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旅立ち/Катюша-Woodsei’s TAC 2014 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4584 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 89 of 162 07 August 2012 at 4:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Alright, HTLAL is back! Pretty cool. What's not cool is after I spent a 3 hours
updating my log the last time, I find it's all gone now :S I guess I'll have to summarize my steps again. Thanks to everyone who commented above regarding my move. It took me some time to get back in the swing of things, and even though I've been keeping up with both Japanese and Russian, it was pretty low key. But since the 6WC started and that whole fiasco with HTLAL happened, I was back in the rhythm of things and have been reevaluating my plans and track history of my studies. What I basically have been doing, as I posted in my last updated, is that back in May, when I started using a set of graded readers that are all in Japanese, but that start from zero and go all the way up. This gave me the idea that I could grade whatever I use from native materials if I want to eliminate translations, since they were giving me a headache. I mean, it really helps knowing the meaning in English, and still occasionally do English look ups, but it was alright for single words or short phrases. When it comes to long, compound sentences, it was clarifying the gist, sure, but getting in the way of my actual processing of Japanese. I felt that everytime I started getting used to how Japanese works, as soon as I read the English translation, poof, and there goes Japanese. So I've been grading my materials and took a purely Tadokist approach to Language learning. Reading, lots and lots of it, and I have started with picture books for baies/toddlers that go up gradually. I had ordered a few time from Amazon Japan a number of books, novels and manga, and the books that are the most elementary are a set of science books for grade schoolers and a children's Encyclopedia that explains how to use or do things. Since I'm putting down the dictionary, I need another contextual reference to point out the meaning, and pictures do that. So I've started using a lot of visual clues, which are abundant in children's books. And these books got tons of vocabulary, too. I'm still just starting with them. I also came across this blog online/">here which discusses Tadoku in great detail, and the link I provided has a lot of useful sites for reading extensively. The blog's a goldmine, so check it out if you'd like to. It helped me a lot. Apparently, the Japanese have a word for extensive listening, Tachou たちょう、so that's what I've been doing most of the time. I'm watching NHK because it has a lot of show- and-tell variety shows like children's shows, documentaries, cooking shows, sports, etc. It's awesome because you get to spend time with the culture while you learn Japanese, and these all rely on visual clues. I've been learning a lot, and I'm content. In the post I made that was gone after HTLAL went down, I mentioned that I haven't been using Anki except for kanji review and study. I'm going to use it again, but for less time. I've realized that when I know a word for the first time, I don't forget it, and that lots of repetition and exposure doesn't make me know it better, but moves it from my passive memory to the active one where I can produce it. I've noticed that while my understanding has been skyrocketing, my ability to produce is still very low; it's like I almost draw a blank if I want to respond. Later, I'm able to figure out what to say, but at the very moment I need to, it's still quite low. So I decided to look into doing something that would help me get all that I know forward to that I'm able to speak and write. I'll try self talk, shadowing, Lang-8, and Anki. The things I've covered with Anki seem to come immediately forwards, so maybe that's why it's so effective. I've also notice that simply coming across something many times while I'm listening and reading does the same thing, so repetition is key, not to know, but to produce, I think. What I'm going to to put all my insecurities regarding production to rest is try out, this week, a number of approaches in addition to what I've already been doing, and see how effective they will be. I'll start shadowing, Anki for a few minutes each day, and I'll see whether doing any textbook exercise will be useful. I already can recognize most of the grammar points, and make correct guesses at the remaining few without looking them up, but I'll test these exercises to see if they can help me start writing/speaking a little. We'll see how that goes, and then I'll update my log again in a week with my observations. Let's hope HTLAL doesn't go up in smoke again. I learned a good lesson, and that is to back up my log in order to reference it later, should I need to. I've been doing more Russian, now, and I'm happy I'm finally spending a lot of time with it too, because I'm covering ground now. I've started with easy readers, children's books, and it has been going great. I'm still working my way through it, and we'll see if I need to study grammar actively using a textbook or not down the road. Bu id on't seem to be having any problems for now. And I'm using translations. For Japanese, I decided that, if I want to read a book like Harry Potter, I'll just read the English very well, then put that aside and focus on the Japanese. I won't get confused like that. Or I might do what I do if I use subtitles to watch a show- listen first then quickly skim the English. I'm watching anime/drama/TV/films without subtitles now, but I use them if I'm particularly tired and can't do any guesswork, and this is what I do when I do use subs. I've watched the Olympic opening ceremony on NHK, and it was very beautifully well done. I think it was personal for me because, who doesn't know Mr.Bond, or James Bean, or Harry Potter, or the British culture in general? I grew up surrounded by all of that, and lots more, so it was very nostalgic watching the ceremony. My favorite parts were the Olympic rings and Torch lighting scenes. Very beautiful. And I was listening and learning to Japanese at the same time, which proved extremely useful, since they were describing what was happening on the screen and saying tons of things, and I was able to follow along for the most part and learn new words too :) I've also given in finally to wanderlust and spent a few minutes on some Hungarian and Greek. The sounds are fascinating, and I've always wanted to learn both. I also want to resume French and German, but maybe I'll give 30 minutes a day for some these languages, nothing too strict. I still have no idea where or how to start with Hungarian and Greek, so I'll look around for a while and see what I could find. It's easier for French and German, since these are widely popular languages. But I had a great time, though, and I'll try to see what I can do about it. Well, that's basically what I wrote before. I hope this doesn't disappear as well. Now back to some more studying. じゃ、また！ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4835 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 90 of 162 07 August 2012 at 10:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Nice progress you got there!
