Where did the time go? It’s been over a month since I last posted, and I’ll tell you where I’ve been. Right here on the computer! Since the 19th of October 2009, I’ve spent 89 hours studying Japanese. Some of you may know nanowrimo – an event which takes part in November where you attempt to write 50,000 words in a month. My goal of November was something similar, I wanted to see if I could attempt to study for 100 hours during November. The outcome is I’ll probably just be a little short of 70 hours, but I’m pretty happy with that! Next month I’m aiming for 80 hours – it might be a bit harder because it’s the holiday season but we’ll see how I go! What follows is a long breakdown of what I’ve been up to during November! Listening My listening category includes watching tv/movies as well as other education specific audio. My main source was watching tv, I only include it when I am actively listening and not when I’m multi tasking or have background noise. I think when I have a larger vocabulary I will do more level specific listening to try and improve my listening skills. One TV show I do recommend to beginners is “My Girl” staring Aiba Masaki – the dialogue for the most part is spoken very slowly and simply as the main character is a young girl. Yeah, it’s a bit… but it’s easy study material! There is one more day left in November, but it’s not like I’m going to drastically increase my study hours… With that in mind, in November I watched/listened to about 15 hours of Japanese. December’s goal: 20 hours.   Reading Breakdown:

Grade 3 (primary school) short story book Grade 1 and 2 (primary school) short story book Manga Novel for 10-11 year old girls

Reading is a skill that I really want to improve. One of my goals of learning Japanese is to be able to understand Japanese books in their native language easily. This month I did more purchasing of books that actual reading. It’s actually a bit strange, but out of all the different types of study activities I do, I find reading the most tireing. It may be the times of day that I read – usually on the bus on the way home from work or in bed before I go to sleep, but I always find after a page I need to close my eyes and go to sleep. This is frustrating!! But I am hoping with time it wont be so taxing on my brain or I will find time to read at different times and I will see a difference. I started out with a reader for grade 3 (primary school) Japanese children. It is actually a pretty good book for learners because it is full of short stories, all kanji have furigana and at the end of the short stories is a short little quiz on the content of the story to see if everything was understood. There are also little dictionary type meanings under some words that must be knew/unknown to most 3rd graders which was helpful! My method of going through this was to first look up any unknown words and write them down in pencil next to the word. The words in the book are big and have large spaces between the lines, so it was perfect for this. The problem is that my vocab knowledge is so low that it was hard to infer anything and had to look up a lot of words. And I found the first story a bit unsatisfying. My problem is, I think, that I don’t like short stories in English, I like getting to know the Characters and going on a journey with them… So perhaps I shouldn’t expect to like them in Japanese either… Still, I felt my first foray into reading Japanese literature a bit of a failure, I went and bought some books that are full of short stories for grades one and two (at the time I was thinking my main problem was vocab and perhaps something very simple would fill me with a sense of accomplishment). So far I’ve read a couple of short stories from the grade one book, and I have to say it does make me feel good when I can read through something and understand maybe 70% of it. I can infer meaning from the pictures and sometimes there may be a sentence I don’t undertand but it doesn’t bother me. I haven’t felt the need to use a dictionary yet even if I don’t fully understand something. There is also a cute poem in the grade one book that I liked. But yes, over all the stories are… a little strange and a bit confusing because I guess they are meant for young children – it’s satisfying in that I can read but what I’m reading isn’t satisfying, I hope that makes sense! Manga. I have been reading a book for young teen girls, a high school relationships manga. Your everyday sort of stuff, nothing remarkable about the story line. I bought this book at the wonderful Book Off when I first got to Japan and started it then but didn’t get far. This time it was nice to open the book and understand more than what I did then. I am improving!! Yay I haven’t finished it yet (reading is slow!) and again, I think I’m getting too old for the school girl stuff, I want to move onto something more my age – damn I feel old sometimes! The problem with moving on is vocab/kanji with a lack of furigana etc. So again with the yay for reading but the story isn’t grabing me type stuff. Yeah, if I was at the stage I am now half a year ago I would have been over joyed but it’s a case of the grass is always greener – but I guess in a way it is motivating me to keep going. Next: Today I bought some books that as far as I can tell are for girls about 10-12 years old. I’m expecting them to be tough. However, I feel like I’ll be more satisfied with them. Sure, they are still for young girls, but they are fantasy stories about (I hope!) strong female characters – these are my favourite type stories to read in English so I’m hoping that they will be more staisfying. So far I read the prologue of one, it was really easy! It was the main character introducing herself (introductions are about the only thing I’m good at in Japanese!) and about her history. I did it infront of the computer to quickly look up a couple of words in the dictionary (no writing down) but for the most part it was exciting that I was reading a “real” book. We’ll see how I go as I get into the story line more. I’m sure I’ll be complaining about it at the end of next month. It’ll either be too hard to read or the story line is too simplistic or something!!! November Hours Reading: 5 hours December Goal: To finish a book!       Grammar I’ve been using:

