Some of you may know nanowrimo – an event which takes part in November where you attempt to write 50,000 words in a month. My goal of November was something similar, I wanted to see if I could attempt to study for 100 hours during November. The outcome is I’ll probably just be a little short of 70 hours, but I’m pretty happy with that! Next month I’m aiming for 80 hours – it might be a bit harder because it’s the holiday season but we’ll see how I go!

What follows is a long breakdown of what I’ve been up to during November!

Listening

My listening category includes watching tv/movies as well as other education specific audio. My main source was watching tv, I only include it when I am actively listening and not when I’m multi tasking or have background noise. I think when I have a larger vocabulary I will do more level specific listening to try and improve my listening skills. One TV show I do recommend to beginners is “My Girl” staring Aiba Masaki – the dialogue for the most part is spoken very slowly and simply as the main character is a young girl. Yeah, it’s a bit… but it’s easy study material!

There is one more day left in November, but it’s not like I’m going to drastically increase my study hours… With that in mind, in November I watched/listened to about 15 hours of Japanese.
December’s goal: 20 hours.

Reading

Breakdown:

• Grade 3 (primary school) short story book
• Grade 1 and 2 (primary school) short story book
• Manga
• Novel for 10-11 year old girls

Reading is a skill that I really want to improve. One of my goals of learning Japanese is to be able to understand Japanese books in their native language easily. This month I did more purchasing of books that actual reading. It’s actually a bit strange, but out of all the different types of study activities I do, I find reading the most tireing. It may be the times of day that I read – usually on the bus on the way home from work or in bed before I go to sleep, but I always find after a page I need to close my eyes and go to sleep. This is frustrating!! But I am hoping with time it wont be so taxing on my brain or I will find time to read at different times and I will see a difference.

I started out with a reader for grade 3 (primary school) Japanese children. It is actually a pretty good book for learners because it is full of short stories, all kanji have furigana and at the end of the short stories is a short little quiz on the content of the story to see if everything was understood. There are also little dictionary type meanings under some words that must be knew/unknown to most 3rd graders which was helpful! My method of going through this was to first look up any unknown words and write them down in pencil next to the word. The words in the book are big and have large spaces between the lines, so it was perfect for this. The problem is that my vocab knowledge is so low that it was hard to infer anything and had to look up a lot of words. And I found the first story a bit unsatisfying. My problem is, I think, that I don’t like short stories in English, I like getting to know the Characters and going on a journey with them… So perhaps I shouldn’t expect to like them in Japanese either…

Still, I felt my first foray into reading Japanese literature a bit of a failure, I went and bought some books that are full of short stories for grades one and two (at the time I was thinking my main problem was vocab and perhaps something very simple would fill me with a sense of accomplishment). So far I’ve read a couple of short stories from the grade one book, and I have to say it does make me feel good when I can read through something and understand maybe 70% of it. I can infer meaning from the pictures and sometimes there may be a sentence I don’t undertand but it doesn’t bother me. I haven’t felt the need to use a dictionary yet even if I don’t fully understand something. There is also a cute poem in the grade one book that I liked. But yes, over all the stories are… a little strange and a bit confusing because I guess they are meant for young children – it’s satisfying in that I can read but what I’m reading isn’t satisfying, I hope that makes sense!

Manga. I have been reading a book for young teen girls, a high school relationships manga. Your everyday sort of stuff, nothing remarkable about the story line. I bought this book at the wonderful Book Off when I first got to Japan and started it then but didn’t get far. This time it was nice to open the book and understand more than what I did then. I am improving!! Yay I haven’t finished it yet (reading is slow!) and again, I think I’m getting too old for the school girl stuff, I want to move onto something more my age – damn I feel old sometimes! The problem with moving on is vocab/kanji with a lack of furigana etc. So again with the yay for reading but the story isn’t grabing me type stuff. Yeah, if I was at the stage I am now half a year ago I would have been over joyed but it’s a case of the grass is always greener – but I guess in a way it is motivating me to keep going.

