Kraemder's attempt at JLPT N1 (Japanese)

[kraemder]

Well today was a little frustrating for my Japanese. I had the day off which was good and had planned to mostly just relax after my lessons in the morning on Skype, which is basically what I did. I also planned to read manga and clean my room and workout. I've started working in Japan and finally got paid a little while ago. So I'm using the  円 I earn for pocket money so far. The exchange rate was pretty good when I first got here but it's kind of gone to hell since. In Japan, you can pay for a lot of stuff at convenience stores instead of using a credit card. I thought I would be able to do that with Amazon.com and in theory I can but only for certain items depending on the seller. I don't know if there's some sort of scam going around where people abuse the system causing the limitation. I have a Japanese bank account but no credit card. You can buy prepaid credit cards at convenience stores. I did some research and went to Lawson's intending to buy one. I even had my phone and google images ready to show the store person. However, she had no idea what it was. She hadn't seen it before. She asked another store person and she walked around showing me prepaid cards for PSP and Nintendo and stuff. Not what I wanted.. A real credit card just prepaid. Then she walked up to a machine and out of the blue asked for my telephone number. I balked. I didn't know why she would want this. I was thinking maybe she thought I placed an order online and needed to pay for it using cash like you can sometimes do as mentioned above. The other girl tried to help explain. I don't know if she really even understood what the older lady was saying. She wasn't making sense to me and I wasn't understanding every word she said. Finally she said 在庫 and I got that she meant they didn't have the item in stock. So she was going to special order it or something and call me. But the lady said nothing of the sort prior to asking my phone number. I ended up buying an Amazon gift card which mostly does what I wanted anyway but isn't quite as versatile as a credit card. I walked out of the store being a little disappointed in my Japanese. I really struggled to understand what the heck they were saying. Then tonight at the drugstore the clerk asked me if I wanted a bag and I didn't understand him. I really don't know how I failed to understand him since I've thoroughly studied the various ways of asking if you want a bag but I think he invented a new more complex way of doing so. I got beer after that and I've been drinking since. I think I'll top off at 4 beers before going to sleep.

Foreign languages suck.

I also haven't heard back from the girl I went on a date with. We exchanged Line info so I messaged her on Line. I don't know if she's not getting it for some reason (maybe doesn't recognize my line picture??) or just isn't interested in replying. I thought the date was ok but no reply. Might need to start looking for someone else. I hope tomorrow is better but I have work so that's kind of not likely.

[kraemder]

Got through another week at Berlitz. Most of the lessons are pretty easy to do but some of the business ones are honestly over my head. I would have to spend more than 3 minutes preparing the lesson. Berlitz gives you 5 minutes between lessons to get the next class material and prepare and go do it. You don't know your schedule until the night before when they send you an email and even then you can't see what you're teaching unless you're in the center and pull it up on the Berlitz iPad. As a new teacher who is unfamiliar with the material it would make it a lot less stressful for me to have a detailed schedule of what I'm teaching the next day and be able to review lessons at home the night before. But they don't give you that option.. And they don't have enough materials that you can bring textbooks home either. During the week, an option is to go in early and check your schedule and review which I sometimes do but it's not the same. On weekends that's totally impossible. I start teaching 20 minutes after the doors open and my schedule is packed back to back until they close. It's a bit stressful for new teachers but veterans all know the material and what they're going to do for each lesson because they've taught the same material so much. There are some lessons I've taught over and over now and those are really easy. No stress at all when those pop up on my schedule but yesterday I had 3 minutes to prepare a lesson on how to read an accounting balance sheet and some other accounting stuff. Berlitz doesn't teach its teachers accounting. The teacher's guide doesn't give the teacher a cheat guide of any sort to help with the lesson either. I took accounting 1 last year at my previous job because GEICO feels there's value in having its associates take all the 'core' business courses regardless of whether it's applicable to their current job. It was not applicable to my job so I crammed the material and forgot it the next day. I hated that class more than anything. Looking at that lesson just made me a bit nauseous. I took about 1 minute to scan the material, realize there was very little actual English speaking practice or anything that my being a native English speaker could really bring to the table, and marched in prepared to get skewered. I don't think it's fair but I've had a couple of disrequests already so I'm a little nervous right now. On one hand if I'm not suited to this job and teaching business English and they let me go then it would probably be a good thing but I just would hate to fail at something. I went into the lesson, sat down, did a bit of small talk, opened the book, and the student said - I have no idea what this lesson is about. I looked at it and I don't understand it at all.

