Post by Jembru on Sept 4, 2016 0:47:30 GMT
Long time no post! I hope everyone's studies are going well!
I guess after a bit of a break would be a good time to write my own introduction.
For those who don't know, I'm Jemma and come from the North East of England. I live with my long term partner and a little grey cat. I've been trying to learn Japanese since I was in 6th form, although I didn't really stick to it until these last 4-5 years. Largely because until 2013, I didn't really appreciate how much dedication or effort was required to get good at a language. I thought I could just work through Japanese for Busy People and after all 3 books I'd be fluent (ah, if only! ^^). I think few would disagree that I've been pretty dedicated ever since though. While still not fluent, I've come a long way since the disappointment of finishing the JBP series only to realise I was pre-intermediate at best. Not as far as I'd have liked, but still some way.
For no perceivable reason, back in May I suddenly lost my motivation for studying Japanese. By mid-June I had even stopped doing my anki reviews. My closest Japanese friend had her baby around that time, and I was no longer able to make my regular scheduled skype calls with Bokusenou, so I stopped having any reason to use or practice Japanese. So long story short, I stopped studying, practicing or using Japanese for well over 10 weeks.
That probably doesn't sound like that much of a break, but for me that's massive. For the previous 4 years and 5 months, I had hardly missed a single day of study, and had used anki almost daily for 3 of those years.
About 2 weeks ago though, I was suddenly hit with the bug again. My goal was always to be able to join in with conversations, and while I have plenty of room for improvement, I can do that now and I never really replaced that goal. I had made my new goal 'being able to read Japanese novels without furigana', but that is actually stupidly vague. I mean, I already could. Of course, I had to look up a lot of words, or I could just guess the meaning from the context, but no matter how 'advanced' my Japanese becomes, there will never be a day when I don't come across words I have to look up or guess at. Where would I draw the line?
Instead then, I've decided to make translation my biggest goal. Although at this stage I don't think I want to make a career out of it, I'd like to be able to make a little extra money by doing translations now and then. I've started doing the occasional translation for free too, for contacts I found on facebook. Depending on time and funds, I may be enrolling on an evening course in translation at college (a desperate attempt to avoid having to sit the JLPT as proof of my Japanese ability -I don't cope well under exam conditions!). Right now, there's no way I could get the time off to attend though, so I'm not putting too much hope on that.
Now that I have a goal, I have a brand new study system (of course I do! ^^), where the focus is on translating. Rather than studying JLPT material, or working through kokugo textbooks as I was before, I'm now studying grammar and vocabulary as they appear in the material I'm translating. Of course, I'm having to improve my written English too, so that the quality of my translation is good (I'm only studying Jap->English).
This seems to have rekindled my interest in Japanese again, and so I thought it was high time I came back to Gaiwa!
I guess after a bit of a break would be a good time to write my own introduction.
For those who don't know, I'm Jemma and come from the North East of England. I live with my long term partner and a little grey cat. I've been trying to learn Japanese since I was in 6th form, although I didn't really stick to it until these last 4-5 years. Largely because until 2013, I didn't really appreciate how much dedication or effort was required to get good at a language. I thought I could just work through Japanese for Busy People and after all 3 books I'd be fluent (ah, if only! ^^). I think few would disagree that I've been pretty dedicated ever since though. While still not fluent, I've come a long way since the disappointment of finishing the JBP series only to realise I was pre-intermediate at best. Not as far as I'd have liked, but still some way.
For no perceivable reason, back in May I suddenly lost my motivation for studying Japanese. By mid-June I had even stopped doing my anki reviews. My closest Japanese friend had her baby around that time, and I was no longer able to make my regular scheduled skype calls with Bokusenou, so I stopped having any reason to use or practice Japanese. So long story short, I stopped studying, practicing or using Japanese for well over 10 weeks.
That probably doesn't sound like that much of a break, but for me that's massive. For the previous 4 years and 5 months, I had hardly missed a single day of study, and had used anki almost daily for 3 of those years.
About 2 weeks ago though, I was suddenly hit with the bug again. My goal was always to be able to join in with conversations, and while I have plenty of room for improvement, I can do that now and I never really replaced that goal. I had made my new goal 'being able to read Japanese novels without furigana', but that is actually stupidly vague. I mean, I already could. Of course, I had to look up a lot of words, or I could just guess the meaning from the context, but no matter how 'advanced' my Japanese becomes, there will never be a day when I don't come across words I have to look up or guess at. Where would I draw the line?
Instead then, I've decided to make translation my biggest goal. Although at this stage I don't think I want to make a career out of it, I'd like to be able to make a little extra money by doing translations now and then. I've started doing the occasional translation for free too, for contacts I found on facebook. Depending on time and funds, I may be enrolling on an evening course in translation at college (a desperate attempt to avoid having to sit the JLPT as proof of my Japanese ability -I don't cope well under exam conditions!). Right now, there's no way I could get the time off to attend though, so I'm not putting too much hope on that.
Now that I have a goal, I have a brand new study system (of course I do! ^^), where the focus is on translating. Rather than studying JLPT material, or working through kokugo textbooks as I was before, I'm now studying grammar and vocabulary as they appear in the material I'm translating. Of course, I'm having to improve my written English too, so that the quality of my translation is good (I'm only studying Jap->English).
This seems to have rekindled my interest in Japanese again, and so I thought it was high time I came back to Gaiwa!