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5 years of 日本語 TAC 13 桜/Schnitzel

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436 messages over 55 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 12 ... 54 55 Next >>
g-bod
Diglot
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United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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1485 posts - 2002 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 89 of 436
16 February 2013 at 12:17pm | IP Logged 
I totally wanted to do the nice dinner out somewhere. Unfortunately I'm still full of this awful cold, so I wouldn't have enjoyed it so much. I think I owe myself one when I feel better though!
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g-bod
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5781 days ago

1485 posts - 2002 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 90 of 436
18 February 2013 at 5:52pm | IP Logged 
6WC week 2 report

Well, it's a little late, but at the rate I'm going there will be nothing to report on for week 3 anyway, so I might as well note some positives here before they become a distant memory.

I reached 23h33 German and 31h overall and made a good attempt at consistency in my approach, generally managing 1 Assimil lesson, 1 Warum Nicht lesson, and some textbook time every day. I also started fitting in a few more Japanese activities including some TV and a bit of reading.

I completed nearly a whole week of Assimil lessons, and then stumbled and fell, thanks to being sick, on the review lesson, and haven't picked it up since. I've almost completely lost my voice now, so the listen and repeat thing isn't going to work for me right now. Since I like to do some of the textbook exercises out loud too, this is also on hold. And I'm not listening to Warum Nicht, well, I guess because I'm sulking that I can't do anything else!

I also had to cancel my Skype Japanese exchange this weekend which I was pretty annoyed about. My partner sent me an article for reading practice though, which was really cool of him.

Since my usual methods are failing me right now (for the second time this year, for goodness sake, I need to get healthy) I've spent time just watching silly TV shows. At least today that has involved a silly TV show in Japanese, so I guess I'm making progress.
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Sunja
Diglot
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Germany
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2020 posts - 2295 votes 
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Speaks: English*, German
Studies: French, Mandarin

 
 Message 91 of 436
18 February 2013 at 7:45pm | IP Logged 
February is a tough month. It's the time when my immune system crashes. I had a cold last week that wasn't too terrible and I shamefully took full advantage by telling folks and family I was SOOO sick (cracking voice helped) and everybody left me alone to recover. I stayed in bed surrounded by language books and chamomile tea!
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kujichagulia
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 4646 days ago

1031 posts - 1571 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Portuguese

 
 Message 92 of 436
19 February 2013 at 1:16am | IP Logged 
Ugh... please, take care of your health first. Then continue to dominate the 6WC competition! :)
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g-bod
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5781 days ago

1485 posts - 2002 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 93 of 436
19 February 2013 at 9:50am | IP Logged 
Yeah I guess I need to take my own advice and take it easy for a few days!
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g-bod
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5781 days ago

1485 posts - 2002 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 94 of 436
21 February 2013 at 9:43pm | IP Logged 
Yay I'm back!

I think this 6WC is going to be more of a 5WC for me now, but never mind. I'm not an all powerful language learning machine. It turns out I am, after all, only human.

Today I went back to work and this evening I came home and went back to German. I reviewed the last 6 lessons in Assimil by listening and following the scripts a few times, and then I read the summary lesson which I was supposed to do last Thursday. It included a little translation exercise which was kind of tough, but I tried not to let it put me off. I don't know if it's even intended for right now or for the active wave, but I gave it a go anyway. And at least I got some bits right.

I also listened to another episode of Warum Nicht which was a lot easier to pick up where I left off, since each lesson starts off with a little review of the previous lesson, the pace is not too fast, and they do a good job of explaining everything that's going on.

Over the last couple of days I've been dipping into Japanese thanks to my giant illustrated children's encyclopedia which is the best book for reading in bed. It's just so chunky. It has lots of full page spreads with lots of pretty pictures covering everything from planets to insects to the south pole. Anything with penguins generally wins me over. I totally forgot about tracking time when I was ill, so I've guessed at around 1 hour of reading in total to give myself some credit. One interesting thing I noticed about the language used was that the main text introducing each section is written in です・ます style, but all the snippets of text explaining things about the pictures (which often amount to paragraphs rather than snippets anyway) are written in である style.
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g-bod
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5781 days ago

1485 posts - 2002 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 95 of 436
23 February 2013 at 6:29pm | IP Logged 
And now it seems I'm back on form again with Japanese too! Hurray! At last!

I actually did a little bit of analysis on the figures from November's 6WC, partly because I'm a nerd who loves pivot tables, but mainly because the biggest thing that has been bugging me about my JLPT N2 success is that I don't know what I was doing right!

Anyway, after coding things up a little, I discovered the following:

55% of my time was spent using the language (reading, listening, speaking, writing)
45% of my time was spent studying the language (textbooks, analysis, Anki reviews)

I coded class time as 50% use and 50% study, which I think reflected the content of the classes reasonably well.

To take things a little deeper:
46% of my time was spent using the language passively (e.g. watching TV or extensive reading)
9% of my time was spent using the language actively (e.g. conversation, writing)
29% of my time was spent studying using KIC or reviewing what I had studied in KIC in Anki - this one particular resource took up so much of my time it really needed a separate category!
16% of my time was spent studying using other things (e.g. various textbooks and class time)

The biggest surprise is that I spent more time studying than I realised, although I think the fact that I still spent over half my time using rather than studying the language was important. Maybe my perception was skewed by the fact that I was using one single resource for most of my study time, the focus of which is 100% on passive understanding. In fact I spent at least 75% of my time experiencing Japanese passively.

It certainly makes me think more and more that maybe planning to listen and read my way to N1 success (rather than drilling my way there) is not such a bad idea.

I also feel a lot more inspired to pick up Kanji in Context again. It's definitely a useful text at this level, but only if I spend more time reading and listening to the language than I do studying and reviewing KIC.
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g-bod
Diglot
Senior Member
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5781 days ago

1485 posts - 2002 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 96 of 436
24 February 2013 at 9:51pm | IP Logged 
Why is it that whenever my will to study Japanese returns with a vengeance, it is so strong that I feel I can't possibly lose any precious language study time to any other language?

And why is it that this always seems to happen when I get to around Lesson 45 in Assimil?


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