Kanzen Master JPLT 3 Grammar book JET program language course – intermediate level review book for beginners/JLPT 3 level

I’ve been spending my time learning/reviewing JLPT level 3 grammar, using Kanzen Master JLPT 3 grammar guide. This is a good book, mostly all in Japanese with a little bit of english to explain the grammar point. I would have to say with JLPT level grammar, about 90% I already “knew” – knew in that I had encountered it before. A lot of it, however, still isn’t firmly in my head, like giving and recieving (I don’t know why I have trouble with this!), passive and causatives. Also transitive and intransitives. Much work to be done! There were a small amount of points I hadn’t learnt before but I think these ones will be quite simple to master. Over all I do recommend Kanzen Master JLPT 3. I have no intention of studying the JLPT at this stage, but I like the way everything has been grouped into like forms, there are example sentences that are going to be at my level and there are quizes to check if you understood. Now, some of the quizes are easy in that “Oh, I just learnt that this grammar point you need the verb to be in the “te” form, so I’ll just choose the only option that is in the “te” form, even if I have no idea what the sentence means.” – I haven’t tried the exercises yet futher in the book so I’m not sure if they get harder than this. My method of study sofar has been just to copy out the “formula” and then to copy a couple of the example sentences. It hasn’t done much to stick I don’t think, so now and into december I plan on paying a bit more attention into and really nailing down those passive etc forms. I’m hoping to have really got a solid foundation by the end of December – enough to move onto JLPT 2 level, even if I haven’t completely mastered them. I do have a concern that with the JLPT 2 level, because I am (I imagine) not familiar with the grammar that it will be harder for me to actually understand what the grammar points are trying to address only through example sentences. I am planning on buying Kanzen Master level 2 so I guess I’ll see if it’ll be enough or if I need to supliment it somehow. I have also been “studying” haha with the JET course. Now, a lot of bad things have been said about the course, and I believe last year they redid it alll. I think it’s not so bad really… but it isn’t really what I want to do with studying, if that makes sense, I would rather prioritise and do other things. Also the first book has been easy in that I am familiar with most of the grammar covered. So what I did is I wrote out all the grammar points and an example sentence, like what I did with Kanzen Master. Then I did the review exercises near the end of the book, compared it to the answers. I did fairly well, so I just went ahead and open book test style did the test. I still have to send it in, but I am satified that the JET course gets me studying and doesn’t seem so bad. I’m scared about the Dec book though – the dreaded transitive and intransitive verbs! Last but not least, I’ve been doing this quiz book that tests kanji, vocab and grammar for JLPT 3. I did it back in Sept/Oct and scored fairly well. I picked it up again a week ago to see if I’ve improved. Happily I have improved. This time around I’m going to focus afterwards on the things I fail to see if I can really nail my short commings.