Interesting thought's on how you do the Russian learning and how you use English subtitles for Japanese media. It'll be interesting to see your opinion of Lang-8. As for Hungarian, I suggest you take a look at the German language for beginners page. You should check out the "Német nyelvtan" (German grammar) part as well. There are some good starts on the basic grammar of the Hungarian language (like cases). I suggest you use Tatoeba, too. (Like looking up sentences with "because", "but", "in order to", "better" and what not. Edited by Takato on 07 August 2012 at 10:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4584 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 91 of 162 07 August 2012 at 10:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, Takato! I'll head over there and take a look at the website. Thanks for the
tips, too. Those connectors are always so useful to know early on, I agree. I don't know if I actually got there. I mean, I seem to be alright with following along pretty well, but then I'm lost and totally lose confidence in myself and how I study. I seem to handling that pretty well, now, though, and tell myself to just keep going. The reason I use translations for Russian is because I don't have a lot of resources at the moment. I have lots of books without translations, so I'm definitely gonna have to let go of them soon, but for now, I only have Youtube and a number of readers that either have translations or a glossary at the back with all the definitions. I tried to start with Assimil early on, and I love the series and how they ease language learning while actually teach you something and take you beyond beginner, but my problem is that I don't stick for long to textbooks, and native material can hold my interest for long, even if it involves reading lots of toddler books. And I WILL have to access native sources eventually either way. So there. I don't know, I might definitely need to access a grammar guide at some point. It's just that with my experience with learning Japanese, grammar is better studied later than from the get go, because by then you're used to the language and can recognize it, and the explanations would make sense rather than confuse you. Even then, just looking up the structures and reading a couple of examples is enough. That's how it is to me, at least. Speaking and writing will improve by actually speaking and writing, so I need to get more of that done. I'm allowing myself sometime a day for other languages, but it doesn't necessarily mean I will stick to it. I'm telling myself that knowing one or two languages to a high level is better than being allover the place and nowhere at all in terms of proficiency. That said, I really want to study Hungarian, Greek, German and French, at least after I'm confident with my Japanese. Good luck to you, it seems you're doing really well with Japanese and Chinese! がんばってね！ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4584 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 92 of 162 07 August 2012 at 10:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Whoops the above link doesn't seem to be working. Here it is again:
http://joechip.net/extensivereading/2011/06/15/extensive-rea ding-material-online/ This is a blog page that lists lots of useful site for Japanese Tadoku, and lots of very basic children's books, if you can stomach it :) I can :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4835 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 93 of 162 07 August 2012 at 11:29am | IP Logged | ||
No time investment is well enough. As for French and German, I thought of Spanish words when wanting to think of German words lately, and after spending about 4 hours watching anime with German subs, most of it came back, so, for the languages who only need maintenance, I think an hour a week might be just enough. There's no use in losing confidence. I suggest you watch Moses' channel when having a lost confidence. I suggest you watch this one video no matter if you're confident or not, since in that video, it's broken down well how to learn multiple languages at once. I don't stick to textbooks too long, either. But then I generally don't stick to anything, so I don't know. What's a high level in a language? What about not having a high level nor being all over the place but somewhere in-between? Thanks for the luck. My luck level is increasing. \(^o^)/ Luck to you as well. Good learning at your Japanese, too. (*¬*) Edited by Takato on 07 August 2012 at 11:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4584 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 94 of 162 11 August 2012 at 10:46am | IP Logged | ||
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@Takato: Thanks for the great advice and the pep talk, I really appreciate it. You do
have a point about studying multiple languages. I guess it's because Japanese is so special to me that I want to be awesome at it, lol. But I also want to learn many other languages, a lot that I find fascinating, so it's good to time management into account. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4584 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 95 of 162 12 August 2012 at 8:01am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm taking a short break from languages to make little post. At least I hope it's a