Next: Today I bought some books that as far as I can tell are for girls about 10-12 years old. I’m expecting them to be tough. However, I feel like I’ll be more satisfied with them. Sure, they are still for young girls, but they are fantasy stories about (I hope!) strong female characters – these are my favourite type stories to read in English so I’m hoping that they will be more staisfying. So far I read the prologue of one, it was really easy! It was the main character introducing herself (introductions are about the only thing I’m good at in Japanese!) and about her history. I did it infront of the computer to quickly look up a couple of words in the dictionary (no writing down) but for the most part it was exciting that I was reading a “real” book. We’ll see how I go as I get into the story line more. I’m sure I’ll be complaining about it at the end of next month. It’ll either be too hard to read or the story line is too simplistic or something!!!

November Hours Reading: 5 hours
December Goal: To finish a book!

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Grammar

I’ve been using:

• Kanzen Master JPLT 3 Grammar book
• JET program language course – intermediate level
• review book for beginners/JLPT 3 level

I’ve been spending my time learning/reviewing JLPT level 3 grammar, using Kanzen Master JLPT 3 grammar guide. This is a good book, mostly all in Japanese with a little bit of english to explain the grammar point. I would have to say with JLPT level grammar, about 90% I already “knew” – knew in that I had encountered it before. A lot of it, however, still isn’t firmly in my head, like giving and recieving (I don’t know why I have trouble with this!), passive and causatives. Also transitive and intransitives. Much work to be done! There were a small amount of points I hadn’t learnt before but I think these ones will be quite simple to master.

Over all I do recommend Kanzen Master JLPT 3. I have no intention of studying the JLPT at this stage, but I like the way everything has been grouped into like forms, there are example sentences that are going to be at my level and there are quizes to check if you understood. Now, some of the quizes are easy in that “Oh, I just learnt that this grammar point you need the verb to be in the “te” form, so I’ll just choose the only option that is in the “te” form, even if I have no idea what the sentence means.” – I haven’t tried the exercises yet futher in the book so I’m not sure if they get harder than this.

My method of study sofar has been just to copy out the “formula” and then to copy a couple of the example sentences. It hasn’t done much to stick I don’t think, so now and into december I plan on paying a bit more attention into and really nailing down those passive etc forms. I’m hoping to have really got a solid foundation by the end of December – enough to move onto JLPT 2 level, even if I haven’t completely mastered them.

I do have a concern that with the JLPT 2 level, because I am (I imagine) not familiar with the grammar that it will be harder for me to actually understand what the grammar points are trying to address only through example sentences. I am planning on buying Kanzen Master level 2 so I guess I’ll see if it’ll be enough or if I need to supliment it somehow.

I have also been “studying” haha with the JET course. Now, a lot of bad things have been said about the course, and I believe last year they redid it alll. I think it’s not so bad really… but it isn’t really what I want to do with studying, if that makes sense, I would rather prioritise and do other things. Also the first book has been easy in that I am familiar with most of the grammar covered. So what I did is I wrote out all the grammar points and an example sentence, like what I did with Kanzen Master. Then I did the review exercises near the end of the book, compared it to the answers. I did fairly well, so I just went ahead and open book test style did the test. I still have to send it in, but I am satified that the JET course gets me studying and doesn’t seem so bad. I’m scared about the Dec book though – the dreaded transitive and intransitive verbs!

Last but not least, I’ve been doing this quiz book that tests kanji, vocab and grammar for JLPT 3. I did it back in Sept/Oct and scored fairly well. I picked it up again a week ago to see if I’ve improved. Happily I have improved. This time around I’m going to focus afterwards on the things I fail to see if I can really nail my short commings.

November: 15 hours of study
December goals: Finish Kanzen Master JLPT 3.

Kanji/Vocab

Yeah… Smart.fm has turned a bit to shit in my opinion, but I actually finally started using it. They have been upgrading a lot which has been frustraiting (it usually goes down for maintenence when I want to study) and I don’t use the new study program at all, but I have been spending every night studying vocab at smart.fm.

Vocab is a huge weakness for me, so I want to make a mass effort to really get my vocab up there. My goal of November was to study 1000 words, and right now I’m just short of 1500 – I’m hoping to reach that magical number tomorrow. Already I can notice the difference through reading my manga. There are shortcomings to smart.fm but I am enjoying (for the most part!) using the “iknow” interface. Once I master some lists I plan on upping my listening skills and doing the dication – I did a couple already but I think I’ll get the most benifit from that and the brain speed aspects of smart.fm once I have “mastered” the lists.