Of course he didn't understand it. He worked in sales, not accounting. Well, maybe he could be a hotshot business all rounder who knows it all but he wasn't. Probably not a surprise. One thing I remember from my class because my teacher repeated it over and over... Accounting and Sales do not get along. Sales people are happy to lose a little money or spend a little money to get the sale with the expectation of repeat sales... Accountants only see the cost and they argue over it etc. So I told him this chapter was designed for accountants and if he requested that we skip it and move onto a different chapter then even though Berlitz wants me to do every chapter I would be forced to skip it. He wanted me to skip it. I'm probably not supposed to solicit that from the students. Berlitz is a corporation and all. I probably should have tried to sell him on learning the accounting. But truly it was an accounting lesson and not an English lesson. Business English is like that a lot. At least with the books we use. English teachers with liberal arts degrees like literature (me) may not have a clue about the business material we're teaching and yet we get 3 minutes to prepare and go in. If I had had time the night before to prepare then I could have made a lesson that made sense probably. Then again, it could have taken me a lot of time to do that and then he may have looked so miserable that I might have skipped it and moved onto another lesson anyway.

The lesson we did was about investing and he wasn't too interested in that either. We both had a little bit knowledge of the topic at least so we could have a conversation even if it wasn't something we really knew a lot about. My dad does a lot of investing so I mostly just repeated the stuff he tells me and got through the lesson as quickly as painlessly possible (maybe still a little boring though.. ) and then asked if he wanted to do a role play about something completely different. He said he did. So we did that. He has a business trip to Tailand. His company sells chemical products and they have decided to sell an anti rust product there. He's going there next month to meet a distributor and some possible clients. They sell to non consumers... It's for cars, airplanes, and any tools or metal equipment that deteriorates with rust. I don't truly understand his business model. I'm not a business man either as stated above. I got as much information as I could in 5 minutes (his English is pretty good but he's not native and I doubt I had a full understanding of his situation) and did a role play of him meeting with a distributer and negotiating. After the role play he thought that his trip was going to be very hard indeed. I don't know if I goofed the role play and negotiated to hard or seemed too skeptical.

Anyway, that was just one of my classes. I had several. Pretty much every business English class I am not really relaxed and comfortable. It's a bit stressful and I feel way under prepared. I also feel like that for some of the kids lessons because getting kids to engage material is challenging and I don't know the tricks and would like to think about it the night before. The classes I'm comfortable teaching are regular English material to teenagers and adults. Some of the kids material we use is pretty bad however so even then I have to try to think of something to do instead and then I'm in the same situation where I wish I had known the night before instead of thinking of something under pressure with no time at all to think.

So this entry is more about teaching English in Japan than learning Japanese. Burt I needed to get it off my chest. I'm a little behind on my Anki reviews. I'm still working through the Core 10k deck I have. It's setup as a sentence deck. I test myself two ways, 1st as an audio listening card, and 2nd as a sentence reading card. I'm a little behind on the reviews even though I haven't added an new cards in several days but I will be caught up today (day off). I've considered switching from this deck (or just not adding any new cards but maintaining reviews) and switching to using the sentences in Kanji in Context. I've heard others say that the Core 10k sentences are just boring which is a detractor for getting material to stick. They are very boring. But they have English translations so if the sentence meaning is a bit different than just the individual word meanings.. Then that is really good. Kanji in Context doesn't have any translations to help you. However, the sentences are generally longer and give you more information so you can understand the meaning without a translation, at least in my experience. But I've only read the early chapters. There's no native audio so I would have to use text to speech. I would also have to input the sentences myself.. Well there's a spreadsheet of the 1st edition out there that I could use instead. I'm still thinking. I am also using Midori to save words I lookup while reading or just talking to people. I try to review both Midori and Core but I am giving priority to Core and I'm behind at the moment. I haven't done much with grammar except a few cram sessions maybe once a week or every other week. I don't expect that to get much better until I'm more up to date on my vocabulary reviews. I think vocabulary is more important to me at the moment but of course I'd still like to get better at high intermediate / advanced grammar patterns. Generally, because I'm a bit stressed at work right now, when I study Japanese it's to do something to relax. Sometimes vocabulary reviews actually do relax me but lately it's been reading manga. I've been spending a good amount of money on the Kindle store on manga. No regrets.

