The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

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kujichagulia
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby kujichagulia » Mon Mar 05, 2018 1:21 am

Serpent wrote: :roll: Plot twist: I actually don't think it's the right time to add more languages :? Sorry, kuji. ... It specifically mentions challenges too. While you have other reasons to learn these langs, it does seem like the FLC is your main reason... and it shouldn't be ;)...

iguanamon wrote:I'm with Serpent (big surprise!). I don't think you should try the Free and Legal Challenge right now, sorry! Why? Irrational Exuberance. You have already proven that you can do the FLC, pretty much, with what you've done with Portuguese so far. You have nothing to prove.

Thank you for the posts, and I'm glad you two are still reading my sometimes complicated log!

As usual, you two are right. I got caught up in the excitement of the FLC against my best interests. Instead, I should figure out how to keep myself going with Japanese and Portuguese. I have a good thing going here; the past three weeks or so I've "found my groove again." I've gotten back into daily, consistent, high-quality time with my target languages, and adding another language is not a good idea at the moment. So... I'm out of the Free and Legal Challenge... before I even really started. There... that's done.

iguanamon, you mentioned getting Portuguese to B2. I'm going to learn Japanese to fluency because I can easily see the need for it; it's pretty obvious. With Portuguese, though, it's different. It's based on hopes and dreams. There is no clear and present need for me to learn Portuguese, or even clear hopes and aspirations as far as using Portuguese, so that sometimes challenges my motivation for learning it.

What do I want to do with Portuguese? I started learning Portuguese because I was interested in the music, the futebol and the culture of Brazil. Nowadays, though, I hardly watch any soccer at all, much less Brazilian soccer (which is quite hard to access). I don't listen to Brazilian music as much as I used to; my musical tastes often fluctuate and I'm currently into mellow jazz.

I guess what's left is that I'm still interested in the culture of Brazil and of the lusophone world in general. I want to get to the point where I want to read books and learn about the culture. I really have no clue as to which books by which authors I want to read; that would make things easier. However, I do hope that once I reach a certain level of Portuguese, I will have the ability to find out more about which books I want to read, which media I want to consume, and what aspects of the culture I really want to get into.

My hope is that the farther I get into Portuguese, it would become clearer what I want to do with the language. For now, though, I'm going to press through DLI and finish it up, and I won't worry yet about my future plans with the language.

===========
Like usual, the weekend was slow as far as language learning goes, although I did more than usual. I forced myself to read news only in Japanese, which was a bit difficult. The big story was a "power harassment" scandal involving a female wrestler named Icho and her coach, whom she accuses of harassment. I'm still not sure what "power harassment" means. The Japanese, パワハラ, comes from the English, but I believe we don't actually use the term "power harassment" in English, at least not in the United States. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) The best I can infer is that the coach was verbally abusive to her, or perhaps made her train too much or without purpose and was pretty much harsher than necessary.

Other than, that, I watched some TV in Japanese, and I did Anki reviews for both languages as well as duolingo for Portuguese, Chinese, French and Korean. (Those will be the last things I do for Chinese, French and Korean for the time being.)
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kujichagulia
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby kujichagulia » Tue Mar 06, 2018 1:22 am

At the end of last week, I set some goals that I want to meet regularly. I will (attempt to) post my progress in this log and see how well I can do. These are my goals for the time being:

JAPANESE
  • Read 15 minutes of Japanese a day. Usually blog posts (I'm open to any suggestions for interesting blogs with colloquial Japanese!), but I'm thinking of again trying to tackle some of the Japanese-language books that I have.
  • Anki reviews daily
  • 15 minutes of study at home each day. This can overlap with my other goals. For example, if I read 15 minutes of text at home, then I've met two of my goals by doing one thing. However, if I read 15 minutes of text on the train, for example, then I still need to do 15 minutes of study at home. By study, I mean activities where I'm doing nothing but concentrating on the activity.
  • 15 minutes of Japanese writing each day. I have a ton of writing topics and questions saved on a spreadsheet, and I have it set up so that I can push a button on my computer keyboard and it gives me a random topic to write about. This is more interesting than writing about my day, which can get kind of repetitive.
  • Watch one episode of 男子ごはん a week. I might have mentioned it before, but this is a weekly 30-minute cooking show for men. I have a ton of these recorded on my TV, but for some reason I can't get myself to sit in front of the TV and watch it. I feel like I need to be doing something with the show: using the closed captioning to study vocabulary, or write down the recipes, etc. For now, I'm going to try to watch 5 or 10 minutes each night before bed and do it extensively, without worrying about writing anything down. If I like the recipe, I can always take a snapshot with my phone camera.
  • Watch one episode of Easy Japanese a week. In theory, this should be easier to do than watching 男子ごはん, since the Easy Japanese videos are on YouTube, which I can watch on my phone.
  • 5 minutes of Japanese speaking practice daily. This can come in any form. I could speak to somebody in the hallway at my school, or the cashier at the supermarket, and complete this goal. What I also want to do is practice speaking with the journal that I'm writing, for example saying the previous day's entry out loud.