November: 31 hours, (hopefully!) 1500 words
December goal: to get up to 3500 words studied (+2000 words)

Writing

I get a lot of “writing” practise mainly through copying out my grammar books, but in this case writing corrosponds to when I physically create my own writing. I was planing on writing at 8lang regularly, but then I decided not to. I am going to save focusing on output (writing and speaking) when I am a bit futher into my studies. That being said, the small entries that I’ve done at 8Lang have been most helpful and I think it really is a fantastic resource. In the future I hope to keep a daily type log there.

November: half an hour
Decebmer goal: I don’t really plan to focus on this in December.

What’s Missing?

One noticible aspect missing from my log is speaking. For one, I think it would be hard to measure speaking unless I was to get up and say a monologue of some kind… At any case, right now I don’t feel confident in my speaking. Sure I can give one word responses and I can ask questions at stores if I think about it first, but I am not up to the level where I can have a conversation with people. I may add this to my spreadsheet at a later date, but for now I am not so worried about speaking and have no intention of measuring it in an “hours” format. At any rate, as my vocab and listening skills increase, I have found I have been more confident to speak, in particular to my students, and that has been satisfying/enough of a measurement for me. I can feel I’m inproving and that’s the main thing!

If you can think of something else I’m missing from my studies, feel free to leave a comment! Also if you have any questions or comments on my methods I’d love to hear them from you. I feel like, right now, I’ve never been so determined to get good at Japanese, and I feel like I’ve never gone this gung-ho at studying. Let’s hope I can keep up the momentum! (but still find the time to post… eep!)

All through 2008 I was experiencing burn out, mainly because I really wanted to study Japanese my own way but had to do it the University way. Now that I’m out of university, it means that I can do it my own way but no longer have the push that I absolutely have to get something done. So in a way, I can’t have it all, dammit!

So while my start to this year hasn’t been filled with as much Japanese study as I could have done, I’m making more of an effort now. Here’s some of the things I’ve been up to in Feb:

Anki, Remembering the Kanji and 2001 Kanji Odyssey

Currently I have 755 cards in my Anki deck, with 45% of the “mature” cards.

In Japanese at the moment my main aim is to be able to read. Even in English my reading and writing ability are stronger than my speaking ability. I am much more articulate in writing! I love to read, and what I really want to be able to do is read my manga collection with relative ease.

In manga, because of the relatively short dialogue, I am sure I know most of the grammar, but my biggest weaknesses are kanji and vocabulary. Eventually I want to move on to big thick novels.

I’ve decided I’m going to attack this with Remembering the Kanji and 2001 Kanji Odyssey, using Anki. What I am doing is going full speed at RtK, until I get bored of it, then I will study KO. I do reviews of both in the one Anki deck, but take turns in actively studying whatever I feel like it out of the two. I think I’m making good progress.

I don’t mind so much now about powering through RtK. Originally I wanted to just go through RtK as quickly as I could and get onto other things. It wasn’t working for me, which is why I’ve changed to this approach. With RtK, I do find it is the best way for me to learn how to write the kanji, plus a basic keyword which does come in handy when reading, as I can sometimes guess what a word is from a keyword.

However, while I really want to write the Kanji, perhaps a bigger concern for me at the moment is actually reading/knowing words. I’m really excited about KO as it provides what a lot of Kanji guides have PLUS three sentences for each Kanji. I find that when I’m using a SRS program, I do learn better with sentences vs just words. So this is great.

The first book is 555 kanji, and if I’m persistent (and don’t revert back to RtK or move on to something else… which is highly probable) I could finish it by my birthday in April easily.

I know more than what is in Genki I. Way back when, Genki was the original material that I bought to learn Japanese. This time last year I was probably not much past the first couple of chapters. Now I know all the kanji from it, and all the grammar points.

I’m 3/4 of the way through Japanese for Everyone, and I will be finished by the end of the year. In terms of grammar, I think that Japanese for Everyone gets you right into an intermediate level. It is really good and has a lot of bang for what you pay for it. I have started reading some books and I so far understand (most of) the grammar, even for longer, complicated sentences.

I am still getting through learning all the Kanji. Because of university I have had to utilise many different methods of learning the Kanji. If I could start again, I would have completed Remembering the Kanji before I started at university. I hope that I can get through this book by the end of the year.

