sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6395 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin
| Message 97 of 197 09 October 2007 at 5:26pm | IP Logged |
In case anyone hasn't noticed I've changed the title of this log to indicate that that the Total Annihilation Challenge is over, at least for me.
This past week has been very busy for me, so I haven't been able to have get started listening-reading. That said, I'm about 3/4 done with the parallel text for "Le Petit Prince," and hopefully I can get that completed soon. Meanwhile, I'm still reviewing Kanji and Assimil sentences and spending up to 30 min/day shadowing the Assimil dialogs.
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sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6395 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin
| Message 98 of 197 12 October 2007 at 4:11pm | IP Logged |
Finally finished the parallel text for "Le Petit Prince." It's in Open Office format and I've added a link to it in the list of audiobooks.
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sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6395 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin
| Message 99 of 197 17 October 2007 at 5:04pm | IP Logged |
Over the last few days I've been Listening-Reading to several of Kenji Miyazawa's short stories and so far I'm really enjoying it. It's important to find good quality audio for these works because it gives them more repeatability. In particular I think the audio for "Restaurant of Many Orders" and "The Acorns and the Wildcat" are a pleasure to listen to, although a few of the other ones are quite decent as well.
At first it was hard to follow the narrator, but by the second or third time through I was starting to develop an ear for the language and recognizing vocabulary I already learned while at the same time picking up the occasional new word. It also helped to use Audacity to slow down the audio by 10%. All in all, I think going through Assimil and Heisig has prepared me well, and I hope to slowly make my way through most of the works on the list.
Edited by sheetz on 17 October 2007 at 5:06pm
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sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6395 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin
| Message 100 of 197 24 October 2007 at 11:00pm | IP Logged |
I'm now trying to Listen-Read a few Sherlock Holmes stories, and finding them to be a definite step up in difficulty from Kenji Miyazawa. I do find them interesting, however, as I haven't read them in quite a long time. For now, though, I'm just going through each story several times until I get bored, and then moving on to the next one. Then later on at some point I go back to the earlier stories again. When I've done that I usually notice a significant improvement in my comprehension regardless, so this method appears to be working fine for me.
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sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6395 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin
| Message 101 of 197 29 October 2007 at 10:16pm | IP Logged |
One thing I'm noticing while listening-reading is that I don't pick up on grammar nearly as well as I pick up on vocabulary. Maybe that will come later on as I get more advanced, but for now I've decided to start reading through "Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar." At first I was thinking I might enter all the example sentences contained within in an SRS just like I did with the Assimil sentences, but I decided I'll just read it through and see how that goes first. I actually find it enjoyable to read in its own right and I'm hoping that will be enough to help me retain all the important grammatical points.
Edited by sheetz on 29 October 2007 at 10:19pm
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kinoko Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6654 days ago 103 posts - 109 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, Japanese, Spanish Studies: German
| Message 102 of 197 29 October 2007 at 11:58pm | IP Logged |
I don't think isolated study (and even drills and exercises) of grammar can be efficiently replaced by the List-Read. method, expecially with Japanese which sports a grammar which is completely different from your native one.
I think the two can be integrated. Devoting 30 minutes a day to the study of grammar paths is invaluable and helps you with speaking in a tremendous way. Going back to your List.-Read. you'll start recognizing and picking up those structures making the method way more useful and enjoyable. Expecially if you want to progress to the stage of reading complex novels and enjoy them you should make yourself comfortable with hundreds of grammar patterns and idiomatic constructions along with building up your vocabulary and vocabulary usage. I suggest you to do both, I'm sure you will find the combination enjoyable and very useful.
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sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6395 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin
| Message 103 of 197 30 October 2007 at 1:54am | IP Logged |
I agree. Grammar and L-R complement one other well. It shouldn't be difficult at all to go over a few grammatical points in DBJG each day during my spare time. And as I said before, I actually enjoy reading it, so I should be able to get through it in no time at all.
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kinoko Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6654 days ago 103 posts - 109 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, Japanese, Spanish Studies: German
| Message 104 of 197 30 October 2007 at 2:03am | IP Logged |
As you get a good grounding in grammar you can move on to the Intermediate one which is also very good. After that for more complex yet important and widely used grammar patterns I suggest the grammar books for the Japanese Proficiency test. Those of the Master series are excellent, they drop the English translations (which may end up being misleading at that level) and incorporate a huge set of example sentences you can study and learn for both reading and oral comprehension and oral production.
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