[kraemder]

I got distracted and forgot to post what I wanted to say in the first place. I started watching Pokemon Monsters on Hulu last night. I'm now 2 episodes in. It seems like it's the first show in the series but I'm not sure. I would say I was too old when Pokemon got popular to be interested in it but since I've started studying Japanese most of the other students all love it and I felt left out. I didn't grow up with it but now I'll at least be able to relate (well 2 shows in but I'll accumulate more soon). The series is totally aimed at kids but it's cute and fun and I'm enjoying it. But if I weren't studying Japanese and enjoying the language practice, more than a couple of shows would probably not be able to hold my interest. I'm even older now than when it first came out . I have one of the games for the 3DS but haven't been motivated to play it but maybe after watching the anime I will. Also, as you probably know already, there's a big new Pokemon Go app out now. It is releasing in Japan today and the Sharehouse is all very keen on playing it. This is why I'm making Pokemon a priority.

[kraemder]

I'm taking a break sort of from Japanese. That's to say I'm reading some English novels and a lot of English language news instead. I really didn't do that before, forcing myself to spend as much time as possible doing Japanese, flashcards mostly or reading or watching anime. It feels like a relief. I don't think other people quite go to this extent when studying languages until they're advanced and can effectively go full immersion and read lots of news in the target language etc. Still trying to do Anki reviews though.

[kraemder]

No more break from Japanese. I've been studying a lot this week. I really wanted to up my reading and that's what I've done. I'm using the Midori app to facilitate this. It has a translation feature which isn't translation at all but furigana. I didn't know this because I never tried the feature before. Who wants to use Google translate imitations? Google translate sucks enough already! I sent the author a feedback saying he should rename the feature but I be he doesn't. It has some limitations. Although I can load an entire novel into the app and add furigana and the ability to look up (most) words instantly, it's really not meant as an ebook reader. It's intended more as a news article reader I think or any old text that is a couple paragraphs or less. There's no bookmarking and if you want to load something else you have to delete the current text to load the new one. So I'm cutting and pasting from iOS notes and deleting the text I've read already to make it easier. I'm making vocabulary lists in Midori. Having upped the quantity of reading I'm seriously thinking of eliminating SRS from my study routine. I've been faithfully doing my SRS for the past six months that I've been in Japan and of course it's helped some but I'm thinking that it's not the most efficient way to study after all. Which kind of blows your mind when you think that the whole idea of SRS is to study vocabulary as efficiently as possible right? Well, if you're reading enough, you don't need all those reviews I don't think. They're superfluous and the time spent eats into reading/watching/speaking. No matter how motivated you are I don't think SRS reps are particularly engaging. It's more of a test of discipline. Like lifting weights at the gym.

I'm still on the fence of just ignoring my due cards or doing them but not adding any new ones for a while until I'm convinced I'm doing the right thing. I'll probably just do the reviews. It currently takes me about 45 minutes to do and should go down to about 25 minutes within a week I think.

So what I'm doing instead is to make lists of vocabulary from the stuff I read and cram them until I get bored and then just move on using vocabulary from the next book. I'm saving new kanji though and I intend to review that more regularly and not just stop and move on. I don't see all that many new kanji per day, even reading as much as possible, that it's really going to be a big burden on my studying. I think. I think reviewing kanji SRS style makes more sense (unfortunately) than regular vocabulary.

Anyway, the nice thing about using the Midori app to read is that it adds furigana to all the text so my reading speed goes up and I can read for longer without getting too tired. People often criticize these tools because you're too reliant on them - how will you read without them? Well, that's what making the lists of vocabulary to cram is for (and kanji).

[kraemder]

I'm at McDonald's in Chofu (Tokyo). I quit my job at Berlitz . Believe it or not it was really stressful. I had three disrequests in my first month - the coming was hat I didn't seem prepared. I only got to see one of he disrequests and review the lesson I have. I agree that I was new and even if I had prepared lessons it's possible I'd come off as new which is about the same as unprepared. I.e., you stop and think about what to do next... If the activities in the book are crap or not. If they're crap you have to do something else and maybe you didn't know they were crap until you actually did the lesson so now you are without a lesson basically. And yet you are working for corporate Berlitz and have to follow this lesson plan. Anyway, I quit it. I'm not sure if I'll try another teaching job or just go back to the US. Teaching English is ok but not with the format and schedule I had.