Wow... this list looks both simple (15 minutes a day? Sounds easy...) and complicated (Look at all those bullet points!) at the same time. But let's go with that for now.

OK, now to Portuguese:

PORTUGUESE
  • Do DLI study during my morning commute every day. Right now I'm working through DLI Portuguese Basic Course Volume 6. I have a 20-minute train ride to work, so I'm making that my DLI time. I could study on the way home, too, but the afternoon commute is a mixed bag. Sometimes I can study, but sometimes I'm too tired to study. Also, sometimes I'm on the train with fellow teachers or some of my students who want to talk.
  • Anki reviews daily
  • 15 minutes of Portuguese writing each day... or three sentences, whichever comes first. I want to practice output, but I don't want to spend too much time writing at this stage. Answering the narrative questions in DLI counts for this goal.
  • Do one new lesson and reviews on the duolingo app each day.
  • Watch one episode of Easy Portuguese a week.
  • 5 minutes of Portuguese speaking practice daily. I'm still undecided about this, because I do get speaking practice with DLI (although on the train, I can't speak out loud). However, I do want to work with the writings I do.

At the beginning of each week, I'm going to (attempt to) post a weekly review with a list of bullet points showing my weekly progress. However, I'll (attempt to) quickly write about my progress each day.

Let me point out that this is not all that I'm doing. For example, I watch the news in Japanese every morning with my breakfast before I go to work, and I'm doing chats on Tandem at times. These goals help me focus more on things I think I should be doing more of, such as DLI, intensive reading and getting more focused Japanese listening practice.

============
JAPANESE
I wrote an island which talks about my wife. Then, I came to two epiphanies about writing islands:
(1) Writing islands (short paragraphs about a topic that should be memorized and ready for conversation) is definitely useful, but in practice it's not a lot of fun. I have a list of topics for islands: My House, My Pet, Favorite Foods, My City, My Birthplace, the Prime Minister, etc. I don't know... sometimes it doesn't feel fun to just write islands for these preset topics. I'd rather make islands when I need them, or get the inspiration. Instead, I can regularly write about other interesting topics.
(2) I posted the island about my wife on Lang-8 for correction, but then, to my surprise, I quickly deleted it. I'm starting to feel about Lang-8 the same way I do about Facebook. I like to write about my own life, thoughts and opinions, but I don't really want to put them on the Internet for everyone to see. I'd rather have someone I trust go over the texts and make corrections, in person or through e-mail, etc. This is interesting because I used to use Lang-8 a lot. It became hard for me to use Lang-8 the past few years, and now I understand more clearly why.

I did Anki reviews, and I even did five minutes of speaking practice at home. But I didn't meet any of my other goals. I didn't read any articles or do any home study other than those five minutes of speaking. It was a busy night; I had some private English lessons to teach to a few students.

A few posts back, iguanamon mentioned the possibility of my taking the JLPT for motivational purposes. It might be really odd coming from someone who teaches ESL in high school for a living, but I'm not a fan of tests. I've resisted taking the JLPT N5, N4 and N3, and I've been resisting taking the N2. N5 is really beginner-level Japanese, while N1 is native-level Japanese. I've always said if I do take a proficiency test, the first one will be the N2, which is probably high intermediate/low advanced level. That's concrete proof of basic fluency right there. But I've told myself that I'll only take the N2 if I actually need it.

I've never really seen the point of taking proficiency tests as a means of motivating myself to study more. However, a teacher at work challenged me to take some sample N2 questions a few weeks ago. It was only the vocabulary section, and I got roughly 40 percent of the questions right. However, I found out that, generally speaking, you need to get 50 percent on the N2 test to pass. That means I'm not that far off! :lol: That in itself was motivational. It seems that, with a little more study, I could actually pass the N2. It's something I'm now considering taking... as a means of motivating myself. (What is wrong with me?)

PORTUGUESE
I did DLI on the commute this morning (Tuesday) and yesterday morning (Monday) (I've forgotten how many weekdays in a row that is now, but I haven't missed a morning in a long time), Anki reviews... and that was it. To be honest, that's not a bad Portuguese day, though. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't do duolingo; that is usually easy to fit into my day, and it should be easier now that I'm no longer doing Chinese, Korean and French in duolingo.