little, I tend to ramble on like no other when I write. Japanese So, I decided to get out of that rut called losing confidence, and continue doing what I do, because I know it works. I'm reading lots, still reading children's books, but I can tell I'm getting better everyday, because when I watch an anime or drama I can make out more and more of what's being said. Of course, I'm also watching drama/anime/tv. I'm looping what I listen to now, more, though, because I found that looping the audio has a better effect on my ability to speak. The next day, I feel like I can say the conversations much easier. I also started shadowing a little, and there is definitely merit in that. What I found I liked to do more in regards to that, was to repeat conversations in anime and drama, more so than in audiobooks. I don't know, maybe it's because conversations in anime/drama are more interesting than reading aloud an expository piece, and I feel I can relate more to what I'm saying, and thus pronounce it better. I'm using Anki to drill some words/collocations/sentences, but I'm not letting myself go beyond an hour daily with it. It's sustainable that way, and still leaves me time to read, watch, and listen all day to Japanese without burning out. I'm trying to learn the readings of kanji, but not in isolation, through words and sentences that I come across in my reading and listening. I noticed something very useful regarding the readings. Say, for instance, I'm watching an anime episode, and have been figuring out words from context or through looking them up. I then look at the script/subs, without the audio playing in the background. I find myself able to read the kanji without the help of furigana, simply because I have listened to it before in the episode and know the meaning of the word. Another example is if I already know the collocations, or what words go together from spoken speech, I can usually read the kanji without seeing the reading before, or even the kanji itself. 雨が降っている as a simple example. I know the kanji for "ame," but not "futteiru," but I heard it before, so I can tell the reading and meaning of the kanji for raining when seeing it in written context, with or without knowing them previously. This is a very simple example to get my point across, of course everyone studying Japanese knows these words. I guess what I'm trying to say is knowing what words go together/collocations, and sounds through listening lots helps tons with kanji readings. Speaking of drama and anime, for drama I'm currently following "Trick," which I think is very good, and for anime, currently "Sword Art Online." I didn't like the first two episodes of SAO at first, because they didn't touch on the gravity of the situation (players trapped in an online game, and if they die in the game, they die in real life,) but it really picked up from the third episode onward. I like it a lot now, so I'll keep watching it. The other two I really like are "Hyouka" and "Tari Tari," and of course, all the old favorites like "Naruto." I find that story manga/anime can be more interesting than long-running mainstream ones, though. Hungarian I finally broke down and decided to study Hungarian. I'm only keeping it at 30 minutes a day, as best as I can, though, because I'm still focusing on Japanese, and Russian. I haven't done much, simply reading some phrases online and listening to them. I also found an audio book, "Egri Csillagok," a historical novel by Géza Gárdonyi, which is published as "Eclipse of the Crescent Moon" in English. From what I could find out it's a pretty interesting story, so I'm trying to read the translation/look up words, and read/listen to it. I'm still debating whether to read up on the grammar or wait a little. My experience doing that with Japanese has been confusing, and I understood the grammar better after spending sometime with the language first through reading lots of sentences, and watching drama/anime, so I don't know. I'm still starting out, so hopefully I'll be able to figure all that out soon. I also found a reader, with audio, as well as a coursebook, on the FSI site, but my guess is that I'll immediately use the reader :) The course looks very thorough, though. I don't know. I'll find out in time. Russian I'm using a children's audio book application I found on iTunes on my iPad. It has a bunch of stories with audio and translations in French, German, Russian, and English. Cool, ね. I'm also reading some example sentences for the grammar points I do look up, and basically keeping up with listening and reading on a daily basis. I'm looking into some conversational sources, though, because I'm interested in the spoken language as well as the written one. These were my past few days in a nutshell. また！ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4584 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 96 of 162 26 September 2012 at 3:01am | IP Logged | ||
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It's been over a month since my last post, but I have been getting ready to get into the flow of things at
