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TAC 2014, tabidachi 旅立ち - dampingwire | ||
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| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4461 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 81 of 118 20 June 2014 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've started to tackle 日本語総まとめ N3 文法 again.
This time through things are making a lot more sense (thank goodness!). Even the "reassemble this shattered sentence" questions aren't as daunting as they used to be. I'm not getting 100% on each quiz, but I'm only getting a smattering wrong. I'm also working through ~4 units per day, which is probably right since this is just a final revision pass before the exam. I'm also using this run through the book to look for missing vocabulary and, again, this time through there's not much that I'm having to look up. (So I'm using this pass to mop up the occasional straggler, rather than adding a future tidal wave to Anki). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4461 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 82 of 118 06 July 2014 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm back from a gruelling day of JLPT N3: out at 8:30AM and back at 7:30PM.
Overall things weren't as bad as I was expecting them to be. The もじ ごい paper was OK. I felt as though I knew most of it and only guessed a few times, so hopefully that one will at least match the 25 out of 35 that I managed in the later mock tests. The ぶんぽう どっかい paper was hard. I certainly had to guess a few more times than I was comfortable with. However, I was expecting to run out of time with 4 or 5 answers still to produce and that didn't happen. I still think it'll be borderline: even when I think I've understood a passage I've usually missed something or misread an answer. Still, it went better than I thought it would at the start of the day. That just leaves ちょうかい. In a break with tradition, not all of the paper was spoken in エルボーニャン or 珍糞漢, instead they slipped into 日本語 on a number of occasions. I have to admit that was a pleasant surprise. Still, the unexpected shock means I still think I'm borderline for this one too. I hate coming out of an exam knowing I won't know the result for two months, but I suppose I hate that less than coming out of an exam knowing I've failed. Progress, I suppose. The biggest thing I've learned from this exam is that I really need to step up both my reading speed and my reading comprehension. I needed to have been a good deal better than this for N3 and I'll certainly need to be far, far better if I want to try for N2. I took advantage of my trip to London to fit in a visit to both JP Books and Adanami Shobou. As the exam was in Vernon Square, which I remember from my N4 experience is an hour by foot from Marble Arch, I decided that when in Rome, I should get an Oyster card and use the underground. That meant I could fit in both bookshops before lunch and still get back home in time to watch the 2nd half of the F1 highlights on the box! Anyway, JP Books was first. It's moved from it's previous home and is now its own shop in Denam Street. The last time I was in this shop I was looking for text books. I now have enough of those to keep me going probably all the way through N2, so this time I was concentrating on books to read. The first thing I noticed was that most of them are smaller than a typical UK paperback, so the kanji are (to me) quite small. When I looked at the few physically larger ones, the kanji seemed to be no bigger: there were either fewer pages or more whitespace. Not knowing what I was going to find in Adanami Shobou, I picked up two paperbacks as "insurance". The total was ~£18, so no worse really than a typical UK bestseller. Next I went to Adanami Shobou, which still pretends that it is a dry cleaners. Can't they afford a new sign or is there really a dry cleaners in there somewhere? Anyway the bookshop is stuffed to the gills with books. Some new, some second hand. Since I had no idea what sort of book I might enjoy reading I allowed myself to be swayed by more practical considerations. So I looked for "cheap" and stopped picking up books when the load in my hand reached "somewhat heavy". So that added 5 books, 3 of which are hardbacks for another £11. A very rough estimate suggests that there are 1500 pages there: certainly enough to keep me going well into the SC. The end result is that I've no idea whether I've bought tat or treasures, but the whole point is to get to the stage that I can read them well enough to be able to tell. In which case they'll have done their jobs and my £30 investment will have more than paid off. Overall, I'm very pleased with today. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4461 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 83 of 118 11 July 2014 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been taking things easy over the last few days but now I'm beginning to consider