I am understanding more and more of what I hear. Watching a lot of dramas definitely has attuned me to the language.

The biggest let down for me is my lack of vocabulary. I don’t have a large vocabulary which makes it hard to read or listen and actually understand what is being said. I am at the moment experimenting with some vocabulary learning exercises.

My speaking is also probably not very good. I haven’t had an opportunity to speak much Japanese besides following along with tapes and talking to myself aloud. I am going to Japan in November which will be my first real test of speaking and conversing.

I am very happy with my progress, I don’t think that I could progress any quicker. Even if it is not possible for me to be in All Japanese All The Time enviornment like some people can be, I engage myself in a Japanese language activity every day. It is very much a part of my life now and I will get to Japanese fluency. If you want a more “slow and steady” approach to Japanese learning compared to the AJATT method, I recommend my method: Procrastinating and Looking At Japanese Boys. It seems to be working for me!

Japanese For Everyone

I’ve finished chapter 12. I’ll be taking a break from this while I try to remember the kanji, hopefully getting back into it in January. Chapter 12 was a fairly easy one to get through.

Anki

Thanks to the kanji, I’ve fallen behind on my reviews with this. 289 expired cards… *cries* I have 615 cards now, up from 533 from last month. And I did review at the beginning of the month, not so much towards the end. I would like to keep this up through the kanji, how ever as things are proving I’m not sure if I can. The kanji is time consuming!

Deck statistics time!

Correct over a week: 92.5% (346 of 374)
Correct under a week: 77.3% (2061 of 2667)
Correct unseen: 85.3% (828 of 971)
Total Correct: 80.6%

If only my kanji was that good. The thing is, though, when I add a sentence to my srs, usually I understand all the grammar and it’s only to reinforce grammar and to help learn new vocabulary.

Remembering the Kanji

I have to pick up my game. Moving at the pace that I want to move out, Remembering the Kanji is time consuming. Currently I have studied 395 kanji. The problem is I’m finding it takes 3-5 reviews for most kanji before I find them in my head and I can pass them onto the next box. And the most time consuming task is actually studying the kanji, vs reviewing the kanji.

Here’s my deck as it stands right now:

After I started tracking my review results (so, from the 28th October onwards), I have averaged at 48% correct. This number goes up when I review cards in the far decks, but so far as most of my cards are in the first deck I’m getting a lot wrong. I’m expecting the numbers to sort of even out as I get further into it. I guess we’ll see. Must… Study… More…

Into The Future

I’m still hoping to finish the Remembering the Kanji book by around Christmas. I’ll have no excuse after my exam in two weeks. I’ve already got my “rewards” for finishing picked out – certain Japanese books. So, main priority: Kanji. I’ll let you know how it goes.

September is over and I’m looking forward to the end of October when it is Natsu Yasumi (Summer Holiday) time! But that is looking a head and this post is for (mostly!) looking behind.

Learning 日本語

I feel like I’ve had an epiphany. I feel like I’ve really moved forward this month and everything is coming together. Things are clicking into place and I suddenly understand so much more about the language. It’s a great feeling.

Japanese For Everyone

I’m up to Chapter 11 now. I’m almost half way through the book! Exciting!

I think that JFE’s strong point is grammar. It doesn’t explain things in great detail (I like the fact that Genki has longer written explanations), however the exercises are very good and most grammar points are easy to pick up. I think at the start of the book with no other guidance I would have been lost, but once you are over the initial hurdle this is a good book.

Anki

Anki is going good. Earlier in the month I didn’t use the program at all, which is bad. Last week I was busy clearing out all my sentences and then adding more. Last month I had 359 cards, now I have 533 cards. However, I haven’t yet been tested on 113 of them! I need to, next week is an exam!

OK, deck statistics time!
Correct over a week: 93.7% (253 of 270)
Correct under a week: 75.4% (1378 of 1827)
Correct when seeing for the first time: 85.7% (717 of 837)
Total Correct: 80%

Hana Kimi Overload!

I admit, like the rest of the world, I have become obsessed with Hana Kimi. I have watched the show over and over again. I feel like I hear a bit more every time. I do feel like my listening skills have improved.

However, sometimes when I watch the show with subs (I alternate) I realise I understand the sentence that I didn’t understand without subs – only because the sentence wasn’t said 100% clear or something so I didn’t recognise it. I know that people don’t speak clearly in real life so this is good, real-world-like training.

