I thought it might be interesting to reflect on my Japanese learning.
I think I've been studying for at least one year. My anki deck is currently around 6500 cards.
First I did Remembering the Kanji for the first 2000 kanji.
Then I started using Anki I went through A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Sentence Patterns, Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar and Smart.fm Japanese core 2000. (as well a dipping into to other misc sources)
So what can I do at this stage?
I can write Japanese (on the computer) pretty well. I often trade messages with people on mixi entirely in Japanese. I'm not fluent, I can't express complicated concepts well. I'm mainly at the conversational level.
I can speak in Japanese and be understood. Again I repeatedly find myself struggling to express what I want to say. (I often use plain and polite form together by accident)
I can follow the jist of conversational Japanese but there are often bits I just don't catch. Or ways words are used that I just don't understand. Sometimes hours later I'll twig and think "Oh! That's what they said".
Some dramas I can follow, sometimes whole scenes I can understand word for word. Some times I understand, nothing, nothing at all. What the hell are they talking about? :D
Reading - I can't pick up a book and just read it, there are far too many words I don't know. I can bulldoze my way through it, ignoring what I don't understand, picking up the jist where I can. I've started reading manga, on my laptop, .cbr format (with a magnifying glass program to try and make out the furigana). I'm reading Gintama and I have to look up lots of words!
So I'd say I'm low level intermidate, frustrated, and wanting to know a lot more words! I don't think I'm pushing myself hard enough to aquire new vocab and phrases either - it's easy with a system like RTK or Smart.fm core 2000 but when you're alone in the wilds of Japanese everything goes slower, there's no pre-set path.
2 comments:
Hi, I've followed your blog for some time, and I was wondering if you could help me with some Japanese learning related advice.
I've been studying japanese lightly in a casual-ish course at my sixth form as well as my other main subjects, and next year I will do my GCSE japanese. But I'd like to hear your advice to the best way to learn japanese quickly - I've been learning all the words so far by just look-cover-say-check vocab lists my teacher gives me which isn't ideal, and i'm still struggling to learn hiragana / katana, let alone the few kanji we have been given. I tried writing out the table for hiragana and katakana, but that just led to me knowing the layout of the characters, not what they actually are.
Any help/advice would be much appreciated!
I learnt hirigana and katakana by writing them out again and again. You see them quite often so they tend to stick.
There are lots of kanji http://kanji.koohii.com/. I used the Heisig method to learn them. And now I just learn new ones as I find new words.
A lot of people learning on their own, base their method on Khatz: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about
Also as you're still in school, there might be an opportunity for you to do an exchange. http://www.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/en/study/Japan-EUmusp.html
Hope I could help!
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