March was an OK month in regards to my Japanese progress. Some of the activities I did include:

An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese I have gone through chapter three of this but still need to do more review. Reading Manga I have read through two and a half volumes of manga. I finished the first four chapters of Hana Kimi and decided that was a “book” when it wasn’t the extended version From there I read a story called (from memory, it is packed now, more on that later…) “Love, Love..” I think I’m about 5 pages from finishing it but had to put it down. I was a bit over the main girl character crying all the time. Now I’m a chapter and a bit into “pichi pichi pitch” subtitled “Mermaid Melody”. Very cute, for a young audience so it is fairly easy to read.

For the most part study has been disrupted by the fact that I’m moving in a week. So posts may be a bit sporatic until everything is settled down again. Many reasons for moving but the main one is our lease is up so I have to! I’m looking forward to be over packing/unpacking/cleaning etc and settling down into study again! Yes, looking forward to study! That often happens when something is there stopping you from doing so.   Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.  

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This morning for various reasons I sat in on one of Gakuranman’s free Edufire Japanese for Beginners Lessons. It was a bit of fun, a great reminder of what it was like to first be learning Japanese, and a bit of a way to see other people’s teaching styles, but mostly it was a huge kick in the face…. My Japanese is so rusty!! If I was still in university it would still be another month away before it starts up again and before I would be actively studying. But that is no excuse now, as I’m out of university (actually… going to edufire reminds me of university, which is prob why I like it so much - all the stuff of university without assignments!!). What I need is to ship shape myself into action! I really have been slack. So today I flicked through the text book and I’ve been working through what has built up in anki… If I clear out my deck tonight I want to add in a few more sentences from 2001 Kanji Odyssey - I’ve decided that I can’t do RtK on it’s own, I lose steam. So instead I’ve been alternating, depending on how I feel. Sometimes I’ll add KO to my deck, sometimes I’ll add RtK.

I’ve also decided that things like textbooks, manga that I read, etc etc. I’m not adding those sentences to Anki. Instead, I’ll just read them where they are. I’ve done the “sentence” thing and I got bored of it. OK, Yes, that’s what I’m doing with KO, I feel that would be the best way for me to study that book. But for manga, I don’t want to rip it to pieces. I want to enjoy it. So, if I really want to learn something from it, I will seek out the word/whatever in a different form. So, fingers crossed that I can push myself to and over the intermediate level of Japanese.

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Almost a year ago now I bought and reviewed my first impressions of An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese textbook. Since then, much to my dismay, they have bought out an updated version that includes the CDs. Dammit! Especially it is only now that I am really having the chance to start using this textbook. I’ve finished Japanese for Everyone (awesome textbook), and as here in Australia the kids are going back to school for the new year, I’ve decided to kick myself into gear and do a bit of my own formal study. So today I bought an exercise book and I’m going to get the show on the road… I’ve pretty much already done chapter one, so this week I’m going to take it easy and review it. Then it’s down to business. I’d like to ideally do a chapter a week. I think this means I will sacrifice how many new kanji I can learn in a week in my quest to complete Heisig . But while I love the progress I make with it, I feel like I need more, hence doing this text book. 会話 - Conversations First in the text book is a page in English with some culture notes. These are fine, interesting, but a bit of a waste of space. I will, of course, give it a glance before I move on to the first bit of meat in a chapter - 会話. There are three conversations, one super polite, one polite and one casual. To get through the conversations, I plan to do something like:

Listen to the dialogue and read along learn the vocab I don’t know yet read along as the dialogue is being spoken. Repeat this until I can say it at the same speed as the audio. My aim isn’t to memorize but rather just to get my tongue around talking as fast as the audio does. I’m not sure if they have done anything to the new version of audio is any different, but for my version it is pretty good, sounds almost as fast as real life (compared to other audio I’ve listened to!). If I could be bothered, I would also like to do something like “scriptorium”. Take a look at this video as an example:

You can read more about it on Professor Arguelles’ website, but here’s a quick run down: 1. Read a sentence aloud. 2. Say each word aloud again as you write it. 3. Read the sentence aloud as you have written it. I think it would be awesome writing practise, a chance to pay attention to the nitty gritty (it’s all to easy to understand something as you read it or listen to it, but when you go to say it, sometimes you are left wondering “what was that particle again?”). I also feel that I learn better when I write things down. Writing down the sentence will help me cement the vocab I have learnt.

To be honest, I’m not sure if I will start with 会話 even though it is at the beginning of the chapter. I think that I would listen to it while reading it, but do the rest of my study after I complete the rest of the chapter, or at least go through the grammar points. Listening is one of my poorer skills - I’m a good listener if you need to talk to someone, but I’m not good at learning something through listening. So this may end up being something I do later in the chapter. But, at this stage, this is what I want to do with the 会話 section of An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese.

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