the path towards N2. It's looking like a fairly steep path at the moment. There's a certain amount of grammar that I need to have seen (and hopefully learned). Based on how much effort it took to get through the N3 日本語総まとめ and 新完全マスター grammar books, and scaling up roughly by the lengths of the corresponding N2 books, and further allowing for 30m of grammar study per day, then I think that 150 days would be enough. In practice it'll probably take a little longer. I've taken a quick look through the N2 日本語総まとめ book and some of it I've already covered for N3 (thanks to 新完全マスター or みんなの日本語). The N2 新完全マスター, however, is longer and all in Japanese. Throw in that I'm not likely to manage 30m of grammar every single day and 200 days looks like a more realistic target. It probably doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things as I'm very unlikely to be ready for N2 a year from now, so grammar doesn't look like it's going to be on my critical path. I have the 新完全マスター N2 Listening book, so I will work through that. In addition I want to give shadowing a go and I have ~180 lessons from JPOD101's Lower Intermedate series try that on. Again allowing for 30m each day that would take 180 days for the book and a further 90 days for the shadowing. My estimate for the book is very rough, based purely on the page count. Again, this isn't likely to be on the critical path. The 新完全マスター N2 Reading book looks like it might take 175 days to work through. This is a very rough guess as I've not tried one of these before so I have no applicable data that I can use to form an estimate. I'm really just guessing that the timer-per- page will be roughly the same as the other books. Reading speed and comprehension were, I think, my weak spots in the July JLPT N3, so I definitely want to put more effort into this. That leaves vocabulary. There are roughly 4000 more words needed for N2. I realise that the examiners are no longer constrained to the previous (officially published) lists, but in practice they have to be reasonable. I expect that a fair amount of vocabulary I will pick or reinforce through the reading that I'm doing for the Super Challenge, but however I do it I need to allow enough time for a goodly number of words to sink in. Allowing a conservative estimate of 5 mins per word, and allowing 45m per day of Anki or Reading or some combination, then that's 444 days. If I want to throw in the first thousand or so kanji from Kanji In Context (and I do) then that adds up to 568 days. So that would seem to be my critical path. I started the year by trying to cram vocabulary at the rate of 300 words per week and that didn't go so well. If I managed 100 per week then I'd need just over a year of consistent study to cross that particular hurdle. If I tried to do all of that together I'd need to commit to 2 hours of study per day. That's probably a little steep. I don't think I can try shadowing during the commute (although shadowing at home should help me better understand the audio during the commute) and I also want to keep going with watching drama/anime. So I think I need to set a tentative (but hopefully achievable) target of N2 in December 2015. I'll start working through the grammar right away, as it will help with comprehension. I'll put the Listening book to one side for now, but I'll start the shadowing immediately too. I've already started activating some of the memrise N2 vocab within anki, so I'll keep that going and aim for 100 words per week initially. I want to keep the anki reviews under control so I'll adjust the rate of addition over the next few weeks based on what I see. I'l leave the Reading textbook to one side for now and wait until I have more vocabulary under my belt before tackling that one. I'll probably start to look at Kanji In Context soon, but that's going to remain an optional activity for now: I'm really just going to dip into it to see how much time it will take if I do add it to the plan. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5778 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 84 of 118 12 July 2014 at 1:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ah the best bit about going to London for JLPT is definitely the book shopping opportunities!
I hope you really did find treasure! As for N2, I think aiming for December 2015 is very conservative. If you've hit N3 level already, you have a good chance to get to N2 within 12 months if not sooner. Don't worry so much about covering all the stuff in the prep books. I still haven't learned all the N2 grammar and I passed in 2012... I would suggest focusing mainly on comprehension, especially of real world material, and build your vocab and grammar study around this. There is value in exam practice closer to the time, but with all your prior JLPT experience you should already be an expert in handling the exam format! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4461 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 85 of 118 16 July 2014 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well my tutor's first comment was "Well now you've done N3, will you be sitting N2 in December?" ... so I guess at least you are cutting me a little slack :-) I suppose that I'll see where I am in early March and see how I feel. I may have sat three JLPTs now but I'm still not used to the idea that 50% is a decent passing mark!
