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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Hasi Diglot Senior Member Austria Joined 5902 days ago 120 posts - 133 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 73 of 101 20 December 2013 at 11:38am | IP Logged |
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I didn't neglect my Japanese studies, I promise, I just...neglected my Anki deck.
I recently looked at it again because the past few weeks with exams were just so busy and I guess it's true what they say: if you can not do anything one day, it won't be as bad to not do anything the next day either. That's more or less what happened with me. I have a total of 1300 reviews ahead of me and I want to take it slowly and catch up by the Christmas holidays. I do feel like I need some way to study vocab to reinforce what I have been reading because otherwise I don't think the vocab sticks. Speaking of reading, I am reading a novel, a cell phone novel mind you, but still. I am reading, in Japanese and over the past few days I managed to read 70 pages which I think is pretty awesome. I have been reading books by Shiroi Yuki and I can highly recommand her novels. I am surprised by how easy they are to understand and even if I don't know all the kanji I can mostly guess based on the context what she is talking about. Of course, these novels aren't written in a super difficult but just knowing that I can actually read something that I find interesting in Japanese and understand it is amazing and really motivating. I recently took the practice JLPT exams only to discover that the N3 still seems to be far out of reach at this point. The problem is grammar. I suck at grammar because I never really reviewed it while I was in class and I am particularly having trouble with the particles. So while I might be able to understand grammar in a written context I can't actively reproduce it. For this purpose I started working through my Minna no Nihongo books from the very beginning and doing the practice exams. I haven't had a lot of time recently, due to exams, but I am planning to work through the first book over Christmas. It is really embarrassing that even super basic things still give me trouble. After all, I have been studying Japanese what feels like forever yet. >.< If anyone has any recommendations for grammar study I'd really appreciate it :) I want to focus mostly on engaging with native material while also actively studying/reviewing grammar and vocab. It is nice to see that studying with Core has paid off for me because I can see a lot of the vocab I have studied while I am reading. I hope that by continuing to read and watch native material I will be motivated to actively study more and that working with anki and textbooks will help me to enjoy the native material even better. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4970 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 74 of 101 21 December 2013 at 3:59am | IP Logged |
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I'm finding that my grammar flashcards in my SRS deck are helping. They're based mostly off a study packet given to me by my Japanese professor from school for class. The way I have it setup is English side 1 and I do the Japanese on side 2. This really simulates what we did in class very well and it's good. It's also kind of a pain to go through and takes longer than vocabulary flashcards but your deck doesn't need to be nearly as big. Vocab decks get super huge really fast but grammar is much more limited thank goodness.
I haven't really dug into 皆の日本語 but I would imagine you could make a little SRS deck using it. I believe there's an answer book to go with it. I like having English prompts but I'm any old prompts would be good.. IE make Japanese question prompts. I like SRS for grammar because it's similar to vocabulary.. you have to keep doing it or it doesn't really stick. And sitting down and doing a text book regularly takes more discipline I think than pulling out an anki deck. Here's an example card I just pulled up... side 1 I think it would be good if you ask the teacher. (I have a pic from google of a kid in a class room just to make it more interesting) side 2 先生に聞いたらいいと思います。 Yeah that's from Japanese 201 so it's pretty easy. 202 got a bit more difficult and the stuff I'm (slowly) putting in now using A Dictionary of Japanese Intermediate Grammar is generally more challenging. You want to keep the vocabulary very basic though. If an example (from the dictionary etc.) uses vocab I'm not really good with I just stick it on side 1 with the English prompt. Hope this helps. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hasi Diglot Senior Member Austria Joined 5902 days ago 120 posts - 133 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 75 of 101 04 January 2014 at 1:05pm | IP Logged |
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I am terribly sorry for the late reply.
