Kraemder's attempt at JLPT N1 (Japanese)

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cathrynm
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Re: Kraemder's attempt at JLPT N2 (Japanese)

Postby cathrynm » Thu Feb 09, 2017 8:11 pm

I'm heritage so I've had years of thinking I'll just pick it up somehow, by ear or from anime or something like this. The weird thing is sometimes people around me think it'll be like this, so that doesn't go away. The actual progress comes with Anki decks and grammar more than anything else. So these days I've come around to more of a conscious rejection of all the 'learn like a child' type talk.
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kraemder
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Re: Kraemder's attempt at JLPT N2 (Japanese)

Postby kraemder » Fri Feb 10, 2017 5:18 am

cathrynm wrote:I'm heritage so I've had years of thinking I'll just pick it up somehow, by ear or from anime or something like this. The weird thing is sometimes people around me think it'll be like this, so that doesn't go away. The actual progress comes with Anki decks and grammar more than anything else. So these days I've come around to more of a conscious rejection of all the 'learn like a child' type talk.


Yeah I know what you mean. I see people like this one guy from Turkey who does almost no studying but watches a lot of anime in our common area. He's a beginner the Japanese course he signed up for here is the only Japanese course he's ever taken. I keep thinking he's doomed when I watch him. He says the Turkish grammar is like Japanese grammar so he can pickup Japanese really easily. The word order may be similar but that doesn't mean he doesn't need to study. His teachers apparently told him he's learning nothing and will need to get put back to an earlier class if he doesn't start doing homework so I think he's starting to actually study. That said, I like watching anime with him and most foreigners come to Japan and just watch English language programming. He watched the movie 君の名は without subs and cried at the end so I believe he can understand a lot but maybe it's not the language and it's just watching what happens and paying attention to the tone of voice etc.

I'm still going to TRY to think like a kid when I read stories though. It can't hurt. And when I think of vocabulary too. I just ran into the word 道場 in my Core deck and it reminded me of being a kid taking karate (I only did it a couple of months). But I had no problem learning that word at all then so why now? While I'm at it maybe I should start praying to the god of foreign languages before I study?
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kraemder
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Re: Kraemder's attempt at JLPT N2 (Japanese)

Postby kraemder » Sun Feb 12, 2017 10:21 am

The kana only sentence decks are working well for decks with native audio but I didn't like it so much for sentences pulled from newspapers or just online. Despite what I said, I still have a bit of trouble seeing the boundaries between words if it's all kana and the sentence includes unfamiliar vocabulary. The robot text to speech helps this a little but I gave up. The core deck and the subs2srs decks are going to remain kana sentences and audio on side 1 for now however.

Going through my Core deck today doing reps I gotta say I was pretty darn bored. The subs2srs deck gets boring too but not as bad as the Core. I've slowed down a lot adding new cards to it though as it is challenging. I'm happy with it though in that I'm seeing a lot of the military vocabulary / speaking style repeat in other anime. It's helping. But I wonder how long it will take me to get through Ghost in the Shell the movie 1995. So much (good, hard) material in that O.o.

I've been reading ベルガリアード物語1. When I was a kid, maybe 13, I read this in English and it was the first fantasy epic story I ever read. I've got a lot of fond memories from that experience and I read this story in Spanish again (years ago) and liked it just as much. I'm enjoying it now too. In general it's not too bad but occasionally they throw in a strange word/kanji and I doubt any 13 year old Japanese kid would be able to read it. There is virtually no furigana in the book at all. I think the Japanese translator mistakenly thought this series was for adults? I look at other middle school books and there's furigana -everywhere-. High school they really start taking it away but there's still some. This book really has none. Surprising. But I'm enjoying it. I'm on p170 out of 471. Surprisingly, the Japanese publisher didn't split it into separate volumes like they often do.

I'm thinking I need to do more pure 多読 reading as I haven't done much at all with Japanese. Everyone I think has a problem reading a foreign book without using a dictionary because they want to know stuff. And in Japanese, even if you guess the meaning, if you don't know the pronunciation, it's that much harder to just skip it. But if you think about it, that's exactly what Japanese kids have to do. They don't know all the readings. Sure, they have a pretty big vocabulary so they're more likely to pick a word they know based on the context to fit with the kanji but I'm sure a lot of the time they just guess and later on they learn they were 'reading' it incorrectly and learn the correct reading. It doesn't ruin their Japanese anymore than Americans learning a word from reading a book and pronouncing as per their best guess without bothering to reach for a dictionary. (many Americans can't read the pronunciation guide in a dictionary anyway haha). I know a lot of kanji now so if I'm guessing it's not like I'm guessing every other kanji jut a couple per page. Probably hehe. Anyway, I think it's ok and maybe even hurting me to use the dictionary too much. I need to do more 多読.

