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Post by Jembru on May 22, 2014 14:45:00 GMT
I'm going to try and clear some of these today. I'll post another at the end of the day to show how much I've done. What a coincidence! I've been catching up on memrise today too. I didn't have quite as much to do though though.. I think something like 25 reviews and I maybe studied 10 new words at the most. This is the last chance I'll have to study for more than short bursts, for a few weeks, so I'm making the most of having the flat to myself while JP is at work! ^^
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Post by chocopie on May 27, 2014 14:44:47 GMT
Yesterday I finally cleared my anki backlog! I made myself do sessions of 20 cards at a time because when I see that I have 100+ cards waiting I lose all concentration and find other things to do.
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Post by Jembru on Jun 30, 2014 16:09:05 GMT
My work here is done..
As some of you probably know, I record myself speaking as part of my usual study sessions. Lately I've been really busy so while I've had time to study, I haven't been following up study sessions by playing back my recordings and writing up my strengths and weaknesses.
I finally have a little head space today though, so I started writing up all my sessions. I've noticed something though.. I have no idea when I started doing this but now, when I pause to think before giving an opinion, I take a sharp, audible suck of air..
So that's it folks.. I've nailed it. Anything else I can learn at this point is just garnish. Mission complete... Japanese nailed! ^^
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Post by Jembru on Oct 21, 2014 3:48:30 GMT
Haha, I'd forgotten about my last post here. >.<
So on a more serious note this time, I'm really happy just now. I couldn't sleep so decided to listen to an N3 listening recording in bed. I'd never tried this before and I wish I had. It was far easier than I had imagined it would be. I guess I was scared to listen to something like that before in case I couldn't follow a word. But if I want to study from N2 and then N1 material next year, I had to know for sure if I was aiming too high or not.
Now I've listened to that recording, I am sure I am right to start at N2. Everything was so clear. It wasn't like having a conversation, where I need to really concentrate and fill in the blanks with lucky guesses. It gave me a beautiful glimpse into what the future holds for me by showing me how it feels to understand everything clearly. Sure it's a long way off yet, but I feel like every lead character in shounen anime right now, so just let me have this moment... 俺の夢、必ず叶えるぜ!lol
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Post by Jembru on Nov 4, 2014 9:15:12 GMT
I realised how nice it feels to have learnt kanji yesterday afternoon.
JP and I met up with some Japanese friends for lunch yesterday. We went to an izakaya run by Chinese people. JP loves good sea food, so we've been quite a few times, but it was one of our friend's first time and she said it definitely has an authentic izakaya atmosphere and was impressed that the ramen was 'close enough' to the real deal (not that I can try ramen in Japan being a vegetarian).
The biggest oddity is that some of the signs don't make much sense. Maybe because they're written in Chinese rather than Japanese (yet other signs, in the same handwriting include kana, so we weren't sure). My friends were looking at one sign and saying that it didn't make sense. It was all fairly basic kanji so they decided to ask me if I recognised the characters. I recognised all but one. It said;
空 運 油 甘 刺 身
The one I couldn't read was 刺, so I've made a point of adding that, for no other reason, to anki. ^^ My friends were suitably impressed though. They also complimented me on the speed my Japanese is improving these days (which is all thanks to this forum, and a very special friend who sadly moved back to Indonesia this summer).
My partner, JP showed off his Japanese muscle too (and yes, he's still refusing to actually study the language, the pig >.<). There was an authentic wall hanging in hiragana saying ふくがいっぱい which I translated as 'brimming with fortune'. JP then said, are you sure it's not a pun? Drawing my attention to all the images of blow fish on the walls in that area. I said, 'no,no, blowfish is ふぐ not ふく. But then one of our friends pointed out that in some dialects, they do actually call it ふく, so it's possible it WAS meant as a joke. Trust JP to notice the puns.
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Post by Jembru on Jan 2, 2015 2:18:38 GMT
Here's a few ideas for learners to help you to appreciate your progress...
In 2013 a friend of mine brought me back some My Melody items from Japan. Amongst these was a little box of 3 beautful notebooks. I decided I wouldn't write in these precious books until I could write in Japanese. At that time, I was still frantically working on my spoken Japanese though, so knew it would be some time before I even started to write, let alone got good enough to keep my notes in Japanese.