Oh, and I chatted a bit with a dude in Brazil, but it was half English, half Portuguese.
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kujichagulia
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby kujichagulia » Tue Mar 06, 2018 1:49 am

Oh, forgot to ask... if anyone can recommend any relatively easy but modern Japanese novels to read, I would be most appreciative!
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby vonPeterhof » Tue Mar 06, 2018 5:32 pm

I don't have any blogs to recommend, but I can suggest a few novels:

-The 響け! ユーフォニアム series by Ayano Takeda, about the struggles of a high school concert band. It's quite heavy on musical terminology, but the book doesn't really presuppose deep familiarity with the subject on the part of the reader, so it's not too hard to follow (if you don't mind the fact that most of the dialogue is in Kyoto-ben).

-If you've watched and liked Shinkai's 君の名は。, in addition to an official novelization of the movie there's also a compilation of extra stories called 君の名は。 Another Side: Earthbound. I've yet to finish that one, but I think it's been pretty easy to read.

-It's a little bit on the older side, but Yasutaka Tsutsui's 時をかける少女 is an accessible read if you're into low-key sci-fi.
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby iguanamon » Tue Mar 06, 2018 6:32 pm

kujichagulia wrote:...I've never really seen the point of taking proficiency tests as a means of motivating myself to study more. However, a teacher at work challenged me to take some sample N2 questions a few weeks ago. It was only the vocabulary section, and I got roughly 40 percent of the questions right. However, I found out that, generally speaking, you need to get 50 percent on the N2 test to pass. That means I'm not that far off! :lol: That in itself was motivational. It seems that, with a little more study, I could actually pass the N2. It's something I'm now considering taking... as a means of motivating myself. (What is wrong with me?)

I agree, I've never really seen much of a point in them for me either, especially when I factor in the not insignificant expense of travel and the time off of work needed to do it. However, in your case, I mentioned it because many times, as self-learners, we either consciously or subconsciously compare ourselves to native-speakers and we can't see the forest for the trees. From reading your log, I got the feeling that your Japanese is at a higher level than you give yourself credit for having. So, I thought by at least investigating the test you'd find that out for yourself. ;) . Who knows maybe the artificiality of the test situation will force you to fill in some of your gaps. I'm all for learning with native materials, speaking and writing, it's what I do, but there are always a few holes that need to be filled in with conscious effort. Perhaps taking (or at least preparing to take) the N2 test can provide that impetus. Keep up the good work, Kuji!
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby kujichagulia » Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:49 am

vonPeterhof wrote:I don't have any blogs to recommend, but I can suggest a few novels:

おすすめありがとうごさいました! 面白そうです。 
I've been trying to find Japanese text written in everyday colloquial Japanese, which is why I've been hunting for blogs a lot. The times I've tried to read Japanese books, I've been bombarded with a wall of text, and it's hard to know which words are used in everyday life and which are not. However... Why am I so concerned about that? Why not just read, read, read? I think I limit myself when I say I want stuff in everyday, colloquial Japanese, especially when I'm in Japan and there are other ways to access colloquial Japanese. I should just read whatever is interesting. So, vonPeterhof, thank you for the recommendations!
iguanamon wrote:I agree, I've never really seen much of a point in them for me either, especially when I factor in the not insignificant expense of travel and the time off of work needed to do it. However, in your case, I mentioned it because many times, as self-learners, we either consciously or subconsciously compare ourselves to native-speakers and we can't see the forest for the trees. From reading your log, I got the feeling that your Japanese is at a higher level than you give yourself credit for having. So, I thought by at least investigating the test you'd find that out for yourself. ;) . Who knows maybe the artificiality of the test situation will force you to fill in some of your gaps. I'm all for learning with native materials, speaking and writing, it's what I do, but there are always a few holes that need to be filled in with conscious effort. Perhaps taking (or at least preparing to take) the N2 test can provide that impetus. Keep up the good work, Kuji!

Muito obrigado, iguanamon! You know, a lot of expats I know here who are at an intermediate level of Japanese buy the JLPT study books they have for the N2 and N1 tests. They use those for study, even if they aren't planning to take the test. They say the same thing: it helps them fill in gaps they might not be aware of. So, that's something I should look at doing, even if I don't take the test. I might end up taking the N2, though; it's good preparation for the N1, which I would need if I ever get into translation or interpreting.