I'm thinking of balancing my study style a bit. Obviously do Anki every day. But otherwise, I was thinking of doing 多読 or studying Japanese by just engaging it without using a dictionary (except for an *ahem* emergency) for 2 days and then the next day doing the opposite in that I use a dictionary quite a lot and cover new material in textbooks etc.

Also, I found the 字幕 button on my remote control. I only checked one channel but it was a talk show and it had proper subs. Not the ones that are hard subbed for all viewers but the optional kind like we have in the States for people who can't hear and or just like subs. I also tried watching some anime on Netflix with subs and found it quite helpful. I watched three anime. Little Witch academy, GEAS, and Psycho Pass. Those three almost represent easy, medium, and hard as far as language in anime go (coincidentally). I could totally enjoy Little Witch academy and not feel like I'm missing anything without subs of any kind - but in fact I am missing a little as I can see when I turn on the subs. Intensive sub viewing I think will help my kanji and vocabulary. I didn't do this before because I read somewhere that it's better not to as it hurts your true listening skills but I think this is wrong. I think it's helping a lot.

So today is going to be my first 多読 day and tomorrow too. There's still a lot of Anki to review however.
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kraemder
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Re: Kraemder's attempt at JLPT N2 (Japanese)

Postby kraemder » Mon Feb 13, 2017 6:19 am

Do what I say, not what I do: learn the prefectures of Japan. I guess there's 47 of them to learn. It's unfortunately terribly useful when talking to Japanese people and watching / listening / reading about the news. Aside from a few major cities in Japan, I pretty much only know the names of places I've been to, and even then it takes a bit of effort sometimes. 青木ヶ原 just doesn't want to come to mind easily - my brain just thinks suicide forest and stops.

I recognized the importance and downloaded an Anki deck to memorize them last fall. I studied it I think 3-4 times total and then just procrastinated and procrastinated. Yesterday I met two girls who were taking a tour of the sharehouse and made a little small talk. Of course, I asked where are you from? They just said their prefectures. Being Japanese, when I said I didn't know where that was they didn't explain to me where it was. They just sat there silently waiting for me to say something else. This is something you have to get used to when talking to Japanese people. They just sit back silently and say nothing while you ask them stuff. Now, if you knew the prefectures, then you could be like, Ah! I know where that is! It's near so and so or something... and then they think you are less alien and maybe they'll talk more. (maybe you can sense some frustration here on my part). But trust me on this - learn the prefectures. And then learn the capitals of the prefectures too. As of today I'm restarting that Anki deck I downloaded last fall. I hate doing it and so I'm going slow. I'm learning 6 prefectures right now and will slowly add more. If I spend 3 minutes a day on the deck then I consider that a success. Mission accomplished. Within a couple months at that rate I should get through them.
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Re: Kraemder's attempt at JLPT N2 (Japanese)

Postby tuckamore » Tue Feb 14, 2017 9:31 pm

kraemder wrote:I'm thinking I need to do more pure 多読 reading as I haven't done much at all with Japanese. Everyone I think has a problem reading a foreign book without using a dictionary because they want to know stuff. And in Japanese, even if you guess the meaning, if you don't know the pronunciation, it's that much harder to just skip it. But if you think about it, that's exactly what Japanese kids have to do. They don't know all the readings. Sure, they have a pretty big vocabulary so they're more likely to pick a word they know based on the context to fit with the kanji but I'm sure a lot of the time they just guess and later on they learn they were 'reading' it incorrectly and learn the correct reading. It doesn't ruin their Japanese anymore than Americans learning a word from reading a book and pronouncing as per their best guess without bothering to reach for a dictionary. (many Americans can't read the pronunciation guide in a dictionary anyway haha). I know a lot of kanji now so if I'm guessing it's not like I'm guessing every other kanji jut a couple per page. Probably hehe. Anyway, I think it's ok and maybe even hurting me to use the dictionary too much. I need to do more 多読.

I identify with what you wrote here. Kanji is a double edge sword for me. As you say, I can know or guess the meaning of a word based on the kanji, but not know its reading. The pro: extracting meaning from kanji, independent of its reading, seems to allow me to read (semi-)extensively for pleasure. The con: if I don't know the reading, no matter how much I see this word while reading or no matter how well I understand the word, I'll never recognize it or be able to use it in conversation. Then, there are kanji for which the reading is right on the tip of my tongue. I know these words/readings, or rather, I should know the readings of these well-known words, but they often escape me. Sometimes this happens to me for the simplest of words and it drives me nuts. I think in these cases, the words are likely solidly in my passive vocabulary, but only weakly in my active vocabulary. So, while having a large passive vocabulary may be sufficient for reading in alphabet based languages (or even in kana), reading kanji-based words requires the word to be in my active vocabulary.