Then last May, I realised that I was preventing myself from progressing in Japanese by sticking to familiar language, because it felt safe. If I didn't want to 'just get by' in Japanese for the rest of my life, I had to push myself out of my comfort zone.
So I decided that I would stop focusing on conversational Japanese for a few months, and practise reading and writing. Then I would be able to start using my My Melody books at long last! My mind was made up.. from January 2015, I would enter the advanced stage of my studies once and for all (although I'm starting with upper-intermediate to ease myself in).
It was then that I wrote myself a letter. I wrote about how I felt about my current ability and my hopes for January. That was put away with a bag containing the stationary I got from Miyo, and some other My Melody stuff that I ordered from Japan.. ...it was not to be opened until New Years Day!
I read it today! And I cried my eyes out! Honestly.. when I think of what I can do now compared to last May, I can finally see that I've made progress. Of course, I'm still a way off fluent, but I feel really confident now.
The other thing I did was to take the parallel text I have and mark in the 'あ' section of the dictionary at the back, all the words I knew back in May. I ended up not using that book in the end, but I still went through it again today and marked the words I know now.. I'd marked just over half in May, but today, there was only 5 I still didn't know!! So I'm pretty sure I DO make progress after all..
So there you go... if you're interested in measuring your progress, I definitely recommend writing your future self a letter, and marking off words you know from a page of a vocabulary list in a textbook you have! It might just surprise you when you come back to compare!
My only regret is that I never got around to taking the J-Cat test. That would have been amazing! I'll have to see if I can get around the issue with screen resolution and take it to compare my results next year!
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Post by Jade on Feb 24, 2015 0:23:57 GMT
Not sure if this counts as a study highlight, but I've kind of started studying again. I'm awful at studying, I've always muddled through to a passing grade without most of the time, so actually working on it is really hard lol
I've started translating otome game stories in my spare time, and started up a new Ameba blog to post stuff on. Ameba's been neglected lately because I had a constant headache for like a week (that still hasn't gone away ugh), but I'm gonna get back to that. I've started N1 grammar study again too, though I really should go back to N2 cause I don't know a lot of stuff for that too even though I passed it lol
So, not really a highlight, but hey I'm studying again. That's something at least.
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Post by Jembru on Feb 27, 2015 10:52:38 GMT
I promised myself to post here after my long rant in the benkyou burnout thread.
So the things I can be proud of..
I guess just the speed at which I've improved recently. My Japanese has probably changed more since August last year than it had done in over the whole of the 2.5 years or so I had been studying before that. Something definitely clicked last year.
I suppose discovering I already knew such a massive chunk of N2 grammar surprised me. There are things in the textbook that have been part of my active Japanese for a very long time. I remember explaining 'すればするほど' to Midori/Abby through youtube even before LittleGaijin had made the old forum, and I'm pretty sure there are examples of me using things like, だらけ and 限り back on that forum too. When I make my video journals, I always feel that I stick to beginners Japanese, but seeing how many of my 'go to' expressions are considered to be upper intermediate grammar, has made me realise that just because something feels easy to me, it doesn't mean it's simple. It just means I've mastered that particular grammar. That's something to be pleased about I think.
Besides that, I guess just the fact that I don't hold back when I'm out with friends, and just use my Japanese instead of sitting shyly in the corner, is something to celebrate. After all, things can only improve from here...
... I just really need to hurry up and get kanji out of the way. That's probably my final real hurdle (besides the lack of inter-personal skills I mentioned in my rant thread). After that, it's just a case of continuing to use what Japanese I have, and gathering up more knowledge as I go.. like a snowball rolling along the ground, getting larger and larger until before you know it, it has gotten so large that you can hardly push it anymore!
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Post by Jembru on Mar 14, 2015 4:07:47 GMT
It took a little longer to get here than I hoped but...
I BROKE THE 1,000 MARK!!!
Well, my method for calculating is vague, but I'm pretty sure I'm about there about now. I knew I started with around 600, and have now added at least 400 new kanji to my memory. So it's not that unlikely.
