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5 years of 日本語 TAC 13 桜/Schnitzel | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 225 of 436 29 May 2013 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Blurgh. I've caught yet another cold. I think I've spent more days being sick than I have spent being healthy so far in 2013. I have to decide whether to cancel my Skype lesson tomorrow. You need to give 24 hours notice, otherwise you still have to pay for the lesson (which, having done some private tutoring myself a few years ago, I actually think is quite reasonable). I don't want to miss the lesson, but at the same time right now I'm not much good for anything more taxing than trashy TV (I can at least do that in Japanese), or writing whining posts like this on my language log.
The tutorials are absolutely fantastic, which is why I'm reluctant to cancel tomorrow's session. I am being forced to speak and write twice a week, which is just the push I've needed to get more active. I also love how the content of the lessons sits completely outside the JLPT framework. I gave my tutor some general ideas about the kind of topics I would like to talk about when the lessons were first set up, and now she provides me with a more precise theme to prepare prior to each lesson. For the first time I found myself able to talk in some detail about my day job, which was a great feeling. I think if anything, I would really love to be able to push my Japanese from "studies" to "speaks". I'm not entirely sure what this entails, as it's such a subjective measure. All I know is that I'm not comfortable within enough domains to claim I can speak Japanese (although on a good day, in certain circumstances, maybe I can speak Japanese already). As for German, I think the Assimil rennaissance will have to wait until I've recovered a little bit from this cold. Listen, repeat and understand is incredibly effective, except when one is suffering from a sore throat. Blurgh. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 226 of 436 02 June 2013 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Against my better judgement I've signed up to take part in the Tadoku challenge this June. I tried it before a couple of years ago and it really didn't work for me, partly because I felt it pushed all of my study time into reading at a time when I actually really wanted to work more on listening and speaking, and partly because my reading speed was so slow it felt like I never had a chance of getting anywhere near the top of the leaderboard.
This time I'm not worrying about the leaderboard, but I have set myself a personal challenge of 500 pages. At my current level, I think it is achievable, but at the same time it would require pushing myself beyond the normal amounts of reading I do. Also, I am well aware that at my current level, one of the best things I could do to extend my ability would be to read more. I've been thinking a lot over the past couple of weeks about what I should be doing in Japanese, and the one thought that always sticks is "I should be reading more". So it's a good time to tadoku. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 227 of 436 03 June 2013 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Important lesson: if you're thinking about putting off studying your kanji book until
tomorrow simply because you're feeling lazy, don't. Next day you'll get a migraine and will be incapable of doing anything useful. Not even Japanese TV tonight. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 228 of 436 08 June 2013 at 11:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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We've decided to take our summer holiday in France at the end of August. This means one
important thing: it's time to fix my French! I've started limbering up by listening to French radio this week (TuneIn Radio on my phone is fantastic. I can't believe I've been studying languages so long without it). Last night I opened up New French with Ease and worked through the first week of lessons. I had a couple of false starts with the French Assimil before. This time I feel quite different about it. I think after my experience of using German Assimil I am much more certain about what the course offers, and what it doesn't. I have seven years of high school French behind me, plus two abortive attempts to take a B1-1 level evening class. So I'm probably a few steps ahead of the typical false beginner. In fact my comprehension of French radio is at least as good as Japanese (reassuring for my French, depressing for my Japanese). Furthermore, my comprehension of le Monde is better than my comprehension of Yomiuri (there's no kanji in French and lots of words which look the same as English, but still...) So my plan is to race through the passive wave of Assimil until I reach a point where it gets hard. This will help me get a structured review of the grammar while working on my pronunciation at the same time (which will also assist with listening). Apart from that I'm jumping straight into using native materials. As my comprehension is already on par with my Japanese, I'd be stupid not to. I already started watching les Mystérieuses Citées D'Or. The English version holds plenty of nostalgia value for me, but since it was a Franco-Japanese production it's great seeing it with the French dub! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4431 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 229 of 436 09 June 2013 at 11:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Good luck with your French! And don't hesitate if you need any help! Considering your
past I guess it'll come back quite quickly though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4464 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 230 of 436 09 June 2013 at 11:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Embarrassment is one thing I always feel when in France: after all that studying at school I really should be much more at ease!
I'll be interested to see how you get on. One thing I think I've learned through trying to study Japanese is how to study a language. I'm interested in polishing my French (in a while ...) but I'm not sure where to start. I think my grammar is mostly OK, but I have nothing to judge against.
When I toyed with French a few years ago I found that TV5.com not only provided a goodly chunk of its TV programming on the web, but there was even a section of the site that included a basic language course. They took real news reporting, chopped them up into mini comprehension lessons. They even had transcripts available. I found those very worthwhile (although I didn't put much effort into it). There are also a few French language channels on the Hotbird satellite (TV5 and a few others). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 231 of 436 09 June 2013 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@yuhakko, many thanks for your kind offer. As soon as I am ready to start working on my active skills (hopefully after a couple of weeks of warming up my passive ones) I shall be in need of plenty of help!
@dampingwire I expect with your knowledge of Italian you'll probably have an easier time with French grammar than me! To what level did you study it at school? Thanks for the tip on TV5 - I just checked and the web address is actually www.tv5.org. We don't have a satellite dish here, but French is one of the few languages that is provided for by our cable provider. We have a whole 2 channels (France24 and TV5). But that's 2 more than we have for Japanese (or, for that matter, German). Anyway, in my first few days of going back to French I have made a couple of discoveries: In terms of grammar and vocab I could probably get through 7 lessons a day in Assimil's New French with Ease. However, if I want to retain the ability to at least attempt to mimic the pronunciation on the recording (which is one of the main reasons I'm starting from the beginning with this beginner's course - my French does still suffer from school-French pronunciation) I have to stop after 3 lessons. My listening ability is exceptionally variable. I seem to cycle between understanding a lot and understanding next to nothing very rapidly. This is quite different to my experience of listening to Japanese. It seems to take a bit more effort to tune in (and stay tuned in) to the French way of pronouncing things. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 232 of 436 10 June 2013 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@dampingwire was the TV news course you used on TV5.org called 7 jours sur la planète? I had a go with this last night. You get a news programme just under half an hour long which summarises all the main stories from the previous week. They then select a few of these stories and provide a transcript and exercises graded at A2, B1 and B2 levels. I worked through one excerpt about new words being added to the French dictionary. As I watched the whole TV show, I thought I wasn't doing too badly in terms of comprehension. I went through the A2 exercises with no major problems. But when I moved onto B1, I discovered I'd missed an awful lot of detail on the report (further confirmed by checking the transcript). That was pretty humbling.
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