I expect that I will use native books + NHK to guide me in my studies - I'm already noticing some structures cropping up relatively frequently and others I've yet to meet in the wild. I'm still going to work through the book though as that way I'll recognise something as a grammar point so I can then go and check its meaning. The N2 新完全マスター books are pure Japanese anyway, so I'll be motivated to get plenty of reading practice that way (in addition to those books now sitting on my shelf of course). I'll be away on holiday later this year: I expect that I'll have some internet access but books will be a main source of Japanese during that time (plus whatever listening I can cram onto my phone). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4461 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 86 of 118 30 July 2014 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Just back from a week in Lago di Garda. I didn't get that much studying done but
I did find that taking along a Japanese novel turned out to be a really good idea. I took along 日本語総まとめ N2 文法 because I thought I could always get some grammar done if the reading didn't work out. That actually went fine, and I worked through a reasonable chunk: I'm now half way through the book. That's would have been too fast a pace, but it seems that about half of those grammar points I've already covered anyway when working towards N3. I suppose that's partly due to 日本語総まとめ being less comprehensive than 新完全マスター and partly down to different author's ideas of where the boundary lies. The reading was a pleasant surprise. I picked うたかた/サンクチュアリ through a process of extensive research: it was the highest hardback in my pile of Japanese books. (I decided that hardback would be more likely to survive the rigours of a holiday. Things didn't start well, or so I thought, as the hotel internet was really flakey. To be fair, it worked really well if I stood underneath the access point in the corridor, but that seemed moderately inconvenient. SO I was forced to just read and plough on when I hit words I didn't recognise. There were obviously plenty of those, and quite a few sentences made little sense if I couldn't get one or two of the words. Yet it ended up being a really quite rewarding experience. I'm certainly going to have to go back over the book with an electronic dictionary to hand just so I can see what all those missing bits were, but, despite that, the whole reading experience was really quite motivating. I found myself picking up the book rather than the grammar textbook when odd moments presented themselves, because although I knew I'd probably miss a lot of what was on the page, I'd often get the gist and occasionally I'd work out a whole sentence. So now, even though I do have the internet to hand once again, I'm going to continue to the end of the book in "extensive" mode. I'll probably not manage to resist for a whole week if I hit another word like ぼんやり, which must have cropped up half a dozen times and I knew I knew it but just couldn't remember it or work out from the context. (Yes, I've now checked and, yes, it does mean absentmindedly, and yes it is funny and ironic, and no, I'll probably never forget it again :-)) The weather was good too! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4461 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 87 of 118 02 August 2014 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I thought I should make an effort to list the books I'd picked up and maybe see what
the world thinks about them. The one I've been reading (and have now almost finished) is うたかた/サンクチュアリ by 吉本ば なな. It's really two novels published as one book. It seems to be an easy read. I think I'll re-read this one with the aid of an electronic dictionary to see where that gets me. Next up I have two books from 山田宗樹: 嫌われ松古の一生 上 and 下. GoodReads rates these as 4/5 and 5/5 respectively. From 内田康夫 I have イタリア幻想曲 (still shrink-wrapped). I can't find much about this, so I guess I'll just have to read it sometime! From 野間宏 I have さいころの空. This is 600 pages and is printed in that "double page" format. This may be heading for the bottom of the list! From 雪乃紗衣 I have 彩雲国物語. Wikipedia suggests that this is a light novel. I seem to have lucked out as I've picked up what seems to be the first in a series of 16!! Finally 森浩美 has provided ほのかなひかり. If I search by author name all I seem to see is Immigration Policy and Foreign Workers in Japan, which is definitely not what I have. So this is another one that I'll probably just have to dive into and see what it is like. Has anyone read any of these and can offer any advice? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4461 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 88 of 118 02 August 2014 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that now the excuse of a looming JLPT has vanished I should get back to setting some goals.
Time to set some goals for August. As before, I'm going to set main goals and optional goals. Main Goals: 1. Continue listening to dialogue tracks. 2. RTK: I'll continue to keep this up to date. I didn't do any during my holiday and I've not got back into it yet, so there's a bit of catching up to do (about 356 reviews pending right now). 3. Anki: Kanji. I just need to keep this one ticking over. This one has fallen behind for the same reason as RTK. 4. Anki: Vocabulary. At the moment I'm activating the N2 vocabulary, which I downloaded from memrise. It came with kana but no kanji, so that means I need to tidy up each entry as I go. It's taking me about one hour for 100 words (tidying + activating). Maybe 25% of them I already know, so that's handy. I have just under 2000 words still to activate. At 500/week I should manage to do that in August. Once I've activated everything I'll be able to export a clean dataset to reimport into my kanji deck. (I use one for knowing the words and the other for going from kanji to kana/meaning). That'll leave me with a backlog of reviews that will take months to clear but I'll just set a time limit and stick to it. 5. 日本語総まとめ N2 文法. As I've just finished Week 6 of 8 I should be able to get to the end of this quite easily in August. I've been doing all the exercises associated with each grammar point, but I've left the 7th day tests for now. I'll cover those and also extract any new vocabulary too, by the end of the month. So far I've found that a fair few of the grammar points I've covered already one way or another. Getting through this material should not prove too much of a burden. I'll certainly be coming back over all of this once I've been through 新完全マスター N2 文法 later in the year. 6. I'm going to read at least 50 pages for the Super Challenge each week. 7. I'm going to watch at 3 hours of drama/anime for the Super Challenge each week. It will be a mixture of with and without subtitles, according to what I'm watching. Optional Goals: A. I'm going to work through at least 5 NHK News articles each week. B. I'm going to shadow 3 JPOD101 Lower Intermediate lessons each week. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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