November: 15 hours of study December goals: Finish Kanzen Master JLPT 3.   Kanji/Vocab Yeah… Smart.fm has turned a bit to shit in my opinion, but I actually finally started using it. They have been upgrading a lot which has been frustraiting (it usually goes down for maintenence when I want to study) and I don’t use the new study program at all, but I have been spending every night studying vocab at smart.fm. Vocab is a huge weakness for me, so I want to make a mass effort to really get my vocab up there. My goal of November was to study 1000 words, and right now I’m just short of 1500 – I’m hoping to reach that magical number tomorrow. Already I can notice the difference through reading my manga. There are shortcomings to smart.fm but I am enjoying (for the most part!) using the “iknow” interface. Once I master some lists I plan on upping my listening skills and doing the dication – I did a couple already but I think I’ll get the most benifit from that and the brain speed aspects of smart.fm once I have “mastered” the lists.

November: 31 hours, (hopefully!) 1500 words December goal: to get up to 3500 words studied (+2000 words)   Writing I get a lot of “writing” practise mainly through copying out my grammar books, but in this case writing corrosponds to when I physically create my own writing. I was planing on writing at 8lang regularly, but then I decided not to. I am going to save focusing on output (writing and speaking) when I am a bit futher into my studies. That being said, the small entries that I’ve done at 8Lang have been most helpful and I think it really is a fantastic resource. In the future I hope to keep a daily type log there. November: half an hour Decebmer goal: I don’t really plan to focus on this in December.   What’s Missing? One noticible aspect missing from my log is speaking. For one, I think it would be hard to measure speaking unless I was to get up and say a monologue of some kind… At any case, right now I don’t feel confident in my speaking. Sure I can give one word responses and I can ask questions at stores if I think about it first, but I am not up to the level where I can have a conversation with people. I may add this to my spreadsheet at a later date, but for now I am not so worried about speaking and have no intention of measuring it in an “hours” format. At any rate, as my vocab and listening skills increase, I have found I have been more confident to speak, in particular to my students, and that has been satisfying/enough of a measurement for me. I can feel I’m inproving and that’s the main thing! If you can think of something else I’m missing from my studies, feel free to leave a comment! Also if you have any questions or comments on my methods I’d love to hear them from you. I feel like, right now, I’ve never been so determined to get good at Japanese, and I feel like I’ve never gone this gung-ho at studying. Let’s hope I can keep up the momentum! (but still find the time to post… eep!)

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Rate this book: Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it. Assimil is different from other texts in that the bulk of it is dialogues which you listen along to with the provided CDs. While it does have explanations, called “まとめ　－　Revision and Notes”, a grammar enthusiast will be wanting more. The idea is to learn through assimilation. While it doesn’t really provide a totally authentic immersion environment, I am impressed at how much is covered in this beginner’s text. Assimil has a pretty lengthy introduction which is quite good at introducing Japanese to someone who has only just come to the Japanese language. From pronunciation, how verbs and adjectives work, the writing systems… Then it says: Ugh! Don’t panic. You don’t have to worry about about all of this right away. Assimil works in two stages, passive and active. I only have the first book, so can only really comment on the passive stage. This is where you don’t really worry about trying to learn kana, kanji, What you do is just go through the lessons, reading along to the tapes. The idea is learning through assimilation. With enough exposure it will all sink in.

Every lesson is a dialogue. On the left page is the Japanese, the right in English. The Japanese has kanji with furigana, a phonetic guide and romaji. The first thing I did was get a black texta and got rid of all that romaji and pronunciation. It is important, I guess, to note that I came to this book as something to reinforce what I had already learnt. So I already knew how to read hiragana/katakana. When you are just starting out romaji is good for a guide. But after a couple of lessons I still think you should black out all that information. It gets confusing, and you shouldn’t rely on it. Hell, this book makes it easy, you don’t even have to learn how to write if you follow this method to a t, but rather only recognise them. Any fool can do that!! The English page is also great. It has an English translation and also a word by word translation so you can work out how sentences are put together. Down the bottom are little notes that help you understand the dialogue better. And every seventh lesson isn’t a dialogue but rather a “revision” lesson which explains all the major things that are happening in the dialogues you just studied.

