What next? (learning Spanish, maintaining German, random dabbling...)

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gsbod
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Re: Und was jetzt?

Postby gsbod » Sun Oct 03, 2021 2:43 pm

I've moved on to the next part of the Kanzen Master N4 Bunpou book, which feels more like most JLPT grammar books - i.e. here's a bunch of sentence patterns to learn with minimal explanation and some really clunky English translations if you are lucky, followed by some multiple choice questions with no explanations in the answer book to help you figure out why the correct answer is correct/where you went wrong.

It's frustrating, and more so now that I've learned German and have much higher expectations about what is possible when it comes to teaching grammar.

Need to just remind myself: 1)I've no intention of preparing for any exam, 2)comprehension is way more important for me than production (for practical reasons), and 3)this is what I'm choosing to do in my free time for fun/relaxation - if it's not fun or relaxing I should choose something else.
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dampingwire
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Re: Und was jetzt?

Postby dampingwire » Thu Oct 07, 2021 7:32 pm

gsbod wrote:I've moved on to the next part of the Kanzen Master N4 Bunpou book, which feels more like most JLPT grammar books - i.e. here's a bunch of sentence patterns to learn with minimal explanation and some really clunky English translations if you are lucky, followed by some multiple choice questions with no explanations in the answer book to help you figure out why the correct answer is correct/where you went wrong.


N2 and N1 fix some of that: there are no translations and the "explanation" are purely Japanese ...

It's not just the 新完全マスター series though, all the ones I've looked at are similar. 日本語総まとめ makes it less painful by mostly not explaining anything and also cutting down on the examples to avoid the confusion :-)

I've found that some grammar points are "obvious" and for the rest I need to hunt around in different books and on the net and try to root out an explanation that way.

Some days I think the whole language was just set as a massive puzzle to see whether I've got the willpower and stamina to keep going :-)
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新完全マスター N2聴解 : 94 / 103新完全マスター N2読解 : 99 / 177
新完全マスター N2文法 : 197 / 197TY Comp. German : 0 / 389

gsbod
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Re: Und was jetzt?

Postby gsbod » Thu Oct 07, 2021 8:35 pm

dampingwire wrote:Some days I think the whole language was just set as a massive puzzle to see whether I've got the willpower and stamina to keep going :-)


Well your tenacity is admirable if nothing else ;)

I don't think it helps that there are very limited options outside the JLPT practice books for intermediate to advanced Japanese learners, and the books themselves really do make grammar in particular feel like a puzzle in a way that's not really helpful outside the bounds of a JLPT exam. Anyway, multiple choice questions are no way of learning how to put language knowledge into use, which is already a built in limitation to the system.

I also think this is a shame because I get the impression that in many respects Japanese grammar (as opposed to the much trickier issues around style in Japanese) is actually quite straightforward.
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gsbod
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Re: Und was jetzt?

Postby gsbod » Fri Oct 08, 2021 8:42 pm

This week at work has been pretty tiring again, which has left me spending too much time reading rubbish on the internet and not enough time doing anything really worthwhile. Even reading a few pages from one of my Krimis felt like too much effort the other day. Looking forward to an early night tonight and hopefully I'll feel more refreshed over the weekend.

So as you can imagine, Japanese has pretty much ground to a halt. Although one thing I have done is try and test my listening a bit with some of the TBS podcasts, which are now available outside Japan again (yay) via Spotify. I always used to struggle with podcasts in Japanese relative to TV shows, I think due to the lack of context (in contrast, for German I tend to find podcasts easier than TV shows). Anyway, my general impression is that my comprehension is around 50%. I can understand all the bits which don't really mean anything and then, when I'm lucky, I get a really moment of clarity and understand a bit more.

I'm certainly amazed I was ever able to pass N2!

My German course on the other hand is going really well :)

Oh, and whilst I've been both tired and insomniac, earlier this week I had quite a bit of fun with the Radio Garden app. As a teenager I used to love seeing what random radio stations I could pick up with a shortwave radio - this is a pretty satisfying alternative.
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gsbod
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Re: Und was jetzt?

Postby gsbod » Sat Oct 16, 2021 9:00 pm

After seeing the discussion around the TV5 Monde TCF mock exam in aaleks's log I thought I'd have a go myself. My most recent "proper" level check was the examination at the end of the B1 course I took last year, which I passed very comfortably, so I thought it would be interesting to compare.

Interestingly, in terms of test format and types of questions, it felt in some respects quite similar to the JLPT, only with a narrower range of question types.

My scores are as follows:
Overall score: 62/80
Compréhesion orale: 77% (7 réponses incorrectes)
Structure de la langue: 65% (7 réponses incorrectes)
Compréhension écrite: 87% (4 réponses incorrectes)

I'm not 100% on how these scores should be interpreted but it looks like listening and reading are well into the C zone but language structure is more around B2.

I think I lucked out a little bit with some guesses in the listening section (that is, the score doesn't represent my perception of how much (or how little) I understood the listening questions), but the scores for the other two sections I think are fair.