school. I was also traveling around on trips, and I had a great time visiting family and friends, but thankfully I was able to put in magnanimous amounts of time in Japanese, while keeping a moderately steady pace with Russian and Hungarian. Most of it has been listening and reading, neither of which needed me to be glued to the computer or an Internet connection. I just synced audio/video with my iPod and listened almost all day while I was doing other things. And I kept my books and iPad on me all the time, so I could read on the go. Things have been more or less the same with how I have been studying, but I've been trying to do a few different things here and there. Japanese/日本語 Recently, I've decided to read out loud some Japanese every day. I don't have a set time limit or page count, I just read as much as I can, and focus on intonation, pronunciation, and body language. I shadow, too. I just pretend I'm an actress who's auditioning for a role by reading a script. Another thing that helps is that I try to imagine a very simple situation and make up a conversation or a description for it. Like for instance describing a recent trip, or something. I've only been doing this for a few days, but I feel that what I've been reading and listening to all this time is starting to come forward. I know the material, but my problem was being able to produce it on the fly automatically without thinking. I realized that just like tennis, for example, if you watch enough matches, AND practice enough serves, something like swinging the racket becomes second nature. At least in my case, a while back. I also read a book, The Talent Code, which stresses that deliberate slow practice repeatedly produces good results and mastery of a anything you might spend time with, not just sports, and that makes sense to me. On a side note, I think I mentioned before having a relative who has majored in Japanes language and area studies as an undergraduate, and has been to Japan, and recently I've been spending a lot of time working on other projects with her, plus all the family gatherings, and the subject of Japanese came up and she offered to help. We agreed that we can start doing a mix of conversations, pronunciation and intonation drills through reading aloud, asking me to describe things, or talk about almost everything, cultural tips, word/phrase usage, like what is normally said, as opposed to what can sound artificial/wrong/polite/impolite/native sounding not textbooks, etc. Good thing I haven't been spending any time with textbooks, but it's always useful to know the differences. I only just spent one session with her, and it's been an immense help. All the shadowing/reading and self talk, coupled with conversation time has been really bringing my Japanese forward, at least what I've been doing actively so far. Plus we're both close in age so we can talk about all sorts of cool things :) I actually feel somewhat relieved practicing with her before jumping ship in native waters, but I'm not going to let that deter me from seeking native speakers to practice and make friends with. I've also gone back to working on kanji readings, as that was on the back burner for a while now, and it's really refreshing. Other than that, I'm still watching anime/drama, listening to radio, watching NHK shows and documentaries, and reading all the manga and light novels that have been cropping up over the months. Well, manga, not yet novels, but I've gotten around to doing it. Russian/Pу́сский I had a huge motivational boost a few days ago when I turned on a newscast online in Russian and realized I'm starting to get the gist of the report, rather than just understand a few isolated words here and there. I'm working at a slow but steady rate with Russian, averaging 30 minutes daily, and jumping between Assimil and LR, but I've been trying to extend my resources to places like YouTube and online news, since I've been neglecting that or a while now. A very excellent and admirable fellow cosmonaut on Team Sputnik posted a ling for full-length features in Russian on YouTube that I thought was immensely helpful and would like to share here, in case anyone wants to know and hasn't visited the team thread already. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/user/mosfilm?feature=results_main Thanks, Tecktight! Hungarian/Magyar I'm really loving this language. It's still in it's larva stage of development, and I've been slowly building momentum, and repeating lots of lessons in Assimil, but I'm having lots of fun. To an extent, the rate is similar to that of Russian, and I haven't really started exploring native content yet. I guess I'm just letting it sink in, and I'm pretty content with taking a relaxed approach to the language. I've also been playing an audiobook randomly throughout the day to get used to the sounds and flow of the language, as well as researching the history and evolution of the language simply out of interest. I'm currently reading up on the culture and country, happily bookmarking away all the places I want to see when I embark on my next European visit, which hopefully would include Hungary :D I realize I'm not really talking about useful things, and simply giving an account on how I spend time with each language, so I'll hopefully work on posting some worthwhile content in my coming posts. Till then! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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