I'm still adjusting my approach to kanji in my 多読 type reading, but I generally only look up kanji words under 3 situations: (a) it is one of these tip of my tongue words and I'm seeing it repeatedly (the further to the tip, the less times I need to see it before I'm compelled to look it up), (b) a word that I think I've accurately guessed the meaning and reading, where I want to confirm my guess for the reading, and (c) a word that keeps popping up over and over and over. (I use a kindle, so look-ups are convenient.) I think I would also benefit from your idea of 2-days 多読-type readings, followed by one day of intensive readings. I've thought about doing this by alternating chapters, but I am seeing improvements with the exposure that 多読 gives me in working through a single book and I don't want to sacrifice this right now.
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kraemder
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Re: Kraemder's attempt at JLPT N2 (Japanese)

Postby kraemder » Fri Feb 24, 2017 7:54 am

Living in Japan I'm far more motivated to increase my conversational skills over reading comprehension than I would otherwise be. But for me, reading is really the gateway to speaking. Other people's learning styles are different I think. I know I wasn't happy with studying German until I made reading my focus and speaking secondary. So with that in mind I'm trying to focus on reading and being happy with the achievements I get out of reading books. Japanese people, while generally friendly, as a big white guy, fitting in can be daunting as hell even if I spoke really really good Japanese. I think.

A friend from New Zealand came back today and when I talked about some of the books I'm reading she told me the new 村上春樹 book just came out -today-. She doesn't speak Japanese or read it but she's really into the Japanese culture and has read many of his books translated into English. It's not quite like a new Harry Potter book coming out but it's the closest thing that I've seen since Harry Potter. All the Japanese people are aware that it's out and it's in the news and I saw an article online about the midnight sale at a store where they had a picture of people lining up to get their hands on the book as soon as possible. I bought a copy of the first half of the book at the local store about 5 minutes away. There are book stores everywhere in Tokyo. Yes, the book is split up into two volumes, costing about $19 each. The first volume is 507 pages so I suppose that isn't so terrible but I kind of resent how the Japanese publishers milk their customers for all they can get. In America, it would be very unusual to split up a store into two volumes unless the author only wrote the first volume and had yet to write the second. Reading the prologue I only had to look up one word although I looked up a couple others just to verify the reading of the kanji. I'm sure the amount of words I will look up will vary from few to a lot depending. 村上 does that. Some 'light' novel authors however I have to look up tons of words always always always. I don't get that and definitely resent it.

There's several other Japanese people in the sharehouse also reading the book. Of course, they're a bit taken aback that I'm reading it. Maybe I'm just weird in that I'm much more able to tackle a book in a foreign language but speaking it is more challenging. When I try to explain this to people here they look at me funny. Foreigners and Japanese alike.
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kraemder
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Re: Kraemder's attempt at JLPT N2 (Japanese)

Postby kraemder » Wed Mar 01, 2017 6:45 am

I'm on p102 of 騎士団長殺し. Overall I find the vocabulary not too hard and the language easy to follow. Although I'm working on the N1 grammar and I really think it's useful and a must know if you plan on using Japanese for the rest of the your life regularly, as I read 騎士団長殺し, my grammar skills feel totally up to the task. No issues at all. I don't think about grammar at all while I read the book. The only issues would be vocabulary/kanji.

I sometimes bring the book downstairs in case there's nobody to talk to and I want to read while I eat/drink coffee. I rarely actually read the book but it seems a Japanese person takes an interest in the book and asks around.. who's reading this? They never think to ask me. I'm a little surprised by that. Of course, eventually someone tells them it's mine and then they ask me in a really surprised tone of voice, is it yours?? Yeah. It's mine. It's a popular book right now in Japan so it gets noticed far more than any other book I've brought down. Before, if I brought something down, they rarely showed interest. Maybe a polite interest but more it was like... oh did someone leave their book out? Maybe I should put it back on the shelf? But they're genuinely interested in this book. This makes it a bit more motivating for me to read although I'm not making the progress I was hoping. I was hoping to do 50 pages a day - I managed 50 pages one day so I figured why not every day? It's just not working out like that. I think I can do 20 pages as a minimum but again.. it may not happen. Anki always happens but after that I get distracted by stuff.