Back to Japanese. So I've all but decided to stop using Anki entirely. I have my saved vocabulary in Midori instead to work with. I am making decks of about 50 cards which are small enough that I can plow through 50 without a break. I'm renaming the deck appending a 01 or 02 etc., my goal is to do each deck 4 or 5 times testing with English on the front and Japanese on the back. After the 5th time or so I'll possibly never look at it again. 5 times should be enough to get some of the vocabulary into my long term memory especially since I'm doing my best to read everyday which will in theory reinforce words. Whatever doesn't stick is probably a leech for me at this time anyway. I'm a strong believer in the whole word frequency thing... I think our brains will filter out the less common words automatically until we're ready for them. Fighting this with SRS may not be the best idea (hey, I'm learning an entire language here and there's not a test per se I have to pass like if I'm taking a college course.). So why make it hell? The words will come up again in future word lists I make as needed anyway. And it makes studying more fun since I always feel like I'm going forward.

Well this is the idea anyway. I'll need to do it for a month I think to review the results.

I also want to try shadowing to help with my speaking. Of course actually talking to people helps you speak but doing something while you're alone seems good. I have this book called Shadowing for intermediate to advanced learners. It has a variety of conversations and it looks quite good. BUT it doesn't include the scripts of the dialogues.....??? It has a translation for each dialogue and the. Some notes in Japanese for a couple vocabulary items they thought warranted it. I don't want an English translation. I want the actual dialogue. Maybe it's because I don't want to do the shadowing technique as they want me to. I'd like to memorize each dialogue and say it in unison with he audio rather than saying it a second after the speaker. And of course there's a few words I can't quite catch on the dialogues. Naturally I would like to read them and confirm the vocabulary I'm studying. How can they do this to me??? Ahhh. I don't know if I should put the effort into writing out the dialogues myself or find other material or do the shadowing without truly knowing what I'm saying.

*edit*

I was looking at the pdf sample on Amazon and noticed that it had some pages that my scan didn't have. It turns out I scanned the book without turning duplex scanning on so I only got half the book. I downloaded a free PDF online if the tai version. It doesn't have the English translations but it has all the actual dialogues. I'm copying the book into my flashcards app. Basically, they don't split the recording up by exercise but instead by unit. So if you want to keep doing he same dialogue over and over and over and over again to get it right, well, you can't. But you can use Audacity it another program you can adjust that. I guess you don't need to put it into a flashcards app but it works nicely if you do and have the text in the card. You can just easily replay the audio etc. Foashcards Dekuxe has a nice browse mode. I wouldn't want to SRS this deck at all. Just take it out and practice the dialogues I want.

[kraemder]

I was just eating lunch there not working hehe. (did I write otherwise?)

[kraemder]

I got the results back from the JLPT N2. I failed by 1 point. I'm a bit surprised at the scores. They were as follows:

Scores by Scoring Section Language Knowledge (Vocabulary/Grammar) 24 ／ 60
Reading 28 ／ 60
Listening 37 ／ 60
Reference Information　(※) Vocabulary A
Grammar C
Total Score 89 ／ 180


You need an overall score of 90 to pass... so close. I kind of fell asleep briefly during the listening portion when I closed my eyes to maybe focus better. The C for grammar surprises me. I don't feel that weak at N2 grammar. Admittedly, it's mostly a passive understanding so it could be stronger. It seems if you try to trick me by using two grammar structures that have a similar meaning... well.. clearly I fall for it. As I took the test I had a feeling this could happen on some questions but I'm still surprised. I'm a little bummed but I can always take it again.

[kraemder]

Here's the scores from my 1st attempt at the N2 a year and a half ago... they're pretty much the same scores.

vocab/grammar 25 / 60 85 / 180
reading 26 / 60
listening 34 / 60

Vocabulary: A
Grammar: C

I've studied Japanese almost every day over the past year and a half and yet the test reflects just a marginal improvement. At least it shows improvement... meh. I see why people get fed up with this thing.

[dampingwire]

I've studied Japanese almost every day over the past year and a half and yet the test reflects just a marginal improvement. At least it shows improvement... meh. I see why people get fed up with this thing.

I suspect that the marginal improvement just means you've only got slightly better at taking the test: I'll bet that the last 6 months has done a lot more than that for your actual Japanese ability overall!

I've always thought of the JLPT as a cattle prod to keep poking myself with so that I sit down and study, rather than as a valuable certificate. It would be nice to pass N2, but I'd trade N2 for speaking good Japanese in a heartbeat ...