I'm not going to read on in RTK for now though. I'm quite behind on memrise, which is a good thing because I'm reminding myself of characters a week or so after I first studied them, but the gap is so wide now that I'm worried I'm rushing too quickly. That book is pretty addictive once you get into the swing of it but I'm using memrise in place of the flashcards that the book suggests (I am using flashcards for 'keyword > kanji' writing practice though), so really need to let myself catch up.
I know I'm not even at the half-way mark yet, but 1,000 feels like a milestone somehow, so I wanted to share this small victory here!
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Post by Jembru on Apr 5, 2015 9:23:39 GMT
Sorry to hog this thread, but I have a genuinely huge (for me) success story that I want to share. It seems so small a thing, but this is a massively significant milestone for me. Some of you might know, because this came up in a number of discussions in the past, that my favourite kanji is 驚. Well I was annotating my notes in the 'free' space at the bottom the page last night, and was writing that 'てしまう' was being used to emphasise the speaker's surprise in a way I hadn't come across before. I rattled off a handsome little 驚 without a second thought, and it felt like a real milestone. A 22 stroke character drawn in around 3 seconds, without any strain. I'm working through Remembering the Kanji, and of course, this character has come up. As the book suggests I do, I make a point of covering the page and writing each character as I learn them. So I'd written this character once before, but this was the first time I'd used it in context. I'm starting to read now too. Not just the carefully graded stories in my textbooks, that of course don't use any kanji I don't know, but other texts too. Of course these are still a challenge, but suddenly, it's all just coming together. Thank you James Heisig, and thank you Bokusenou for giving me the push I needed to get over myself and give this book a second chance! After how low I felt at discovering I still can't write coherent Japanese on my phone a few days ago, I really needed this little boost! EDIT: Omg, I just realised I haven't met that character in the book yet! I learnt to write the top section, 'respect' though, and could already write 'horse' prior to RTK because it's grade 2. I just automatically put them together! So that WAS the first time I'd ever written it. This character never fails to surprise me, lol. Now if that's not an endorsement of the RTK system, I don't know what is!
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Post by Jembru on Sept 13, 2015 20:38:16 GMT
This probably won't mean much to anyone who doesn't use memrise, but OMG... So, JP and I had planned a special pokemon night tonight that involved us setting up our PC's on the dining table, game tournament style. This meant I didn't have much time to do my memrise reviews, yet I didn't want to fall behind as I've only just got caught up again after a break. I decided to do a speed run. They're not ideal all the time, but good at times like this when you just want to burn through the reviews quickly, they're a huge help. I could hardly believe it, but I got 64 in a row!! Again, if you don't use memrise or haven't tried the speed review feature, you probably won't appreciate this, but looking around the comments on their forum, it seems that 20-30 in a row is about the average (and I was rarely getting over 30 myself before tonight). I'm sure it was a fluke, but I'm still proud of myself. I've included a screenshot, to prove to myself I didn't dream this.
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Post by Jembru on Dec 28, 2015 5:12:36 GMT
I should rename this thread to 'Jembru's study highlights' shouldn't I? Haha.
There are actually two today! I know, I know... what a treat!
So, first of all I've finally finished RTK!! On memrise I only have the last few sections to do, and they're just characters that were missed earlier on (I assume accidentally when the person was making the course, because most of the characters appear as elements of characters that made it onto memrise in the correct order). There aren't any characters I don't know in those sections, so I guess I'm done!
Of course my work isn't done yet, but at least the tedious part (for me at least, I know others really enjoy learning kanji, but it has always been the aspect of Japanese I've cared least about), is over, and I can get back to my regular routine at last!
That brings me quite naturally to my next highlight...
I couldn't sleep after work yesterday morning so I thought I'd read another article from a Japanese magazine I bought last month, but haven't been reading while I focused most of my attention on rtk. Usually I look up words as I read, and it takes me quite a long time to read anything. Yesterday though, I read a page and a half before noticing that looking up words hadn't even crossed my mind. I was elated to say the least!