I think that is a really good idea kraemder and I will certainly look into that, thank you very much :) I signed up for TAC and the tadoku challenge this month. ^^ I am excited for both of them. so far, I don't yet know what my goals for 2014 would be but probably easily passing the N3 (practice) exam and in general getting more used to doing things in Japanese rather then relying on English too much to understand what is going on. My boyfriend bought an iPad about a month ago and I currently have it with me and use it to read manga. I love it and if you own an iPad I highly recommand getting Comic Zeal if you haven't already. It costs around 5 Euro but it is totally worth it. I love the fact that you can inport zip and rar files and I prefer reading manga on there rather then on my mac. I think I might even like it more then reading the actual books because using the iPad I can read in the dark before I go to bed which is really great. I also downloaded the free J-Drama Masters app which lets you stream Japanese dramas on your iPad. So far I hae only tried watching a few shows but most of them seem to come with Chinese and Japanese hardsubs which I think is really great. I am super excited for tadoku because I wasn't aware that January was a tadoku month and I always wanted to try it. I LOVE competing with other people and since I have been reading quite a bit recently I am getting even more excited. I hope that I will be able to reach 500 pages by the end of the month. seeing as I have around 33 pages read so far I think it is doable. I will try my best :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hasi Diglot Senior Member Austria Joined 5902 days ago 120 posts - 133 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 76 of 101 06 January 2014 at 3:44pm | IP Logged |
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TAC 2014 Introduction post
One day later then expected but here it is my official intro post to TAC 2014. I have been studying Japanese one and off ever since my second semester of college so about since about 5 1/2 years. Mind you, it wasn't after I went to Japan for a semester 1 1/2 years ago and working through RTK and actively selfstudying last year that I saw progress. I have taken 6 college classes of Japanese of 1 1/2 hours a week but I never really studied for the classes but managed to get by thank to watching a lot of Japanese TV and "getting by". Because of this my Japanese is all over the place. As in: I can watch TV dramas that deal with daily life and I can easily understand what people are saying and what the overall topic is. However, when it comes to active skills I SUCK, a lot. I still struggle with some really basic grammar issues when it comes to producing texts and speaking. I also lack vocab, or rather: active vocab. After all of this rather long intro I will try and formulate some goals for this year: - read more - work through Minna No Nihongo I,II and Tobira to improve grammar - create my own anki deck from native material I encounter - produce more output aka write and speak more - reach above N3 level by the end of the year I know this list still seems to be rather wish-wash but I think that right now, since I am super motivated I might set my goals too high (by saying I'll read at least 100 manga volumes this year) and then burn out quickly. What I would prefer to do instead is set some monthly and maybe even weekly goals that are easy to achieve. January goals: - I want to read at least 500 pages for the tadoku contest by the end of the month (username:biheart) - work through the first 13 chapter of Minna No Nihongo I - watch something in Japanese every day - finish reading Yotsuba&! (currently on Volume 8 out of 12) as far as anki is concerned: I just don't want to do it xD I know anki is useful and study core has been useful but I kind of would prefer to pull vocab from native material as I encounter it. I have studied about 3000 words thanks to Core so I think I am "ready" to start my native material adventure. Edited by Hasi on 06 January 2014 at 4:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hasi Diglot Senior Member Austria Joined 5902 days ago 120 posts - 133 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 77 of 101 08 January 2014 at 4:58pm | IP Logged |
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Resources
Reading - NHK Easy News - Graded Reader - Yotsuba& - Life - Cellphone Novels -- 逢いたい…キミに。 (finished January 11) -- 幼なじみ〜firstlove〜 (finished February 10) -- 赤い糸 (finished February 10) Watching - Dailymotion --For AKB fans --For variety shows --A bit of everything, updates often --Previous channel of above user, older (last year) shows Edited by Hasi on 18 February 2014 at 10:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hasi Diglot Senior Member Austria Joined 5902 days ago 120 posts - 133 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 78 of 101 08 January 2014 at 4:58pm | IP Logged |
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I have been thinking and it seems like I can't give up on anki just yet. the reason for this is that I feel like I have learned quite a bit thanks to using it over the past few months. However, like I said in my last post Core has been going kind of meh (and I also haven't reviewed in a while *cough*) so I want to build my own vocab deck. This month I don't want to start with that though because I have a lot of exams coming up and I'd rather spend my time reading and studying grammar instead of typing up sentences into anki. What I am going to do instead is this: While reading, if there is a word I feel like I have to know I will look it up on anki to see if it is in my core deck, if it is I'll unsuspend the card. This way I can reinforce the words I have seen in the wild and I feel like studying core is useful again.