My friend down the hall from India and I have started doing Youtube lessons together. This is the video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI1eoTU7Bsk

we're maybe 30 minutes into it I'm not sure. She's just covering 擬態語 so far which is onomatopoeia (The Japanese is easier to spell for me here lol), but it's fun. She's very pretty and also does exaggerated facial expressions to explain the vocabulary. About half of the words she's covered are new to me or I forgot them. We had a tutor helping us previously but his schooling has started up again and he's gotten busy and isn't as available unfortunately. But watching the video together seems to be working out. It's nice having someone to study with. I feel like foreign language classes are more than just for learning the language. They're also like a support group for language learners. Being in a foreign country and learning the foreign language is a daunting task and can mess with you emotionally. You constantly are comparing yourself to the natives or to other foreigners who have been there much longer and know more than you. So sitting down and studying in a group with people about the same level as you can be very helpful psychologically. In your home country this aspect may be less important but still helpful I think.

Getting back to the 騎士団長殺し book.. last night we had a birthday party for a friend of mine in the sharehouse and I had brought my book downstairs. He asked me if I understood a word from the prologue. It's not a word I know really but from the context and the kanji I could infer the meaning.. (午睡). I explained it and he was impressed. So were some other Japanese girls one who apparently didn't know the word herself. I guess it's not a common word. However, I'm having to lookup plenty of words in the book that she wouldn't have to lookup - I am positive because in Midori it says (common) in the entry way more often than not. Not that word though. So that was partially encouraging. I'm not a complete idiot hahah. But this book is good for learners I think because most of the words I lookup have (common) in the heading. Whereas with most of the -LIGHT- fiction this (common) label is nowhere to be found at all. I've felt like LIGHT fiction was anything but LIGHT at least in terms of vocabulary and kanji although the content is rather droll, and now I feel like I have some good hard proof to back it up. Japanese people say Murakami Haruki is hard and you should start with something easier but if you're ready to go beyond kids books... then I say he's actually quite appropriate.
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kraemder
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Re: Kraemder's attempt at JLPT N2 (Japanese)

Postby kraemder » Fri Mar 03, 2017 7:25 am

It happened again. The McDonald's lady stumped me. Actually, rather than say lady I should say girl. I think she in high school or just out of high school. So she was just a kid. She pointed at the menu and said something that wasn't but resembled かみあう. It seemed like would you like to buy something else since she was all gesturing at the menu. Me, not knowing what she said and wanting to learn asked her what she said and what she meant. She had her manager help and he just asked me 以上ですか? so I asked her if that was the same thing as what she asked me. She then pulled the old Japanese routine of staring at me like I'm an alien and she will not be talking to me anymore. They teach students to do this in school when they don't know the answer or so I've heard. From my point of it's the rudest thing she could have done and it actually hurt my feelings. Even though I know she just wasn't sure what to say or how to explain it. This is a difference in cultures that's hard for me to deal with. I still don't know what the heck she said but if a McDonald's person gestures at the menu I'll just say 以上です!and I'm sure this will make them happy. Probably. I have no idea what else to do or how to deal with it. I think a foreigner asking what something means is the worst possible thing a foreigner can say to a Japanese person. Unless that person speaks English. Then it's fine and they'll gladly explain in English or try to.

The Nintendo Switch is apparently out today. I went to Seiyu which is the Japanese Walmart (literally) and they don't have it though. On Amazon it's priced about $100 over list price. I initially thought it was a bundle but no... there's a shortage and sellers are taking advantage. I'm not sure I want to buy it at list price, never mind at an inflated price. As an English teacher, playing video games gives you something to talk about with the kids. And games can be a good way to learn Japanese. I'm currently stuck in a bugged out loop in my 3DS version of Dragon Warrior (7?). I've been stuck for about six months now. As interested as I am in video games, in my old age I've become more the spectator than the participant. Grrr.

I'm on p120 or so in 騎士団長. I only got through one chapter last night and that was right before falling asleep at about 3 AM. This chapter was faster and easier to read than the previous one - just more stuff happening rather than abstract thoughts being expressed. It's a great book.

