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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 5983 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 433 of 436 31 December 2013 at 1:06pm | IP Logged |
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At the end of November I tried to maintain a little momentum in my studies by setting some goals for December. It's always a bit of a weird time of year, with more chances to get sick, go socialising, and procrastinate ones studies by ruminating on the year gone by and planning for the next year's TAC. I managed to do all of those things, which got in the way of meeting all of my minigoals except one:
I just finished reading L'homme aux cercles bleues! Apart from that I've listened to a few more episodes from season 2 of Warum Nicht and I've completed a few pages of Chapter 4 of Begegnungen. I've watched the first few episodes of Les Revenants and need to make time to sit down and watch the rest. On top of that I've been messing round with Duolingo for French and German, listening to as much French radio as I can stand, and I managed to get a couple of Japanese language exchanges when they weren't being interrupted by being sick or socialising. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5983 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 434 of 436 31 December 2013 at 2:49pm | IP Logged |
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TAC 2013 End of Year Review
If I had to pick one word to describe my language study over 2013, it would be “messy”. I started the year not really knowing what I wanted to achieve with languages, having just sat the JLPT N2 and feeling uncertain about the outcome. When I found out I’d passed, rather than wanting to celebrate completely I just felt rather confused about the whole thing. I arranged a holiday to Germany in the spring, which was the perfect excuse to pick up German again after my flirtations with it in summer 2012. In retrospect, I think I'd reached an ideal point in my Japanese studies to start learning another language. However, I then complicated things by booking a trip to the south of France in the summer and deciding to work on my French instead. I wouldn't recommend this approach. It's hard enough switching from one language in your life to two. Going from one to three in the space of a few weeks was enough to make my brain feel like melting and as a result I developed the tendency to just concentrate on one language for a few weeks before switching to another after a short period of brain melt. But despite the "messy" side of things, I still managed to hit a few milestones and make a few discoveries along the way. The most fundamental breakthrough of the year was during my trip to Germany, where I learned how to speak. Since I used to be the kind of person who would break into a cold sweat and forget even the most simple utterances when faced with a native speaker, this is a really big deal. I built the foundations for this back in 2012. Going to Japanese class provided a great sandbox for making a fool of myself in a safe environment, coupled with some good experiences with face to face language exchange that year. But this is still a few steps removed from communicating with strangers in their natural habitat, especially in a language where I'm still a beginner. The thing that gave me the confidence was simply the fact that in the very first hotel I arrived at, the person on the reception desk addressed me in German. I told them I had a reservation in German, and they continued speaking to me in German. Since they believed I could speak German, at least for the first sentence or two, I carried up the pretence for as long as I could. French has been an interesting experience. Coming back to a language that at one time I had an intermediate level in is a very different process to starting a language from the beginning. I started using some materials aimed for beginners (e.g. Assimil, Michel Thomas) and while Michel Thomas helped me to access my active skills again, after three hours (not in one go) it got boring. I had similar problems sticking with Assimil. I already kind of knew most of the things it was trying to teach me, but with gaps in weird places. I had better luck by jumping head first into real French books (I've actually read 4 whole books in French this year) and working with a French tutor once a week. I had to remind myself of what I already knew before I could start to identify things that I genuinely need to work on. Over time with Japanese, I realised that I've reached a level that I am mostly happy with. As cool as it would be to reach an advanced level in Japanese, I doubt I will ever use Japanese professionally so I've decided that at this stage I am content with my N2 level and it's just not worth the effort to ramp up my Japanese at the moment. I'm happy with my ability to enjoy TV shows and my speaking ability, while not amazing, is fit for the only use I actually have for it at present, in my weekly language exchanges. Over time I would like to improve my reading (kanji being the unique problem for reading Japanese), but I don't mind if this takes another 10 years. I did somehow manage to make use of both my French comprehension and limited German comprehension in work this year. That was quite unexpected, but certainly adds to my motivation to improve both these languages next year. I will finish my summary with a list of any resources or native materials I have used this year that have made a big enough impact for me to remember them: General Tunein Radio - I can now get radio in Japanese, French and German on my phone Japanese Courses/Textbooks みんなの日本語中級I - for an intermediate level general textbook (rather than something totally oriented around JLPT) I think this is one of the best on the market. It comes with audio CD, transcripts, answerbook, and does not assume that you are an American college student suffering culture shock for the first time. 留学生のための漢字の教科書中級700 - if you like the format of Basic Kanji Book but hate the fact that it doesn't come with an answer book, this is a great alternative. It assumes you already know 300 characters (roughly what you'd need for N4) and builds on this to take you up to 1000 characters, with reading practice, writing practice and some word games. Books 村上春樹 カンガルー日和 - a collection of short stories which are both particularly short and particularly comprehensible. A great first step for intermediate learners into the world of proper Japanese fiction for adults. TV 相棒 - the show I remember enjoying the most this year. It's a little bit more challenging than some of the shows I'd been watching previously, but by sticking with it for a few episodes I felt myself levelling up. It's been running for several seasons too, so I still have plenty more to watch. Online School I used www.j-os.com to find a Skype tutor and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for one to one Japanese lessons online. French Books (Showing off again - I read 4 whole ones!) Le Petit Prince - I don't think I really need to write anything here about such a well known classic, other than to confirm it's a very good place to start when reading French. Amélie Nothomb Stupeur et Tremblements - an interesting and relatively easy read for somebody with an interest in both French and Japanese. Fred Vargas L'homme aux cercles bleues / L'homme à l'envers - a bit more challenging than the first two books I read this year in French, but both were worth the effort, and seemed to get easier towards the end. Films My French tutor did a brilliant job at introducing me to some French movies. Two I particularly enjoyed were: Prête-moi ta main Un air de famille German Courses/Textbooks Deutsche Welle Warum Nicht? - Deutsche Welle has some brilliant offerings for learning German. The radio course Warum Nicht has to be my favourite. It manages to cover all the boring, functional A1/A2 level language in a really quirky way which appeals both to my sense of humour and my love of classical music. Begegnungen A1+ - If you are new to German, this textbook on its own is not going to be enough, because it's all in German and some of the grammar explanations are a little too sparse, presumably because of the limitations of basic German. However, the pacing of this book is brilliant as key vocabulary is regularly repeated and grammar points repeated and then built on as you work through each chapter, using a variety of different activities making it a great workbook. Duolingo - I have been playing around with this app for French and German. The audio for the French really annoys me, but I have been very pleasantly surprised with how well it works for German. A よいお年を to my team mates in Team 桜. Thanks for your support and inspiration throughout the year. Well done to all the other TAC 2013 participants who made it to the end of the year! And to anybody else, thanks for reading! My log for 2014 will continue here 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 435 of 436 01 January 2014 at 4:01pm | IP Logged |
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Congratulations on passing the N2, on improving your Japanese generally and on managing
to juggle French and German at the same time. I'll be watching with interest to see how you keep French and German going together as I'm hoping to perform the same trick with German and Spanish at some point. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4633 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 436 of 436 01 January 2014 at 6:54pm | IP Logged |
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Congrats for everything accomplished in 2013! Let's hope 2014 will bring even more
accomplishments! I really hope that at what point during the year, you'll feel the urge to study Japanese seriously once more because it sure is a pleasure to follow someone who's at the same level as I am! ;) As for French, if you wish to Skype, PM me to organize one day ;) And if you liked Stupeurs et tremblements, Amélie Nothomb wrote a book about here returning to Japan : "La nostalgie heureuse". I haven't read it yet, but heard it was really good 1 person has voted this message useful |
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