Reading has been going really great :) I think part of the reason is because I have the iPad and I have a few different manga uploaded onto it. In addition to that I still have my AKB PSP game and some mobile otome games that I can use to read and of course: real books. Despite starting late with my challenge on the 4th I managed to read 319 pages so far which I think is pretty amazing. Due to the variety of sources I use I don't get board easily and I don't feel the need to read say 20 pages at a time. (something I used to feel before which made me drain reading as a whole) By far my favorite thing to read right now is the Graded Reader series. I highly recommend it. I have been reading texts from both level 2 and 4 and I really enjoyed them. It is so nice to know that you can read a "real" (simplified) text and understand everything. Even some difficult grammar structures seem to be easy because I can understand what is going on. I think it is interesting that on the website it says that level 4 is for L4/L3 whereas on the app page this level seems to be N3/N2. So far no level 4 app has been released but once it does I'll be sure to check it out. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hasi Diglot Senior Member Austria Joined 5902 days ago 120 posts - 133 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 79 of 101 11 January 2014 at 2:52pm | IP Logged |
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I have been thinking about what to write for the first team challenge but...I just hate it. I am just not very good at these things, in any language really, and it is the part I dread most when it comes to new classes and meeting new people. So for now, I am putting it off until later.
A lot has happened in the past three days. Somehow, without meaning to, I managed to reach my goal of 500 pages for tadoku. 500 pages in 7 days instead of a month! I have to say I am pretty impressed that I managed to accomplish that. Today also marks another big accomplishment of mine. I finished my first novel in Japanese. It's a cellphone novel, mind you, but it has been publish as a real novel since so I guess that counts ;) If you have been reading my recent posts it might come as no suprise that I have read one of Shiroi Yuki's novels called 逢いたい…キミに。 I managed to read the whole book within 3 days. I just couldn't stop. Yes, it is a rather cliche high school romance but it was really entertaining. In addition to that it is written in an easy, straightforward way which makes you want to read even more. If you decide to read novels on this particular site I highly recommend using the iPhone app but on an iPad. The reason for this is that reading the whole novel "in one go" i.e. as one huge wall of text rather then having to click and open each new page via the website, really helped me to completely immerse myself in the novel. As far as tadoku is concerned: I will aim for 1000 pages now :) Edited by Hasi on 11 January 2014 at 2:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hasi Diglot Senior Member Austria Joined 5902 days ago 120 posts - 133 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 80 of 101 18 January 2014 at 12:39pm | IP Logged |
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It's been a week since my last update. I had to do a big project and my days went something like this: get up, get on the train, meet friend, work on project, go home, eat, lie down on the couch, go to bed. So, not a lot was accomplished so far.
As far as my Japanese is concerned, I managed to do a few reviews on memrise. I had been working with this website in the past but ditched it in favor for anki. Well due to stress with the project I didn't feel like doing anki so I worked on memrise instead. I want to work through the JLPT levels there while continue to read and maintain my anki deck. Although, knowing me, I won't be going back to anki until after my exams are over so around the middle of next week. Reading has been going so so. After finishing my first novel I spent a lot of time looking for what to start reading next. I tried a few more cellphone novels but nothing would quite click with me. (I even spent a few days reading around 50 pages of a book I didn't like just so I would read something: not a good idea!) In the end I managed to find something that I liked which is a story about childhood friends that is...over 1000 pages long. Ooops. I tend to dislike reading long novels and manga series but I am 70 pages in and so far I really like it. We will see how it goes. Despite working on this huge project I managed to reach the total page count of 1000 pages. In comparison to last week where I read around 700 pages I didn't do too well, but I am still proud of myself as I couldn't use my commute to study this week. (I have a 3 hour commute per day so that is a lot of time to read.) My next goal is to read 1000 book pages. I am currently at 688 and I hope I will be able to reach that goal. I also want to stay in the top 10 for Japanese and I think I can do that. One thing I noticed is that playing games really helps with getting a lot of pages "read". In a way it feels like cheating but if I want to catch up I might have to rely on that. One thing I need to get started on is grammar, I still haven't looked at my Minno No Nihongo books at all. >.< I hope after tutoring I will have some time to work on grammar too. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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