As for my level of Japanese, maybe I don't give myself enough credit. I do realize now that my reading and writing level is probably mid-intermediate. My wife is amazed when I can understand certain things that I read, and when I'm texting with Japanese people on Tandem, they often say they can't tell me apart from a native. We're usually talking about basic stuff, though. And when I tried to read a Haruki Murakami book a few months ago, it was quite difficult. While I can get the gist of what's going on on many Japanese dramas and variety shows, I still miss a lot of details. On the other hand, a simple blog on minimalism is pretty easy; I only have to look up a handful of words. So, I don't know. Listening and speaking is definitely lower than mid-intermediate. I still have trouble getting out even the most basic sentences smoothly and quickly. But I guess that's to be expected with my situation. Listening and speaking are going to lag behind reading and writing.

===========

JAPANESE
I had free time at work, so I did my 15+ minutes of reading there. Instead of blog reading, I decided to fire up my Kindle application and try for the second time to read the sample of a novel called ブラジル蝶の謎 (The Mystery of the Brazil Butterfly). I read the first couple of pages. I can understand some things, but I don't have a complete understanding of what's going on. There's some guy who's somehow working for the police in some capacity, perhaps as a detective? He and his partner, Himura, are heading to north Osaka to investigate a murder. That's where I am at the moment. :lol:

I also wrote two journal entries and did my Anki reviews. Anki's pretty easy these days because I haven't made any new cards for a while.

I did five minutes of speaking practice at home - just reading aloud the two journal entries I wrote. But that's all I did at home, so I didn't meet my home study requirement. In retrospect, I should have stayed up later and done those 15 minutes before bed, but I was really sleepy last night.

I watched Japanese TV like usual, but I really need to sit down and watch an episode of 男子ごはん with my full attention. This weekend I'm going to Hong Kong for a couple of days, so I really need to do that before Friday.

PORTUGUESE
I finished reading the narrative of Lesson 51 in DLI, so all that's left to do are the questions. To be honest, I haven't really been doing the narrative questions up until this point, but I thought I should get some more practice in. I did the first five questions during my lunch break at work. That counted as part of my Portuguese writing goal, but I also wrote a journal entry.

I did duolingo and Anki reviews as well. I also listened to a Brazilian radio station called Radio Cultura. I'm getting tired of pop, rap and rock music these days, and I wanted to listen to something more peaceful. Radio Cultura was playing classical music, with a little Portuguese thrown in between songs. It was good to have on while I did chores.
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby Sayonaroo » Wed Mar 07, 2018 2:24 am

I recommend reading with rikaichamp or yomichan if you aren't already. they are pop-up dictionaries. besides blogs there's also twitter and instagram. I find this comedian's twitter to be funny and deep (?) at times https://twitter.com/ozwspw?lang=en
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby kujichagulia » Wed Mar 07, 2018 4:00 am

Sayonaroo wrote:I recommend reading with rikaichamp or yomichan if you aren't already. they are pop-up dictionaries. besides blogs there's also twitter and instagram. I find this comedian's twitter to be funny and deep (?) at times https://twitter.com/ozwspw?lang=en

I use rikaikun on Chrome and rikaichan on Firefox when I read blogs or news. I can't imagine breaking the wall of kanji without it.

I try to use Twitter as well, but it can be boring for me because I always have trouble finding interesting tweeters to follow. It's usually news and other similar stuff, so I appreciate your recommendation. Thank you!
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby Serpent » Wed Mar 07, 2018 8:17 pm

intermediate is a really vague term that can be used for any level between about A2 and B2 :x I generally avoid applying the level to myself at all.

as for twitter, it's best to find something through the search or hashtags. i mostly like to follow individual people (are you maybe somewhat embarrassed to do that? seek out those who already have many followers)
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby Sizen » Wed Mar 07, 2018 9:46 pm

kujichagulia wrote:Oh, forgot to ask... if anyone can recommend any relatively easy but modern Japanese novels to read, I would be most appreciative!

The easiest novel I ever read in Japanese, by far, was バンドリ. Though I must say that one of the only reasons I read it to the end was precisely because it was so easy.

Another great read is Hoshi Shin'ichi's ボッコちゃん. It's a collection of his short stories, so not a novel, but some of the stories are extremely easy reads. They're also very entertaining, and often have a funny twist ending. The humour is a little dark at times, so be mindful of that.

Lately, I've been reading 魔女の旅々, which is a delightful read. Once again, the book consists of short stories, but this time, the story consistently follows the same character and some of the stories are interconnected. Not all the stories are winners, but most of them will at least get a smile out of me. (The second book does contain a rather disturbing story, however.)
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