiration... I don't know about that, but I do know that you, g-bod, as well as many others, have inspired and motivated me, so thank you very much. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4629 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 194 of 706 14 May 2013 at 3:49am | IP Logged | ||
Expugnator, thank you very much! I saw fabriciocarraro's post (the one in French, right?). I wish I could remember the French I learned at university, but your summary above helped me a lot. I already subscribe to Café Brasil, although I don't listen to it that much; I tell myself that I will get more out of it when I reach a higher level, but surely just listening to it will not harm me, and I could pick up a few words and train my listening as well. I see that Nerdcast is one of the most popular Portuguese-language podcasts, but I could not understand what it is about. Now I know, so I will download it as soon as possible! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| espejismo Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4833 days ago 498 posts - 905 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani | Message 195 of 706 14 May 2013 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks a lot for these podcasts! and kujichagulia, thanks for the 'native nod' on lang8. It's a small world. :P 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4629 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 196 of 706 15 May 2013 at 1:56am | IP Logged | ||
Whoa, it certainly is! I didn't realize that you were the person I gave a native nod to... heck, I don't even remember giving a native nod! :P But if I gave you one, you deserved it! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4629 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 197 of 706 16 May 2013 at 3:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just an update here.
I finished Chapter 9 of An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese! And I completed it in about half a month! I'm flying through this book using my new routine of studying Japanese every afternoon on the train. The bad thing is that I'm only studying with IAIJ at the moment, but with six chapters to go... hmmm. I wonder if I should go slower with IAIJ and mix in some other resources again. Speaking of which... I haven't touched The Little Prince since I started this routine. The Japanese version is written almost entirely in hiragana and katakana, with very little kanji. This is because it is a children's story, and children of that age do not have a great knowledge of kanji. Theoretically, that should make it easier for me to read. But for me, I find it a bit annoying. It is difficult to look up unknown words, for example. There are many homonyms in Japanese, and the Chinese characters help differentiate the meanings from each other. I may think that a word means one thing, when in fact it has another meaning in that context. If an entire sentence is unknown to me, it can be difficult to parse the words, and to know if that に or は or が is a particle or part of the preceding or following word. I should probably just continue to push myself through it until the end. For DLI Portuguese Basic, I am currently in the middle of Unit 2 Lesson 18. I'm getting a good grounding in simple past tense, which allows me to begin writing a simple diary! I posted a short entry on Lang-8, the first time in a while I've done that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4629 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 198 of 706 31 May 2013 at 4:24am | IP Logged | ||
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A couple of weeks ago, I started to think that I had the wrong mental approach to my
Japanese studies. Since my recommitment to Japanese, I have studied with this mindset: "It's only a matter of time until I can speak Japanese with anybody on all but the most specialized subjects." It is true that it is only a matter of time, but I think I did not realize just how much time it is going to take me to reach C1 or even B2 in Japanese. I mean, I have learned a lot since last summer. My vocabulary, grammar, reading, kanji and listening skills have all improved to various degrees. But I'm still stuck in B1 level, and B2 seems far, far away. So I decided to research just how much time, on average, it was going to take me to reach C1 in Japanese. I came across two web pages (sorry, having trouble posting the links today) that has the US Foreign Service Institute's (FSI's) list of languages organized by difficulty for native English speakers. Japanese is listed in the most difficult category, along with Chinese, Korean and Arabic. In fact, there is an asterisk next to Japanese denoting that it is a little bit more difficult than the other languages in the category. That means, according to FSI, I'm learning the most difficult language I could possibly learn. That's fine, but how long will it take to learn? FSI says it will take 2200 hours to learn Japanese to Level 3. According to a Wikipedia page called Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, Level 3 of the ILR scale (what FSI uses) is roughly equivalent to C1 on the CEFR (European) scale. I'm at B1 now, so how long will it take me to reach C1? In fact, when can I expect to reach B2? Using the Deutsche Welle information at that last link I posted two paragraphs ago, I came up with the following estimates. Out of all the time you need to reach C2 in a language, it will take you: 17% of the time to go from scratch to A2 (perhaps 8% to reach A1 from scratch?) 17% of the time to go from A2 to B1 17% of the time to go from B1 to B2 17% of the time to go from B2 to C1 32% of the time to go from C1 to C2 Using this, and the 2200 hours FSI says it will take me to reach C1 from scratch, I estimate that it will take me roughly 3200 hours to go from scratch to C2. 17% of that is 540 hours. I study a minimum of five hours a week (intensively - not counting watching TV, listening to all the Japanese around me, etc.), and most weeks I study more than that. Those five hours don't count weekend hours, which are flexible. But if I just study five hours a week, then it will take me about two years to get from B1 to B2. That makes some sense. It has been only a year since my recommitment. In fact, I may have been more of an A2 when I recommitted myself last year, so it may take me longer. Now, I do know that these numbers are just estimates and theories. But they do serve a purpose: I now realize that I still have a lot of work ahead of me, and I need to put my head down and make the journey. Anyway, I decided to calculate the hours for Portuguese as well. FSI says it is one of the easier languages for me to learn, and they say that it will take just 600 hours to reach Level 3/C1. That means 900 hours for C2. 17% of that is 150 hours. I started Portuguese in August 2012, and I study about five hours a week. So, to go from nothing to A2, it should take me about 7 months. It's May, that means it has been 9 months. I doubt that I am at A2, although I would list myself as a high A1. But yeah, I know that these numbers are not concrete - just estimates. What is interesting is that, if I use these guidelines, I should reach B2 in Japanese perhaps January-May 2015. I should reach B2 in Portuguese by January-February 2015. So I'm on pace to become fluent in Portuguese before I do in Japanese! Uh-oh. That can't happen. Edited by kujichagulia on 31 May 2013 at 4:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6379 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 199 of 706 31 May 2013 at 10:53am | IP Logged | ||
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The thing about the FSI numbers is that they are the hours in the classroom. But FSI students also get tons of homeworks. On the other hand, they probably teach some topics that are not essential for you (like military or diplomatic stuff).
But yeah, sooner or later your Portuguese will surpass your Japanese. It's easier and you like it more. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5764 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 200 of 706 31 May 2013 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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The FSI numbers are also based on studying to a really intensive schedule (20 class hours per
week). I often wonder if this is not the most efficient way of doing things. Nevertheless, thinking about my own studies, I'm beyond the point of being able to make an accurate assessment of total time studying Japanese. However, assuming I put in an average of 1 hour a day over the last five years, and intend to continue at that intensity, I'd still have to study for another 12 months to hit the 2200 hours threshold. That's pretty sobering. Japanese is hard. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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