Now that I can recognise all jouyou kanji, I was able to work out some words I'd never learnt just from the kanji. Some I could read too, like 体内時計 (body clock), some I understood but couldn't read like 内臓 (organs, although now I DO know how to read it because I had to look up 臓 in order to write that just now!), and some I could read but couldn't work out the meaning of. Those are harder to remember but I think one such word was 代謝 (yeah.. just looked it up and it fits the topic.. and annoyingly, I actually have 新陳代謝 in my anki decks, but it's English-Japanese so I couldn't read it). Weirdly though, because I could read such words phonetically, I didn't mind not knowing the meaning and just kept on going. I guess like when I see a word I don't really understand in English. Sometimes it did mean I couldn't understand the sentence, but I was just caught up in the enjoyment of reading somehow.
It took me 11 bloomin' months, but I'm finally at a level where I can read Japanese without looking up every other word. On the one hand I'm gutted that I couldn't advance as much as I'd hoped this year because of the need to prioritise kanji, but I genuinely feel like an advanced student now. Better late than never I guess!
Also.. I honestly recalled those example words from memory, so I guess I finally believe those who insist knowing kanji aids your ability to memorise new words!
I'm so happy!
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Post by Bokusenou on Dec 31, 2015 0:31:35 GMT
Bravo! I know the exact feeling. After that point my Japanese reading ability started growing by leaps and bounds, and new words with kanji became much easier to remember.
As for me, I don't have any study highlights because I've had to learn a lot of new programming stuff for work lately. Hopefully I'll be able to return to Japanese novel reading in the new year.
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Post by Jembru on Dec 31, 2015 17:55:16 GMT
Bravo! I know the exact feeling. After that point my Japanese reading ability started growing by leaps and bounds, and new words with kanji became much easier to remember. As for me, I don't have any study highlights because I've had to learn a lot of new programming stuff for work lately. Hopefully I'll be able to return to Japanese novel reading in the new year. Thanks! (^v^')> Of all the milestones along this journey, this one feels like the most significant for sure. Of course, there are still characters I don't know all that well yet, but I'm really enjoying the feeling I get when I see a word, pause for a moment while I thumb through my internal filofax of mnemonics and then hit on the meaning! Towards the end of October, I actually stopped all other study methods (besides watching stuff in Japanese and reading nhk news articles), and just threw myself into finishing the book and the memrise course. I even fell behind with anki, getting through only the recently added cards deck on some days. The result was that there was almost a 2 month period between the last time I'd tried to read Japanese (outside of Line and nhk easy news, I guess, but even they took the backseat for a while). So I didn't experience a gradual improvement, but instead went from having to look up at least one character in every other sentence, to just being able to keep reading on with a good enough idea of the gist not to have to look up unfamiliar words. The sudden leap means it's the first time I've been able to feel my progress since I did that 'speaking boot-camp' way back in 2013, when I first started to be able to speak with something resembling fluidity. After that, progress just seemed to be so slow I couldn't feel it at all. One thing that has been fun to discover is that I'd been mistaking similar characters for the same character quite often. For example, I thought the first character in 再生 was the same as that for 両親, 両手 and so on. I've written it a lot with that character in my notes. ^^ Another one was that I was always puzzled that 瓜二つ was written with the kanji for 'claw'...what did that have to do with looking alike? That was, of course, until I learnt 'melon' and the penny dropped. I could go on and on, there are so many. I'm pretty sure I wrote something on Line a week or so ago where I used the wrong kanji, which was just the right hand side of the kanji I really meant (I can't remember what it was, but Rin was able to workout what I meant and was nice enough not to draw attention to my blooper!). Of course, this realisation came on more gradually, but over the last few days I've been reading insatiably, because I can! And it's made me notice more and more such words! As I said in English Line chat, now that the memorisation part is more or less over, I'm already feeling my disliking of kanji melting away to appreciation! Next year's study will be much more enjoyable and rewarding, I'm sure of it!
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Post by Bokusenou on Jan 4, 2016 11:47:11 GMT
JembruYeah, I remember feeling the same way! I also used to mix up similar-looking kanji before RTK. Really glad it worked for you too!
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