The audio is good but not great. It provides almost 2 hours worth of audio in Japanese. Each dialogues are fairly short, most are around 2 -3 mins worth. The bad thing is that for the first few dialogues the pace is painfully slow. Perhaps this is good for absolute beginners, but I was not an absolute beginner when I started this. Also, the dialogues never reach a native pace. To a certain extent, this is good for a beginner if you realise it isn’t full speed. It is a good intermediate step. Even myself, sometimes, I find the pace just right when I am trying to read aloud and my tongue gets twisted. I imagine as my reading speeds up, I could modify the audio to also speed it up slightly. At the end of the dialogues are some exercises which are essentially useless. It consists of reading along with short phrases, and fill in the blanks that are entirely in romaji. I looked over these but largely ignored them. One feature I liked is that it has the page numbers written out in Japanese. Would have preferred them to be in kana, as they are in romaji, but it is still a neat feature for those learning their numbers. I am quite impressed how far this book actually goes. For just over 300 pages, it covers a lot. I was impressed that the last dialogue starts off with a poem which was a bit tricky to get my head around at first. I haven’t encountered that in any other beginners text and so it was a nice surprise. I am not sure if I personally would be satisfied to learn from this book, as you may know I like to learn by having things broken apart for me, and then some how I put the pieces back together. In this book you have to work out things for yourself, or perhaps not even work things out, you just go along with the flow and have faith that things will come together in the end. However, as a revision tool I am quite impressed. In the second book you start the active phase, and I am keen to pick it up and see if it lives up to the first.   Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.     Purchase Japanese With Ease: Assimil

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I just discovered this month’s Japan Blog Matsuri and decided to take part at the last moment! This month’s topic is: “How I Resolve to Make the Most of My Stay in Japan” Well, unfortunately I’m not in Japan any more. I was there for two weeks in November. But before I went I promised myself that I would not wimp out… I WOULD communicate in Japanese. This may not be such a big deal to some people. I figure, though, speaking in another language would be nerve wracking for a lot of people. For me, well, I’m shy. I don’t have a social phobia, but it can be hard sometimes to work up the courage to talk to people. Doubly so in another language really. But I promised myself that this was my opportunity, and I wasn’t going to let anything stand in my way! I started off strong. On our aeroplane was a Japanese flight attendant who had previously been a Japanese teacher in Melbourne. We had a conversation and he knew just the right level to communicate with me. It was great, it did build up my confidence. Thank you flight attendant guy, you were awesome at your job and made the whole flight more pleasant! Being in Japan… Well, there was a lot, of course, that I didn’t understand but a lot that I could. I managed to purchase headache medicine which was behind the counter and understand the directions that the pharmacist was telling me. That was a success. Other times I got shy. When we were trying to purchase a camera lens duty free we got a guy that could talk English. Sometimes we had no choice in the matter. After just getting off a train in Umeda, we barely had a chance to orientate ourselves before some helpful (but, unwanted helpfulness!!) man directed us in English to the correct exit. Other times another sales guy insisted on talking in English even though I answered in Japanese. And other times - and I do blame this on lack of sleep as I get grumpy when that happens! - I was thinking “why should I bother asking this question in Japanese, I wont be able to understand the answer”. Overall, I loved my trip to Japan and I had lots of positive experiences talking in Japanese. The people I went with were also impressed with how much I know, even if at times I feel like I don’t know much. I would say, however, that I didn’t really “learn” much Japanese while I was there, but I did solidify things that I was learning and got a bit of speaking practise. Most of the time I felt like I was just trying to “survive”, as in I was using my Japanese to buy things or find out where I was. Looking forward, next time I go to Japan (hopefully sooner rather than later!), I resolve to have more “conversational” conversations. This month’s question was from Rising Sun of Nihon. Looking forward to next months!

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