For The Future

I’m going to be talking a bit more about the upcoming months and my plans in my newsletter, but let’s just say that October is going to be a very busy month for me, finishing up my semester at university and all the plans I have for the website. Hopefully I can follow through with my plans, that would be subarashi! All though, truth be told, I think I’m going to have to pull some time out of my arse.

Pimsleur I:

I’m up to lesson 20. I’m haven’t listened to it for a week or so now, as my new job is closer to home (I used to listen to it as I walked to work, which was about a 30min walk, perfect!). I was finding it easier and easier, and perhaps moving too slow. I’m not sure if I’m going to have time to pick this up again while I’m at uni, so I might be stuck on this level for quite a while…

Japanese For Everyone:

This is the textbook I use at university (if it was up to me I I’d be using Genki). I’m currently half way through lesson 7. I really need to catch up in the workbook, I’m several lessons behind in that…

Anki:

I know I used to talk about how great jMemorize is, and I still like jMemorize over other programs such as Supermemo etc. However, I have found a program that I love even better. It’s called Anki and it’s still in better, however it’s still in beta. I have been following the creator’s progress and I know that 0.3 will be awesome! I’ll be doing a review of this program soon, comparing it to jMemorize…

I’ve also been revising this month how I incorporate flash cards into my study. So, with the move to Anki, I’ve restarted with my cards. I have 233 cards currently, and over the next two weeks or so I’ll be releasing another download for everyone.

Japanese Readers:

I recently brought some Japanese Readers. They are beginner level – I was tossing up between buying Beginner and Upper Beginner. Now I’m glad I brought beginnger! I have 10 stories in total. They started off very easy. Even when I didn’t know a word I could guess from context. Now, the stories were very simple, with simple language and simple sentence structure. So while it was sooo exciting to be reading Japanese, it was also a bit of “This is sooo damn simple! This wouldn’t even be interesting to a child!” Then, after the first three books, it started getting harder. I can’t really read any more of them at the moment. My biggest problem is vocabulary. I know a fair few sentence structures because Japanese For Everyone moves so quickly, but I don’t know nearly enough words. I’ll keep working on it!!!

Other Things In July

As you all know, I’m back at uni. This week is only the second week back, but I am already highly stressed. You see, I’m taking an extra subject this semester. I didn’t want to, but I have to if I want to graduate at the same time as I originally planned. Which means that I am highly stressed and don’t have as much time as I’d like. I’m also feeling really really tired and run down – after uni I try and do something but I end up going to bed, and spend more time trying to wake up so that I can cook myself some dinner!

Basically it means that this website has been suffering. Not good. This place is almost like an added stress even though I love posting here and maintaining it. It’s just that when I do, I think “I should be doing more university work!!”

So, I have decided that this semester I am only going to be posting reviews for two series: Nanokakan and Hana Kimi. I will finish the other series when the semester is finished – only about 12 weeks to go!! I have some great things planned this summer which I’m looking forward to. You can find more about them if you are subscribed to my newsletter.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about my study methods, combined with research I’m planning to do this semester at uni, so expect some fantastic posts on learning languages!

Plans and Goals

I can’t wait to finish this semester of University. As much as I love uni, I am really stressed! I just want to know everything already and be over and done with!

So when this semester of uni is over, I have some plans of what I would like to do. One is I plan on completing Remembering the Kanji. My original plan when I started this was long and slow… Just go through it at a nice pace. I’ve since decided if I do it this way I’ll probably never get it done. So, starting around November, I want to just power through them. I probably wont do any other Japanese study (other than “fun” stuff like watching dramas) while I do this, and I’m hoping that I can learn them reasonably well in two months, three at the most! Once I’ve got through it, it’ll all be revision, and a matter of acquiring vocabulary.

But Really, I’ve Just Been Wasting Time…

Yes, I am the queen of procrastination, and I think more than I act (which is strange because when I do act, I do so without thinking…) Now with uni here, I will have to watch my time more carefully! However, I am going through a bit of drama withdrawal, so hopefully this sunday I will be able to chill a bit, relax, and have some much needed comic and romance relief. Then again, I really need to do some washing and the dishes…. There isn’t enough time!