I don't actually feel like I'm on the cusp of B2/C1, even though that's kind of what these scores are suggesting, although my experience of German also suggests that I don't have a good "feel" for whatever level I'm at in a language anyway.

Still, maybe I should take the TCF anyway, so I can have another certificate on my CV for a language I don't really feel comfortable speaking (despite still having no official certificate for the one foreign language I am comfortable with...)
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gsbod
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Re: Und was jetzt?

Postby gsbod » Wed Oct 27, 2021 4:15 pm

I've been having a good old sort out of my books and CDs and things. I've managed to reorganise and trim things so that I can get rid of two rickety old bookcases but it means I'm now on a strict one in one out regime for pretty much everything (arguably I still have space for another half dozen French books if the mood takes me...)

I also counted up how many reading books (as opposed to reference books or textbooks) I had in the unread pile in all my languages, and came to the realisation that assuming I read one book every 3 weeks (which is about the fastest consistent reading pace I can muster) I'll need the best part of a decade just to get through the English and German ones. So maybe if I can commit to learning/re-learning 4 kanji a week, I'll be ready to start reading Japanese again some time after 2030 :lol:
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gsbod
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Re: Und was jetzt?

Postby gsbod » Mon Nov 01, 2021 6:21 pm

Still prodding away at Japanese, bit by bit. I've dropped the JLPT practice books, which were somewhat too one sided anyway, and have now jumped into Quartet I. There's been a few teething issues while I figure out how best to use it, but actually in terms of general content and explanations, so far I am pretty impressed. It's way ahead of Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese both in terms of content and in terms of suitability for self study. The only downside is that there doesn't appear to be a full answer book available, but that's par for the course with most Japanese textbooks, it seems.

Anyway, the grammar explanations (in English) are pretty good compared to most Japanese textbooks, and not too clunky. Same goes for the vocabulary translations. The example sentences are well written to demonstrate the point. The reading strategies section is bloody brilliant.

I wish something like this had been available around the time I finished Genki, as it would have made a great transition to the intermediate level. That being said, knowing where my mindset was at the time, I probably wouldn't have made the most of it back then, as I was too impatient to get ahead and all over the place in terms of study methods and what I was trying to achieve. As it is, it's a pretty good course to refresh my intermediate Japanese after what has been quite a long break, so I'm just happy it's around now!
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gsbod
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Re: Und was jetzt?

Postby gsbod » Tue Nov 02, 2021 7:07 pm

I finished reading the first volume of よつばと! tonight. OK, so I've read it before (probably a decade or so ago :o ) and it is probably the easiest manga in the world for a Japanese learner to read. I've reached a stage in life where I am no longer interested in the majority of anime or manga...but よつばと! is still good!

Part of my motivation for refreshing Japanese at the moment is to try and reduce the amount of Japanese books I have. Not for the sake of minimalism or anything like that, but some of the books really do feel a bit like a millstone, and they are all taking up space, and I know for a fact I wouldn't need all of them even if I wanted to get all the way to C1+/N1+ Japanese (which I don't think I do anyway). But I'm not sure that よつばと! is one to read and donate. More like one to read again now and then keep for another decade or until the next time I feel like refreshing my Japanese.
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gsbod
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Re: Und was jetzt?

Postby gsbod » Thu Nov 04, 2021 7:48 pm

I've been giving my Japanese another boost by (re)-watching 花より男子. It's so ridiculous and cheesy. The ridiculous outfits...the ridiculous houses of the rich...with ridiculous interior design... Also can't quite believe it was first broadcast 16 years ago, and it is showing its age now. But I still find it entertaining!

Anyway, episode 1 I was able to just about follow because I already knew the story having watched it a few times before, all be it several years ago now. But I couldn't really understand much, just a few fragments here and there. Episode 2, the fragments I could understand grew into bigger chunks. Tonight I watched episode 3 and it feels like I can understand a lot more, although there are still some chunks of impenetrable dialogue here and there, mainly due to vocabulary I think. Grammar wise I picked up plenty of uses of ~らしい and ~わけ which form the basis of a number of sentence patterns you need to nail down at the intermediate level, so I was quite pleased to both notice and understand them when they were used!

Altogether I seem to be recovering my listening comprehension ability at quite a pace now, which is incredibly satisfying.
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gsbod
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Re: Und was jetzt?

Postby gsbod » Tue Nov 09, 2021 8:03 pm

I'm now having a bit of a dabble with Korean. I don't expect to get very far, but just trying it out for fun. (No, I haven't watched Squid Game.)

I've dabbled with Korean before, way back when, when I tried using a Japanese Korean textbook. I didn't get so far as even mastering hangeul, so right now I'm very much in complete beginner rather than false beginner mode.

The Japanese Korean textbook is long gone, but I've now got the Ewha 1-1 textbook (English version) (along with the workbook and study guide) so I'll see how it goes with that.

First impression - there are lots of vowels which sound similar to other vowels, plus one vowel which sounds like it's pretty much impossible to pronounce.

I hate vowels. :lol:
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