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TAC 2013, Sakura 桜 - dampingwire | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4636 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 9 of 137 04 January 2013 at 7:55am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Wait... let me get this straight. You are planning to work through JP101's Upper Intermediate episodes before you do Japanese in 30 Days (is that not a beginner's book?)?
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| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4454 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 10 of 137 04 January 2013 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
"Planning" is a rather grand word for what I'm doing :-) My subscription to JPOD101 ends in June. Before then I want to make sure that I've verified that I've downloaded everything and that it has downloaded correctly. That means listening to everything. I'm moderately lost with the Upper Intermediate stuff and I expect that I'll be totally lost with the Advanced blogs. I have found, however, that when I move to a higher level the lower level stuff seems to magically become easier. Some of the later Beginner series stuff seemed tough at the time but (now that I'm listening to Intermediate stuff) when I go back to it lately it seems much more understandable. The Berlitz stuff turned up unexpectedly at Christmas. I expect that it will turn out to be be fairly standard "tourist fare" so I'm in no great rush to switch from my current commuting habits to using the Berlitz stuff. However, since I now have it I want to at least go through it. There are only two audio CDs so I expect that two days of commuting will get me through it, but I want to work through the book at least to start with so that I give it a proper chance. I seem to have gone from "not a lot" of non-audio material at the beginning of December 2012 to "actually quite a bit of stuff to work through" now in January. That's a good thing I guess. I do want to work through the basic stuff soonish as I expect that by the end of the year I probably won't want to go back to the really basic stuff (which means I may miss out on some things that I really ought to know but missed the first time around). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5771 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 11 of 137 04 January 2013 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In terms of what to move onto after you finish Minna No Nihongo II, to be honest I wouldn't worry too much about it until you actually get there. There's no single good intermediate textbook out there, so it will be down to what your strengths, weaknesses and goals are once you get to that point. I think if you want to start looking beyond what is in your basic textbook, it would be more useful to look at investing in some good grammar reference books if you haven't done so already.
I wouldn't bother getting Japanese for Everyone as most of it will be too basic by the time you've finished with MNN. I bought a copy as it was going cheap on Amazon, but in the end I never used it. I found that the third volume of Japanese for Busy People was quite a nice bridge to get towards lower intermediate from the stuff I'd learned in Genki - however one of the limitations of Genki is that it is aimed at university students so all the scenarios and vocabulary are very oriented towards student life rather than working adult life. I'm not sure this is a problem with MNN, as I've never used it, so you may have all that you need with that already. For the N3 exam, the most useful books I found were the Unicom 実力アップ books for listening and reading, which both do a good job of combining practice for the listening and reading sections of the exam and introducing useful expressions and vocabulary. The Kanzen Master books for N3 hadn't been published yet at the time I was preparing for the exam, so I never used them, but I quite like the ones for N2. They are very much oriented towards what you need to pass the exam though, rather than improving your language skills in general. I think the easiest to understand anime show I know is Azumanga Daioh. One character speaks with an Osaka dialect and another is permanently overexcited and speaks too fast, but apart from that most of the characters speak very clearly, and a lot of the vocabulary used seems to be quite common, everyday stuff, so it is easy to follow. For a graded list of dramas, check out Japanese Level Up's Ultimate J-Drama Guide - however I think Azumanga Daioh is much easier to understand than any of the 1 star dramas I have watched from this list. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5015 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 12 of 137 04 January 2013 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Love the many placeholders, I placed only 2, which is far too few in retrospective. If I enroll in another TAC in 2014 I'll make sure to follow your example. Now I'll keep watching (and hopefully learning)...
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| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4973 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 13 of 137 04 January 2013 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Good idea with the placeholders. I wish I'd had that foresight when I
made my log... But I can always update the first entry I guess. I too was a little taken aback that you were doing a beginner book and upper intermediate lessons on jap pod. But if you like it then I'm sure it's helping. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4454 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 14 of 137 06 January 2013 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I've already asked for my employer to buy it; even if I don't use it, there are two people at work who can make good use of it.
Well someone else at work has added volumes 1 & 2 to the list ... if no-one beats me to it I'll ask for volume 3 to be added to the library (in a few months).
I've not found myself too bothered by the various situations in MNN. I've not used Genki, but I don't think it being full of students would bother me too much either. I generally don't care hugely about those fictional characters, I see them as a useful and instantly forgettable stepping stone to fluency :-)
Thanks for the recommendation (and the book advice). I'll try to start some viewing soon. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4454 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 15 of 137 06 January 2013 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I decided to start looking at the Berlitz course. As expected it's a fairly
straightforward beginner course. So far it has used roomaji throughout, although it has started to introduce the kana. After about 70 minutes of study I've been through the first 12 chapters (of 30). I've not tried the exercises, but the grammar covered so far is pretty basic. There have been some useful bits of vocabulary, so I think I'll keep going to the end. I expect (unless it suddenly jumps a gear) that I'll be done with it by the end of the week. I'll probably try the audio out when I'm commuting again (I'm working from home most or all of next week). I've also started working through the Japanese Reader. The first 12 chapters are a basic review of ひらがな and カタカナ. I've used those mostly as a source of vocabulary for SRS> Chapter 13 is where the 漢字 starts and I'm now on Chapter 14. I expect that this is the point at which it is going to become more interesting ... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4454 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 16 of 137 06 January 2013 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I'm going to use this post for two things. Firstly I'm going to see if I can
successfully link to a specific post in a log like this: Brun Ugle's January Goals. Following the suggestion in that post, I'm going to set myself some goals for January. 1. Listen to the remainder of JPOD101 Upper Beginner S2 - S5 by the end of the month. This will be mostly during the commute or when I go out cycling in the evening. So it's time that would otherwise be wasted. 2. Do at least 20 mins of Anki each day. 3. Keep the memrise N5 course watered and plant all 800 words of the memrise N4 course. I think that's going to be 40 words per day. It sounds like quite a lot, however, they won't all be new and I've found with both Kanji and Anki, they do begin to stick after a while. I think that'll be about 60 mins per day. 4. Work on the Japanese Reader for at least 10 mins each day. 5. Keep up the Kanji reviews at Reviewing The Kanji. This is rarely more than 20 mins each day. That's less than two hours to find each day. Edited by dampingwire on 06 January 2013 at 9:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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