Aozora's Log for Japanese and French

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Aozora
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Aozora's Log for Japanese and French

Postby Aozora » Sun Feb 28, 2016 6:20 pm

I recently found this forum after visiting the HTLAL forum for years. This will be my first language log!

I'm a long time learner of Japanese, however my study habits are pretty bad and I haven't made as much progress as I could have liked over the years. I tend to study a lot at once, and then stop and go a long time without study. My level is a around intermediate/N2; I can read manga easily, I can read light novels and simple novels pretty well if they are not too difficult. I can understand everyday speech, but struggle with technical language. My output skills are pretty low, I have no real use for output right now. My goal is to reach JLPT N1 level as soon as I can, and then continue learn as much as I need to in order to understand Japanese media.

For Japanese, I'm planning to use these resources:

- Sou Matome books, starting with N2 to clean up any weak areas and moving to N1
- JLPT N1 vocab list on Tanos http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/jlpt1/vocab/
- Youtube videos, anime, and audiobooks for listening
- Novels for reading
- Anki for vocab and sentences I pick up from reading

edit:
My growing 2016 book list:

カゲロウデイズⅠ
カゲロウデイズⅡ
十二歳
恐怖コレクター 1
恐怖コレクター 2
ミヤマ物語 1
ミヤマ物語 2
オンライン! 1
海色のANGEL
涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱
カゲロウデイズⅢ
カゲロウデイズIV


I'm also going to tackle French! I took one year of French in University, a few years ago. After that I found even the simplest children's stories too difficult, and I was busy with my other school work, so I stopped studying. I'm a beginner in French, I will have to review everything I knew previously again from the start and then go from there. I want to use learning resources that include audio as much as I can, so that I don't ruin my pronunciation and listening skills. My medium term goal is to learn enough that I can start reading simple books and improve by reading.

For French I'll be using these resources:

- My University textbook Motifs: An Introduction to French (no audio unfortunately)
- Lingvist lingvist.io
- Lingq
- Memrise for more vocab after Lingvist
- a collection of readers with audio


Any input or advice is welcome! Juggling two languages on top of my daily life is a challenge, but I really want to work on both of these.
Last edited by Aozora on Wed Oct 26, 2016 12:04 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Super Challenge Books: 14 / 100
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User avatar
Aozora
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Posts: 234
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2016 3:46 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: English(N), Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17971
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Re: Aozora's Log for Japanese and French

Postby Aozora » Sun Feb 28, 2016 6:41 pm

Yesterday I used Lingvist, and I'm up to 233 "new words learned." Lingvist counts word forms as different words like, tout, toute, tous, toutes are counted separately. I like that it has you type the words.

I also worked on my French Motifs textboo. I did some writing exercises and read some passages. I'm on chapter 2 :D I'm hoping working on active writing skills will pay off in the long run. Now is a good time to commit to active skills, so that someday I'm not reading novels while feeling too uncomfortable to write an email or forum post in French (or not being able to spell anything).

I didn't really get any Japanese in yesterday (I'm not including anime watching, since it's not study). Lately I've been using wordlists to learn vocab. I'm reading a light novel series called Kagerou Days, and I picked about 450 new words from the first 2 volumes. When I try using Anki, I get bored and bogged down by new words, so I would like to study and drill them a bit before reviewing. I'm waiting for some new novels in the mail, which are aimed at 10-12 year old readers. I'm hoping to read them all and then go back to the slightly more difficult novels on my reading list.

I'm attempting the Goldlist method for JLPT N1 vocab, however, waiting so long to review feels odd. On Monday I should be doing the first distillation from 200 words I added 2 weeks ago. I have no idea what to expect. I'm a nerd who likes writing lists of Japanese words, but I might be too impatient to leave them untouched/unlearned for weeks.
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Rotasu
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Re: Aozora's Log for Japanese and French

Postby Rotasu » Sun Feb 28, 2016 7:22 pm

Welcome :D

Please get back to us about how the goldlist worked out :D

Nice to see others realize that Anki is for reviewing, not learning xP Have you tried using Memrise for JP as well? Im trying to get into now but every course is going kana to english, which just doesn't make sense to me. If I want to read Japanese, shouldn't I see the kanji of the word? >_< Also if you don't mind saying, how did you get started with Japanese? Straight immersion, self study, classes, textbooks?
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Aozora
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Re: Aozora's Log for Japanese and French

Postby Aozora » Mon Feb 29, 2016 1:15 am

Hi Rotasu! I have used Memrise for Japanese. I joined in the Memathon vocab learning contest which took place in September 2015 and crammed all the N2 vocab I didn't know or had forgotten. I found courses that went Kanji-->English, with Kana that appears when you see the answer. I'm still doing reviews from the Memathon to this day, ha ha... I always use the app for reviews so I don't have to type anything. Some Memrise courses teach Kana in one lesson and Kanji in the next, so you learn both (N5 one here http://www.memrise.com/course/122927/jlpt-n5-readings/). Maybe you could try one of those? It can be hard to learn both the reading and the English meaning at the same time. Sometimes I get the meaning right in a review and then realize I had the reading wrong.

