My Japanese Journey

[AndyMeg]

I started studying japanese around seven years ago. I had a log about it in the old forum: Learning Japanese Stage I

Life got in the way many times, but I kept studying japanese on and off and I think I have achieved a lower-intermediate level (grammar wise), but I still need to improve my vocabulary a lot.

Over the years I've been less and less in contact with japanese native material (anime, manga, doramas), and more and more in contact with korean native material (specially K-Dramas, K-Variety Shows and K-pop), so this year I decided to start learning korean as my main focus (and I made a separate log for that).

I'll keep studying japanese, but at a more relaxed pace. Here is my plan for japanese:

- Practice once a week with a friend using japanese scripts of doramas. The way we practice is as follows:

1) We watch the part of the dorama will be studying that day, but we don't pay attention to the subs, only to the sounds and the general context.
2) We read the japanese script for that part and look for anything we don't understand (new vocab, grammar, etc.)
3) After we get a good grasp of the script meaning, we contrast it with the official subs.
4) Then we divide roles and read our part of the script trying to imitate the actors' pronunciation and intonation.
5) We listen to the part again and then role-play some more.

So far this has been a really fun and gratifiying way of studying

- As I still have a very basic Kanji knowledge, I'll be practicing everyday (for at least 10 minutes) using this amazing android app: Kanji Study

In the app I've made custom groups to study kanjis in frequency order. For this I've used 2001.Kanji.Odyssey as a guide.

[AndyMeg]

- I try to practice once a week with a friend using japanese scripts of doramas, but there are weeks in which we can't practice at all.
- I've been more focused on learning korean and stopped using the Kanji Study app because it was interfering with my use of Memrise for learning the most frequent korean words.

I was planning to only keep doing the once a week study session with my friend for the rest of the year, but today I finally got a live skype language exchange with a native japanese/korean speaker with whom I've been texting with for some months now (mainly in spanish with some japanese mixed in between). He said I have a really good japanese pronunciation. It was great to hear that and it somehow motivated me to put more effort into my japanese. So now, besides my weekly practice session with my friend, I plan to do the following:

- Start studying again with the Kanji study app.
- Read "Dragon Ball SD" which is a manga version with easier japanese than the original one.
- Make more live language exchange sessions with the native speaker I mentioned.

[AndyMeg]

Quick update:

I decided not to use "Dragon Ball SD" manga for my study. My new study material is Harry Potter's book 1. I have the japanese text and audio book. I also have versions in other languages (like english and spanish). I decided on this book because I grew up with the series and I loved it. As my main focus this year is on korean language, I'll be doing some intensive reading/listening (everyday, I hope), but for very short periods of time.

For now I'm only on the first line and it has already amazed me how complicated it sounds in japanese because of the way the sentence is constructed: until the very end you don't know exactly who the sentence is talking about xD!).

[AndyMeg]

I stopped trying to read Harry Potter in japanese. I also stopped my once-a-week practice sessions with my friend. I've been mainly focused on korean, but now that I'm taking a small break from that language I'm back to japanese.

All this time I've been watching (just for fun), from time to time, some japanese media; sometimes with english subs, sometimes with japanese subs and sometimes without any kind of subs.

Now I'm using Kanji Study Android app. I chose the option of dividing the kanjis in the same groups as the Kanken (漢字検定) and I've been studying the kanjis for level 10. For now I'm just focusing on meanings and handwriting. First I used these test options:

- Multiple choice
- Test on meanings
- Don't show readings
- Never pause
- No time limit
- Repeat questions with wrong answers until I get them right

The test shows the results with a percentage of "precision". My goal was to get a score of 100% precision. When I finally achieved that, I moved on to a different kind of test. I divided the 80 kanjis of Kanken level 10 into subgroups of 10 kanjis each. For each subgroup I chose the following test options:

- Test on handwriting
- Show meanings
- Don't show readings
- Normal detection of strokes
- Repeat until I get the kanji right from beginning to end (right direction, right order of the strokes)

So far I've got a "100% precision" score on 4 of the subgroups and I'm currently working on the fifth one.