Doing my reviews yesterday I was thinking how to improve my rote learning. Yeah, I know if I made a stupid mem for everything then this would be the best solution but that's just not going to happen with the quantity of words I study everyday. I have read that writing stuff out works great and this Japanese girl I'm sort of dating says she does that with English. She literally copies newspaper articles by hand. I haven't found that this helps me in the least however. It helps my penmanship and helps me write faster but I don't remember words any better at all. So I thought that's because I don't talk with my hand, I do with my mouth. And if I'm trying to remember a meaning, I don't write it out on my hand or in the air, I repeat it silently to myself. So I'm repeating words out loud (or quietly if there's people around) as I study. Six times or so. I was getting carried away going on for over a minute but I've stopped. I spent the whole day repeating words over and over. I think my throat is a bit tired today as a result and so I am going to try to do this as silently as I can. I hope it helps some.
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kraemder
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Re: Kraemder's attempt at JLPT N2 (Japanese)

Postby kraemder » Fri Mar 03, 2017 8:45 am

I guess I feel like posting today. As someone who has passed the N2 I think about what this means and my level of Japanese. I know a lot of businesses will accept it as proof that your Japanese is good enough to perform your job. But I've read that there's some dissatisfaction because people with N2 certificates have varying levels of Japanese and not all can speak it fluently. The JLPT boot camp guy/website equates it to a junior high graduate. I don't think I speak Japanese at the same level as a real Japanese junior high kid whether entering or graduating. Not even close. But you can argue that I know as many kanji as a middle school graduate. Maybe you could argue that we both read academic Japanese at about the same level. But not manga. I'll need a dictionary far more often than the middle school kid. Of course the kid isn't going to use a dictionary. He'll just guess or skip the meaning of anything he doesn't know. But his vocabulary is way over the 5K/6K that is needed for N2.

For example, last night I was having a conversation with a friend who is an architect and used to live in the sharehouse I live in now. She said the sentence いえをかいしゅうする to me. Any Japanese middle schooler should have understood that. I didn't. I (proudly) know the word 回収 (かいしゅう) but logically it didn't make sense here because she was here to talk to a carpenter. Not an lawyer type, as she might were the house being confiscated. Here's the part that is frustrating as hell for me. When I didn't understand she didn't explain in Japanese. She declared in English, "reformation". Of course I still had no idea. I begged her to just explain in Japanese. She felt it was impossible. So I got out my phone and looked it up - which I would have done anyway if only to save the word for review later. The translation was kind of crappy and I wasn't sure if she was remodeling her home or doing repairs. So I did what was apparently impossible for her. I explained what remodel means using Japanese. She said that's exactly what she's doing. I told her the English was remodel.

Now she's definitely not the personally you think of when you think of a Japanese person. She's one of the most out going people I have met in any culture and is always talking about something and if there's a conversation she won't be quiet for very long. Her English is very low level though so English conversations with her aren't that long but she has fun with it and treats it like a game. So she wasn't being shy like the young cashier at McDonald's was. And she would never silently stone face someone who's talking to her like a student in school who's called on but doesn't know the answer. And yet the best she could do to explain かいしゅう was いえをかいしゅう.

At least taking to me. I've seen non white people get really good explanations about Japanese but in Japanese from Japanese people before. These were Indian speakers speaking Japanese about the same as me but with a better accent. I wonder if it's my accent, my race, or my size, or maybe my personality that makes it so hard for me. I've heard from another English teacher whose Canadian but ethnically Indian and basically Japanese size. He says that Japanese people all agree. He's easier to talk to than the white giants calling themselves English teachers. I'm not sure how much of an exaggeration that is. But I feel like I need a higher level of Japanese to get Japanese to speak to me than some other foreigners.

Looking at some web articles about learning foreign languages... and I'm sure everyone here has done this... you are supposed to be able to learn or guess from context the meaning of words if you know about 3000 words or so. I know more than that and yet I still struggle to guess the meanings of words. Written Japanese is definitely easier for this than spoken Japanese. I look at the above sentence and the only word I didn't know is the target word. But what if the speaker just isn't giving you much to work with? I need to work on strategies to make them give me a bit more.

I'm thinking step one is to never admit you don't know. Rather, ask a different question. Like what about your house? Or did something happen? Or something. It doesn't seem fair really but what can you do.
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Aozora
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Re: Kraemder's attempt at JLPT N2 (Japanese)

Postby Aozora » Fri Mar 03, 2017 4:22 pm

kraemder wrote:Looking at some web articles about learning foreign languages... and I'm sure everyone here has done this... you are supposed to be able to learn or guess from context the meaning of words if you know about 3000 words or so. I know more than that and yet I still struggle to guess the meanings of words.


Figures like that never worked for me either. As you said, even 6000 words isn't enough, at least for Japanese. I'm thinking there's a kind of breakthrough around 10,000 words, but there will still be plenty of unknown words. I haven't been to Japan, so unfortunately I have no advice on that front.
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