I got started with Japanese with self-study. I also took it for 3 years in high school, which mostly fortified the basics. If you're a beginner, I recommend Tae Kim's grammar site, it was a big help for me! I'm also one of the crazies who used RTK and similar methods to study kanji. Right now I just study new kanji as I come across them since I've got the bulk of it down.
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Super Challenge Films: 63 / 100

Rotasu
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Posts: 247
Joined: Sun Sep 20, 2015 3:40 am
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Re: Aozora's Log for Japanese and French

Postby Rotasu » Mon Feb 29, 2016 1:18 am

Japanese in high school?!?! So lucky. Which country you live in?
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Aozora
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Re: Aozora's Log for Japanese and French

Postby Aozora » Mon Feb 29, 2016 1:52 am

I live in Canada :) There aren't many Japanese people in my city, but I was pretty happy they had Japanese courses in high school. I almost took Japanese in University too, but I felt it would be treading over the same basic material.
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User avatar
Aozora
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Posts: 234
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2016 3:46 pm
Location: Canada
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17971
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Re: Aozora's Log for Japanese and French

Postby Aozora » Mon Feb 29, 2016 5:44 pm

Yesterday I worked some more on Ch 2 of my French textbook, and got up to 294 "words learned" on Lingvist. I'm picking up the stuff I learned in the past pretty quickly.

I added 50 words to my JP Goldlist yesterday, from the JLPT N1 vocab list. The reason I'm using this list for the Goldlists, is because they are words I want to know in the long run, but don't need immediately. My thought is that if I can learn them with less time and effort put in, it's okay if it takes longer.
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Super Challenge Books: 14 / 100
Super Challenge Films: 63 / 100

User avatar
Aozora
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Posts: 234
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2016 3:46 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: English(N), Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17971
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Re: Aozora's Log for Japanese and French

Postby Aozora » Tue Mar 01, 2016 8:19 pm

I'm at 364 "words" in Lingvist now.

Yesterday I started distilling my Goldlist for Japanese. It takes way longer than writing the words down in the first place. I was starting to feel super pessimistic about the Goldlist method, and I thought I was wasting my time writing down words without actually studying them. But to my surprise I did recall 30-40% of the words so far (27/75 words). I still have more distilling to do. Japanese words have both the reading and the meaning to remember, and that's two pieces of information per word... so for some words I put the reading and the meaning as separate entries. Most words on the list I can tell what the reading is by the kanji, so I leave those words as one entry. I feel my second distillation might go even better, because I looked up some of the words and wrote down a sentence example for them.

For example, even though the word 観点 is new to me, I know the readings for 観 and 点 very well, and I know it will be read かんてん even if I don't know the meaning. So I wrote it down

観点    かんてん   point of view

Another word 涸れる I can't tell what the reading would be by looking at it, so I wrote it down like

涸れる   かれる
涸れる          to dry up, to run out
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User avatar
Aozora
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Posts: 234
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2016 3:46 pm
Location: Canada
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17971
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Re: Aozora's Log for Japanese and French

Postby Aozora » Thu Mar 03, 2016 4:00 pm

I'm up to 530 words in Lingvist. I'm now trying to fit two sessions in a day, since the reviews take time away from new cards. I've been waiting until evening to do my studying, but by then I start getting tired and have to stop before I really want to. I'll try to fit some study in at lunch or breakfast or breaks...


Yesterday I worked on my grammar for Japanese. I'm going through my Sou Matome N2 book, picking out grammar points that could use some extra work (so that I don't just recognize the meaning, but really know it well), and writing down the example sentences. I look up the same points on Tanos and a few grammar decks I downloaded for Anki, and add sentences so that I have about 5 examples per grammar point instead of just one or two. Hopefully I can do this for the whole book and then I'd like to use an N2 Unicom book that has quizzes and more explanations. I think it probably has some different grammar points than the ones in the Sou Matome book.


Edit: my brain is still asleep, so many typos
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Super Challenge Books: 14 / 100
Super Challenge Films: 63 / 100

User avatar
Aozora
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Posts: 234
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2016 3:46 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: English(N), Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17971
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Re: Aozora's Log for Japanese and French

Postby Aozora » Fri Mar 04, 2016 9:37 pm

679 words in Lingvist now. I listened to these children's stories I found on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_--IJ9Js4c
They have subtitles, so they'll be good to come back when I learn a little more.

My Japanese books arrived today! Most of them have furigana for all the kanji. I've read plenty without furigana, but I think this could be good for learning words in context. I always find it frustrating when I don't know how a word is pronounced. I'm pretty excited to start reading them.
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Super Challenge Books: 14 / 100
Super Challenge Films: 63 / 100


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